//------------------------------// // Lineage // Story: The Ties That Bind // by Scyphi //------------------------------// Once it was clear they were safe again, at least for the moment, Gallus decided he probably ought to scout around, see if he could find out where they were exactly and if there was any help nearby. Telling Spike to wait at the airship and try to recover any supplies in the meantime, Gallus flew out the broken forward window and circled around the skies, looking for anything significant. Eventually, he perched again in a tree to assess the unfortunately little information he’d gathered. The shoreline they’d passed over really did seem to be the only notable landmark in the immediate area—the rest was just trees, foliage, and other wilderness. There were no signs of any nearby residents, at least none within the first couple of miles. It was clear some occasionally traveled down to the shore via the dirt path he’d seen on their way down, and he’d followed that path for a bit from the air, seeing if it led to anything significant, but it joined with another intersecting dirt path that was only somewhat bigger, and both looked like they got traffic fairly sparingly. Neither seemed to lead to any civilization any time soon, nor did Gallus want to wander too far from the airship without Spike just yet. There were mountains further out, closer to the horizon, but these were miles away and it wouldn’t be a quick trip reaching them, whether by wing or by foot. But Gallus did notice that it wasn’t like their crash site was hard to see from afar. It in fact looked even more obvious from above, as the airship had cut a clear path through the foliage when coming down. Plus, the airship itself did peek just barely over the tree line, and its envelope—which had become detached, deflated, and strung out over an adjacent hill—was even easier to see, thanks to bearing a bright orangey tan color that was clearly artificial. Surely anyone passing by would take notice and be inclined to investigate, especially if familiar with the terrain and knew this had all arrived recently. He told Spike this upon returning back to the wrecked airship. “If anyone’s out there searching for us, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to find us here,” he explained to the dragon. “But even if they aren’t, we’ve still got options because you might be right about us managing to land in or near the Griffon Kingdom since I think I recognize those mountains out there. We’re too far away to tell for sure, but if they’re the mountains I think they are, Griffonstone’s on one of them. But it’ll be a bit of a trip getting out there either way.” “Hmm,” Spike hummed as he peered out at the sky. The storm had continued to fade, and while the sun itself still wasn’t visible, its glow could be seen through the clouds, putting it low in the sky. “Well then, it’s getting late enough that we probably ought to wait until morning before going on a trip like that. I’d hate to wander around in those woods in the dark.” “Agreed,” Gallus readily confirmed. “Trust me, traveling in the wilderness at night is no fun. I only ever did it for brief trips and even that was…creepy. And I’ve heard plenty of horror stories of bad things happening to other creatures who tried, so let’s not be those creatures.” “Guess that means we’re camping here for the night,” Spike said, looking around the airship they sat in. It was definitely banged up but the upper deck at least was intact enough. “The ship should provide enough shelter.” “It’ll be kinda dark after sunset though,” Gallus noted with a grimace. “Any chance we can get the lights back on in here?” Spike shook his head. “I already tried while you were out. I don’t know if the batteries actually ran out, but it seems like the airship is damaged enough that it doesn’t matter now.” He then waved that matter aside. “But I’ve got my fire breath, so we can start a campfire easy-peasy.” “How about supplies then?” Gallus said and motioned to the modest stack of foodstuffs Spike had gathered on the cabin floor. “Is this all you could find?” “All I could recover in the ship’s galley, at least,” Spike explained, pulling out a spare pack he must’ve found along the way and proceeded to move the supplies into it. “It was somewhat crushed in the crash, so parts of it are hard to get into and some of the food was ruined anyway. But this dry stuff all seemed to have survived well enough.” Gallus picked up a box of crackers skeptically, which set something of a theme as most of the rest were largely similar snack-based foods. “I mean, food is food,” he admitted, “but I don’t know how filling this’ll be.” He considered for a moment. “I think I saw a river not too far from here when I was looking around. Maybe I can catch us a fish or two—that’d be more nourishing in the long run, and we’re probably going to need it before this is all over.” “I also found this,” Spike added, sliding a metal case across the floor towards