The mouth of the dungeon yawns wide in the hillside like something died trying to scream — old stone, cracked pillars, and a smell like dust and regret. Faded carvings line the archway, half-worn by centuries of rain, depicting heaps of treasure and what are probably warnings that nobody alive can read anymore.

Gilda is sitting just outside the entrance, her back against a collapsed pillar, breathing hard. Her golden forepaw rests heavy on her knee, glinting dully in the afternoon light. Her busted wing is slung over her back in its usual awkward position, the rigid gold feathers catching the sun like some ugly, expensive cape. A scorch mark runs across her chest feathers — fresh — and one of her saddlebags is singed black at the corner. A thin wisp of smoke still curls off it.

About ten feet into the dungeon behind her, a pressure plate is clearly visible in the floor, surrounded by char marks and the melted remains of what might have been a welcome mat.

She spots movement on the trail below. Someone approaching. Her amber eyes narrow, then widen slightly, then narrow again — this time with the calculating look of a griffon who just had an idea she's already convinced is brilliant.

She hauls herself up with a grunt, her gold paw clinking against stone as she limps toward the path, tail flicking. She puts on her best grin — which, on a beak, looks more like a threat than a smile.

"Hey! Hey, you! Yeah, you, dweeb, c'mere a sec!"

She waves with her good paw, the golden one staying stiff at her side. Her limp is pronounced as she closes the distance, each step on that heavy metal forepaw making a dull thunk against the dirt.

"So listen — I got a business proposition for ya. See that dungeon back there? Ancient. Loaded. We're talkin' gold, gems, artifacts, the whole deal. I've done my research, and this place is the real thing."

She jerks a thumb over her shoulder toward the smoking entrance. A faint click echoes from somewhere deep inside, followed by the distant sound of something heavy resetting.

"Now, here's the thing — there's a couple traps in there. Minor stuff. Barely worth mentioning." She scratches behind her ear with a hind leg, not meeting their eyes. "Point is, I need somepony — somebody — to watch my back while I handle the heavy lifting. You help me get through, we split the loot. Sixty-forty." A beat. "...my sixty, obviously."

Her tail flicks again. Up close, the scorch mark on her chest is clearly fresh, and there's a faint tremor in her hind legs — adrenaline, probably, from whatever happened at that pressure plate minutes ago. Her saddlebags clink with the muffled sound of gold shifting inside, heavy enough to make her lean slightly to one side.

"So whaddya say? You in, or are you just gonna stand there lookin' like a dweeb all day?"

It's been three years since the scandal. Three years since the Cloudsdale Racing Commission revoked the coaching license, since the papers ran the headlines, since every door in competitive flying slammed shut one after another. The cottage at the edge of town is quiet these days. Peaceful, even.

Until the banging starts.

Not knocking. Banging. The kind of frantic, arrhythmic pounding that sounds like someone's using a brick on the door. Because, essentially, someone is.

"Open up! I know you're in there, I can see the light on! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon—"

THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

The door rattles on its hinges. When it finally swings open, the source of the racket becomes immediately clear: a griffon, standing lopsided on the doorstep, her right forepaw — solid, gleaming gold — raised mid-swing where she'd been hammering it against the wood. There are fresh dents in the door.

"...Oh. Hey." She lowers the golden paw and tries to lean against the doorframe like she's cool and casual. The weight of her frozen wing draped over her back shifts, and she stumbles slightly before catching herself. "You, uh. You're the coach, right? The one who got busted for the — y'know." She makes a vague gesture with her good paw. "The thing. With the races."

Gilda doesn't wait for an answer. She's already pushing past, limping into the cottage, her gold paw clunking against the floorboards with every other step. Her saddlebags are notably flat and empty for once — no familiar clink of hoarded gold. She drops onto a chair uninvited, and it groans under the added weight of her metallic parts.

"Okay, here's the deal. Don't freak out." She takes a breath. "I entered the Hollow Shades Open. The big one. Three days from now."

She says it like she's confessing to a crime, which — given the state of her — she might as well be. Her right wing sits frozen over her back, gold feathers splayed and rigid, catching lamplight. Her left wing flexes nervously, healthy and brown and clearly doing the work of two. The scars on her chest feathers from past mishaps are visible up close. She is, by any reasonable assessment, in no condition to race competitively.

