The plan to infiltrate the valley between the Triplets and attack the town had crashed harder than Rainbow Dash after too much liquor. The new plan was following Goving and his minion, infiltrating the settlement, and figuring out what was happening. Then get stuff done, Gilda wins, everyone goes home happier, richer, and free to move on. It shouldn’t too hard.

The walk to town was a silent and quick one with fewer griffons and no need to skulk around. Even in the dark, Goving walked briskly and surely on the forest floor. The two queens had no choice but to trust him and his knowledge of the region and still tripped like every root and pothole deliberately sought their feet. They still had to keep up the pace or his monstrous bodyguard growled-complained.

On their way through the woods, Goving never wised up to the fact he should not have left without making sure the others were dead. That taking away the monster was a bad idea. Then again, he never struck Gilda as particularly bright or experienced. She was counting on his thick skull to not wake up to her ploy until it was too late. As they walked, they had distanced themselves from the rest of the company enough that Gilda hoped Gevorg and the others had already fought those traitors. That they, hopefully, were on their way to help her and Grunhilda.

Time breezed by during their walk, and sooner than Gilda had expected, they exited the forest. A frozen mud street greeted them, but there was only so much she could see under the dark of the night. The mud road seemed to meander in between cultivating fields and around the entire area, skirting the forest and the base of the mountains beyond. The scarce light came from a few lonely torches and abandoned oil lamps along the street, unevenly fighting a losing battle against the dark. A lugubrious glow came from what seemed to be the main street and from a lone barn at the edge of the town. Like someone had forgotten to snuff out the lamps before bed. All the rest was an impenetrable gloom.

Gilda frowned, both trying to see and in frustration. Even in Griffonstone, griffons were mindful enough to keep the lighting for safety and for comfort. Even worse, silt had taken over the glass panes of the greenhouses. Many of those had broken, making holes in the ceilings otherwise covered by thick, seated snow. What poor lighting reached Gilda’s eyes teased the imagination with shades and promises of more collapsed buildings.

The griffons of Frozenlake would shovel the snow away and board their roads. It helped carts and coaches on their way and made walking more comfortable. In Feathertip, walking down a slope, Gilda and the others struggled with the fresh, unstable snow. Gilda had time to think, and the situation had her stumped. How long had passed? Those buildings seemed abandoned for years.

Ahead was an almost dead town. Griffon homes in the distance appeared eerily abandoned. One of the homely stone houses on the edge of the city had a hole in the wooden tile roof. Lacking maintenance, the weight of the snow defeated the support rafters. Nobody seemed to care anymore than they did for the greenhouses. But Gilda kept those questions to herself.

Further on, at the limit of the light produced by a grimy lamppost, rested a dead griffon lady. Gilda stopped for a second, along with Grunhilda, staring at the frozen corpse; a poor, malnourished old lady, simply neglected to the elements. Left on the field and so close to town. Cruelly abandoned to freeze and rot, denied the traditional northerner burial. Her actual colors were hard to see; the frost had washed them away. A frail corpse like a draugr missing its magic. The pair resumed their walk after Goving’s minion gurgle-growled at them.

The road took them between an abandoned two-story house by the fields and the illuminated barn. The living room was dark, and pieces of furniture were left abandoned along with blood splatters and common daily-use items. Down the street, a trio of mindless dirty griffons patrolled it, armed with clubs. Upon seeing Goving and his prisoners, the pair of unkempt males and their female friend stopped talking and stared.

A rancid smell of putrefaction filled the air. Gilda twisted her beak and Grunhilda grimaced but said nothing. Before Gilda could complain, she looked at the barn across the street from the house. She wished that the old oil lamps had already run out of fuel.

The remains of wooly oxen, much like the ones which pulled her caravan’s cargo and supplies, remained in their individual stables for days after dying. One of the utterly desiccated creatures laid lifeless in a pool of black ooze coming out of its mouth and nozzle. Its neighbor showed bone through a tear on its rotten leather. Two rows of dead animals ranged from bloated to broken and extended all the way from the wide doors to the frozen, dark field on the other side.

Gilda coughed and bile soured her mouth. The image stayed with her, giving her the impression that those griffons had stopped caring for themselves and their animal friends. The foul sludge seeped into the beaten dirt path in between the bays, flooding old straw and around abandoned farming tools. Even the maggots that fed off the dead remained still in that vile scene, either frozen or themselves half-decomposed.

“This is horrible!” Grunhilda yowled.

“You’ll get used to the smell.” Goving said casually, leading the way further into town. “It’s not so bad in the longhouse.”

“Do you see anything wrong with this place?” Gilda asked, full of sarcasm, despite the distress creeping into her voice.

He turned to glare at her, yelling. “I think I told you to shut up!”

“Are you for real?” She retorted, raising her voice. “I feel like I should ask you to take me to an adult so I can talk to them!”

Gilda chastised herself; she could have ruined his passiveness. Fortunately, the trio of patrolling griffons exploded in laughter and distracted him. Goving’s blush and retort that he was an adult simply made them laugh even harder. Gilda even started feeling sorry for the flustered, awkward white griffon. Goving’s flared wings, childish anger, and yelling at them to shut up made it worse the more he talked.

Gilda watched the trio undoing themselves with mocking laughter. Beneath all the grime and caked mud, the queen had a lovely combination of purple and pink, with an exuberant fluffy chest and long multicolored feathers. The two toms were about as young adults as she was. One showed two shades of gray and the other carried a beautiful blue that had completely lost its luster to all the mud and broken feathers.

How in that Mother-forsaken place could those griffons have gotten so dirty? Ninety percent of the ground was covered in a layer of water! Dried blood, inscrutable stains, missing patches of fur and feather left sore and pimpled skin showing… Their oddities were too many to count. The queen had mating scars on her shoulders that simply festered and never healed properly. Missing feathers and dried pus stained her shoulders. Just the thought almost brought Gilda’s lunch to her throat again. The gray tom was laughing so hard he started coughing and blood sprinkled on the snow. It was so horrible and otherworldly that Gilda couldn’t tear her eyes from the abomination before her.

“Make them stop!”

Goving’s raging yell startled Gilda out of her thoughts. For a second, she thought he was talking to her because he stared her way, but his frosted minion stirred behind her. The monster splayed its feathers and icy spikes, shoving her aside, out of his way. The wormy shades inside the spikes stirred. A wave of cold washed over Gilda when the monster stormed by. Its screech died inside that thing’s throat while its paws reached and grabbed the dirty gray griffon. Like he suddenly awakened, the laughing griffon screamed, helplessly pawing at the monster’s forelimbs.