Gallus. “An emergency kit, nice!” Gallus said, pulling it towards him and opening it. “This should come in handy.” He pulled out a small pistol-like device. “And look, a flare gun! If anybody does fly over us, we can use this to let them know we need rescuing!” He popped open the barrel and peered inside, then back into the case. “Only two shots though, one already in the gun and a spare in the kit. We’ll have to be careful about how we use them.” He went through the kit a little longer and frowned. “Nothing in here in terms of radios or other things to call for help with though.” He glanced at Spike putting the last of the salvaged food into the bag for safer keeping. “Have you tried to see if you can use your firebreath thing again?” “No, actually, I hadn’t gotten back to that,” Spike admitted as if just remembering and grabbed the scroll he had tried with earlier. “I’ll go see if I can do that now.” He stopped long enough to scribble out a few updates about their status before rolling the scroll up again and clambering out the broken forward window, trying to distance himself from any interference the airship may or may not still be producing. Meanwhile, Gallus continued sifting through the emergency kit, seeing what else of use it had. Beyond about three days’ worth of dehydrated rations and a compact lantern though, the flare gun really was the most useful thing in there. Not that Gallus wasn’t pleased they had it at all, of course, but it didn’t really help to change their circumstances much or help speed up their chances for a hopefully swift rescue. Spike getting word out with his magic firebreath was ultimately their best bet still. A bet that seemed problematic when, after being gone for some minutes, Gallus heard a bellow from outside: “Balani devoveo!” Surprised, Gallus poked his head out the forward window to peer at Spike, who was angrily kicking at the dirt about a dozen or so feet from the airship. “Where did you learn to swear like a changeling?” he asked in a faint tease. Spike snorted as he stomped back towards the airship. “I’m friends with a changeling too, you know!” he snapped before holding up, to Gallus’s dismay, the scroll he’d been trying to send. “This still isn’t sending though!” Gallus flapped out of the window and met him halfway. “How?” he asked as he landed before the little dragon, not understanding. “Do we need to get you even further away from the airship, or whatever it was Gene Type did to block it?” But Spike shook his head, plopping himself on the ground with a frustrated groan. “Why would he ever need it to reach so far from the airship if that’s what it was?” he asked before sighing. “No, I’m starting to think we got it wrong altogether.” He looked Gallus in the eye. “You remember when Gene Type started his supposed tests by scanning us?” “Yeah…what about them?” Gallus asked, not sure he was following. “Do you remember how it felt?” “It…didn’t really feel like much of anything to me.” “And normally it shouldn’t, not for the sort of scans he was doing. But for me, I’d felt a light tickle anyway.” Gallus suddenly caught on. “You think he snuck another spell in with the scanning,” he summarized. Spike nodded sadly. “He didn’t put a spell on the airship, he put a spell on me. That’s why I can’t send any messages with my firebreath.” Gallus mulled this over for a moment before moving to sit beside Spike, putting a comforting wing over the dragon’s back. “So…where does this leave us then? Anyway we could break it ourselves?” Spike shook his head. “No, even if we could cast the necessary magic ourselves, we don’t know what spell Gene Type used, so we’d just be shooting in the dark anyway. We’re stuck with it for now.” He half-heartedly chucked the useless scroll away from them. “I suppose we could send a message the traditional way,” he reasoned after a moment, “but we’d need a post office for that.” “Which means we’d also need a town,” Gallus added and looked again to the sky. “And we already agreed it’s too late to try and find one right now, so I guess that’s also going to have to wait until morning.” “Yeah, so until then, looks like we’re still hoping somebody heard that distress call we got out before Gene Type blew up the radio,” Spike concluded with a nod. He then heaved a heavy sigh. “You think anybody heard it?” “I think at this point it’s not going to matter too much,” Gallus replied. “Everybody at home was expecting us to be back by now, so they’ll definitely have realized something’s wrong and started searching for us. It’s really just a question of whether or not they know where to look and how long it takes.” “You think it’ll take them long to track us down?” Gallus hesitated. “I think it might be faster to go ahead and find our own help in the morning,” he replied. Spike nodded and gazed solemnly ahead for a few moments. “This whole mess is wacked,” he admitted after a moment. “Understatement of the day,” Gallus agreed with a snort. “When I got up this morning, I certainly