Gilda followed Gia through the main hall and outside, into the cold windy air smelling of thunder and fresh snow. They walked over the fluffy snow and the sounds of soldiers preparing to march reached them. A grindstone squeaked and grated as Gia hurried like she feared the end of the world. Gilda did the best she could so the other’s nervousness didn’t get to her, while Geary and Grunhilda mindlessly followed them around the manor.

A few soldiers congregated next to a small wooden house leaned against the manor’s stony walls. Horizontal planks scaled on one another to make its simple, but sturdy wall and tiled wood made the roof like feathers on a griffon’s wing. A simple little room past a simple door, and it had a small window with finely crafted iron fittings and intricately cut glass. More like a simple bedroom, the closed house flowed past a roofed open area. A wide chimney stood above a forge radiating enough heat that the snow melted on the roof and collected in gutters draining it into a barrel.

The furnace itself resembled a great stone oven. Its base held a bright flame behind a stone top at the proper height for the griffon shoving the metal inside of it. It counted with a bellow and a reinforced door which would allow for feeding the fire. It looked like it would burn for quite a while yet, and a reverent silence remained over the cracking of fire. A vivid cerulean griffon had their back to them, watching a blade inside the furnace.

“Galahault?” Gia called softly, but he raised his right paw. Her face scrunched, but she made silence.

Gilda and Grunhilda sat nearby, paying attention, a bit off from the soldiers with Gia in between them, and under the covering roof.

“He’s been working on that thing for a week now.” One of the soldiers in cuirass armor whispered with a paw to his beak.

“To be fair…” Another added in whisper. “That is an impressively quick forging for such a sword.”

“He’s supposed to be making muskets!” Geary followed in the same tone but frowned. “‘Good enough’ muskets, not perfect ones that take too long to be ready.”

Then the griffon by the fire sighed audibly and they quieted for some four seconds before he pulled the metal from the fire. A bright hot blade for a greatsword, with its tang exposed and still missing its cross-guard, but with the pommel forged into the tang.

He slowly put it on the anvil and grabbed a hammer. White wood with a black head in the shape of a ball adorned with an elaborate pattern and two sides, one square and the other a ball. But Gilda couldn’t make out the details.

He looked at Grunhilda and spoke with a deep voice for such a small griffon. “You have to listen to the metal, kitten. It will tell you when it’s ready for the hammer.”

She just gave him her typical dumb stare and watched as he felled the hammer on the still bright metal. “Okay.”

That griffon didn’t look… Normal.

A short griffon, but not small. Bright yellow feathers and fur, with a black-blue glove on his paw he held the incandescent metal to the anvil with. He wore a heavy, brick colored leather apron in front of hum and a white metal necklace held something behind it. His short black beak remained shut in focus, and a stipe of azure crossed over his black eyes. The top of his head didn’t have the typical crest of feathers, but vividly blue feathers. His wings carried the same incensed blue in its feathers.

A striking stripe of darker blue feathers contrasted with his yellow chest as a collar of glossy feathers.

Then Gilda almost screamed when he held the searing bright metal in his left and right paws, noticing neither had any coverings but his natural skin. Every hair and feather in her body stood as though she expected some sort of delayed reaction, and she let go a breath when nothing happened. He simply stared down the blade with a content smile.

He seemed old, older still than Gabriel. But he also seemed so goddamn strong like a contradiction. Like one of those freaking unicorns who looked like they were going to live forever because they were so damn epic they didn’t give a feather about getting old!

“Galahault, we need a weapon for her.” Gia respectfully, but impatiently gestured to Gilda and Grunhilda. “Do you have anything special for a swordmaiden and her thrall?”

“No… I don’t.” He frowned a little and ground something off the blade with a file he grabbed from a box of tools with his tail and delivered to his paw, without looking at it.

“There he goes again…” One of the military types groaned to himself in a low voice and the one next to him hushed him with a grin.

Gia meant to speak again, her raising temper visible in her scowl, but he spoke first.

“The fledglings will laugh at me for saying this again.” He laid the slowly dimming sword against the anvil again. “They don’t pay attention to the signs anymore and this is why we find ourselves in our present situation.”