“Alright. Alright. Calm your feathers.” The purple and rosé queen contained her laughter and snerked into her fist before she made half-hearted appeasing gestures. “Lord Gavingkal told you to take them to the longhouse. They’re waiting, and you’re kinda late. So… yeah…”

Because Goving relaxed or because the monstrous griffon recognized the queen’s pleas, it stopped and let go of her friend. Goving on the other paw, suddenly reminded he was in a hurry, urged Gilda and Grunhilda to walk. He went as far as pushing Grunhilda’s rump onward. Walking with him, Gilda tried to think of something to tell him, but nothing came to mind. Her head was too full of that place’s bizarre circumstances while he hopped on ahead like an anxious cub.

Closer to the main street, what remained of the houses sheltered a few lethargic griffons lounging around the campfires. A few drank, others engaged in heartless fighting, and a dude mounted a queen, barely hidden behind a crumbled stone wall like mindless stray cats. Most of them simply laid on pieces of cloth strewn by the fire, looking bored. A sudden laughter distracted Gilda, and the overall impression was that of a late evening with nothing to do. Except the place was a mess, and a cub was crying, weakly, somewhere.

Apathetic stares kept following her while Gilda drank in the scenery. Abandoned pets had died and nobody recovered them. Cats, thick furred dogs, and a couple of starved simargl canines had stayed behind and remained ignored on the street and porches. Gilda could see the distress in the Grunhilda’s eyes, jumping from one detail to the next, but both remained quiet. The smell of ‘frozen rot’ hit Gilda’s beak like she walked into a wall before she followed Goving into the main street itself.

Where the eyes could see for a long unbroken line, Gilda would have forfeited such a privilege. It remained a road of frozen mud and snow with larger griffon houses and stores flanking it. Windows had been broken and doors battered down. Blots and sprays of blood remained above the broken bodies of griffons, abandoned, and left to freeze. Their armor, jewelry and belongings had been taken, and what wouldn’t fit or suffered damage lay abandoned along the bodies. Corpses and discarded loot littered the sides of Feathertip’s main street. A thin, broken layer of snow covered everything.

Building after building, abandoned and tortured corpses laid on display. Cut apart, pierced by bullets, or showing arrows and crossbow bolts from what used to be beautiful feathers and velvety fur. Blackened walls spoke of fire, broken windows and doors torn from their hinges, testified to the violence. Little dolls of griffon make, and toy swords were left shoved and trampled into the frozen mud, as broken as the bodies. Not even someone’s little pet bird had survived, being left a tiny, frozen body inside a mangled cage. Elsewhere, a little lifeless mink was bent in half. What sort of monsters did that?

Open eyes stared at Gilda, devoid of shine, hard as the stone of their homes. Frozen solid, they told of those Children of the Harpy’s last moments. Beaks hung open and brows frowned, stricken with pain and horror. Talon marks remained on their feathers and fur from when they were dragged outside. Stomachs, cut open, let intestines freeze outside and vile gashes covered caved skulls. Not only the toms and queens, but the elderly and the cubs too. Pets and working animals, which seemed a word more appropriate to whoever was responsible. Mangled paws, broken beaks, gored eyes, ripped pelts and torn wings, nothing seemed too obscene for this place. And around a corner a pile of dead young toms and queens stood like a monument to perversion. Gilda closed her eyes, but those griffons’ last hours haunted her thoughts.

Further up the street, the diorama of torture and horror continued. Paltry campfire lights poured from the dilapidated buildings. Rather than fixing, they used the houses as though they were an improvised shelter. A plaza capped the main street before the longhouse. A statue of a griffon had collapsed to pieces and only the base remained, surrounded by a dead pool of dirty, frozen muck. Three stakes circled around the fountain. What initially looked like cloaked griffons left hanging revealed themselves to be decapitated bodies. Someone had nailed their paws at the stakes. The cloaks turned out to be their blue satin capes, blackened with blood, while their heads adorned the longhouse’s façade. A grim scenery with the light from the torches on the entrance’s support beams, shadows reaching across the ground toward Gilda like the claws of a monster. A couple of pelt-and-bone simargl dogs stood and dashed away between the buildings.

Standing at the center of the street, just by the plaza, a strange emptiness filled Gilda. No anger, no fear, or any sorrow. Only the heat of searing flames and the disgusting smells of a past life staring back at her from the figures around the little plaza.

“I don’t like this place, Miss Gilda!” Grunhilda yowled again, but this time she clung to Gilda and shivered against her side.

“No!” Goving said, soft-voiced and reaching for Grunhilda’s shoulders like a caring brother. “They are not going to do that to you, Grunhilda! Only to the bad griffons.”

He stopped dead in his tracks when Gilda’s paw held his throat. Both sat on the snow for balance, even if she was half a head shorter than him. Her talons held him like vices and threatened to pierce his neck. He raised his paw to fight her, but she slapped it away while her eyes pierced his. All the while, like the bizarre, deranged griffons they had become, the locals started laughing. It caused the white griffon to frown in distress, but also to grimace with anger. His monstrous griffon bodyguard stirred and approached them.

“Call your lackey off, or you won’t live long enough for me to ask about your creepy infatuation with Grunhilda.” She said with a fire in her throat. “Did you do this?”

He kept his grimace, but it reflected a broken ego more than anger. His eyes closed, and he tried pulling away, increasingly agitated and quaking. Gilda held his neck tighter and shook him.

“I asked you a question, you little shit!” She let go and shoved him away. Not with enough force to topple him, but enough to get the message across that she was done playing that game. “Did you do this?!”

His eyes moistened and his brow knitted into a deeper scowl, like a cub about to throw a tantrum. Banging doors stopped him before he could speak. Two more griffons with icy spikes emerged from the longhouse, shaking their bodies and scattering frost on the wooden deck. They guarded the door while a third griffon walked from inside, strutting like he owned the place.

He was large, although not as bulky and tall as Goving. More like the northerner standard Gilda had grown accustomed to as far as physiques were concerned. His red eyes spilled delight at witnessing her anger. Deeply gray feathers, perfectly preened and clean, framed the slackening face of a griffon growing too old. His longhouse reflected it perfectly, sticking like a gleaming diamond in the middle of all the filth.

He paraded down the stairs to his home’s façade, but never stepped in the mud. A diva owning the stage. He stood on his hindlegs, showing off his bleached white armor, shining like he was trying to compensate for something. A complete set too, akin to the one the blacksmith siblings had shown Godwin but missing the tail and much heavier too. The chest plate reflected the light from the torches like he was supposed to be the center of attention and don’t you dare forget it. A white cape outlined his body, as he opened his forelegs and dark wings like all eyes existed to stare at him. It swayed with his feathers in the rot-smelling wind.