didn’t think this is where the day would be ending.” He gave Spike a comforting nudge. “But we’ve gotten this far safe, so I’d like to think our odds are still pretty good.” “Hopefully you’re right,” Spike replied, giving Gallus a hopeful grin. He then sighed again. “I just wish I knew why though. What was so important that it led Gene Type to attempt murder?” “Aw, who can say what was going on in that guy’s head,” Gallus remarked with a roll of his eyes. But then he gazed thoughtfully at the crashed airship before them for a moment. “Though now that you’ve mentioned it…” he pointed a talon at the craft, “…we haven’t searched every room in there yet, have we?” “No, I suppose we haven’t,” Spike admitted with a shrug. “There hadn’t been a need to. Why, what are you thinking?” “Well, Gene Type’s been living on this thing for like, what, a month or so, right? Doing all the research and stuff?” When Spike nodded, Gallus pressed on. “So the guy must have left some notes for whatever harebrained scheme he cooked up lying around in there somewhere.” Spike perked up slightly. “Maybe,” he admitted. He squinted his eyes at the airship for a moment. “They’re probably a real mess after the crash, if they’re even there, but…” he stood up. “It might be worth a look.” “And it’s not exactly like we’re going anywhere at the moment,” Gallus added with a shrug, “So it’d at least give us something to do in the meantime, right?” This decided then, they reentered the airship so to give it a more thorough search. Though there was still adequate light coming in from outside to see, it was slowly dimming as the sun sank ever closer to the horizon, so Gallus brought with them the compact lantern from the emergency kit as they began their search. Right off the bat they expressed some worry about how well they would be able to explore the lower, more damaged, deck of the airship, but ultimately they didn’t even need to as the second upper floor room they checked proved to be an obvious office. It wasn’t particularly large, only about ten by five square feet, but it bore a basic desk bolted to the floor, a sliding chalkboard on the wall behind it, and a closed floor-to-ceiling cabinet in front of it. It was obviously where Gene Type had done or kept the paperwork side of his research, so they were on the right track. Unfortunately, as Spike had predicted, everything that hadn’t been bolted down had been flung onto the floor and into a chaotic mess from the crash, including virtually all the documents that had been on top of the desk, the items probably of the most interest to them currently. Gallus set the lantern on the desktop and bent down to start sorting through the jumbled papers carpeting the floor. “Well, I guess we’d better get searching,” he said, seeing no need to delay. “Hopefully Gene Type had these all organized enough that they’re still mostly grouped together.” But as he sorted through the first few documents and saw no apparently relation between any of them, he didn’t have high hopes for this. Nevertheless, they quietly pressed on, sorting the papers back into stacks of their own creation and speaking up whenever they found something that might be of interest. For the first several minutes though, they didn’t find much but some uninteresting bureaucratic documents, flight plan registration papers, a couple of financial bills, and a lot of reports that listed results of Gene Type’s research in highly dense and technical data that was more numerical than verbal and thus difficult to meaningfully interpret. None of it seemed especially relevant to their role in all of this though, until Spike, moving some of the stacks they’d made back onto the desk so to get them out of the way, noticed something already there. “Hey, come take a look at this,” he said, waving Gallus over. Gallus set aside the papers he was working with and joined him at the desk, where Spike was pointing at a series of sticky notes stuck directly to the face of the desk. A quick glance was enough to see they seemed to be reminders or to-dos for Gene Type. There didn’t seem to be any order or pattern to them though, and a long moment of silence fell as the two attempted to puzzle out the exact intended meaning of the cryptic and disorganized notes. Gallus still quickly recognized what had gotten Spike’s attention about them though—one note read “SPIKE/GALLUS MON. NOON.” But that wasn’t so out of the norm in of itself so he wasn’t sure what it told them. “Obviously this one is about our scheduled meeting earlier today,” he said, tapping the note in question before motioning at the others. “But I haven’t the foggiest if these others tie in with it.” “It’s these two that really get my attention,” Spike said, pointing to two other notes nearby that were stuck immediately next to each other. They read “CONFIRM HYBRIDS” and “POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS” respectively. “They’re the two that aren’t like the others.” Gallus scratched at his crest