Gilda and her friend galloped along the corridor as fast as they could. None of the mist, noises, ghostly apparitions or cold remained. Only the dark persisted, partially controlled by the lighting crystals that seemed to work properly with a white light. They merely lacked the numbers. Nothing supernatural seemed to be happening anymore.

Rolling her eyes, Gilda thought Gavingkal was not only delusional and a traitorous tailhole, but also a stingy jerk.

An elongated hallway provided her with a moment of reflection. How were they going to properly bury Goving and the black griffoness? She simply couldn’t leave them to rot and allow their souls to become even more of a plaything for the Windigos. She kept going with those thoughts in her mind. Soon enough, the branching paths had been boarded up and torched replaced the magical lighting crystals. The way up was close.

Turning a corner, Gilda stopped with a gasp. A pair of the griffons Gavingkal had called Frostbound blocked their way at a bend in the corridor. One hissed upon seeing the pair, and the other turned to look at them. Both stood to fighting stances, each holding a spear and readying for a fight. No armor or shields, but their weapons, made in dark metal, seemed ancient and so did the magic they radiated.

Gilda hissed at them, flaring her wings out of surprise, while Grunhilda barely even slowed down. She barreled down the corridor like an out-of-control train in a racket of clanking armor plates and showing no signs of slowing down, despite Gilda’s orders to stop. Their spears slid past her armor and one of them gurgled, crushed against the wall with a high-speed Grunhilda-worth of kinetic energy.

Just as Gilda could open her eyes and stop grimacing—and be angry at Grunhilda’s recklessness—Big Girl’s hammer smashed a spear against the floor with a thundering crack and a shower of sparks. Screeching, the frostbound let go of his broken weapon and lunged at the white griffoness with his talons. Gilda grabbed him first, while the other monster was still stunned against the wall.

Her fingers sizzled at the frost in his gray plumage, and the monster’s strength surprised her. After a momentary struggle, she shoved the griffon back against the wall, and without an instant of hesitation her talons slashed his parched throat open. Black blood, sticky like a melting pony candy, flew with broken, sickly feathers and glued to her talons. But that wasn’t the worst. It was that the monstrous griffon simply kept moving and his talons just barely missed her eyes. Only then, the frostbound stopped. He only seemed to register the injury after a heartbeat and as long wiggling worms spilled out of his exposed blood vessels.

Gilda jumped back with a mismatched combination of different swear words. Likewise, Grunhilda shrieked, hiding behind her when the griffon she had crushed too kept moving and worms crawled out of its mouth along with the leaking tar-for-blood. Grunhilda screamed again, hiding behind Gilda’s wings.

“I really don’t like this place, and I would like to go home, please!” Big Girl shrieked yet again.

Worst of all, the slit throat began knitting itself up and slurped the worms back inside. The frozen, decaying flesh melted, for lack of a better word, and started melding together. With a disgusted grimace, Gilda grabbed the nearest torch from the wall and shoved the burning tip into the wound. It produced a satisfying hiss, even if neither the monstrosity nor the griffon it had taken over were readily flammable. While it slowed the monster down, what Gilda called corrupted flesh simply grew over the burnt wound after the frostbound removed the torch.

The two griffonesses backed several steps as the monster clawed at its re-knitting throat and the other hobbled towards them. Gunhilda’s little ear-like feathers perked when a threatening screech came from behind. Two more monstrous griffons emerged from the direction they had come from.

Grunhilda screeched at the monsters in front of them and flared her wings while Gilda turned around, measuring the other duo’s approach. They prowled, step after step, but they didn’t flare their wings. Instead, having no weapons, they hissed menacingly. Big Girl hissed at the first two again, standing on her hindlegs and wielding her hammer at the ready.

“We gotta burn them! We need more torches!” Gilda yelled with the nervous energy she found herself filled with. She shifted her posture, nervously pacing from side to side until something unseen slapped her behind her head and she yapped. Then her eyes widened with a sudden realization. “Oh… Yeah. Right.”

She gave herself a confident grin and stood on her hindlegs, closing her fists, willing the magic to flow, and channeling it to her talons. Fingers tingling, her chest filled with warmth and certainty. The nearest frostbound griffon lunged at her, but she was ready for its attack despite its unsettling speed. Gilda gracefully danced a step back, redirecting his paws with her left paw. Her right traced the air with lightning and teared at the sickly flesh, searing and cutting the monster’s face with Mother Harpy’s magic.

The monstrous griffon reeled, screeching, and holding the blackened wound across its face. He tumbled and fell on its back while Gilda reached for the other. The overly long talons out of the shriveled fingers glanced off her chest; her very feathers flashed with Mother’s Light and unleashed its power against the monster. Despite the magical protection, the vigorous impact hurt and made Gilda step back not to lose her balance. The monster shrieked at the black, mangled thing his paw became.

Gilda acted quickly and held the monster by the neck to let lightning magic flow into it. Its eyes popped and its flesh ripped itself apart, bursting with steam and the disgusting ichor the monster had for blood. When she let go the frostbound collapsed with streams of smoke coming out of its nares and ears.

Gilda’s gut clenched. A second thought reminded her it was death. Release. That griffon’s soul was free of its frozen shackles and once they gave him a proper burial, Mother would take care of him. She raised her eyes to the other monster, the one whose face she had clawed. She saw a griffon in there, thrashing against bars of fouled meat. Not too unlike she had once been thrashing against bars she couldn’t touch. The monster used to be a young queen, probably with a cyan shade of blue under all the magical frost and disease. Something lingered behind the foggy eyes. A ferocious predator, mangled by sickness and chained by profane magic. Gilda’s eyes hardened as the Frostbound lunged at her again. She held her paws, fingers intertwining, but before the monster could attack again, she reached forward with her open paw, planting her fingers on that creature’s face.

“It’s over. Mother calls you to the Stormy Eyrie.” She willed lightning to unleash, and it burned through the ailing creature in a display of vapor and convulsing, bursting flesh.

Watching the creature die by her actions, listening to herself speak, a sense of accomplishment and belonging filled Gilda. Unlike anything she felt before. Even after joining the northerner griffons and fighting in Thunderpeak. Even more so than helping those helpless griffons cross the northerner frozen lands. It elevated her soul, and somehow, she felt closer to the Allmother. The clanking of Grunhilda’s armor and her struggling snarl brought her back to more immediate matters.

She jumped closer to Grunhilda as Big Girl snarled and growled at the frostbound, both holding the monster’s metal spear, snapping beaks at each other. Next to them, the hobbling monster she had crushed against the wall was ready to attack. All her anger, Gilda channeled at the enemy, at the actual monster behind that wretched soul and twisted body. The horribly mutated rocs came to her mind and the undead swordmaiden lingered longer still.

Her feelings turned into a furious screech, and lightning flashed through the air into the monster. Undoing the filth for reddened and brown meat. The smell, while sickening, was not as bad as the rot it had replaced. The other magically corrupted griffon soon followed. It had taken the spear from Grunhilda, but Gilda never gave the monster a chance to use it. She screeched again and teared at the sickened flesh under his plumage with her talons. Finally, she held the creature and unleashed Mother’s power on him.

Grunhilda waited next to Gilda while she looked down at the smoking corpses. Whatever remained of their souls had already departed. It was what her newfangled magical senses told her and filled with both sorrow and relief.

The moment didn’t last as the noises of battle reached them. Gunfire, mostly, and urgent shouting. After acknowledging she’d punish Gevorg and Godwin for taking their sweet time, Gilda ordered Grunhilda to move and followed.

Trotting out of that cursed hole, they found the same griffons as before. They were busy defending the longhouse so intently they never noticed the pair emerging from the hole on the floor. They kept shouting and shooting out the windows. The room was dark, with snuffed out torches, and naturally cold, unlike the underground corridor. The ponies were gone, and it was one of the griffon mercenaries carrying ammunition who first noticed Gilda. A small, but scarred tan, soldier-like griffon, he froze like his mom had found him stealing cookies.