A pony mare came from inside after him. A piece of dark metal peeked around her neck from under her cotton cloak. Her purple coat was like a black orchid, and a harsh pink for mane stood like a crest. The fractured horn brought memories of the mare that made the news and caused Gilda to scoff at the newspaper and think ‘the ponies are at it again’ a few years ago.

While she stood at the top of the stairs, Gilda’s eyes found themselves fixated on the male griffon again. He laughed gruffly and spoke so his audience would listen. “Graham doesn’t have the gumption to come face me. Instead, his whore of a mate sent me her lackey. It’s alright. I do find it appropriate. Well then, don’t mind the poor cub, I did this. All of this. Have they told you why?”

“Dude, I didn’t really care. I came here just because I made a deal with Lady Geena.” Gilda shrugged and gave him a disinterested stare. She knew the type and would not give in to his appetite for attention. “I was going to kill you just because she asked, but you kind of convinced me that someone really needs to put you down.”

“Unfortunately, it seems your friends did not make it.” He said and gave her a patronizing smile like only a griffon could before he turned his stare back at Goving. He approached, catwalking down a strip in a fashion show dedicated to his ego. “And you… I ordered you to bring them inside. Did you really have to make me come out?”

Goving was going to say something, but the armored griffon swiftly struck his face. Even with his prodigious size, the white griffon yelped and dropped like a sack of flour. He cowered, covering his head with his paws and his wings. Grunhilda rushed to comfort him.

“You monster!” She screeched at the armored griffon.

Gilda took a moment to appreciate how Lady Geena hit the nail on the head. There was no way she wouldn’t know who the two griffons were she was supposed to kill.

“Shut your beak, broken doll.” He said with a growl while a cruel smile fitted his griffon beak perfectly.

Pleased with himself, he smiled softly at Gilda’s thoughtful frown. Proud like the popular bully pushing the right buttons. Complete with an audience of filthy griffons congregating on the plaza to attend to their boss’ performance.

“Oh, Lady Geena never told you? About your broken thrall’s problem? It runs in the family, you know? Quite the indignity to the relatives of the Astrani Star. Why, why else would Lord Graham be so ashamed of his spawn as to send him from his home? Or to forget his niece in the south? Oh… The honorable Lady Geena never told you any of that, did she? And you are not particularly smart either, are you?”

He laughed at Gilda’s attentive squint. At the sheer outrage in Grunhilda’s eyes and Goving’s helpless sobbing.

“I suppose the Allmother never mentioned it either, did she?” He wheezed, squeezing words between his cruel laughter, armor shaking with his deranged cackling.

“Gavingkal, can we get this over with?” The mare with the broken horn said through a disdainful stare. “I’m just here to apprehend this hen and take her to Griffonstone. I can’t take any more of this bucking cold or your… griffon-ness.”

“Yeah, dude,” Gilda glared at him, “the line is growing. Cut the cryptic bullshit so I can kill you, deal with this mare, and go back on my way to Griffindell. Hey, are you the angry mare that killed the hippogriff king working for the Storm King, or some nonsense like that? Are you here looking for me?”

The angry unicorn with the broken horn didn’t answer in time. Gavingkal promptly took the word again. Angry? Worried someone stole his limelight. Testy that his ego was not properly pampered. “Now, spare a shred of empathy for the poor things. Did you not notice anything out of the ordinary with your dear thrall?”

“Jackass, Grunhilda had a meltdown and hurt a local militia in Griffonstone. They were taking her to Shatteredrock.” Gilda’s consternation spilled into her words as much as she raised her paws in a gesture of sheer frustration. “I just wanted to get her out. I didn’t ask for her bill of mental health. Besides, with how fucked up my head is, I ain’t judging no griffon.”

Gilda rolled her eyes, thinking no one was normal in that batshit insane world. In the next instant, she blinked. Because she had noticed something was off about Big Girl. Something subtle, but it was there. Something she never really was able to put a talon on and just ignored. An eyebrow raised and her stare changed from annoyance into curiosity, and then back.

“Fine. I’ll bite. Enlighten me.”

Her tone of contempt made the black griffon laugh before he pulled Grunhilda from Goving by her nape. It was almost funny, because Grunhilda was bigger than he was, and as strong as he was. He still acted like the star in his own epic opera, immune to outside evidence of how otherworldly inane the whole thing was.

He kept holding Grunhilda by her nape and showed her to Gilda like he wanted her to buy the white queen. “This is what happens when the psychotic she-devil in Griffindell causes the Nartani to inbreed so much that a northerner lord doesn’t want his own cub. Gaharjet and Geena producing these disgraceful wastes of griffon is barely the start. Craven, gullible, simpleminded morons the lot. More and more, they will be born. Instead of mighty lords, a generation of submissive griffons not fit for much more than thralldom. She is destroying us!”

“I will save our noble race from that future.” Gavingkal let Grunhilda go and stood on his four legs, eyes aiming at the storm clouds above. His expression softened, and he petted Grunhilda, not noticing her vexed frown. “I found a use for them. I found a way to control them. To harness their unnatural strength, and they will help me-”

“Hey, grassbreath, what is funnier?” Gilda interrupted him, addressing Tempest Shadow. “A simpleton idiot going on about simpleminded griffons? Or a tough mare that keeps getting herself roped to work for these idiots?”

The mare said nothing while Gilda sat and crossed her paws. “Alright, chill on the theatrics. You’re just an incompetent jerk that got too old and never worked up the courage to challenge Lord Graham for Frozenlake. Then you made up some bullshit to justify your cruelty to your thrall. Or maybe you’re right. Fuck if I know how this breeding stuff works, but I know Grunhilda is not like that. Can we just cut to the part where you put your head on a chopping block, and I lop it off? I got places to be, and I doubt this mare is just going to let me go.”

Gilda stopped her rant and blinked twice. “How much is my head worth, anyway?”

“Enough to pay a decent compensation to the foals of the ponies you killed.”

“Well, tough. Take them to Griffonstone and you can give them my home’s insurance.”

Gavingkal laughed. “I’m sorry, Miss Gilda, I don’t understand where your bravado comes from. You are alone with your feeble-minded thrall and surrounded by mercenaries out to deliver you to Griffonstone. There is a throng of angry griffons that want to rip you apart and do worse things. They are quite tired of the very thing you symbolize.”

Truth be told, Gevorg and the others were supposed to have arrived to help her already. Gilda simply stared at Gavingkal with nothing to tell him and nothing to do about it like he was her math teacher. After a couple of seconds of uncomfortable staring between the two griffons and the angry mare, Goving interjected.

“I sent them off, Master Gavingkal!” The white tom declared with the pride of a prized student.