He spoke to Grunhilda, grabbing his hammer again. “And when history happens right under their beaks, they don’t see it and then they make fun of their elders.”

The way he spoke silenced the soldiers, made them cease their snickering and listen, while Gia waited with ostensive impatience, but in silence.

The old griffon smiled and raised a finger with a deep azure talon. “It's modernity. The magical letters, for example. They used to be the privilege of kings and queens, and the general populace knew how to wait. They pondered. They witnessed and held testimony in their hearts. Today they want everything fast and solved. They have teleporters. Some years ago, it was the muskets. Now it’s the rifles. They lack rhythm… They hurry when they’re supposed to wait, and they wait when they’re supposed to hurry! Noisy things, not like the hammer against the hot metal.”

He banged the hammer at the sword, hard, and sparks flew. Magical sparks. Gilda could swear she saw bolts of lightning between the metals just before it hit the metal. She could smell it in the air, like the storm.

He paid her no heed, though, and just proceeded with his work.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Then he smiled at Grunhilda. “Like the rhythm of life.”

Then he left the hammer again and held the sword. Gilda still cringed at the old dude holding the hot metal with his bare paws.

“And… Perfect…” He smiled again, staring down the length of the blade. “It just takes patience. Some care. Love. Like everything.”

“Hum… Nice little house you have here, mister.” She spoke happily and Gilda noted Gia’s intolerant impatience and the soldiers’ growing contempt, but she decided to let Grunhilda and the old griffon talk. Let him work. She was in a hurry, yes… They couldn’t afford to lose the meeting, but her own little voice in the back of her head reminded her patience was a virtue sometimes.

“Thank you Grunhilda. I made it myself. A smith will often find himself in need of woodwork, so he better learn it.” He smiled a little more at her and his eyes grew wider. “Wood is a different creature than iron. It is less forgiving and sometimes you must work it into a scabbard, or a grip. Leather too. You better learn how to treat them.”

He held a strap of tan leather he had nearby and showed it to her with a smile. It almost seemed like an old dude that was happy he had someone listening to what he had to say.

“You are a good listener. That is good. No griffon has ever caught their prey by being noisy. It’s a shame our youth is like that. There is a time for talking and another for listening.”

She gave him her dumb look again. “Hum, how do you know my name, mister?”

He let out a sigh and left the hot unfinished sword rest on a double rack. Its heat seared the white wood, adding another mark to the several others. “She needs to rest for a bit… Wait here. I have something for you.”

He entered his little home. Gilda stretched her neck to see nothing more than a small table, some drawing supplies and a bed covered in a rabbit skin. Gia drew her attention with some angry whispering.

“We’re wasting time.” She sighed. “At least he seems to have something for Grunhilda… We just need to get him to give you something too.”

Gilda meant to scold her, but the old griffon’s voice came from inside. “Ah! Here it is. Do any of you know the story of the Glass Dragon that terrorized the White Desert?”

He didn’t wait for an answer and spoke from inside. “Oh, it happened some sixty, seventy years ago. Lord Garet was just a wee little milkling. But he was fierce already.”

He laughed. “His poor mother.”

“Who’s Lord Garet?” Gilda asked softly.

“Lord Garet.” Grunhilda whispered. “Son of Lord Gildon, father of Lord Gilad and Lord of the Black Gates before him!”

“Isn’t it your job to know these things?” One of the soldiers frowned and whispered to Gia, who just shrugged.

“Our Loremaster sucks…” Another soldier complained under his breath.

By then Galahault slowly walked back to them, carrying a flat and wide box on his back. He dropped it on the beaten dirt floor. It didn’t bounce, subtly eerily. It just stuck to the ground with a loud ‘thud’ as though that thing was just too heavy and awesome to give physics any regard.

Griffons just comically crowded around the thing.

Made of white wood, long on one side, it had been scorched and carved with so much detail and subtlety it reached ridiculous levels. But the engraving itself really caught Gilda by surprise more than the fact it sported so much detail.