“Stop shooting at my griffons!” She yelled above the clamor of the fight. Three of them laid dead in pools of blood. The only ones that didn’t jump at her wrath. The waste, after what she had seen, enraged Gilda. “You joined the wrong side!”

They hid behind the logs which made the walls and under the windows. Gunhilda lowered herself to the floor to stay under stray bullets and the occasional crossbow bolt. Gilda just ignored it all, too angry. Instead of cowering, she pointed a finger at them and their increasingly wide eyes after every bolt that flew past her head and a bullet that whistled into the room.

“I have griffons out there that I care about. I swear, if you killed any, you’ll spend the afterlife licking toilets in the Stormy Eyrie!” she hissed. Grunhilda tried to say something, but Gilda told her she too could shut up. “Go kill the right griffons, or I will end you myself!”

“I believe these are yours?” After quick seconds of shock, one of the mercenary griffons, deep blue, and steely gray, crawled to her, bringing a bundle. A roll of white cotton cloth he left on the floor before opening. Mythical and Grunhilda’s thunderbow, along with Gilda’s cape and magical jewels, were inside. “Those strange griffons left them here when Gavingkal called them to fight. I thought it would be wise to secure them.”

Gilda opened a wide smile seeing her beloved cape was alright.

“Miss Gilda, please get your head down!” Grunhilda pleaded from the floor just as a whoosh flew past Gilda.

Pretending she didn’t notice she was tempting fate, Gilda lowered herself down to the floor like everyone else and pulled the bundle to her. Praising the griffon while she took her magical sword and slid Grunhilda her bow.

“Lady Gilda, you should know…” A third griffon, a shiny yellow and pink queen, talked to her while Gilda donned her magical jewelry. The griffoness hid behind their barricade and Gilda wasn’t sure if it was because they were in the middle of a battle or if she was ashamed. “Gavingkal locked up several townsgriffons. Behind the longhouse.”

Feathering poetic. The jerk probably had found the buried ruins after he started digging his own dungeon. Then he just improvised. Rot begat rot. Gilda took measure of the griffoness and decided she trusted her. A gruff, proper mercenary with broken feathers on her crest and dirty feathers on her chest. A far cry from the filthy griffons outside, pretty like Gertha.

The queen’s tangerine eyes avoided Gilda’s as she still hid behind their barricade. “Some of the locals didn’t ‘take’ the… thing. The Loremaster ordered them beat, but they still resisted. A pair of my griffons are guarding them, and they are not well.”

“Keep them there and keep them safe.” Gilda wasted no time with judgment, finally leaning against the wall for protection. Outside was a chaos of filthy griffons holding the line. “Are all the others… Infected? All those outside?”

“Yes…” The blue griffon trailed off.

“We’ll deal with this later.” Gilda interjected with a waving gesture. “I don’t care what happened. Help me deal with this mess; stay here and keep the prisoners safe. I’ll tell the others that you cats are alright.”

The blue griffons nodded, a gesture the others in the hall mirrored. “Be careful with that mare. Tempest Shadow was furious with what she saw. She means to take you back to Griffonstone. One way or another.”

“I’d like to see her try. Come on, Grunhilda.”

“Okay.”

Following their indications, Gilda and Grunhilda found the servant’s door in the remains of a kitchen. They passed a couple of scared griffons cowering behind the cupboards, and Gilda gave them a quick, reassuring smile. Although she kept staring at a young tom with gray eyes. He seemed lost in a limbo between terrified and passive, not to mention malnourished. For now, the mercenary accompanying them unlocked the door and Gilda peeked outside.

Despite the cold, the outside was colder still, but fortunately, it wasn’t the same evil cold as the ruins. Outside was a pathway skimming the backyard. Whatever its features, piles of soil and snow hid them. Those were so large they nearly obscured the small building Gilda supposed was the jail. She growled at the thought that idiot Gavingkal seemed to destroy everything he touched in a misguided quest.

A small wooden fence had missing and mismatching or damaged boards. The fact Gavingkal had no guards posted to that entrance meant he either trusted the mercenaries or didn’t really know what he was doing. Or both, for all Gilda cared.

More importantly, the old veteran queen that Gevorg had sent to scout the woods before their arrival was there. She hid behind one of the dirt mounds, cocking her head and blinking in surprise when she saw Gilda. The tan griffoness smiled and quickly told Grunhilda to wait before she trotted her way to the other griffoness. She smiled even more at the sight of a dozen soldiers from Frozenlake in full gear and Godwin and one of the Hunter guys. Her Loremaster, the blue cape wearing green griffoness that was Gia hid there too, and so was her thrall Geary. Yet another competent fighter Gilda could count on.

“Where is Gevorg? Never mind… get yourselves inside the longhouse.” Gilda addressed the scout, hiding her words below the sounds of battle. “Careful with the hole; there might be more of the frosted monsters. Try to put them on fire. The cats inside are with us now. I don’t think Gavingkal’s griffons are expecting an attack from the longhouse, so do with that what you can.”

“The Captain is on the frozen fields. Gavingkal took his monsters there.” The old scout pointed the way past the houses. “The rest of the guard is keeping them busy. Gertha took the rest around the other way and should be fighting the ferals at the south approach.”

“They are not ferals. They’ve been infected with a weird magical parasite from the Windigos.” Gilda corrected her mindlessly.

“Infested.” Gia corrected Gilda, matter-of-factly. “Parasites ‘infest’, rather than ‘infect’.”

“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you taking care of our injured?”

“Captain Gevorg wanted me to come see you. In case you were hurt.” Gia shrugged and made silence for a second of self-pity. “You don’t look hurt. How do we deal with the not-ferals?”

Gilda shook her head. “Kill them. Free them. Regardless, there are some hurt griffons in that house. I asked the sellswords to keep them safe, but since you’re here, tell them I sent you. Get them to a safe place until we’re done cleaning this mess. Leave some cats to take care of the victims and go help Gertha. And watch out for the ponies.”

“Ponies?” The veteran made a confused frown.

“Some random grassbreaths got themselves stranded in here looking for me. They sided with Gavingkal but looks like their boss may have a change of heart.” Gilda explained in a hurry. “Just try not to step on their hooves. I’ll deal with them when it comes to it.”

Orders given, Gilda brought Big Girl to her from the longhouse’s backdoor with a gesture and the guards started on their way inside with Gia. Godwin smiled and greeted Gilda briefly, as did Gunner and went along with the others. Then, with a brief explanation, Gilda took Grunhilda from the backyard of the longhouse. The two prowled among broken houses until they reached an open area. Rocky outcrops and the slanted foot of one of the Triplets made it bad for farming and the locals had left it undisturbed. Old, packed snow and a few flimsy leafless trees were the only witnesses.

The pair happened upon the remains of a battle. Gilda’s griffons had crossed paths with what seemed like a patrol of ‘ferals’. Blood splatters and sprays tinted the trampled snow and a dozen filthy griffons laid on a pile. Their blood smelled wrong, and Gilda twisted her beak looking at them. She didn’t have the time, nor the expertise, to examine their wounds, but it looked like an open fight and some crossbow bolts on the snow corroborated the theory.

Four dead griffons from the Frozenlake’s guard had been placed away from Feathertip’s residents. Side by side and with their weapons upon them, four good griffons, dead. Instead of clean wounds, the cursed weapons used by the filthy strays turned flesh into a disgusting goo and blackened the exposed bone. Frozen rot really was the best way to define such vileness. Their obscene magic stuck to the wounds like maggots. More than disgust, it filled Gilda with anger. How dare those monsters defile Mother’s beautiful creation?