Tempest Shadow turned to him with a bewildered scowl. “You did what?”

“I sent them away!” He recoiled from her stare, raising his paw like a scared cat. “I told the others to escort them out of the forest! I… I had. They surrendered. And Lady Gilda… She said… She told them to go away. And that nobody else needed to die. And… And…”

“Our guys should have returned by now, milord!” One of the filthy griffons at the front of Gavingkal’s audience cried. He was a yellow, medium-sized tom with the blue highlights on his feathers almost gone due to all the poorly maintained plumage. He held the edge of the raised deck, and his fingers kept shaking. His wide eyes and jittery head seemed too much with the mannerisms of the drug addicts Gilda used to see on her way home back at Griffonstone. “This stinks! They’re probably dead by now or they would be back! The forest is not that much of a walk!”

“Captain Gevorg is the head of the Frozenlake’s guard!” Another said in the middle of the throng of dirty griffons. It was difficult making them out among the nervous rabble under campfires and missing public illumination lamps. “They’re creeping on us right now!”

Panic set in, and the mass of filthy, deranged griffons became agitated. They were all going to die; they said. Gilda was a ‘Loremaster Hag’, and she messed up their minds. Someone joked it wouldn’t take much to mess up some random griffon’s head. Someone was confused, as they had thought Gilda was a Swordmaiden. Others kept telling them to shut up. The concerning part was that they started shouting that they ought to kill the loremaster. Kill Gilda. Shoot her. Bash her head in. They wanted to do increasingly grim and concerning things to her, and that bothered Tempest Shadow. She tossed her head and neighed for them to simmer down.

Gavinkal needed a couple of seconds to understand what was happening in the middle of the growing chaos. His monstrous minions stayed in their positions, screeching and fluffing their feathers while watching the agitated crowd. From inside the longhouse came another pony, one of those tall, lithe mares, covered in white and with a flowing pink mane. What else grabbed Gilda’s attention was her fancy white gold armor and a mask styled as a white and orange fox.

A thousand little loremasters squawked at Gilda, telling her to beware. Tempest Shadow was dangerous, but so was the white mare. A second look showed she held no weapons, but a selection of jewelry and that meant her horn was her weapon.

While the ponies talked in their neighing language and with increasing distress, Gilda caught little of their exchange. She was more interested in Gavinkal slapping Goving again and cursing the white griffon.

“You blithering moron! You were supposed to have had then killed!” His armored paw struck the white griffon a third time and caused Goving to cower under his wings yet again. “Get your cretin cousin inside. To the excavations! Go!”

“Quit yelling at him!” Grunhilda shouted back. A fierce wrath in her sapphire eyes dared him to hit her.

Rather than facing Grunhilda, Gavingkal ignored her and turned to the assembled griffons in the plaza. Under the light from the torches, he raised his voice and made a grand sweeping gesture at them. “Shut your beaks and prepare to defend the city! I will deal with her. I will deal with her and send the Frostbound to fight the intruders. You thugs keep them out and try not to die too much!”

A dozen griffons among the rabble reinforced Gavingkal’s orders and threatened the others into action. In the anarchy of griffons scrambling to fight and the two ponies arguing, the armored griffon turned to the purple mare. “Get your associates and help us fight them, or you are not leaving either.”

The purple mare spun on her hooves, with her ears straight up and a fiery stare in her cyan eyes. Before she could say anything, her friend wearing the fox mask waved her exquisitely armored hoof and urged with her voice muffled by the mask. “We need their help to get home, Fizzie! Myrtle is sick!”

“I will pay you extra, cursed grassbreath!” Gavingkal insisted. “I’ll have my lieutenants escort you and your associates to Thunderpeak!”

“Fine!” Tempest roared before directing her words at the wizard mare. “Get them inside and tell the others to prepare to defend this frozen piece of Tartarus.”

While the fox-masked pony hopped to Grunhilda and Goving and encouraged them to stand, Gilda walked with Tempest Shadow. “I thought that Princess Twilight Sparkle had friendshiped the evil out of you.”

“Queen Novo wanted my head on a spike. Princess Celestia wanted to stick me in a prison until the end of times. Princess Luna wanted to give me therapy. And Twilight wanted to give me homework. The Griffonian government was kind enough to lose me during transport with a small financial incentive.”

“You really ought to stop working for the wrong creatures, though.” Gilda chuckled, but the mare didn’t seem to be in a good enough mood to share in her joke.

“Shut up, griffon hen. You killed two of my friends.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can hate me all you want, but are you just gonna leave Grunhilda here? With these dudes?”

The mare paused and blinked at Gilda’s words. Then she turned around to look at Goving and Grunhilda entering the longhouse. Finally, she turned back to Gilda. Without a second glance, the mare’s horn remade itself with a magical light. Enchanted shackles materialized around Gilda’s legs and connected them with extra chains to restrict her movements. Maybe it was her smile, but Tempest Shadow saw through her words. Gilda sighed and the mare also pulled a pistol from beneath her cloak. Scowling, she nodded for Gilda to enter the building.

Gilda obeyed with a frustrated sigh. She was going to dissuade the mare, but she must have failed to reach the right intonation. Before she had much of a second chance, Tempest’s horn magicked itself into existence again. A gag fitted inside Gilda’s beak to tie itself around her head. She never got to see it and reeling away proved pointless as the thing just came into existence solely to silence her. It forced her beak open and ignored her surprised mumbles. Between indignant and murderous stares, Tempest Shadow ignored Gilda, too.

“Shut up and walk, hen. I’m not taking chances with this Discordian griffon devilry.”

Just where in the feathering world had Gevorg gone to? Maybe she shouldn’t have allowed that dweeb to take her sword. Maybe she should just turn around and mess that mare up with her bare talons. Gilda held her temper; she would still be at a disadvantage without the others. Grunhilda might get hurt. Begrudgingly, Gilda followed the others into the longhouse.

She didn’t know what Gavingkal had named his hall, but Gilda called it a dump. It was dark and musty, literally the opposite from the one in the Manor, or even Geena’s keep. More like a warehouse or a workshop than a noble hall. Several sconces missed their torches and patches of dirt covered parts of the floor. No tapestry, no rich candelabra, or rugs except for one rolled into a corner. A few griffons, who still seemed normal to Gilda, turned the main table on its side and placed neat piles of crossbow bolts by their barricade. One of the walls had been turned into a barracks with bunk beds, collections of packs and random gear. A couple of young queens cowered behind a pillar and griffons in armor hurried everywhere.

It was difficult to see in the dark, but one of the meek griffonesses—never a good sign—looked at Gilda. A darkened halo was visible under her cyan feathers, but she averted her gaze and closed her eyes. Her friend hugged a young tom that Gilda hadn't seen. She could swear he was crying.