A wide composition showed a mountain in the middle and a starry sky. Smaller mountains around it had been carved into palaces and giant mansions, almost like the spires and mansions in Canterlot, with wide arches and ample balconies. Griffons flew everywhere and an image of the great white and black griffoness hovered atop the tower in the central mountain with her wings wide open in a stripped pattern.

Her eyes snapped back to the old griffon as his voice brought her from the sculpture on the box’s lid. “The Windigos were inspired. They had come up with a nasty behemoth. The Glass Dragon the people called it. It was actually made of ice and malice, but they called it Glass Dragon. You know… Ice dragons tend to be chill.”

As she recovered from the physical pain the joke imparted on her, the old griffon continued. “The wicked monster slaughtered the entire Sky Sentry and the hosts from Frozenlake, Brokenhorn and Stormvalley in one epic battle. The griffons of Frozenlake escaped… Brazen warriors… They covered the retreat of their lieges!”

“Well, it seemed as though an army was not the answer for this one… So, Lord Gildon called for heroes who would help him slay the beast!”

The griffons listened to him with their jaws hanging as he recovered his breath. “Five great heroes answered to his call, and so, The Six of Fate, as they were known, set out to hunt the frost wyrm! Lord Gildon Thundercry, the Lord of the Black Gates; Lady Gaharjet Stormborn, the Astrani Star; Master Gembert Steelbender, The Runemaster! And Princess Celestia, the Dawnbringer!”

While griffons gasped in comical unison and loudness, he quieted his voice and pointed up at the stormy sky to then hide his beak behind his paw. “She didn’t like it at all…”

“But what was she going to do, right? That thing was trouble!” He nodded in self-acquiescence. “The Allmother is proud, not stupid.”

“You said five heroes!” Gia gasped nervously “You only mentioned three!”

“Oh… There was also me… I was Master Gembert’s apprentice, and Princess Celestia’s apprentice too… Shimmy… Sunny… Something. I don’t remember her name.” He frowned. “We really didn’t like each other.”

“The important thing…” He regained his excitement. “Was that they tracked down the monster and after a short battle, they concluded that they needed a legendary weapon, something out of the olden tales to destroy it, but they didn’t have it.”

He grinned and pointed a finger. “They had a blacksmith, though! So, Princess Celestia gave Master Gembert sunfire with which he forged an arrow of stellar steel that he gave to Lady Gaharjet! Then they tracked the monster again and they fought it one more time until she managed to aim a flying shot, straight at its bitter heart and it died at the edge of Frostpeak mountain!”

“The sun is not a star…” Gia groaned at him.

“It so is!” The old griffon shot back. “Celestia said so herself! Do you presume to know more than she?”

“You can’t remember what happened last week!” She accused him with a scowl. “What did you eat for breakfast?”

“Your mom.”

“Wait! What did you and Shimmy-whatever do?!” Gilda cried.

“Ah, we watched.” He grinned. “From afar. It was one of the worst monsters the Windigos had conjured up and our masters didn’t want us to die, or something.”

They distanced themselves from the old griffon while Gia screamed and pulled at her crest feathers. “Why did you tell us this stupid story?! We need you to give weapons to Gilda and her thrall so we can get over with taking over the city!”

“But that is what I am doing! Patience!” He defended himself with lidded eyes and a raised finger. “You see… Lady Gaharjet and Master Gembert mated after that. She said she really liked the arrows he made. But… Uh… The Griffonian Standing Army kept watching the Northern lands for ages and they concluded they were too dangerous when Lady Gaharjet and Master Gembert moved to the south! They feared they were involved with something. They murdered them. They derailed a train so that they wouldn’t have help and to hide the murder.”

You… They…” Gilda stumbled with the words, and she almost cried with anger. “You can’t be serious! They murdered them?! Wait… WAIT!”

“Very disloyal… Very… Ugly. But the GSA agents didn’t have the heart to murder their cub… They took her. And I tried to help, but I couldn’t protect her.” His gaze lowered. “I was just a mediocre blacksmith that didn’t have a talon of Master Gembert’s talent and didn’t know how to fight. I almost died myself, but I was there with them when they died. For all the good that I did.”