Who was she angry at? The griffons who sided with Gavingkal, the jerk himself, or the Windigos who used those griffons for their foul fuckery? Gunhilda squealed and distracted Gilda from her brooding anger.

One of the frostbound laid on the snow, convulsing and jerking its limbs. Gilda’s griffons had decapitated the monster, and lacking better words, it had started to fix itself. The worm, or worms inside it, simply started bringing its head back, but the monster didn’t seem dangerous, batting its limbs on the snow with no proper coordination. It was still every bit as unsettling as it was ‘alive’, with twitching ice spikes filled with the parasite and leaking black ichor from its wounds.

“Eeew! I hate this place!” Grunhilda whined and grimaced, making a tantrummy little tap-dance on the snow, despite Gilda telling her to be quiet. “I hate these things!”

With no hesitation, Gilda swiftly rested her paw on his chest. With barely any effort, she willed her magic to unleash a bolt of lightning into the poor creature. It fulgurated the vermin from existence, boiling fluids in its path. The icy spikes growing out of the creature exploded with vapor and insignificant shards. Then, finally, the griffon remained still, letting white smoke.

“I hear you.” Gilda said with a tired sigh, sitting on her haunches. “I wanna forget this place too, but hopefully, we can leave it better than we found it.”

The distant sounds of battle brought Gilda back to the severity and urgency of the situation. She commanded Grunhilda to follow and received a nod as the white queen lowered herself to the snow with a serious-business frown. They navigated the tree line as fast as they could with the advantage that nobody remained behind to watch the small forest of conifers.

The two soon reached the farmhouses and the fields beyond the town proper. Only now Gilda noticed the sunlight filtered past the clouds and she could see the fields. They were divided into parcels of land by what remained of the simple fences. The accumulated snow and abandoned roads turned it all into a single, barely discernible mess.

Gilda hid at the edge of a rickety wooden wall to peek. Trampled snow, blood stains and blck ichor covered the fields and spoke of a chaotic and recent battle. In fact, it was still happening. The evil monsters surrounded too few good griffons. They wielded barely proper weapons made with animal carcasses, and half-a-dozen ancient Astrani weapons. Gavingkal’s infested minions used anything for weapons, and often no more than their talons and beaks.

Gevorg or anyone she knew was not in sight, but griffons from Frozenlake’s guard held the top of a soft hill. Gunshots rang frequently, but bullets didn’t bother the Frostbound. Gavingkal was readily visible, though. He stood at the top of a flat roof, using the embattled parapet like it were the battlements of an ancient Astrani fortress. Shouting orders and commands like his own personal crusade was just starting.

His white cape swayed in the wind, and he projected his voice like the delusional lunatic he was. “Embrace a new age, you heathens. Put down your arms and you will be accepted in this new order. Keep fighting and you will be forced into subservience! Such is the way of the North Wind!”

Whether anyone paid any attention to what he was saying was pointless. The worst was not that the monsters outnumbered them, as Gevorg’s griffons fought competently. The problem was that the dismembered fleshy monsters in the shape of griffons simply redid themselves. Gilda gasped and frowned at the sight of several of them standing back up, picking any weapons they could find, and rejoining the attack.

Forcing them to divide probably was a good idea, and a good thing Gavingkal had his head too far up his ass to notice. Snow Mountains had enough horrible machinations from the Windigos already. Gilda decided the jerk needed to make a swift trip to the Stormy Eyrie. She doubted it had enough toilets for him, though.

“I’m gonna put this birdbrain out of his misery.” She said, turning to Grunhilda and her attentive blue eyes, full of exciting anticipation. “Put that magical bow to some use. Let’s see if it can kill the parasites. Just be careful. Don’t take chances and don’t wait if you have to flee.”

After making sure Grunhilda had understood and that Gavingkal was distracted with his little theater, Gilda rushed out of her hiding spot. Now hidden behind the snow-laden stone wall surrounding the field, she looked again to make sure Grunhilda wasn’t doing anything dumb. Finally, she started towards Gavingkal’s stage, leaving Grunhilda with a small nagging feeling she shouldn’t leave Big Girl alone. Duty called, anyway, and Grunhilda ought to take care of herself too.

Little stone fences separated the fields from the muddy, frozen street skimming the houses and she prowled under the shoulder-height wall of stone and mortar. An instant later, lightning struck the open field. She stopped in her tracks and looked over the short wall. Then her beak hung open when Grunhilda let fly another magical, forged iron arrow from her mother’s bow. It carried lightning with it like Mother Harpy herself had thrown it from the clouds. An instant later it exploded on the back of a frostbound standing on his hindlegs along the others. The magical lightning vaporized the monster’s midline and split it in half. Like that was not enough, the bolt of light divided among the others right next to it and dropped a trio of griffon monsters into the snow. Charred wounds and smoking dead meat in lifeless corpses.

Glorious or unpleasant, Gavingkal’s howling ‘no’ was more than worth it. Then he cried for his minions to kill her. Gilda was done sightseeing and resumed on her way. With feline speed and stealth, she reached the stone wall of the house Gavingkal had taken for stage, then slipped into the street behind the house.

It was a simple, one-story house standing out from the town and reaching it took Gilda only a couple of minutes. Slipping unseen into the alley behind, she found it occupied. Other than a single surviving torch on a wall, a pair of young griffons stood there. One was a queen, piss yellow with white, brown-stained feathers, and the other a green with a faded blue tom. The first clutched a limp griffon doll and had a nearby femur club against the wall. Green-blue held a feather-adorned bow and a quiver full of the things on his back. They reeked of an unidentifiable nauseating stench Gilda could only bear on the grounds of how furious off she was.

Blue-green saw Gilda approaching and squawked like a choking parrot. The other, closer to Gilda, turned with a startled skip and promptly started groveling.

“We… We don’t want any trouble!” She mewled and dropped to the mud. Leaving her club forgotten and holding the flabby doll to her chest, flattening her feathers, and breathing frantically. The other started backpedaling after dropping his bow, taken with an obvious panic in his hanging beak and wide eyes. Ready to bolt, but he never did.

“It’s too late for you.” Gilda walked towards them. “You let Gavingkal put that thing in you and you’re gonna turn into one of those freak monsters. You killed the others and even their cubs and their pets, you filth!”

Yellow shrieked and started shaking, holding her doll, mumbling that they didn’t have a choice. They had to join the others. They feared saying going against the black loremaster. The others would have killed them, too. She begged Gilda not to hurt them as they didn’t know what to do. They just wanted to save their family. Saying that the things in the ice made them think weird things. A barrage of disconnected, panicked excuses. She quaked and shielded her doll with her body while the other froze like a deer before Gilda. When she stood on her hindlegs and the dim light of the torch bounced off Mythical’s blade, yellow started crying.

It never came down. Gilda found herself staring at the malnourished griffoness. She had once been a beautiful creature made by Mother Harpy. Her fur and plumage were supposed to be shiny yellow and pristine white, but now she had sore mating scars on her back—seemed to be a theme—and ribs showing under caked mud and dusty feathers. A hip bone showing where a healthy griffoness would have sultry muscles. Mismatching broken feathers all over her wings and still holding that stupid, very life-like doll. The other cowered in the mud and covered himself with his wings, crying like a lost cub.

“For fuck’s sake. The legends of the Northerner Lords talk of brave warriors and awesome leaders.” Gilda growled, sticking Mythical’s tip on the dirty, frozen soil and sitting on her haunches. “I’m becoming Mother Hen of hopeless griffon losers!”

The pair turned her eyes up to Gilda as she spoke again. “I swear on Mother Harpy’s feathers. If you try to flee, I will find you and you will beg the Windigos to save you. Stay here and don’t do anything. I’ll be back when I’m done dealing with this mess and we’ll work something out.”