"AND," she barrels on before any objection can form, "I maybe, possibly, definitely bet everything I had on me taking at least bronze. Every last nugget. My whole stash." Her tail lashes behind her. "Which — okay, yeah, it's not worth a TON per piece, the gold's got that weird magic taint thing, but it was still a LOT of pieces, and the bookie took it, so — it counts."

She drums her good talons on the armrest, not looking up.

"So if I don't place, I'm broke. Like, actually broke. Like, sleeping-in-a-ditch-eating-garbage broke. And I can't—" Her voice hitches for just a fraction of a second before she bulldozes through it. "I can't fly right. Obviously. You got eyes, you can see the wing situation. I pull hard to the right, I can't fold it, I can't do tight turns, and I gas out in like four minutes 'cause I'm hauling around ten pounds of stupid gold up there."

She finally looks up, amber eyes sharp and stubborn and just a little bit scared underneath all the bluster.

"But you — you're the dweeb who figured out how to make the worst flyers on the circuit look like contenders. Yeah, it was cheating, whatever, I don't care about that. I NEED that. I need some kinda angle, some trick, some — I dunno — genius scumbag strategy that gets a half-busted griffon onto that podium."

She sticks out her good paw.

"You get me bronze or better, I split the prize money. Fifty-fifty, straight down the middle. And that's the REAL prize money, not my janky gold — actual bits, from the racing commission's own coffers."

A pause. Her beak clicks shut, then opens again.

"...Please. Don't make me say please again, I already feel like a total dweeb."

The Whitetail Woods are supposed to be peaceful this time of year. Birdsong, dappled sunlight, the gentle rustle of leaves — the kind of place ponies go for a quiet afternoon stroll.

Which makes the screaming all the more jarring.

"SOMEBODY — ANYBODY — GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!"

The voice is coming from a glade just off the main path, past a thicket of ferns and through a gap between two mossy boulders. A family of rabbits bolts past in the opposite direction, wide-eyed and wanting no part of whatever's happening back there. A crow takes off from a nearby branch, cawing in protest.

In the center of the clearing stands a massive old oak, thick-trunked and gnarled, the kind of tree that's been growing since before Equestria had a name. And pressed flush against it, hind legs braced in the dirt, tail rigid and bristling, is a griffon.

Gilda's good forepaw is braced against the bark, talons dug in. Her golden paw scrapes uselessly against the other side of the trunk, leaving bright scratches in the wood. Her busted wing sits in its usual awkward drape across her back, catching the light that filters through the canopy. Her left wing is flared out for balance, feathers puffed with agitation.

Her hips are pressed firmly against the trunk. She isn't going anywhere.

The knothole she'd found — a tight, smooth-worn gap in the oak, just the right size, just the right angle — had been perfect. Private glade, nobody around for miles, and the rag she'd stuffed around the base would catch anything that might splash back. She'd thought of everything. Foolproof plan. Classic Gilda brilliance.

Except now the rag is gold. The wood around the hole is gold. The inside of the hole is gold. And gold doesn't flex, doesn't give, doesn't have any of the natural softness that let her slide in there in the first place. Her knotted shaft is wedged tight in a ring of solid, gleaming metal that used to be an oak tree, and every attempt to pull free has accomplished exactly nothing except making her angrier.

"I KNOW somepony's out there! I can hear you on the path, dweeb! Get over here!"

She yanks backward again. Nothing. The gold-rimmed hole holds firm, the transmuted wood fused seamlessly into the living trunk. Her balls, heavy and swollen, press against the bark beneath the hole. A thin trail of goldified sap runs down the trunk where stray drops must have landed.

She cranes her neck to look over her shoulder toward the sound of the trail, amber eyes blazing with fury. There is not a single trace of embarrassment on her face. Not one. She looks like someone who got their claw stuck in a vending machine and is fully prepared to fight the vending machine.

"Look — I don't care what this looks like, okay?! I got STUCK. It's a CURSE thing. Just — ugh — just get over here and help me figure out how to get this stupid gold off the stupid tree before my legs cramp up!"

A squirrel peers down from a branch above her, chittering. Gilda snaps her beak at it.

"BEAT IT, fuzzball! This doesn't concern you!"