Gilda shook her head and her beak hung as he reached inside his apron to pull a shiny white crystal, breaking the collar and offering it to Grunhilda. “They wanted you to have these.”

But Grunhilda shrieked and pulled away from it. “I can’t! I’m... Indebted to Miss Gilda!”

“Greatness is calling, cub.” He held the crystal to her, pending from the broken chain he held in his paw. “You are the child of legends. Your mother wanted to teach you the bow. And your father wanted to teach you the hammer. But you were beyond my reach, and I did the best I could. You must find your own path. It is the life of a Child of The Harpy.”

Her scared eyes found Gilda’s and she nodded softly. “Take it Grunhilda. It is yours.”

“You will do great things, Grunhilda.” Galahault smiled. “I know you will.”

She held her white paws to herself, stare shifting nervously between Gilda and the crystal. Finally, with another encouraging nod, she took the small crystal and stared at it. Then at him, who nodded down at the box. She stared down at it and approached the crystal to it. As it came closer, it shone with a clear cyan light that reflected on the engraved image and painted it with light, as though it filled with light turned liquid and entered every little cranny.

The lid popped. Grunhilda blinked at it and lifted it bare. Inside, the box was padded with a soft filling covered in blue satin that fit a hammer. White wood handle and a black rectangular head, the side adorned with an image of a forge like a mountain. And next to it a dark metallic bow. It had at least seven feet in length, and it looked like iron, but with an eerie shine to it. Beneath, the case held a quiver of black leather and elegant iron fittings carved in knots and adorned with diamonds. It contained several arrows which actually seemed made of iron, but exquisitely made and adorned.

Honestly, the thing contradicted everything Gilda thought she knew of bows…

Grunhilda reached forward, but Galahault held her paw. “This is an Astrani Thunderbow. Most things you hit with it will not survive. This is an ancient legendary weapon of the sort only a pawful exist in the world.”

She blinked and nodded respectfully before she reached forward to it.

Then Gilda held her paw. “Be careful!”

“Okay.” She promised with her typical stare that made Gilda uneasy she hadn’t truly understood and reached forward again.

But Gia held her paw. “How about we practice with a traditional northerner ash hunting bow first?”

“Can I pick it up or not?!” Grunhilda frowned and whined.

“Sorry, Grunhilda…” Gilda smiled. “This is yours.”

Grunhilda reached forward again, and Gia meant to stop her, but Gilda slapped her paw away and scowled at her. Finally, Grunhilda held the hammer. She frowned, holding it up in her right paw. “It’s heavy.”

But then her beak opened a bit with a smile, looking up at it. Her eyes gleamed like a pair of stars.

“Of course, it is!” Galahault laughed. “Iron has a strong soul! It needs to be hit hard so it will turn to whatever it is meant to be. Much like griffons themselves.”

“Thanks, Master Galahault!” She cawed happily, still staring at the thing like it was… Well… An epic item of legend, and a gift from the parents she barely knew. Gilda smiled too; her happiness was too infectious.

Master Galahault too smiled, looking at Grunhilda, until he turned back to the sword he had left ‘resting’ in the wood stands. “Well, I think she’s ready.”

Then he laughed. “You see… Some of Master Gembert’s knowledge rubbed off on me. I had shamed myself, and I turned all my being into becoming the best smith I could.”

The metal had, indeed, cooled to the point it looked like black iron instead of an oversized surgical instrument for cauterizing wounds. But maybe, the best thing in the whole situation was he turned to Grunhilda again and showed her the weapon. Then he turned to the grinding stone and sat next to it. He reached with a hindleg and stepped on the wood pedal to spin it while holding the weapon to it with his paws.

“Normally you will temper steel before sharpening it.” The big griffon girl paid attention, half-way through donning the black quiver across her back with the bow. She had found a belt she hung the hammer onto, but her head snapped to the old griffon when he talked. “Not so with Astrani steel. It can’t be bent, molded, or ground at all once you have tempered it.”