“Don’t lag behind.” Tempest ordered.

Gilda growled back. She wanted to remind the mare she had tied her legs, but all she managed was a collection of raging grunts. She couldn’t even admonish the dumb pony to look around her and see the disgraced mess she had tangled herself with. A passing insight that Tempest Shadow might be as blind as those griffons to all the insanity in that place chilled Gilda’s blood and silenced her.

Her tantrum caught the attention of a bulky, green-gray griffon with rustic, black iron armor and a horned helmet. Just as he arrived from further back in the longhouse, he saw Gilda and squawked to the others. He shook his head and more of them joined him, abandoning their job of preparing to defend the building. They talked among themselves with unhappy whispers, and noticing the disturbance, ponies who certainly worked for Tempest Shadow stopped working too. A short one with a mask that more reasonable creatures used for hockey looked one way and the other with a worried mumble, asking what was going on.

“This was not our deal, Tempest Shadow!” The bulky griffon said as the others gathered around. Her ponies joined too, and nobody seemed happy with the situation. “I dislike this profane place already, but I can accommodate for a decent pay. However, she is the Swordmaiden of the Shaddani!”

His words made the ponies nervous. For a bunch of pudgy grass-eating equines wearing masks, they seemed well prepared. Each carried a multitude of firearms and melee weapons, armor, and fancy apparel. All gleamed with magic to Gilda’s eyes, as shiny as the gems and expensive metals they were laced with. Their anxious backward steps and tossing manes confirmed they didn’t like what they heard. Nervous stares were shared, and it became a dangerous situation, especially with the imminence of battle hanging above their heads.

“Quiet!” Tempest Shadow took a threatening, stomping step closer to the griffon in iron. He stood his ground and squinted at her, but his beak remained shut. “It’s all griffon nonsense for all I care! I have paid you! Stop crying and do your job. You’ll get the rest of your fees when I leave with this hen. Walk away if you don’t like that.”

Satisfied she had said enough, the mare’s hard hoof shoved Gilda’s flank for her to walk after Goving and Grunhilda. The griffoness obeyed while the others resumed preparing the place for a last stand. That was when Gilda noticed the gaping hole in the floor. A couple of walls had been taken down, replaced with improvised support beams. It disfigured the inside of the longhouse and a plethora of digging gear laid strewn around the hole. Semi-improvised stairs led down into it, and torches lit the way. The entire longhouse had been turned into a mess. The entrance of a mine, messy with tools and dug-up soil.

Gavingkal raised his paw and ordered Tempest Shadow to stop. “There is nothing for you in here. My Frostbound will keep her under control.”

“I will not leave her alone.” Tempest retorted. “So, we’re all going down into your precious excavation, and you’re going to deal with it.”

She ignored his fuming and angry stares to the point he never even bothered replying. Goving kindly guided his cousin on, and the others followed. Going down the stairs, the abrasive dirt from the dug soil, spattered on the stairs, turned into mud and bothered at every step. Ahead, Goving kept reassuring Grunhilda to the point she lost her patience and snapped at him that she was fine. The two were so amusing that Gilda almost forgot she was a prisoner and that her plan had gone up in flames.

Behind Gilda, Gavingkal and Tempest Shadow kept arguing like a married couple. Their whispers were nowhere as silent as they thought, going back and forth between the two. The tan griffoness smiled, despite the uncomfortable gag in her mouth. At least, the two dirtbags were as miserable as she was.

The noises of griffons dragging furniture and shouting orders, the anxious neighing and trampling hooves all died away in the distance. The tunnel made of wet, dark soil and the broken remains of old rotten trees and rocks made way for walls of stacked cobblestone. A mist covered the floor and the wood planks felt, somehow, colder.

They soon reached a corridor in a buried building. An ancient one, and to Gilda’s quickly sharpening magical senses, thick with ancient magic. It practically seeped from the walls and hung in the air like steam in a hot bath, but instead of roses and sandalwood, it smelled of rot and rather than cleansing sweat, it brought shivers. A cutting cold that seeped into the bones replaced the abrasive dirt on the smooth stone and the walk remained an unpleasant exercise. Where did such a cold come from? Could it be coming from the frozen soil behind the cobblestone walls? Gilda knew little about that. Did the mist come from it?

They kept walking, turning twice, and soon passed a pile of discarded torches. On the walls, they were replaced by magical lighting crystals, recently fitted into the gaps between the stones. Branching paths led to old rooms with broken, ancient furniture. All both frozen and rotten, undoing itself into nothing. Just breathing burned Gilda’s nostrils, and the smells seemed dulled, but what she had dubbed the ‘cold rot’ prevailed.

‘What is wrong with you, dumb grassbreath? Are you seriously going to fight the griffons coming to fix this dump just to take me to Griffonstone?’ Gilda wanted to tell the mare. Her friends had attacked her and Grunhilda first. Not only that, but while Gilda had a paw in the grave and was about to slip in already. Why couldn’t the two of them just take their beef outside? Mare and griffoness. If Tempest would only let Gilda deal with the scumbag and help whoever they could in that Nightmare Night freak show, she’d gladly settle the score.

Groaning and swearing to herself around the gag, Gilda kept following Big Girl and the white tom. How deep were they going? They just kept walking. Gilda could have killed that jackass, Gavingkal at least three times over with her bare paws only to make him and the mare shut up. The corridor grew darker and colder with every step, and only after passing a couple of lighting crystals Gilda noticed they lost their shine. Pair after pair, they grew weaker and weaker. Slowly, the scowl on her face undid itself.

The corridor started tapering around her. The crystals dimmed their light with every step, barely illuminating the mist, much less the floor. They seemed to pulsate with her steps. Or was it her heartbeat they followed? She couldn’t understand the bickering duet behind her. She could hear their words, but the meaning eluded her. The cold seeped deeper into Gilda’s paws, up her legs, every time she dipped them in the thick mist. Like sticking her paws in ‘ghost water’. It had no wetness, only the cold that clung to her joints and made them stiff.

She never noticed when the lighting changed further, but the crystals no longer grew darker as she advanced along the corridor. Gone was their clear white, replaced by a distant, bluish twinkle, chilling her soul through her eyes. Like a star lost inside the mist, cold and abandoned. Gilda frowned and scanned the corridor. Did the stacks and stacks of cobblestones lining the walls move? At some point, the mist had seeped into the gaps. Or was it coming out of them? Cascading down the stones and playing tricks with her eyes?