The squirrel doesn't move. Gilda's tail lashes furiously. Somewhere deeper in the trunk, the goldified wood groans faintly as she shifts her weight, but it holds solid. She isn't going anywhere without help.

"...Seriously, whoever's out there, I will pay you. I got gold. Literally. Just — get over here already!"

The Everfree Forest at night isn't for the faint of heart. The trees grow thick and wild, no pegasus manages the weather, and the things that live in the underbrush don't care much for visitors. But the clearing is decent — flat ground, a natural break in the canopy that lets the stars through, and a creek nearby for fresh water. A good spot to camp.

The fire crackles. The woods hum with the usual chorus of insects and distant, unidentifiable rustling. It's almost peaceful.

Then something hits the canopy.

Not gently. There's a splintering CRACK from above, followed by a rapid series of snapping branches, a shriek that's half fury and half terror, and the heavy, chaotic thrashing of something large pinballing through the treetops. Leaves and bark rain down into the clearing. A bird nest explodes into a shower of twigs and feathers somewhere overhead.

"STUPID — WING — MOVE, YOU PIECE OF — !"

One final branch gives way with a wet SNAP, and a griffon plummets through the gap in the canopy. She hits the ground about fifteen feet from the campfire, hard, tumbling beak-over-tail across the dirt and leaf litter before slamming sideways into your tent, and with a loud SHHRIPPP she punches straight through, and in with you.

She doesn't get up right away. She lies there in a heap, chest heaving, one brown wing crumpled awkwardly beneath her and the other — the golden one, its flight feathers fanned rigid and gleaming in the firelight — sticking straight up from her back like some absurd gilded sail. Her lion tail twitches in the dirt. Leaves and small twigs are tangled in her white head feathers.

Then, slowly, with the grinding determination of someone who is far too stubborn to stay down, she pushes herself up on her good forepaw. Her golden paw scrapes against the bottom as she braces on it, the metal claws leaving bright gouges in the fabric. She shakes her head, sending a shower of debris flying, and blinks.

The campfire. A camp. Someone's camp.

Her amber eyes lock onto the source of your lamplight, squinting through the haze of her rough landing.

"...The hell are you lookin' at?"

She hauls herself the rest of the way up, wincing as she puts weight on her gold forepaw. Her limp is worse than usual — she's favoring her left hind leg now too, probably tweaked in the fall. Her saddlebags are somehow still attached, though one has burst open, spilling a handful of dull, faintly shimmering gold nuggets across the ground. She doesn't even glance at them yet. She's too busy scowling.

"Great. Perfect. Fan-freakin'-tastic." She spits out a mouthful of leaves and runs her good paw down her face. "I tried to get above the tree line. Figured I'd get a better view, find the stupid path to this enchantress lady's hut, save myself a couple hours of stumbling around in the dark like a dweeb."

She gestures furiously at her golden wing with her good paw.

"WELL. Turns out, when you bank left at altitude and half your wing is a giant chunk of metal that doesn't BEND, you don't bank left. You spin. And then you fall. Through trees. Into—" She looks around the clearing, at the fire, at the camping setup, at the person sitting there. "—into some random dweeb's campsite, apparently."

She starts picking twigs out of her chest feathers with sharp, irritated flicks of her talons. A thin line of blood runs down one of her hind legs from a scrape, but she ignores it completely.

"Whatever. I'm fine. Totally fine. Just gotta—" She takes a step, and her gold paw sinks into the soft earth. She lurches, catches herself, hisses through her beak. "—gotta figure out where the hell I am and get moving. There's supposed to be some hermit enchantress lady out here who breaks curses. Ring curses. Specifically ring curses. On— y'know what, it doesn't matter what it's on."

She finally notices the gold nuggets scattered on the ground and immediately drops to collect them, stuffing them back into her saddlebag one-handed with the frantic energy of someone picking up dropped cash on a windy day.

"Don't touch those. Those are mine."

She cinches the bag shut, straightens up, and looks back toward the dark wall of trees surrounding the clearing. The Everfree stares back, dense and black and thoroughly unwelcoming. Something howls in the distance. Her ear tufts flatten, just for a second, before she puffs them back up.

"...So." She turns back, amber eyes sharp, trying very hard to look like she's doing a favor rather than asking for one. "You camp out here a lot? 'Cause I could use somebody who knows these woods. Not — I don't NEED a guide, I just... it'd go faster with someone who knows the trails. And I'd cut you in. I got gold."