The blue and green male gasped, shaking so much he could barely pronounce his thanking words. He simply pounced to hug the yellow female. Gilda understood they thanked her about eight different times. Only when they finally quieted down, Gilda looked up, hoping Gavingkal was too engrossed with his madness to have heard any of that. With Mythical back on her back, she flapped her wings and leaped to the roof.

She held onto the wall edge and peeked over it to see Gavingkal ordering his minions to go kill Grunhilda. Frantic gestures and angry screaming, as though they needed the motivation. Meanwhile, Big Girl hid behind the stone fence and a couple of javelins bounced off it before she stood and shot another arrow, downing three more of the infested monsters.

From her vantage point, Gilda could see Gevorg standing on his hindlegs, wielding a shield and a spear. He shouted to his griffons as they either dragged the injured away or charged at the monsters’ back. Too many were injured for Gilda’s tastes, but that was not the time and Gavingkal had just delivered them a perfect opportunity to reorganize.

Gilda didn’t have the time to ensure Gevorg would be alright, though. She hopped to the wooden roof as swiftly as she could, silent like a hunter. The first lights of day radiated from the cloud cover, and still unknown to Gavingkal, she stood on her hindlegs, drawing Mythical again. She then threw a pebble at his neck and caused the grimacing griffon to turn and make his cape dance dramatically.

Holding Mythical in her paws, she squinted at him and spoke seriously. “I let live two of the poor losers you roped into this. My oh-so-benevolent self feels inclined to give you a shot before cutting your sorry ass in half.”

“Damn you!” He roared.

From his white armor belt, he drew a broad-bladed ax and a round shield from beneath his cape. Without a second word, he flapped his wings and lunged at her. Lightning filled Gilda’s veins. The rounded edge of his weapon arced towards her so slowly she almost botched her response from overthinking. She danced to the side, way past his range, and launched her sword in a straight jab.

Gavingkal was no incompetent fighter and was prepared. The tip bounced off the metal-covered face of his shield and the ax came again. Much faster than he was, and trusting Mythical, she deflected the blow, holding the handle in one paw, and supporting the blade with the other, directing his savage blow away. He let the weight of the weapon lead too much of his momentum and let his guard open for her: she shoved the sword’s cross guard at his face with all her might. A satisfying crunch later, Gavingkal reeled with a pained groan.

Against better judgment, Gilda didn’t end the fight. Instead, she yelled at him. “Did your dumb ass really think you were going to save the griffon race? From what? Your own mediocrity? You’re some minor lord in a backwater, tiny farming town! You never even worked up the courage to challenge your boss!”

He threw his head with howling laughter, despite the misaligned and bleeding beak. “So says the homeless hen from Griffonstone!”

She smiled with all the snark a griffon could summon. “I really hope you can appreciate the irony in that.”

“We are all a joke, Miss Gilda. Our hopes and our dreams are the punchlines and our struggles entertainment for the gods.”

“You’re a bad joke, dude!” she retorted.

Barely a heartbeat after she spoke, he lunged forward. His shield came at her face, aiming to reciprocate the broken beak, but Gilda was much faster. Not only did she step out of his bashing attack, but this time, she exploited his open guard. A quick swipe of her sword, just to the side of the protecting plate, cut deeply behind his thigh with a gush of iron-smelling blood.

The griffon in white armor screamed and fell on his side, swearing at Gilda and awkwardly supporting his weight on one forelimb. Just as awkwardly, he threw his ax at her. The deadly metal spun in the air, hurtling with a murderous rush, giving Gilda a terrifying split second to react. She more hid behind Mythical than properly blocked the weapon but deflected it away from her with a resounding clang.

Before she even understood what had happened, something hit her chest so hard she almost lost her balance and her breath after the awkward juggling with the sword. The ferrous smell of blood and stinging smoke mixed. Taking a step back, she first saw the deformed lead ball settling between the planks. Gavingkal held a flintlock pistol in his paw, smoking out of its barrel before he let it go and laid his back against the roof.

“I hate you so much.” He breathed, staring at the cloud ceiling churning under the wind. Griffons still cried, and the thunder of Grunhilda’s bow kept roaring in counterpoint to his tired words. “It is not fair.”

“What is fair, then?” Gilda returned Mythical to her scabbard and let it cling to her back. Returning to the comfortable four-legged stance, she walked to him, step after step, eyeing the downed griffon and raising her voice after every word. “Forcing your citizens to take in a parasite made by the devils intent on killing your race? That your people have sworn to fight? Adopting a thrall and treating him like a common slave? What else? Trying to use an army of brainwashed griffons you made from vulnerable members of your own damn kind?”

Gavingkal laughed while the pool of blood increased in diameter, running the grooves between the planks and covering them with red.

“What’s so funny?” She snarled, stepping closer to him.

“My whole life… As a cub, I saw my parents and tried to be like them. I dedicated it all to becoming the best ruler I could.” Despite his haughty stare to the clouds, a tear streaked from his eye. “It was all for nothing. I could never compete with Graham. I could never take his place at Frozenlake… My city sustained his. Always to be the servant to my liege, who is himself a giant cuck to his mate.”

He paused with a sigh. “What was the point?”

Gilda kept her focused frown, but it relaxed a feather’s touch while she lent him her ears and sat next to his pool of blood. His eyes had lost their shine and his face its fierceness. “I lost my family to this cursed land. This endless, hopeless war with the Windigos. Stuck with nowhere I could go. Forever in someone else’s shadow, dreaming of grandeur that would always see it denied to me. Would you chance everything? Would you turn to something you should not, when all you believed your whole life proved fruitless?”

“Even after I understood… They… The Windigos… They showed it to me. The damage the delusional she-devil in Griffindel is causing.” He frowned softly. “When opportunity presented itself to me, I took it the best I could. I would have fixed the problem, had I had the chance. You could never understand. You are someone’s lackey, and happy with it.”

When she looked again, his grimace had washed off his face. Her frown deepened. “Me? I just wanted to bake scones. It’s you. You missed the second part of the lesson, dude. There are big cats and little cats. I just happen to know my place and to pick the right side, you idiot.”

With one last gaze at the dying griffon, Gilda stood and walked to the edge of the roof. The snowed fields had turned into a disgusting chaos of black ichor, blood, and wiggling vermin. Victorious, Gevorg’s city guards started pouring oil on the dismembered griffon monsters once they were down and put them on fire. Grunhilda had probably instructed them, given that she was doing her anxious tap-dance near one of the downed monsters. Gevorg, thankfully, was still in command, and Godwin was next to him. Thank the Harpy, both seemed unharmed, even if both had that abominable black ichor clinging to them. The captain shouted orders and rushed towards the longhouse where the scout would be, with Godwin close behind.

Did those monsters have consciousness? Did any part of their original minds remain? They squirmed and tried to move once injured and tried to reach their wounds. However, Gilda did not doubt their passing was much less distressing than turning into those things. At least that was the end. Perhaps they would wake up and depart on their journey to the Stormy Eyrie and there would find some solace. Memories of ancient Loremasters from the past told Gilda so.

The stench of burning meat seemed even worse than in Gilda’s memories. She had become familiar with it, but it would never not evoke her first dream back in Griffonstone.

Mythical weighed on her back and so did her head at her neck and shoulders. Gilda’s heavy eyelids closed, and a deep sigh escaped her. The smell of blood, griffon blood with the disgusting tang of the parasite, infested her nares. The noises of clashing steel came from the main street. Like the rooster had called, she shook her body and her brow remade itself into a focused frown. There was always something to do. In this life and the next, it seemed. Even Mother Harpy ought to have a lot of work in between.

Gilda took flight. A quick shift let her land on the ridge beam under the thatch roof on the next house. Using her wings for balance, she dashed to the other end, towards the main street. Arriving, she hid behind the parapet. The unsettling smell of blood from the infested griffons, the ones not quite ‘there yet’, became a near unbearable stench. She groaned and looked away before summoning the will to survey the battlefield.