Someone shoved a heavy piece of furniture. A griffon lady screamed. Gilda jumped and gasped. Her frown deepened, and she looked around herself. A door on the wall had been boarded. Fresh planks showed patches of green and flaking trenches etched into them. Did it move? A small worm, white and fat, moved inside with tiny black claws. On the other side, the furniture scraped repeatedly on the floor, and someone wept. Their broken sobbing and compulsive gasps crawled up Gilda’s spine. She had to distance herself from the boarded door before the sounds and the cold in her stomach overwhelmed her.

Faces of griffons swam in the mist, cascaded from the cobblestone. Old males and females, stretching themselves with the flow. In the next second, it was all gone. The dark corridor took a cold cyan shine and the cobblestone, while still smooth, seemed much crispier. The lighting crystals had vanished, and left Gilda lost in the dark.

‘Did you guys…’ she tried speaking, but her words never escaped her gag. Not even her mumbles received attention; Gavingkal and Tempest Shadow bitterly snarled at each other. In front of her, Grunhilda walked forward, and her wings sagged to the floor while Goving kept talking to her. Completely ignored, Gilda let escape a breath out of her nares and kept walking.

A surprised grimace showed in her face again as ghostly griffon paws sprouted their way past the cobblestone on the floor, pushing them aside and reaching for Gilda. That could not be real. She was most definitely seeing things. Those were not griffon paws rising from the floor. It was the mist. Ghostly rivulets of mist in the dark, playing tricks on her eyes. Grunhilda and Goving simply kept walking and Gavingkal kept arguing with Tempest Shadow. It was obvious the others did not even see any of it.

And yet frigid fingers skimmed against her paws, real as the gale of flying above the frozen land. They brushed at her feet and grasped her legs. Fingers undid themselves as she kept walking, ignoring them, but the cold of their touch remained.

‘There is some freaky magic shit going on here. I’m just seeing things!’ Wide eyes and thumping heart, she mumbled to herself as best as she could with that irritating ball gag in her mouth.

‘As though magic itself isn’t dangerous enough in this batshit insane world.’ She added with the same difficulty and rolled her eyes. Her sarcasm never made her paws stop trembling, much less soothed her anxious heart.

Something pulled at her tail and even she saw all her bravado shatter. Her tail puffed up when she tucked it between her legs. A muffled scream escaped her when she turned around. Everywhere, bony, spectral paws reached for her. Gavingkal and Tempest Shadow were gone. Shaking, gasping, she turned the other way and neither Goving nor Grunhilda were in sight. Big Girl’s name trembled on her throat, but the gag never let Gilda call her for help.

Alone. Her cape she was so proud of was gone too. Her magical jewelry vanished with it. The red scarf went missing. Gilda stopped walking. The ghostly paws grasped her legs, no less frail than they were before, no less cold, but Gilda’s muscles refused to move. Her joints locked, unyielding, shoving in her face what she didn’t want to see: her whole body trembled, and her thoughts refused to flow, paralyzed with fear.

She shivered. She couldn’t explain how, but she was standing before a black pillar in the center of a room. It evoked images of the obelisks which decorated cities throughout the old empire. Scratch marks, like someone had carved words with a chisel, imitated the griffonian writings and bled a cold blue light. Distorted symbols hid their meaning and teased her eyes, desperately searching for something that seemed real.

The mist seemed to flow from under the pillar, like it was the heart of winter itself. A statue of a snake-like being coiled around the obelisk and a long, desiccated equine leg held the creature to it. The snake became the front half of an equine, not unlike the undead draugar, but the parched muzzle of the creature showed fangs most unpony-like. Even carved in stone, its mane seemed to flow like the silky hair of the alicorn-gods and its grimace shed an unnatural malice.

The eyes shone like sickly stars. Unlike the twinkling beauty of Luna’s lights, those carried the oppressive cold of the Frozen North. It spoke to Gilda inside her head, not with words, but with noises and a pickaxe against her skull. Her vision blurred, and a blizzard took over her thoughts. The cold made her hiss and tremble.

“Welcome, child.” A griffoness spoke to her in a calm voice and in a respectful tone. “They yearn for you, and unfortunately, you are lost, alone in their domain.”

When Gilda’s eyes focused again, a raven griffoness stood before the obelisk. Was she there before? The word ‘raven’ described her uncannily too well. Black velvet for coat and a shiny jet for plumage. Onyx for a beak, and vibrantly honey eyes standing out so much Gilda could not look elsewhere. Her face held a supernatural and mature beauty. Her presence demanded attention. She walked, and her gait barely disturbed the pervading mist covering the floor. Her pieces of ornamentation barely rattled. Animal teeth and small bones hung in between squirrel skulls from her necklace. The antlers rising from her headdress made with the skull of a deer barely swayed. Her majesty and poise could not coexist inside Gilda’s head with her gross ornaments.

Finally, Gilda noted the place they were in. She had no reference to compare it to. It was a round room made to accommodate the obelisk with the statue. Foggy ice covered the walls. It was solid as stone and cold as the heart of a Windigo. In fact, it pulsated like a beating heart. It thumped inside her head like an oppressive force crushing her. Gilda’s stomach turned and her head spun. She shivered again, sighing a mist into the air, and hugged herself, hazily wondering when she had entered that room.

Spikes protruded from the walls. Hundreds of them oppressively dotted the dome-like room, reaching toward the statue in the center. Each one was clear as crystal, filled with liquid. Every one of them harboring a ribbon-like worm inside, twisted into itself to fit inside. The raven griffoness examined one, and then another, and another, before finally squinting her eyes at one and smiling. She touched it softly, running her fingers across it, and the worm shivered inside. Finally, she held it in both paws. One powerful pull freed it from the ice layer on the wall and the jagged base bled a foul-smelling water.

Griffons like Goving’s bodyguard had surrounded Gilda. Several of them. She tried stepping back, but the ghostly paws on the floor held her stoutly. Those monsters walked towards her, with their bleached feathers bristling in a hurricane wind that never touched Gilda. Slow steps like the inexorable crawl of time. A frost covered their icy spikes, but the shades moved inside, reminding her of what was in there. They approached, keeping their foggy white eyes on her. She couldn’t even see their irises, but her skin crawled; she knew they scrutinized her every naked inch.

She was looking through the keyhole of death’s door. Her eyes filled with a glimpse of the horrors beyond the edge of life. Were they undead? Were they just hurt griffons, perhaps beyond salvation, but still just griffons? What were they? Magical machinations of terror and cold. The thousands of Loremasters in her past telling her what she saw had silenced. Where was Ghadah and her bravery? Where were Godwin and Gevorg?