“Most magical weapons were normal quench-tempered steel with a multitude of spells shoved into them. They made them more durable and gave the weapons any effects as they were desired.” He held the blade and stroked it with a thick leather. “That is not the case with magical alloys. They must be ground, cleaned, and engraved or carved before tempering.”

“You see…” He put the blade back on the wood supports and fussed around until he found a small, folded leather tool kit he opened and picked a small hammer and a delicate chisel from. “Two ancient techniques used a magical tempering, and the additional spell ought to be done with those. The processes didn’t add to the metal. They changed its very soul.”

He sat with the blade on his knees and took a quick glance at Gilda, muttering something to himself. “Yes…”

He repeated, whatever he had said and took the chisel to the blade. Tapping it with the little hammer, he made sharp tick, tick, ticks and Gilda could swear she saw little fiery sparks jumping off the thing.

It looked normal, but… Magical. Chisels didn’t make sparks.

Curiously, the others didn’t seem impressed at all. The soldiers just watched, bored out of their minds, waiting for the old smith to be free to do whatever they wanted… Maybe repair a piece of armor, or sharpen a pike head, or a sword. And Gia. She resigned to just watching and hoping it would be over soon.

Gilda enjoyed watching the griffon talking and working. Maybe it was what he just did for Grunhilda and maybe they didn’t understand, or didn’t care, but Gilda did. What he had just done for Grunhilda… Not the sort of things griffons did out of the blue.

Not to mention it was way too much of a coincidence the guy who had Grunhilda’s stuff worked with a Loremaster in that particular city with the unrest after the whole thing in the museum… It seemed as though something was going on and it was bigger than her helping Gia get some money while taking the city and it was larger than Gilda getting a cut in it.

It sounded like History happening.

Then the griffon held the blade again and blew over it. “The Battlehorn smiths, the Ordo Ferrarius, were an arm of their auxiliary forces… They had giant cities filled with earth ponies that dug thousands of cubits under the ground, to the bones of the land, from where they drew a dense metal called thaumatonite. Their smiths used concentrated sunlight to fuel the forges that could work it. Giant halls with countless enchanted lenses and mirrors focused the sunlight and the magic it carried into their smelters and furnaces. Only those reached the necessary temperatures and magical flux. They called it Sunforging.”

“Entire families dedicated their offspring to the several steps of the process. Earth ponies dug the land and coaxed the ore out of it, pegasi chased the clouds away and unicorns urged the magic to do its thing. Just as the Battlehorn noble houses and their vassals brought up their children to the task of proudly wearing such armor and arms into battle.”

“You’re seriously telling pony tales now?” Gia stared blankly.

“They are not ‘pony tales’.” He focused on his work but talked back to her. “These are the tales of the land. Battlehorns fought Emperor Grigor wearing that armor. Those leaf-shaped shields held against griffon weapons, and their long, curved blades trespassed many of them.”

“We were different.” He smiled again, cleaning the carving he had just done on the blade with an oily cloth. “Those who became the Astrani had one mighty forge whose ownership passed from parent to child in the form of the master smith’s hammer. And while the ponies dug into the earth, we extracted our iron from the mountains of the Stormy Eyrie...”

He showed his forelimb and held it in his paw. “The same iron in the blood that runs in our veins. We like using the iron from the place we live. Its magic is the same as ours, and the one from the Stormy Eyrie was the best.”

“We acquired the heat and magic necessary in our own way too. There was one large oven that supplied heat for the smelters, and furnaces. It trapped lightning inside and it was the only way to reach the temperatures needed to forge Astrani steel: fifty thousand Imperial Degrees. Any colder and the magical alloy wouldn’t form correctly. It became brittle and disintegrated inside the furnace.”

“And everyone would laugh…” He chuckled.

“Master Galahault.” Gia started with fake patience. “Is there a point to this other story?”

“The point is that muskets, cannons, and airships won’t win us anything.” He turned to her. “It is the magic! The iron that our ancestors dug out of the mountains where we were born! You see… The Astrani smiths believed that every one of them had one single legendary weapon in them…”

He raised one finger. “One that would be the highlight of their life and then there would be no point in living because then their purpose would be fulfilled, as they would never make anything of the same caliber. Hum… Unfortunately, I don’t have a flashforge…”

He stepped outside the ceiling above his forge. “But that is the nice thing about Our Mother. If you do what she asks of you, and if you ask nicely, she will do anything for you…”

“After all…” He stood on his hindlegs and thrust the blade into the sky. “This is how the myths of Her Children are born!”