And it was a mess.

The fighting took over the street and spilled out of every door. Black powder smoke made a thin mist and shots rang frequently, adding to the cacophony of screams and clanging metal. Mostly an ugly brawl of melee weapons drenched in blood, bayonets at the tips of muskets and even an occasional grenade or similar explosive rocking the decayed structures. A fire started somewhere past the other side of the main street. The longer she looked, the worse it all became.

The plaza with the bodies of the decapitated loremasters remained secure, and one of Tempest Shadow’s masked ponies showed some serious authority keeping a line of those filthy griffons guarding it. They kept casting anxious stares over the individual fights and amongst themselves. A couple of them stood on their hindlegs, swinging their rustic weapons back and forth, but the pony, a beige stallion with a hazel mane, kept stoically watching the fight. Inscrutable behind his tree bark mask.

How in the Mother’s forsaken fuck did those grassbreaths manage to be professional mercenaries when they wore things like ridiculously large and edgy masks?

Something cold poked Gilda’s head from behind with the telltale chiming of pony magic in the works. A series of possibilities scrolled past her mind. She could grab it, as pony telekinesis could be overpowered. Feline agility was a thing, after all. She could simply slip to the side. Perhaps shield herself with her wing and griffon magic. She could even simply trust the magic in her enchanted jewelry. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, a bit of common sense would prevail?

Gilda slowly turned on her feet to find a unicorn on the other end of the ridge with his telekinetically held pistol hovering before her. A work of art and a weapon, much like the elaborate arabesques on the mask, plates of armor and a fancy wine-colored cape. The tan pelt and stylish brown mane went well with those. The gems and white gold finish on the weapon kept her attention, though. Ponies furnished their magical weapons, most of which were not to be trifled with, even with all the magical jewelry she had gained from Lady Gwendolen. Or so the stories floating around in King Grover Plaza had told her.

“So, in case you didn’t see the dead griffon on the other roof,” she said, looking around the barrel, “could you take a gander and confirm that Gavingkal is indeed dead? Also, can you tell your boss to piss off? We got griffon matters to deal with and you guys are kinda getting in the way. Let’s just talk this out like civilized creatures.”

“We were not here because of him. We were here to catch you, catbird.” The pony said aggressively in his soft neighing voice and through the mask. He adjusted his footing on the ridge, clinking armor plates and tensing muscles beneath.

The hammer cocked on the floating pistol, clicking softly, so well-oiled and maintained the gun was. The pony shook his head and juggled his brown mane around. “Also, you are not civilized, murderer.”

Gilda realized something very incisive. She was done, fed up, and tired of dealing with creatures who knew nothing about her judging her. Annoying and intrusive creatures that contributed to her problems, and not to solving them. So, she started solving problems instead of tolerating them.

She batted the telekinetically held pistol to the side. The clapping bang whistled in her left ear, but she leaped at the pony. Thirty-three cubits covered in a single leap and flap of her wings. Fifty hooves the pony had to realize he had missed the shot, and still Gilda landed on him with all the weight of her massive griffon body. All the pony did was neigh in alarmed surprise. Fighting truly did not come naturally to his race.

Gilda’s momentum sent both tumbling into the moldy thatch roof. They crashed through the ceiling boards, kicking and thrashing, straight down to a stone and mortar floor, but not before crushing a table with an oil lamp. What remained of it spilled on the old wood and promptly started a fire. Coming from below, the light showed Gilda the pony before her, missing his mask. A middle-aged deep blue pony with wide purple eyes and his navy mane getting in the way.

His horn lit up and Gilda saw the gleam of pony magic pulling a dagger from his saddle's girth. She acted so fast it hadn’t even cleared the sheath when she yanked it out herself. Ignoring the stinging needles his telekinetic magic pierced her paw with, she pounced at him despite his flailing hooves. Her weight toppled the pony, and the sheer wrath fueled her muscles with such strength she straddled him and pinned his head to the stone.

“I wanted to talk, you grass-eating idiot!” She screeched, raspy voice drowning the pony’s cry for mercy.

The pony’s telekinetic magic sputtered out of existence as she drove the dagger to his neck. In its length, through thick muscles. Then again, through arteries that spurted blood. At the base of his jaw. She screamed all her rage at the mercenary, jamming the blade behind his gorget, aimed downward at his chest, again and again until it became stuck at the base of his skull. Then she screeched and swore because the blood made the hilt slick, and her paw slipped from it.

The door burst open. A pair of the filthy residents of Feathertip pounced into the kitchen, already assuming fighting positions. One had a bone club, and the other had already knocked an arrow on his bow. He let it fly and Gilda careened from the pony’s barrel with the impact like he had punched her in her chest.

Angry, more than worried, Gilda yanked the arrow off her chest with a splash of blood and screeched at the unbelieving griffons. Quick as lightning, she drew Mythical and lunged with her wings’ help, sword tip forward at the griffon armed with the club. The magical sword pierced the flimsy armor, ignoring whatever twisted magic it harbored. Through plumage, skin, muscle, and bone, straight to the heart.

With Mythical through him, the yellow tom stared at her in shock. She spared not a heartbeat’s glance before she kicked him from the blade and launched it in a cut at the other with a swirl of blood. Again, Mythical all but ignored everything from wooden bow, leather, and flesh. A more technical and precise cut would have aimed at the neck, but Gilda’s rage-fueled assault cut the griffon half across the chest, and he bent like a gory, broken twig on his way to the floor.

A groan escaped her while she returned to the four-legged stance. Yes, her chest hurt, but their fluids ruined the perfectly fine pool of pony blood. Not sparing them a second look, Gilda skipped a few quick hops to the door and out of the house with renewed energy.

Much of the same scene she had seen from the roof greeted her. The weak light of morning barely hid the worst details from the eyes. The chaos of a messy melee fused together in confusing sights, sounds, heat, and smells. Everywhere, an enemy and a friend engaged in bursts of violence that ended with sprays or gushes of blood. Clanging metals, cracking woods, screams, and cries drew the eyes in every direction. Blood, urine, and feces joined the disgraced smells of that place, but she kept them in the background of her thoughts. One would think griffons with guns would keep away, but their enemies had numbers and different ideas. The cramped quarters for a battle didn’t help.

A gray, large griffon holding a shield between himself and one of Gavingkal’s more monstrous minions screamed. The monster of unidentifiable washed-out colors and withered members held a long, two-pawed war hammer, about to bring it down on one of Gilda’s griffons. He raised his shield to meet the heavy weapon, but it broke through wood and tore a hole in the metallic lining. The impact dropped the shield’s owner to the frozen mud, and the monster prepared a killing blow with a stunning speed that couldn’t be farther from a Draugr’s.

Gilda lunged with a screech and used her weight to topple the uncannily cold griffon. He lost his weapon and fell to the ice with her, resorting to his talons to attack her. His unnaturally long talons moved fast, but broke, glancing off her plumage. Gilda ignored the pain and jumped from the monster just as the gray griffon swung his ax at the monster’s ribs with enough force it stuck between corrupted flesh, bones, and black ichor. While Gilda landed, her new friend took back his ax and split the monster’s face in half in a spectacle of alien flesh and sticky black essence.

“Disgusting piece of filth!” He both talked and spit on the still moving monster before looking at her. “You are injured.”

“I’ll live. Gotta kill these freaks properly.” Gilda said, standing on her hindlegs and drawing Mythical again.

There was screaming, shields and weapons clashing and the gurgling cries while the abomination had already begun to redo itself. She ignored all distractions and pointed her sword to the monster’s chest. A quick shove did the trick with Mythical’s magical properties, and magic obeyed like Gilda had snapped her fingers. Magical lightning shot through the blade, jerking flesh that soon rested, and the flat worms that inhabited it ceased to exist along with the freakish icy spikes the monster had grown.