of feathers with his talons, puzzled. “You think they’re somehow related to all of this then?” he asked, “They’re so vague, it’s hard to tell.” “I…suppose it’s possible they aren’t actually, and only just happened to be grouped together like that,” Spike admitted, rubbing at his chin, but he didn’t sound especially convinced. “But the fact Gene Type associated a danger to it seems significant.” Gallus hummed aloud, but this didn’t help them figure it out much. “What exactly does he mean by hybrids anyway?” he asked, deciding that needed clarifying first. “Does he mean like in the biological sense?” “You mean like a chimera?” Spike asked, the first hybrid creature that sprang to mind. He then frowned and reassessed that statement. “Though I guess as far as hybrids go, a chimera is the more extravagant example…I do know a mule back in Ponyville though, and I guess that’d count as a hybrid, seeing he’s a cross of a pony and donkey…” “Oh yeah, I know who you’re talking about,” Gallus admitted, having seen said mule around town before. “What is that guy’s name, again? I don’t think I’ve ever found out…” “I’m not sure it matters, because what do hybrids have to do with anything?” Spike questioned back. “Mm, and why did Gene Type think there was a danger?” Gallus added, humming thoughtfully. He remained silent for another moment, looking at the sticky notes with a scowl. “We need more information,” he concluded finally and turned around, scanning the office for inspiration on where he might find it. Spike, meanwhile, sighed and glanced around the office himself. “We might have to look for it somewhere else,” he pointed out as he regarded the sliding chalkboard behind the desk. The two panels currently visible were covered with the formulas and genetic analysis expected for Gene Type’s trade. “Most of what’s in here seems to be his normal work that everybody already knew about.” He gazed at the chalkboard for a moment longer then went to slide aside one of the panels. “Though maybe there’s something hidden on here…I wonder if this is like the sliding chalkboards back at the School for Gifted Unicorns the professors were always using. The backmost panel of those was typically a corkboard…” He trailed off speaking. Gallus, meanwhile, nearly went back to sorting through the many papers still disorganized on the floor before his eyes fell upon the cabinet doors at the back of the room. Wondering what might be in there, he moved to open it but the doors simply jerked in place, locked. A quick examination of its latch showed a simple tumbler lock was in place. Gallus briefly considered what he’d have to do to try and pick the lock, but then realized he might not have to. “Hey Spike,” he called while he examined the lock a moment longer. “You see a key that could fit this lock lying around anywhere?” When he didn’t get a response, he turned to look behind him with a frown. “…Spike?” Spike was still at the chalkboard, having slid the rightmost panel about half a foot to one side and revealing the expected corkboard mounted behind it that he’d commented about. Gallus could see that corkboard had several notes of varying colors pinned to it, but he was too far away to read any of them. Nevertheless, Spike stood frozen before it, staring at something Gallus couldn’t see, so there must’ve been something important on it, enough that Gallus, growing concerned, moved back towards him to find out. “Did you find something?” he asked as he returned to Spike’s side, trying to see what had caught the dragon’s attention. Spike, jaw hanging slightly ajar, merely pointed numbly at the bottom right corner of the corkboard where a lone photograph was pinned. Gallus squinted his eyes at it, not immediately seeing what was so important about it. “…looks like an egg,” he finally noted aloud, puzzled. “It’s a dragon egg,” Spike supplemented weakly. Gallus nodded, deciding that explained why Spike had reacted to it, but he still didn’t see why this was special. “Okay. What of it?” Spike swallowed, still keeping his eyes on the photo. “…I think it’s mine.” “What?” Gallus squinted his eyes at the picture again, baffled. “How can you tell that?” “It has purple spots,” Spike murmured numbly. “Dragon eggs have different colored spots, unique to the egg. And my egg had purple spots just like that.” Gallus looked from the photo to the dragon again for a few moments, still confused. “Spike, I can’t even remember what my own egg looked like, so how the heck do you know what yours looked like?” Spike made a sheepish wince and finally broke his gaze from the photo. “Well…Twilight’s dad likes to scrapbook, so…” Gallus pulled back with a disturbed look. “Are you saying he scrapbooked pieces of your egg?” he exclaimed. “Just the shell!” Spike quickly reassured before nervously twiddling his claws, “And not all of the pieces, only a few.” His gaze turned back to the photo. “But…enough to know it looked something like that when it was still whole.” Gallus gazed at the