She pats her saddlebag. It clinks heavily.

"Whaddya say, dweeb? You busy, or what?"

The sewer grate groans as it's shoved aside from below, scraping across wet cobblestone in the alley behind Mercer's Moneychanger. A golden paw emerges first, talons frozen mid-clench, hooking over the rim with a heavy metallic CLANG that echoes way too loud for someone trying to be stealthy. Then the rest of Gilda hauls herself out of the hole, dripping with things she refuses to think about.

She smells awful. Sewer water mats her chest feathers flat against her body, turning the white a sickly grayish-brown. Her lion half is slicked down and miserable-looking, tail hanging limp and heavy with muck. Her golden wing, draped over her back as always, has somehow collected a garland of wet moss and what might be a dead rat caught between the rigid feathers. She doesn't notice. Or doesn't care.

The alley is narrow and dark, sandwiched between the moneychanger's townhouse and a tannery that masks most of the sewer stink. A single lantern flickers above the back door. Gilda crouches — well, tries to crouch, but her gold paw scrapes loudly against the ground every time she shifts — and surveys the building.

This was Mercer's place. The same weaselly earth pony who'd laughed in her face that afternoon. Held up one of her gold nuggets with his little magnifying loupe, made a big show of testing it, then tossed it back across the counter like it was a bottle cap. "Tainted stock. Worthless. Try the junkyard, birdie." And the ponies in line behind her had snickered. Actually snickered.

Her beak clicks shut at the memory. Her tail lashes once, flinging droplets of sewer water against the brick wall.

"Worthless," she mutters, patting her saddlebags. They're wrapped in oilcloth to keep the sewer off the contents — the one smart thing she did tonight. "Five times copper value, minimum. I KNOW what it's worth. That greedy little — ugh."

The plan is simple. Beautiful, even. Break in, find his strongbox, take exactly what her gold is worth at fair market rate, leave the gold in its place. It's not stealing. It's a forced transaction. Totally different. She'd even calculated the exchange rate on a scrap of parchment, which is currently dissolving in her saddlebag because the oilcloth has a hole in it.

She's eyeing the cellar door — padlocked, but old and rusted — when she hears footsteps at the mouth of the alley. Heavy ones. And the clinking of metal tools.

Gilda flattens against the wall. Her golden paw scrapes against the brick with a sound like a fork on a dinner plate. She winces, freezes, then slowly peers around the corner.

Someone. Big toolbox. Dark alley. Heading for the back of the moneychanger's building. At this hour.

Her amber eyes narrow. A grin spreads across her beak — the sharp, scheming kind.

She steps out of the shadows, blocking the alley, arms crossed. Well — one arm crossed, one arm sort of propped against her chest since the gold paw doesn't bend. She's trying to look intimidating, which is undercut somewhat by the fact that she's soaking wet, smells like a latrine, and has a dead rat dangling from her wing. Sewer water drips steadily from her tail onto the cobblestones.

"Well, well, well." She keeps her voice low, conspiratorial. "Lemme guess — you're not here to deliver flowers at two in the morning, are ya, dweeb?"

She jerks her head toward the moneychanger's back door.

"Mercer's place, right? Yeah. Same." She leans in, lowering her voice further. A droplet of something foul falls from her chin feathers. "Look, I dunno what you're after in there and I don't care. But I just spent forty-five minutes crawling through a sewer that I'm pretty sure connects to his cellar, and I can tell you right now — it's a maze down there. Pipes everywhere, dead ends, and I'm pretty sure one tunnel just loops back to the same room with the weird stain on the ceiling."

She sticks out her good paw.

"Here's what I'm thinkin'. You got tools, I got the way in. We go through the cellar together, grab what we're grabbing, and get out clean. I'm not after his whole stash — I just need what's owed to me. You can have whatever else you want."

Something drips from her saddlebag. She ignores it.

"Sixty-forty split on anything extra. My sixty." A beat. "...Fine, fifty-fifty. But I get first pick. And if you tell anyone you saw me crawling out of a sewer, I will end you."

She glances back at the grate, then at the toolbox, then back up with that sharp amber stare.

"So? We doin' this or what?"