“Allmother preserve me from dying like one of these wretches!” The gray griffon said, spiteful like only a griffon.

An inhabitant from Frozenlake, he adjusted his mail cowl and similar thoracic armor. Nothing too fancy, just a protection. He nodded at her before finding another thing to kill in the messy battle. Apparently, northerners didn’t slack around when there was killing to do.

Gilda’s griffons should not have much trouble dealing with the Gavingkal’s murder hobos, but if more of the scary monsters were around, she ought to deal with them. She ought to deal with the ponies too, but never located them. Before she could investigate, one of the dirty strays lunged at her with a flimsy, but still dangerous spear, screaming her lungs out like she wanted witnesses. Gilda, in one fluid movement, stood and stepped back from the weapon’s path. Next, she clocked the griffoness on the face with Mythical’s cross guard.

With the griffoness out cold, Gilda let the weapon rest on her back and returned to her quadrupedal stance. She flew, meaning to miss the entire melee, and that was a mistake. Every gun in that cursed place must have shot at her. Thank the Harpy for her magical jewelry, for Mother’s magic coursing through her, and sheer luck that the worst was that she dropped back to the mud, a little wiser than before and stood in time to defend herself.

Gunfire cracked and whistled by above her and now every idiotic stray cat in town knew where she was. No matter how many of their friends died to Mythical, no matter how gruesome their deaths, they kept coming at her. She and the growing pile of griffon pieces turned into the center of attention until eventually her griffons congregated next to her with dwindling numbers on the enemy’s side.

“Stop fighting, birdbrain morons!” She yelled at none in particular. “Gavingkal is dead!”

But barely anyone heeded her. Guille dismembered the filthy idiots too dumb or too far gone to see he was too big and too skilled with his giant sword. Gertha fought close to him, as did several griffons Gilda didn’t know. One of the Gunner guys had a halberd on the floor and cracked a couple of skulls with a small war hammer paired with a shield. Although the ‘other gunner’ was missing. Probably inside the longhouse with the others. Yet another of the local idiots attacked Gilda as she was surveying the brawl. She promptly splintered his bizarre teethy club against Mythical’s steel, and then she slit the griffon’s throat open with a quick swipe.

Before she knew, that was it. The fighting died down gradually, and only Gilda’s griffons remained. Not the screaming and crying; it continued, but it changed to pleas for help and swift executions of injured griffons too far gone to receive any assistance. A few pockets of scared, not as deranged filthy griffons, huddled in a corner under watch from Frozenlake’s guards. Gia ordered that a couple of griffons haul an injured fighter out of the mud. Seeing her pristine condition and immaculate blue satin cape, Gilda took a second to look down at herself. She saw white feathers stained with mud and blood, which was about how Gia’s thrall, Geary, looked too. Not to mention that stopping and looking at herself hurt. Everything hurt, there was something definitely wrong with her chest.

She meant to ask Gia how she looked like she had just walked out of a bathhouse, but something didn’t fit despite nothing apparently suspicious. A few spontaneous whoops and cheers of victory as those fighting in the fields joined them. Grunhilda was hurrying toward her, but not seeing Gevorg initially worried Gilda.

A thousand loremasters from the past screamed at her head to beware. She had seen none of the pony mercenaries, except the one that tried to detain her. The longhouse. She meant to go there, but a deep peace took hold of her. In fact, it held her like a violent thug.

“Whoa! That’s… Nice?” Gilda said while a smile crept into her beak, whether or not she liked it.

Around her, bloodied and dirty griffons relaxed after an initial wave of shocked gasps and wide eyes. Grunhilda giggled and said she was feeling funny. Mellow smiles and relaxed feathery crests surrounded Gilda. Klaxons wailed inside her head that something was horribly wrong, but the feeling was too nice. How could anything be wrong?

“It’s a spell!” Gia cried, properly alarmed. “It’s Sweet Serenata’s Serenity Suffusion! A unicorn spell!”

Gilda had had bizarre dreams of past lives, dying, witnessing the end of the world and its creation. She had dreamed of sitting with Princess Luna inside a room in her head. Then she had a similar dream with Mother Harpy. The weird part was that those were no mere dreams. The pervading peace which took over her thoughts, however, was the worst. She lacked the words to even define what it felt like.

The best imagery her mind conjured to comprehend it was magical tendrils holding her mind back. Shoving her in a direction she did not want to go. It reminded her of the reported magical vines that once took over the Equestrian capital. But worse, they didn’t hold her limbs. The spell was restricting her mind, castrating her emotions, dulling her edge. Why was she angry? There was no reason to be angry. Nobody to fight, nobody to kill. Nobody was in danger. Just relax. All will be fine.

Tempest Shadow finally appeared again, cresting the ridge of the longhouse’s roof and kicking Godwin for him to walk in front of her. Her tall mare friend with the fox mask did the same to ‘the other Gunner’ while a blue gray pegasus, on the other side, escorted Gevorg. Whatever that creepy spell was doing to her, it also prevented Gilda from swearing at the plum-colored mare when she pulled Godwin’s hock and forced him to lie down. Tempest’s remaining mercenaries showed up on the rooftops surrounding the main street. Each one of them held a richly adorned pony gun. Yet another of her ponies came out of nowhere, flinging off some sort of invisibility cloak next to Grunhilda and putting a dagger against her neck. He kicked her flank when she started to panic and walk away with a whiny expression.

“Don’t you move!” The pony, a bulky, brown earth pony, threatened her by kicking the air and unfolding a firearm attached to armor over his leg.

Gilda knew herself, and she should be spitting fire and swearwords at the mare. Instead, her head filled with melancholy. The fear in her voice was a slip because Gilda comprehended Tempest had her where she wanted.

“Let my friends go! They have nothing to do with Griffonstone.” She said, not so much shouted, but spoke as loudly as the spell allowed. Tempest Shadow didn’t respond. Instead, she produced one of their fancy firearms from her cloak and held it aloft in magic behind Godwin before she spoke.

“Don’t test my patience.” The pony shouted back, finally. “Put down that sword and walk to the… Whatever you call this dump. You and your servant. Tell your griffons to let us go. I guarantee the spell can be much worse and I have no qualms about putting you down right here.”

Gilda replied as best as she could, fighting intrusive thoughts of surrender. She resisted the spell’s tendrils coiling around her. Her voice failed to convince even her. “I am tired of trying to argue with you. Let them go and I’ll fight all of you alone if it makes you happy.”

“You need to learn how to shut your beak, griffon. I am in charge here. Not you.” The mare’s ragged shouting made Gilda regret her quick mouth, but she was not done. She looked at the tall unicorn lady, and Gilda needed a second to understand what happened.

Gilda’s eagle eyes allowed her to see considerably more detail than she liked. Where there should have been a brown eye, was a gush of blood. Metaphorical ages passed before she closed her beak and the images connected with their meaning. The resounding bang of a firearm echoed inside her head like the cackling of death. She wasn’t alone; the others maintained an eerie, disbelieving and stunned silence until a mournful cry shattered it.

Could she call him a friend? Some might question if she did really share such closeness with the griffon she kept calling ‘one of the Gunner Guys’. They were always next to each other, and they were both called Gunner. They even shared the same story: fed-up soldiers from the Griffonian Standing Army. They took the joke in stride and owned it like mature griffons. Ironically, their lack of distinctiveness was their charming uniqueness, much like Godwin’s naïve knightly manners and Gertha’s distinguishing colors and rugged beauty.