“You are… Alone. Forsaken.” A hideous, shrill, and mournful neigh froze her blood, riding the grating High-Griffonese the monster spoke. His beak, twisted and flaky with decay, came too close to hers. Her throat filled with ashes and her nares with the acrid smoke of burning flesh and fur in his breath. She tried screaming when his black tongue licked her beak and her feathers. “Bared to the bone. Powerless to resist.”

A rushing storm of terror rolled over Gilda and filled her muscles with energy. She tried pulling away from the monster to no avail. Her throat closed; her nares seemed too small to carry the air into her lungs. She pulled again, but the bony spectral paws held her. Three on her foreleg before yet another latched on to her so tightly they could break her bones. She could not hold it anymore, but her panicked shriek never escaped her gag. It squirmed inside her mouth and crawled into her throat, filling her with a fleshy mass. She shook her head wildly. Her screams, again and again, remained sequestered in her throat. Her chest weighed like a mountain against her muscles and cold, bony paws with cutting talons held her body; she could not move.

Ash, scorched flesh, and sweat overwhelmed and sent her eyes spinning. The gag turned her cough into retching and spastic seizures, but that was denied of her, with overpowering and rugged fingers about to shatter her bones. They grasped at her feathers and pulled like they had tied her with iron chains and forced her to grate her face against the stone floor.

Tears streaked from her eyes, and her muscles pulled in vain. Rough clasps of ice and harsh fingers scraped up her thighs, heedless of her protests, pulling muscles or curling toes. Her head pounded with her desperately hurried heart and her screams that never left her chest. Life-stealing cold poured into her flesh, spreading through her body like her veins carried the cold of the Frozen North. It cut into her with a thousand knives.

“Mother!” she cried.

The corridor, the monster, and the eerie ghosts vanished. In one instant, they held and hurt her. In the next, she stood on a placid lakeside. Golden light made into liquid washed over the black sand and an island sat in the middle of the lake, taken by a single, solid tower of black stone. A gale flayed Gilda’s feathers like the wind was petting her. Distant thunder rolled with flickering lights above a towering mountain, far behind the lake.

She grimaced and heaved before she controlled her nerves. She pawed at her neck, at her belly and her nethers, telling herself again and again none of that was real. Still trembling, she reminded herself it was a vision. A dream, a nightmare. Something. Whatever it was, it was over, and she was safe. A wave of warmth enveloped Gilda. It washed away the residual cold. Petrichor filled her nares, doing away with the ashen fires and disgusting stenches of heinous defiling. She finally breathed calmly again.

Gilda then smiled with the comforting steps on the sand. Mother Harpy was walking beside her, but then suddenly flicked a finger between Gilda’s eyes. Gilda yelped and attempted to cover her face while Mother Harpy spoke in her usual disappointed tone. “You should have called me sooner, you little idiot.”

How dare she? Gilda had just come out of one of the worst nightmares in her life. She was stuck in a nightmare factory without help! When she growled and looked up to complain, Mother Harpy was looking at a pawful of black sand. She watched it pour from her fingers and undo itself like glitter in the air.

“Deceptively cunning.” Mother Harpy frowned. “They crept into your mind and found your biggest fears, like you had an open menu for it to pick and choose. I almost lost you.”

“They’re messing with my head, the pricks.” Gilda flared her wings and splayed her fingers at the sand, snarling and scowling.

“Messing with heads, as you put it, is what they do.” Mother Harpy petted Gilda with a brief smile that soon shifted into a worried frown. “I despise what I am seeing. This devilry seems strong enough to turn powerful and loyal griffons into their minions.”

“Do I want to know what is actually going on?” Gilda asked with a raised eyebrow, folding her wings, and sitting down on the sand. “Never mind that! I just want to go back there and whoop some ass!”

“The details are indeed complex and unimportant to you. You met Madam Gudrun. She helped their magic to worm into your mind. She has then tainted you with a parasite. It is a magical entity pervading the ruins but bound to the worms. Its physical form is no more than a carrier for the Windigos’ magic. She is herself a victim. I fear all the survivors in the town are infested.”

She poked Gilda’s forehead with an obsidian talon when the tan griffoness flared her wings again, standing and demanding to be sent back. “The parasite is attempting to take control of your mental faculties after arming itself with your fears. It was battering down your defenses with dread and horror, but it was easy to cleanse. While intelligent enough to improvise, like its masters, it lacks the true creative power of the Nightmares.”

“Or mine, for that matter.” The great black and white griffoness held her fluffy, silvery chest. “Had it succeeded, you would have become one of those monsters. Their mistake was underestimating your connection to me.”

Those words gave Gilda some pause. She folded her wings and waited, paying attention to Mother Harpy’s words. Soon, the traitor loremaster and the parasite would realize something went wrong. Mother Harpy frowned; her eyes aimed at the sand. A chink appeared in her armor of inscrutableness.

“In all the previous cycles, they attempted nothing similar. I am not entirely sure of what this means.”

Gilda watched with a touch of curiosity the nigh impenetrable expression of the great griffoness before her, lost in thinking. The tan griffoness wanted to insist. That Mother allowed her to put down Gavingkal and his cronies already. She wanted to ask her about his claims in the subject of inbreeding and what it meant for Grunhilda and Goving. Mother Harpy never gave her the chance for either, and spoke first.

“Blessed is the mind too small for doubts. They are cracks in the foundation of a strong faith. You are not yet ready to understand and your reservations about my designs will sap your strength when you need it the most. You are not yet ready to face this, under the pain of me losing you. I cannot allow this. I command you to flee.”

Gilda frowned at her. She found it awkward to impose herself against a taller griffoness, so mighty she could snap her in half if she wanted. Although feeling like a cub challenging her no-nonsense mother, her glare aimed at Mother’s stormy eyes.

“I made my choices and burned my bridges; you know I am on your side, and that I don’t doubt your power, or your wisdom. I simply disagree sometimes with your ideas. Sometimes.” Gilda responded with words solid and cutting as steel.

“You are not smart enough to appreciate the difference.” Mother Harpy half-snarled, half murmured at Gilda.

She might not be smart, but certainly knew what side she was on. And she might be too dense to understand Mother Harpy’s reservations, but the tan griffoness chose bravery over prudence. Thus, she intensified her glare with the surest of frowns, and perhaps the silliest of pouts, staring up at the black and white griffoness.

“There is no way in the Scorch I will leave that place without my friends. I don’t know what they are doing, but I am not just fleeing like a scared chicken! Much less leaving that place as it is! You gotta help me kill that jerk and save whoever I can, not flee! There is a whole town of griffons we need to bury.”

The Harpy kept her blank expression. “You do not even know what the Scorch is.”