photo also, still skeptical. “And how do you know this is the same egg and not some other dragon egg with purple spots?” he challenged. Spike bit his lip, peering at the photo. “Well, I guess it is odd that room in the background doesn’t look like any of the ones in Canterlot Castle, where my egg stayed until it hatched,” he reluctantly admitted, but he shook his head resolute. “But who else’s egg could it be? We already know I was one of Gene Type’s targets! Why else would he have a picture of anyone’s egg, for that matter?” “He was doing heritage tests for the whole School of Friendship, so he’s probably been researching the backgrounds for a lot of creatures lately!” Gallus retorted. “Heck, that could be Smolder’s egg for all we know!” But no sooner were the words out his mouth did he remember Smolder commenting she had no plans to submit any samples for testing, making that possibility unlikely. Nevertheless, Gallus still had doubts. “Look, it’s probably related to some of those tests he was doing and little more,” he said as he reached over Spike to push the chalkboard panel the rest of the way open, revealing more of the corkboard underneath. “It probably doesn’t even have much of anything to do with—” Spike suddenly gasped and grabbed Gallus’s wrist, pointing at the top left corner of the corkboard as it came into view. Gallus turned his head only for his own eyes to bulge in surprise. There, neatly pinned in place like the other, was another photo, but this one pictured a small griffon youth—a hatchling barely a few months old—turning to look innocently towards the camera as he opened his beak to take a bite out of a biscuit. His vibrant azure eyes seemed to bore into Gallus’s own as recognition filled him. They were, after all, his own eyes looking back out at him. Gallus jumped when his rear bumped into the office desk, not realizing he had been backing away from the corkboard. His beak opened and closed uselessly for a moment as he stared at the photo of his far younger self. “This…how…it can’t be…” he mumbled aloud, trying to form coherent enough of a thought to vocalize. But the second photo wasn’t the only thing that had been revealed. Pinned roughly to the center of the corkboard were two newspaper articles. Gallus immediately recognized the topmost one as it was the same article that’d circulated over most of Equestria following Cozy Glow’s attempt to steal away the land’s magic. He and his friends had all gotten themselves copies of the article because not only did it make praiseworthy mention of their role in stopping said filly, it also featured them in a group picture. Gallus had been standing to the back in that picture, but nonetheless, Gene Type had at some point taken a marker and circled Gallus’s face with it. Jotted next to it was “ESCAPED? HOW?” The second article was a more generic one from the Canterlot Times and must have been printed sometime just before Twilight Sparkle was crowned the new ruler of Equestria. The article’s text focused entirely on the alicorn princess, but it too included a picture in which Spike was visible to one side. His face had also been circled in marker, and with it were jotted notes reading “SAME? VERIFY!” Covering most of the rest of the corkboard were various other notes that had been pinned to it, and now that all of them were visible, both Gallus and Spike could start making sense of them. What they said all varied, but all tracked what was publically known about their lives, all asked speculative but ominous questions Gene Type seemed to want answers for, and all seemed to concern Gallus or Spike. The most nerve-racking ones though read “WHERE HAS HE BEEN THIS WHOLE TIME?” in reference to Gallus and “HOW DID HE GET TO CANTERLOT UNNOTICED?” in reference to Spike. In all, it made it clear that Gene Type’s attempt to murder them had been the culmination of a very long time of work. Spike swallowed again, his breathing heavy. “Gallus,” he began slowly, “I think this all runs way deeper than we thought.” Gallus found himself nodding in agreement, gaze going back to his own photo in the corner. “Especially as that picture shouldn’t even exist,” he said, pointing a talon at it before looking at Spike. “As far as I knew, there simply weren’t any photos of me until I arrived at the School of Friendship, over a decade after that one had to have been taken.” Spike’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand then, how does he have these photos at all? Where did he get them?” “And more importantly, why?” Gallus stressed, realizing that despite everything, it all kept coming back to that one question, and despite this new information, none of it made clear Gene Type’s motives other than to convey that there definitely was at least one. This, in turn, led him right back to the same conclusion as before—they needed more information. And with that, his gaze turned back to the locked cabinet behind them, mind running wild as to what secrets it may hold. “Spike, help