They had come to Gilda as mercenaries joining the caravan to Wayfarer’s Rest for money. There they joined Gilda’s mission of taking a procession of fleeing, politically persecuted griffons to their new homes. For money, or because they truly believed. It didn’t matter. In the end, they too were griffons looking for a better life among the traditionalist northerner griffons who appreciated their services and their expertise.

Now one of them was slumped from the ridge of the longhouse’s ceiling and his blood ran down the green wood tiles, pouring out of a gory hole in his head. Grunhilda screamed and panicked but thank the Mother her captor didn’t shoot her. He simply knocked her on the head with his armored hoof, and Grunhilda cowered in the frozen mud, covering her head with her wings. Godwin called Tempest Shadow a coward, and she rewarded him by whipping him behind the head with her pistol. Gevorg’s resigned stare to Gilda hurt more than anything she had been shot or whacked with.

“Am I coming across to you now?” The mare bellowed.

“He had nothing to do with what happened at Griffonstone!” Gilda’s voice broke. A talon’s width from crying. “He had been nothing but a loyal friend since I met him!”

“He was an accessory to your crimes!” The mare shouted back, raging. “You are wanted for so many things I stopped counting when I followed you to Thunderpeak! The price on your head is astronomical, but this is personal. I will have you pay for my friends you and your servant killed!”

“Craven grassbreath!” A male voice cried behind Gilda. “At least let us defend ourselves!”

Other voices raised, but with little conviction, and Gilda’s legs seemed too weak to hold her. Tempest Shadow would lose her patience. She was going to have Grunhilda killed! Gevorg and Godwin too! Just to hurt Gilda. All the complaining would just make her angrier. Only one solution presented itself before Gilda. That was the end. She had to surrender. A distant thought appeared at the back of her mind of a later escape, but it quickly died. The mare would not take chances. She might just as well have the others killed anyway, and worse, no burial. Their souls would be abandoned for the Windigos to do whatever they wanted with them. Gilda could almost hear them laughing.

Gilda’s mind was so sluggish. Ideas refused to come to her, but all the reasons she could never surrender assaulted her. Things had changed. It was more than fleeing from Griffonstone’s mayor and his family. It was no longer about only her. It had become more than survival; she was no longer simply trying to escape.

“I can’t!” She cried. Her chest hurt, and not just because her body was injured. She felt the tendrils of magic constricting her neck, edging her into the direction she refused to go. They pulled relentlessly; it was a losing battle against a force she could not lash out at. “There are others who depend on me! I can’t abandon them! Thousands of griffons that fled from Griffonstone. You know that the Griffonian government is crooked beyond belief!”

Her caravan, the hippogriff soldiers. Grunhilda and the roc she had saved from dying alone and cold. She had finally found a griffon she liked. Even Mother Harpy. Even Mother counted on Gilda. Giving up was too much to contemplate. There was too much at stake.

Tempest Shadow’s eyes hardened. Gilda understood her and could not truly blame the mare. Three of her friends had died and left a pair of foals. Tempest Shadow probably had issues of her own. She, too, fled from the law. But all notions of sympathy flew out the window when images of Gevorg and Godwin intruded on her thoughts. Images of both, or either, collapsed lifelessly, with a hole in their head filled Gilda with despair and gnawed at her heart. She would rather die. She couldn't picture Grunhilda injured and broken.

Gilda inhaled profoundly. Her chest hurt with every breath. The right words never came to her, much less the proper course of action. All she drew from her cards was ‘surrender’, ‘calm’, and ‘quiet’. Any other thoughts slipped past her, like floating planks in a sea of tranquility. A talon away from her paws that magical tendrils kept pulling at. And yet, she refused to accept.

Just say the words and all three of them would live. Gilda had said it herself; they were not responsible and if she surrendered, they would live. A grimace twisted her beak. Her forehead knotted into a pained frown. Her heart burned, but her blood was serene as a stream crossing a flowery meadow. All the voices from the past silenced, all the vivid memories of the dancing fighter blanched. All paths converged into surrendering. Submitting herself to the mare and whatever she had in mind so her friends wouldn’t suffer. It was only fair that she would pay. Maybe even Grunhilda, but not Gevorg, or Godwin, who had a cute young queen waiting for him.

She found Gevorg again, looking at her. His purple eyes carried a cold quiet while he stared at her. Trying to see every little detail, saying a weeping, wordless goodbye. Her stomach dropped when she found herself doing the same. Then Tempest Shadow waved her pistol and poked Godwin’s head with it. The mare’s pale cyan aura pulled the gun’s hammer into position.

“I am tired of waiting. Tell your thugs to not interfere and come into the house.” Tempest said in a tone of finality. “You are alone. You were never one of these griffons. Just a scared scared hen from Griffonstone, with few expectations of being anything in life.”

All eyes aimed at the longhouse in eerie, peaceful resignation. None moved. Not the bloodied and tired griffons with her, nor the pony mercenaries with muskets lowered at them from the rooftops.Gilda called for Mother in her thoughts, but this time, no answer came. Or perhaps, no answer was needed because Gilda already knew it. Something inside her snapped.

It started as a spark, insignificant and dull, but it grew. All despair and dread vanished. Like they had caught fire and burned into ash the magical tendrils holding her mind. From their embers rose spite and hatred. A flash fire consumed her blood, bright as Mother Harpy’s magic and her face shifted into a grimace of pure anger.

“Fine.” Gilda’s voice came out in a gruff, low snarl, and her paws carried her forward. “Kill them too.”

The clouds no longer churned. The wind carried them, bringing down petrichor and ecstatic anticipation with gales that flailed feathers, manes, and capes. Hidden behind the clouds, the sun let the morning darken. Ponies and griffons shuffled, eyes on the sky, raised feathers and ears perking. The clouds whispered to Gilda and light sparked inside them. Distant thunder rolled in her ears and found an echo in her heart.

“Kill all of them. Kill me and drag my corpse back to Griffonstone.” If there was one thing the High-Griffonese was good for, other than singing the legends of the Stormborn and the glory of Mother Harpy, it was for distilling hatred. The language to best fit griffon beaks was anger and vengeance, turning words to daggers. “But I am not alone. You are.”

“You are far from home, little pony. Deep in the cold of the most heartless of griffon lands. Where is the sun? Where is the moon? I can see only the storm in the sky.” Gilda’s words hung in the air like sheer wrath turned into words and the clouds responded. Thunder rolled above with the laughter of the Mother of Storms.

A frown broke through Tempest Shadow’s stern façade. The pegasus holding Gevorg hostage still held his pistol with his cannon, but all the certainty had drained from his posture. The fox-mask-wearing mare looked at Tempest and her shifting hooves betrayed her anxiousness. Her horn still shone, although she was no longer holding the pistol she had murdered Gilda’s griffon with. Grunhilda stood again, slowly, and the eyes in the main street turned to Gilda.

“If I ask, My Mother will scorch you with lightning and I will offer your heart to her on a platter of electrum. Griffonian authorities can’t reach you here. The pony princesses can’t help you. Nobody can save you. You are at the mercy of my kind, lost in Mother Harpy’s territory, and I am her favored daughter!”

“Shut up, you hen!” Tempest yelled and shoved her pistol behind Godwin’s head. “I will kill all of you!”

Gilda hissed, standing on her hindlegs, slowly opening her wings to the drumming of the thunder in the clouds. “We will feast on pony flesh this day, and I will burn your heart in offering to the Mother of Storms!”

Lightning bolts, bright as only the Harpy’s magic could be, climbed from each feather in her wings to meet the spear of light that fell from clouds. The dusky morning turned bright as midday in Canterlot. The screaming neighs raised above the thunder and filled Gilda with spiteful joy. Dressed in lightning, she laughed and raised her forelimbs to the sky. Mother Harpy’s power course through her leaving excitement and bliss in its wake.