It happened so fast it caught them by surprise, but Gilda saw every flashing instant. Lightning came from the snowed ground and the snow simply disappeared around him. It entered the blade by its exposed tang, following his foreleg and in between his fingers. The metal lit white as the brightest daylight when a bolt of light flashed from the clouds and met the tip.

The following boom resonated inside of her and the heat flash-burned the support structure of his home into ashes and scorched the stone of the manor. Glasses shattered and a few bushes covered in snow caught fire as his little house collapsed.

The blast of hot air pushed them into the air and back. It stole their breath and the sound echoed in the distance. Grunhilda stared with her surprised dumb stare and Gilda dragged herself to her feet. She blinked, jaw hanging, and dry mouth. The short griffon held the blue-white incandescent metal in his paw and cheered with whooping mirth, standing on a circle of soil turned to shattered glass. His right foreleg had burn marks where the lightning snaked up and so did his chest and his face, dark blemishes in his perfect plumage.

The blade was ridiculously hot and staring at it hurt her eyes while the air threatened to burn her nostrils, as vapor rose from the snow as he moved the blade above it.

He brought the thing into what remained of the forge, and the wood the surviving wood supports caught fire when the thing came closer. Galahault kicked open a long metallic container filled with white snow and shoved the weapon into it.

It sizzled and the snow slowly turned to water, letting off steam. The metal ringed a clear note like a harp. Gilda wasn’t sure she wasn’t just dreaming again.

“What the heck just happened?” Gia got back on her feet and cried before she even gathered the scene before her and her soldiers did the same, shaking their heads and groaning, gathering helmets and weapons that flew off. Geary shook his head and covered his ears.

“History, Lady Gia!” Galahault cried, pulling the clear metal from the container full of boiling, steaming water. “The birth of a myth!”

He rested the sword point down into the beaten dirt and fitted the cross guard, slightly bent towards the blade, with a few hammer strikes and followed by wrapping layers of tan leather around the sword’s tang. Having done that, he skillfully wrapped a similarly colored string.

Finally, before Gia could gather her wits and say anything else, he pulled the sword from the ground with a clear twang and grinned widely. He held up the sword before turning it to hold at its blade and offered the hilt to Gilda. Somehow grinning even more, pulling at the fresh burn scar.

How in the feathering world did he withstand the pain?

“Mythical.” He let the word roll off his tongue and her eyes caught the engraved runes near the guard. They shone in gold made light, fiercely, and the blade vibrated subtly, as though the word resonated in it. Everything else seemed less important than him giving her the weapon.

“The first Swordmaiden dancing sword made in the last two thousand years.” He told her proudly. “Astrani steel, made by Astrani, of the iron from the Stormy Eyrie our ancestors brought with them. It waited for you for millennia and it let me forge it into biting steel. Beautiful. Deadly. As the Chosen of the Harpy.”

She held the sword and raised its blade. It was as though the weapon had grasped her paws right back, if it even made any sense. And that was the first time some old dude called her beautiful and it didn’t feel creepy. When she came to, she still kept the thing up, staring open-beaked at it and found herself lost between contemplation while the others batered between themselves.

“Uh… Lady Gwineth…” Geary stood and pawed the snow off himself. “She’s a Swordmaiden and she has a sword, and she dances with it.”

“Let me tell you something, tom. The power she has over you is not the might of the Raptor Queen.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Well, ultimately, it is. But it’s different.”

With that he turned to what remained of his home, not a hint of sadness or regret in him as he started shuffling around the wreckage.

“All that so that you could make a sword for her.” Gia complained. “I mean… You could have just said…”

“Gia… Your lack of faith is disappointing. You are a Loremaster, for feather’s sake. Lore is your reason for existing.” He groaned, but then let out a happy caw. “Ah! Here it is!”