me find a key for that cabinet’s lock. Gene Type must’ve been keeping it somewhere around here.” They hurriedly searched around the remaining mess of the office for a few minutes. “I think this is it!” Spike suddenly declared, holding up the key in question. Gallus quickly snagged it from him and they hurried over to the cabinet to test it. Gallus smirked when the lock clicked satisfactorily. Eager to see what Gene Type was hiding in here, he threw open the cabinet door, expecting to find all the documentation for the deceased scientist’s scheming. Instead, the cabinet was filled with shelves of reference books on Gene Type’s trades as a geneticist and forensic scientist, as well as a couple of other semi-related scientific fields, but nothing obvious pertaining to their current situation. “Oh c’mon!” Gallus bemoaned in disappointment, pulling books at random in the desperate hope one of them was a secret lever for a concealed compartment or something. “You could’ve hidden anything you didn’t want somecreature to see in here, and you fill it up with flipping textbooks instead?” Spike, meanwhile, spied one book not like the others. “Well, it’s not all textbooks,” he remarked as he pulled it off the shelf. “This one is an old photo album.” Gallus groaned and rolled his eyes as he continued searching through the other books for hidden secrets. “Spike, I don’t really care about Gene Type’s family memories right now!” he groused, ignoring the dragon’s find. Spike, however, opened the album to its first page. “This isn’t Gene Type’s album,” he concluded suddenly. When Gallus stopped to glance at him questioningly, Spike turned the album around so he could see for himself. It’s first three photos didn’t picture any ponies as expected but rather a griffoness in her early adulthood. “…huh?” Gallus said as he took the album from Spike and stared at the unexpected photos. “Why would Gene Type have something like this?” Spike shrugged. “You tell me, you’re the griffon. Is she anyone you recognize?” “…no?” Gallus replied, uncertain. “At least…I don’t think I recognize her…” he squinted his eyes at the pictured griffoness, bearing a fiery yellow-orange plumage with a crest of feathers sweeping backwards down her head and nearly onto her neck, each one fading to a golden yellow at their tips, and deeply vibrant azure eyes. Maybe she seemed ever so vaguely familiar to him? “I…guess I might’ve passed her on the street at some point…but I certainly don’t know who she is.” He noticed the photos were all dated and ran some numbers in his head. “It may not matter anyway,” he said, flipping to the next page. “According to the dates, these photos are nearly twenty years old. She probably looks different now.” Spike threw up his claws helplessly. “Well, I don’t know why Gene Type has photos of her then, but there’s gotta be a reason.” Gallus halted as he turned to the album’s third page. “Well, maybe this has something to do with it,” he said as he now turned it around for Spike to see. The first few photos were still of the same griffoness, but the next few showed a male dragon roughly the griffoness’s same age. Initially he looked like he was getting photobombed, but later he appeared to be genuinely posing for photos before the last one showed both the griffoness and the dragon together, the griffoness holding the camera in front of her with a smug look while the taller dragon—barely in the frame—rolled his eyes in bemusement behind her. “What?” Spike muttered, now the confused one as he took the album back and started flipping through the pages, studying the newcomer dragon as he did. The dragon’s main body of scales was a dark navy blue except for his underbelly which was contrastingly colored a creamy light tan. His emerald green spines sprouting from the top of his head and running on down his back were overall rounded in shape, except with a clear, albeit blunted, point to them. He was built well enough to have a light and unexcessive six-pack and yet there was a gentle intelligence rather than physical strength to how he carried himself, making him stand out from most other dragons they knew. Yet he wasn’t at all familiar, which only further confused Spike. “Why would a dragon be in here?” “I’d assume they’re friends,” Gallus reasoned, thinking it obvious. But as Spike noticed the griffoness and dragon become more friendly and chummy in every new photo, he reached a different conclusion. “I’m…thinking they were maybe more than just friends.” Gallus’s eyebrows went up. “You think they were an item?” he asked, surprised, “A griffon and a dragon?” He snorted and let his gaze wander as he tried to puzzle this out. “This doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that you and me are a griffon and dragon like those two are, but…I don’t see how it’s all supposed to connect.” Spike’s eyes suddenly bulged as he flipped to a new page in the album. “Gallus…” he breathed before turning the album around again to show him a new photo. This time the dragon was holding the camera while leaning close to the tired but happy looking griffoness holding in her talons an… “They had an egg?!” Gallus exclaimed as he snatched the album from Spike. The speckled egg in the griffoness’s talons looked like a fairly normal griffon’s egg, but considering the probable father… “No, no, no,” he muttered, shaking his head as he started haphazardly flipping ahead in the album, “A dragon and griffon couldn’t possibly have kids, that egg must be adopted or—AH!” He dropped the album suddenly, as if burned by it, but it landed flat on the floor in front of him, still turned to the photo that’d shocked him. It portrayed three figures grouped together for a quick family photo. One was the female griffon looking at the camera with a small, warm smile. Beside her, one arm wrapped lovingly around her shoulders, was the male dragon, looking at the camera with friendly green eyes, a toothy grin, and perked and attentive pale green ear fronds. But it was the third figure that was the most eye-grabbing, despite also being the smallest. Nestled in the griffoness’s lap was a young fledgling about a year old, looking at the camera with a big laughing grin on his beak and one paw outstretched as if trying to grab it. He seemed so young, so small, and so happy that it seemed foreign…but despite all of that, Gallus still knew that face all too well. And so did Spike. “Gallus…” he gasped, pointing a numb claw at the little fledgling, “…that’s you.” Gallus just stared at the album, too stunned to move. “…it…it can’t be…” he breathed, realizing he was starting to hyperventilate. He watched Spike pull the album towards himself and continue flipping through it, trying to process this reveal. “How…how could it even…” Then Spike gasped, and when Gallus looked back at him, he saw the dragon’s face visibly pale. “Gallus,” he said, before weakly swallowing and turning the album around so Gallus could see, “That wasn’t the only egg they had.” This page featured a series of photos of the happy parents showing off a dragon egg with, by now familiar, purple spots. As if to further affirm this was a different egg from the first, a couple of the photos also showed a young Gallus examining the egg, appearing to be baffled by it. And as Gallus moved closer to get a better look, he realized there was a photo missing, having been removed from the page and leaving a faint yellowed outline framing where it’d been. Feeling a chill run down his spine, he glanced back at the corkboard and at the dragon egg photo pinned to it. Not only was it clearly the same egg, the room visible in the background was even the same. Gallus’s eyes then shot to the corkboard’s photo of him as a hatchling, suddenly realizing where it had come from…and how the photo album fit into all of this at all. Spike seemed to be realizing all of this himself. “Sweet Celestia,” he declared, setting down the album to wrap his claws around the sides of his head. Gallus used that chance to scoop up the album yet again, desperate to find out more. Unfortunately, only a page later, the photos ceased at about the halfway mark in the album, the rest of the pages left completely empty and never used. Heart racing, Gallus flipped back to the pictures of the dragon egg and glanced at the dates marked on them. “Spike, how many years old are you?” he asked urgently. Spike looked at him with dazed eyes. “Fourteen,” he replied simply. Gallus glanced back at the dates on the photos. They were taken around fourteen years previous. The album thumped out of his grasp again as Gallus backed away from it, mind reeling. “There…there has to be another explanation for this, something…something that shows it’s not what it looks like, or…or…” But then Spike’s eyes bulged as he realized something else. “The bloodline stone,” he murmured. Gallus’s heart leapt as the memory of the stone tablet lighting up at their touches sprang back to his mind. “…No…” “That’s why it has both dragon and griffon writing on it,” Spike continued to babble. “It must have been made with specifically those two in mind.” He motioned to the photo album. Gallus’s heart then shot into a nosedive and he suddenly darted back to the desk and the sticky notes stuck to it, rereading the second one: “CONFIRM HYBRIDS.” “No, no, no, no, no…” Gallus muttered as he backed away from the desk again. Spike, having followed, was again thinking in sync with him. “That’s why Gene Type did the tests,” he gasped in realization. “He wanted to be sure.” “He’s wrong,” Gallus suddenly snapped in denial. “He has to be! This…this all has to be some kind of mistake!” “Gallus, we have photographic evidence!” Spike stressed. He jabbed a claw at the photo album. “That griffon and dragon couple are—” “But they can’t be!” Gallus stressed in a panic. “Because if that’s true, then that’d make us…make us…” he couldn’t bring himself to say it. But Spike could, and say it he did in an awed whisper. “…brothers. We’d be brothers.”