Spears of fulgurating light from the sky showered from the clouds and sent splintered stone and broken, charred wood all over the main street. Tempest Shadow screamed, covered in the Harpy’s magic. Its power threw her from the roof. The pegasus holding Gevorg hostage screamed like a scared foal, and with cat-like grace and agility, Frozenlake’s captain spun on himself and attacked the pony. His talons dug into his neck and his massive griffon body threw him tumbling down the roof. The white unicorn mare’s horn exploded with such violence her mask flew off her face.

“Kill them!” Gilda screamed. “Slaughter them! Mother commands it!”

The main street in front of the longhouse spilled with carnage. Gevorg called Godwin to him, and they leapt off the roof. Gunshots rang, but there were too many griffons and too few ponies when even Gavingkal’s filthy strays joined them. The surviving Gunner flew at one of the pony mercenaries, and toppled her off the roof, viciously ripping the pony apart even before they reached the ground. His talons found every opening in her armor. Gushes of blood flew, and his furious screaming matched the equine’s terrified cries. Others joined with spears and axes.

A new battle joined. More shots fired, but without protection from their spell, the ponies found themselves overwhelmed under a storm of bright hot wrath and shining steel. An error in judgment, a poorly calculated maneuver. The tables turned so suddenly they never had time to recover from their shock.

Gilda left the killing to her subordinates. Taking her dancing sword in her paws, she flew above the roof. An instant was all her sharp eyes needed to find the purple mare laying on a snowy paved path in Gavingkal's backyard. She coughed black smoke, sluggishly moving her legs against the snow. The griffoness poured all her hatred into the sword. It snarled like a furious lioness, and Gilda landed on the mare’s body with all her weight. Mythical missed Tempest Shadow’s head by barely an inch. The stone beneath the snow sizzled, and the blade was stuck in the melted rock.

Tempest’s hooves struck Gilda’s face with a bright flare of pain, but the griffoness held her partially melted gorget. Almost burning her paws on the hot metal and smelling charred hair, she held the scorched metal in her paws. Gilda pulled and then shoved her enemy against the snowy pavement so viciously the mare cried, and the hot metal bent.

“You feathering ponies think you own the world!” Gilda’s Common Equestrian came out marred with a High-Griffonese accent and the realization the pony language had no proper swear words. Her own voice sounded awkward, but she never stopped. She had arteries to rip open. “I will serve you for dinner!”

The mare’s eyes focused, and her horn produced cyan sparks. In an instant, she popped out of existence and dropped Gilda ungraciously on the snow. So much anger, such burning hatred, Gilda let escape a frustrated screech, clawing at the snow tainted by blood and burnt remains of the mare’s cloak. A pained groan interrupted her tantrum.

The elegant mare with the pink mane laid on the snow not far. Her mask was nowhere to be seen and her armor had open holes where the melted metal simply gave way to lightning. Her horn didn’t exist anymore, and what remained was a gory, charred wound. Gilda smiled and started on her way to the mare.

A gunshot and a hard knock behind her head made Gilda snap around to see the pegasus aiming his pistol at her. He stood sitting on his haunches, tossing the weapon away, and reaching for another strapped to his gear. When he raised it, Gilda had already covered the distance between them. She yanked the pistol from his folded leg hold and screeched. Before the pony could do anything, she pounced at him and clawed his neck.

He screamed something about monsters, but Gilda didn’t pay him any mind. Her talons found resistance and her weight sent him on his back with her on top. He cried for her to stop. A begging shriek of horror that bounced on Gilda’s fury like a pebble against a volcano. She held his muzzle at the same time her talons dug into his neck, tearing through every fiber of muscle and sinew, to destroy everything she could find. Muscles tensed, and his gasping neigh drained with blood through her fingers and his teary eye begged her ‘no!’.

Hooves kicked at her chest and her stomach as her talons dug deeper into the warm flesh. The overwhelming smell of blood did away with all hesitation the pain had impressed in her. She pulled her talons through muscles, arteries, and cartilage softly like she was caressing Grunhilda. Her beak made into a wicked grin as the wet warmness embraced her fingers. The pony mercenary pulled his head and tossed in a panic, but she pinned him in place and hissed at him to be quiet and die with dignity. His whining was ruining it.

The exposed, twitching muscle and gushing blood filled her with sensations straddling between the erotic and the gruesome. The pain became a distant memory. Her large body tensed above the equine form and feathers stood in the flickering light of the fire. An electricity sparkled in her veins. The wet stickiness in her feathers, the sweet, ferrous smell the air carried with her panting breath sequestered any thoughts that threaded her mind. A savage jerk further exposed his gory wound. Her beak opened like it had a will of its own and tore a chunk of red flesh seasoned in the warm essence.

A long hiss escaped her again with a tightness in her stomach when she swallowed. She should be ashamed, but her savage grin remained. The pegasus’ eyes still focused on her when she caved to the urges drowning everything else. She bent over and tore another meaty chunk of muscle from his neck. Again and again, after her prey had stopped moving.

A soft sob distracted her from her prey and made her look at the still moving white unicorn. A smile showed again in her beak as she turned, swallowing the chunk of meat before walking away from the dead pegasus. Approaching the unicorn, Gilda grinned wider at the pink eyes aiming at her. A sprinkle of blood accompanied the unicorn’s coughing, and her voice almost failed to reach Gilda. “Help…”

“Help.” Her feathers were covered in warm sticky blood that dripped from her leering beak. “Even when you’re dying, you ponies are a riot.”

She grabbed the mare’s mane. It was frazzled and impregnated with the smell that came with lightning, but it held when Gilda pulled and dragged her along the snow. “Don’t worry, your boss left you alone, but I have a friend that is going to love making your acquaintance.”

She first squealed with the initial tug, but then succumbed to mournful sobs, barely hoofing at the snow. On the other side of the blazing longhouse, Gilda reached the street under the hanging corpses of the Loremasters. She could see the other griffons finishing up. Looking for injured companions and snuffing out enemies still not dead.

“Hey, Gunner!” Gilda cried. “I got you a bit of reprisal.”

Her words drew curious stares. Most of them, she knew, and among them was Gunner. The first to arrive was Grunhilda, followed by Gevorg and Godwin. Gia and Gunner arrived soon after, surrounding the white mare under the disfigured armor and robes.

“Let’s hang her!” Grunhilda suggested with a cruel glint in her blue eyes between red-stained feathers and smelling of pony blood.

“She wouldn’t survive long enough.” Gia suggested with a shrug. “Just shoot her.”

Several suggestions crossed Gilda’s mind. Memories from old Loremasters presenting ideas of execution methods contemporary to their times. From cutting the mare open into a gory representation of an eagle to living sky burials, but she ignored them. Gevorg and Godwin shared a stare before directing their eyes to Gilda, but she said nothing to them either. She turned to Gunner.

The worst of the bloodlust had washed away along with the life of his first victim, leaving behind blood and bits of gore on his feathers. The curiously nondescript griffon, tan and white ‘Griffonstone colors’, kept a stoic stare. His thoughts were beyond Gilda, and she simply waited patiently for him to decide what to do with the mare.

“No, it’s too fast.” Gunner said, glaring down at the pony and her wide, pink eye. He frowned and snarled. “Just leave her here. To see the sort of madness she got herself involved with. I think I’ve seen enough violence for the day. I just want to bury Gunner.”

Gevorg spread a wing over his back and walked away, leaving the others with the mare. Taken by a new energy, but locked inside a broken body, she stirred, and her eyes filled with horror.

“You can’t just… Abandon me.” She pleaded.

Gia chuckled as she and Godwin started on their way, followed by Grunhilda.

“Feh… There are way worse ways of dying, pony.” The griffoness shrugged before turning tail and following the others. “At least you get to rest. We gotta cremate all these griffons.”

Next Chapter: Another Mourning After Estimated time remaining: 30 Minutes