Meanwhile, Gilda kept sitting on her haunches, staring at the sword. At her reflection on the fuller. Without thinking, she stood and spun it in her paws and around her body, feeling its balance and length as it whistled through the air with a yellow tracing gleam. A greatsword of perfect size, made of pristine white steel with a golden pearlescence to it. She grasped the string in the grip, and it perfectly aligned to the blade’s edges. She grasped at it quickly a few times and could feel the leather cushioning underneath the tightly woven tan string. The perfect placement of the pommel, a medallion showing a relief of a pair of griffon wings.”

She launched the blade on a diagonal upward cut and it moved as though she was born with it. Cutting the air anxiously and whistling like a bird but growling like a lioness when she held it close, point forward.

She couldn’t see it with her eyes, but somehow, it shone with magic. Like a blinding light she could almost see, as though lightning filled it and rested nervously on her paws. Just about to unleash.

When had she learned how to evaluate a sword and what even was a fuller? And when had she learned to read runes such as those?

It hit her like a hammer when she realized he had been speaking High Griffonese the whole time and she understood it all.

“Mythical.” She whispered to herself. The word echoed in her mind, like her dying words in other lives and her heart burst in flames inside her chest. Little Gilda from Griffonstone, a Chosen of The Harpy. She didn’t even know anything a couple of days ago, and suddenly she’d been granted magic like she’d never seen before.

“Mythical…” The word rolled in her mouth like mead and tasted of lightning.

Legend beckons, My Child. You will both make me proud, and I will gladly share the most precious bounty of your race with you.

Her voice drew Gilda out of her reverie, and she saw Master Galahault wore chainmail armor, complete with a chainmail hood. He drew a sword and a heater shield (which she somehow knew what was) from the wreckage, both of which he put behind his back.

“Let’s go!” He walked heavy, determined steps despite the scorching scars. “Legends will be born this day and this city won’t take itself for The Lion!”

Grunhilda gave him a worried frown. “Master Galahault… Are you sure?”

“My purpose is fulfilled, kitten. I have made my mark and my name will echo in the halls of Griffonia. From the southern heathen bars of Griffonstone and Beachhome filled with scared unfaithful birds to the mighty mansion of Griffinsky and the lordly halls of Brokenhorn and Frozenshore. The skalds will sing of me to My Mother!” He cried with a grave frown and a fist up. “Now… Our Mother calls me to her hall in the Stormy Eyrie!”

“Do you realize you just said you are going to die?” Gia deadpanned.

“Gia…” He talked patiently and put a paw on her shoulder. “Everything dies. Commoners die. Soldiers die. Kings and queens die. Heroes die. You will die. Do you know what will never die?”

She blinked at him, as he pushed a closed fist at her chest. “Deeds never die! The names of the great heroes who answered to the call of greatness! The ones tested in the fires of strife and found excellent! Like Master Gembert and Lady Gaharjet! What you did with your life will never die and it is in death that you are tested. The defining moment! Now come on! One must not leave the Allmother waiting!”

He turned his hind to her and just walked, to what Gia cried with a raised finger and a scowl. “Hey! Wait a second! I am the one in command of this mission! I get to divide the Bits we’ll get!”

Gia was so worried about those stupid Bits she didn’t even notice Gilda spoke the same language they did. It drew a sneaky smirk into Gilda’s beak. Then she looked at her and finally at the blue and golden griffon walking past. “Let’s go, Grunhilda. Come on, Gia. It’s not about shiny coins with Celestia’s face on them. It’s about griffons! Our brothers and sisters under the Mother of Storms.”

And then she left her sword on her back, back to her fours. She didn’t even think about it, but it stayed there.

Huh. For some reason, thinking of the sword as ‘it’ seemed wrong. But she didn’t think about it for long, fearing the thing might fall and stop working if she doubted it.

“Ugh…” Gia whined, then she shouted at the soldiers walking past them after Master Galahault. “Wait!”

Gilda smirked at her and followed the others, hearing Gia’s steps on the snow rushing after them.

Next Chapter: Stealing Souls Estimated time remaining: 24 Hours, 57 Minutes