Gilda cared little. She had made up her mind. Still sitting on her haunches, she made a smug grin and crossed her forelimbs. “Besides, I’d be a pretty crappy Chosen-of-the-Harpy-Awesome-Swordmaiden-Loremaster-Dual-Purpose-Bootylicious-Griffoness if I just squirreled away. Right?”

To say the Harpy was not amused would be like saying her late earthly mother used to be happy with her low grades.

“Do you want me to sign an I. O. U. or something?!” Gilda threw her paws, even letting her voice raise. “You already own my soul! My ass is buried in debt to you! I’ve already agreed that I’m going to be your big Swordmaiden hero, and that I’m going to be your chosen one’s concubine. Or whatever. I even accepted that you make me hornier. Or friskier… I dunno!”

“The word you want is libidinous.” Mother Harpy was still not amused.

“Whatever! Whatever that freaky dream was! I even took part in your big orgy! The point is… What more do you want?!” Gilda’s shoulders and wings slackened. “I… I never had a lot of friends, and I don’t want to lose them… and I know you can help me deal with Gavingkal!”

“So… Ah…” She joined her yellow paws and made a pleading grin. “Please? Pretty please?”

Mother Harpy stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. Gilda’s jaw hurt from holding such an awkward and forced grin. Finally, the great griffoness filled her chest and let escape a long and blaring sigh, also massaging her brow.

“End it, then.” Mother Harpy resumed her stately and haughty posture. “Put my traitorous children to the sword and relinquish their souls to me. I will cleanse them of the Windigos’ parasite and heal them before I send them on their last journey.Avenge their transgression and correct their wrongs. Bring my light to those lost in the dark and let the name of the Swordmaiden of the Shaddani echo in the voices of the living and of the dead. Show the enemy that the Children of the Harpy glorify Me in the fury of battle and wash their sins in the blood of their foes.”

“In the future, I shall teach you prayers which will help focus your mind. For now, remember the Raptorial Creed. Love your own infinitely and hate your enemy infinitely. Take everything and give nothing. Make use of my Gift of Wrath; give in to the raptor.”

Her large paw shoved Gilda’s chest, and she fell into a black nothingness. Slowly, light cold as winter poured into the walls and a room came into being. She saw the statue before her, lifeless and as mundane as any statue. Its empty eyes became twin dots, like distant stars. Cold and piercing instead of twinkling gracefully, pouring malice and unfiltered hatred out of themselves.

Its voice rocked her head like a collapsing mountain. An unfathomable cold surrounded her, and an unholy stench attacked her nares, but she never shivered nor retched. At most, her beak twitched with unpleasantness and her brown knitted.

Proud is the daughter of the Raptor Queen.

How could not she be, for truly did she win.

Vast is the Frozen North, untold its cold.

Empty is her worth, vain her bold.

Mightier is our grasp inside her kin. Cold are their souls within.

Gilda’s expression contorted into an annoyed roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah…” She twisted her beak again. “Roses are red, violets are blue. Something-something, fuck you.”

Gilda’s chest throbbed with pain. Information bombarded her. She was back in the cold room, sitting on the cold floor, with her back to the wall, and encased in ice up to her ribcage. The cold was beyond understanding and only by magic her body remained undamaged. Her most sensitive parts felt numb and sharp stabs hurt her extremities with every heartbeat. Her limbs remained chained by Tempest’s magic, and even the warmness of the pony magic seemed distant as the moon. She was awake and her warmth fought the cold like two armies clashing.

The spikes protruding from the walls shone at her and every little detail assaulted her eyes. Every pulse of magic surrounding her, every squirming worm presented itself for her scrutiny. The frigid ice on her teats, the icy spear shoved into her chest and the icky blood on her feathers. Cracking noises from the ice echoed inside her head and the filthy ice filled her nares with rot. Reality screamed at her.

The raven griffoness’ black paws held the spike firmly past a broken rib and into Gilda’s heart. In the next instant, her honey eyes widened, and her beak opened in sheer shock. Unrestrained fury filled Gilda’s blood and Mother Harpy’s fulgurating magic, itching to be unleashed, boiled it. Gilda screeched at the black griffoness. The chains snapped and she held the icicle. A bolt of lightning filled her nerves with fire. It seared the worm into nothing with a flash and shattered the ice spear into a million pieces. A light so bright it blinded Gilda for an instant. Shards so sharp they cut the raven griffoness’ forelegs when she shielded herself. It reduced the ice holding Gilda to cold dust, and free, Gilda reached for the griffoness’ neck.

“Mother wants a word. Traitor.”

Her honey eyes enlarged further still when Gilda’s fingers held her neck. When the shock subsided, she failed to react. What was the black griffoness thinking, Gilda wondered. She smiled at her, and her eyes whispered to Gilda she was sorry. Gilda was not.

“Beware. There are more.” The struggling words squeezed through her black beak.

The stoic stare of acceptance which followed almost made Gilda grieve for her. Almost. The residual pain where that hag had run her chest through still hurt. The black griffoness simply closed her eyes and never resisted. Gilda toppled her, laying on top of her and didn’t let go, putting all her weight on her paws and anger in her eyes. Gilda held the black griffoness’neck until the twitching limbs stopped. A pang of sorrow struck Gilda, finally, as she let go and all the fury subsided. Her body was so cold it was like throttling a corpse. A passing glance showed a beautiful body, tainted with repeating scars that left missing feathers and fur on limbs and between her teats. For better or worse, she was free, and Gilda would bury her properly.

Grunhilda and the awkward white male both stared at her. One mimicked the other’s wide eyes and hanging beak, but Grunhilda pulled her paws free. He tried to hold her, but her paws slipped from his. The male cried ‘no!’ and grabbed her armor behind Grunhilda’s neck. In the next second, Grunhilda reached for her hammer and in one fluid motion, hit him on the side of his head. Goving collapsed to the thawing floor and the muddy water stained with red.

The white griffoness shrieked and jumped closer to Gilda. A quick once over showed she was unharmed, but the thawing crystals cracked open and released the disgusting worms into the cold, filthy water. They twitched and wiggled helplessly. The obelisk completely lost its magical shine, and darkness took over the room. Only the light from the magical crystals in the corridor allowed them to see. Thank the Harpy, they were working after the magic in that cursed place ceased.

Neither queen needed a word, and Grunhilda followed Gilda. As if to hasten their flight, the stone once under the ice cracked and pebbles splashed in the water along with chunks of dirty ice. Grunhilda stopped by the doorway, though. She turned and looked back into the room with a distressed frown and her beak hanging open.

“We can’t help him, Grunhilda.” Gilda told her. “Maybe it’s better like this… We’ll try to give them a proper burial, but now we gotta go!”

Next Chapter: Battle on the Fields of Sorrow, Pt. III Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes