My eyes locked on to a bushy tail that darted through the treetops. I flapped my heavy wings as I tried to pick out where the squirrel was going. After a few seconds, I knew it was going to jump off its current branch once it crossed over a second, lower tree.
In midair, the squirrel wouldn’t have any control over its movements. In those few seconds, I would strike from above.
Or at least, I’d try. Hunting was natural for griffins, and it brought more satisfaction than just the meal. Heck, I could sustain myself on nuts and berries if I needed to. But we were predators, Lords of the Sky. What sort of disgrace is so weak as to be unable to perform a simple hunt?
Wincing, I shook his words out of my head. Keep it together, Gilda, I told myself. With a deep breath, I found the squirrel again. It was almost ready to jump, and I was ready to kill it. I had been out hunting for two hours already, and I had already lost three meals. A fourth would just be pathetic.
At the end of its branch, the squirrel looked around: left, right, down. Every direction except where the danger was—up. I let myself smirk a little, and a rush of adrenaline followed.
Time slowed down. The squirrel jumped. I dove.
Falling was fast, but when I flapped my wings and reached suicidal speeds, when I stretched out my killer claws, it was more than just “falling.” There wasn’t a word for it; it was just powerful and natural and primal. Like lightning on its way to the earth.
With an outstretched hand, I snatched the squirming, screaming squirrel out from mid-jump. Then I flew over to a sturdy-looking tree branch and tested it with a foot. The bark was rough, but it held, so I perched on it. Finally, after two hours of failure, it was time for lunch.
Maybe it was malice, maybe it was leftover adrenaline; whatever it was, now I had a live meal, I was too stoked to eat. I brought the squirrel up to my face and grinned into its beady little eyes. He—I checked with a glance and a flick of my wrist—was helpless. For years, he’d gone around eating, sleeping, and whatever stupid squirrels did in their spare time. That just led up to today and his true role in life: food.
Slowly, I stretched a talon towards to the squirrel. I could see the terror in his eyes—only natural, given the circumstances. His nose twitched, and I could feel his fuzzy little torso pulsing in rapid, terrified breaths. When I pressed the talon against his neck, I could feel his heart beating about a bazillion times per minute. He knew what was coming next.
I scraped the back of a talon up and down his neck a few times. Then, with a quick jerk, I slit his throat. It was easy.
* * *
My hunter’s glee left after lunch, leaving me hollow. I looked down at my hands and arms; they were doused with blood. For some reason, it made me feel guilty; then I remembered I had tortured the squirrel before killing it. That wasn’t right. An honorable hunter would’ve killed her prey quickly; a skilled hunter could’ve performed the kill mid-dive. I was neither of those.
I shrugged and dropped the remaining squirrel bits, watching as they tumbled and bounced down to the forest floor. That just tightened the knot in my stomach. I rubbed my temples with my hands, muttering and trying to think about anything else.
Only after I smelled copper did I realize that I had just smeared blood all over my face. Despite myself and my situation, I glared off into space. “Three years, and you’re already going native.” My voice was dry, but I started to crack up at the joke.
I wanted to embrace that laughter like it was healthy and real, but I knew better. There wasn’t anyone else around for miles. That thought sobered me up quickly. Instead of dwelling on it, I decided to wash the blood and guts off my feathers. Just because I was an outcast didn’t mean I was a wild animal.
Bathing happened at a pond near my cave. Hunting had taken me about twenty minutes away from home, and I slowed myself down even more by sticking beneath the forest canopy. The Jägerwald—my ex-tribe’s name for the huge forest that I still technically lived in—was home to lots of fanged or venomous things, and I preferred stealth over dodging.
As I flew deeper into the forest, the air got thick, humid, and dark. That was at odds with things outside the Jägerwald, where it was well past noon on a cool, breezy day in either late April or early May. I wasn’t sure anymore. Either way, as my eyes adapted to the darkness, I figured the water would be cold, which helped in cleaning blood off.
At my pond, I scanned the banks and tree branches. I was alone, so I could bathe in peace for a few minutes, at least. I glanced at myself for a moment; it had almost been a week since my last good bath. With a shrug, I jumped into the water.
The engulfing cold shocked my breath away at first. After an unconscious hiss, I paddled out to the middle of the pond. With my feathers soaking wet, I’d pretty much be screwed if something came after me, but I’d have a slightly better chance if I saw them coming first. At least there weren’t any piranhas in my pond.
When I was as safe as I could manage, I started by washing the obvious: my bloody hands. Once they were clean, I could use the rough, yellow scales to scrub with. Sure, I had to be careful with my talons, but almost eighteen years of living with them had been good practice for “not disemboweling myself.”
I worked my way over various parts of me until I got to my chest. There, I felt a raw unevenness under the feathers: three deep, parallel scars. I traced them with my own talons, noting how wide I had to spread my fingers for them to line up.
With a sigh, I remembered how it all began: a juvenile pegasus pony's flight camp. I had been sent there as punishment for being a weak flier. It ended up being the best summer of my life. That wasn’t saying much, though; most of Junior Speedsters’ had been pretty crappy.
For starters, I had been the only griffin there, but that wasn’t really a surprise. Also not surprising was how I had been feared at first. Things changed when the other campers realized I wasn’t going to kill any of them in their sleep; then, they just set out to make my life miserable.
All of them except one: Rainbow Dash, a sky blue filly with a mane to match her name. She didn’t care who I was, just how I flew. We had been rivals—she was more agile; I had speed on my side. More importantly, we became fast friends. Between the pair of us, we had taken the top two places in every event in the end-of-camp games.
A splash shook me out of my memories; I snapped my head towards the source just in time to see a fish fall back into the water. Stupid fish, I seethed, but I breathed a sigh of relief. At least it hadn’t been something dangerous, like a dive-bombing wyvern.
On that note, I finished up in the pond and swam back to the bank. With quick, twitching shudders, I got most of the water out of my fur and feathers. I was too damp to fly, so as I dried, I looked down into the water’s surface to check my reflection. If I had taken the effort to bathe, I wanted to do it right, damn it.
A pair of amber-yellow eyes stared up at me from the water. They were part of the face of a slightly damp griffin with mostly white feathers on her head. The feathers that weren’t white were purple—not lavender, like someone tried to accuse one time. At any rate, there wasn’t any red on my feathers, so I nodded with approval.
As I sat there nodding, I felt a overwhelmed by a foreign sensation. My reflection cringed when I realized what it was: camaraderie. With myself. I shook my head at how pathetic that was, but it had been several weeks since I had even seen anyone intelligent. I couldn’t even remember what I had spoken about the last time I had a conversation with anyone.
I sat there and made some more faces at the water. Life hadn’t always been so lonely; in fact, my family was huge, so I had grown up with the opposite “problem.” Exile fixed that situation pretty drastically, though.
It all started at the end of Junior Speedsters’ Flight Camp.
Dash and I had been walking to the exit; she was gushing about a new stunt she did, and I had been wondering how, exactly, I was supposed to get home. It had been three months, and I had forgotten the exact bearing I had arrived from, which probably meant I was in for an interesting journey.
Without warning, Dash broke down into loud, shameless tears. It snapped me back into the moment, and I tried to calm her down. Shaking her shoulder, I whispered, “Hey, hey... c’mon, Dash. You’re making a... thing.”
She looked back at me through her sobs. “It’s... it’s not fair, G.”
“What isn’t?”
Her voice cracked up her response. “Now everypony treats me like I’m some sort of freak, just 'cause I hung out with you all summer.” I opened my mouth to retort, but she went on, “And I kn-know it’s not your fault. These last few m-months have been some of the b-best ever for me. It’s just, w-whenever we w-were apart, no one would even l-look at me. The only thing that g-got me through it was thinking of w-what we would do, next time we saw each other. And n-now we’re never g-going to s-s-see each other ag-ag...”
Dash completely melted down during the last syllable of “again.”
“Hey, now...” I patted her shoulder. “It’s not like we’re dying. We can still keep in touch!”
Her eyes lit up. “Y-you promise?”
“Yeah, Dash, I promise.” I was a little fuzzy on how, but I vowed I’d at least try.
After she heard my promise, Dash threw herself on my neck in a hug that made it hard to breathe. In that moment, I realized how long it would before we saw each other again—if ever. I hugged her back, clamping my eyes shut, trying to hold back tears.
That was the wrong thing to do. But if I had known that Father had been nearby, I would have known to deck her in the face, throw out a few choice slurs, and leave her there. Dash would have hated me, and I would’ve, too.
It would have been better for everyone involved.
The bushes near my pond rustled, and I turned, talons-out... in time to see the cotton tail of a rabbit as she scampered away. Mind the vicious bunnies, I mocked, rolling my eyes. Still, I was dry enough to fly, so I took off for my home. It wasn’t much more than a hole in a mountain, but at nearly a mile above ground and with only one entrance, it was safer to get lost in thoughts up there.
Five minutes’ vertical flight later, I landed on the outcropping outside my cave and glanced around to make sure it was still my cave. The walls and floor were smooth stone, so it was easy to see everything except the very back, where the light couldn’t reach. My cave was an almost-perfect combination of sturdy and cozy; it had taken almost a month to find it. After living there for three years, I felt it had been time well-spent.
Time...
I mulled the word over in my head. It was weird, having all the time in the world to do anything. Growing up, Father had set all the rules and schedules. Some days, I needed to get out of that hellhole cave and dying ridge. Now that I was away, I wanted nothing more than to go back home.
But the Sharfkral—my tribe—had their rules. The Verbannungsprüfung was both terrible and absolute. To my ancestors’ credit, the whole thing used to be about finding peace with nature and all that jazz, but just like everything else in my tribe’s culture, time had warped it into something brutal and empty.
The rules were simple, on parchment: until I finished a “Prüfung,” I was “Die Verbotene.” The Prüfung could be anything: go find some mystical pool, or speak with the gods, or kill a dragon... Stuff like that. The fun part was how, until it was finished, I couldn’t make contact with any member of my race—under penalty of death.
Of course, since it had been my heartless torturer of a father who had assigned me both the “banishment” and the “quest” portions of the Verbannungsprüfung, it was a choice between dying and something worse. So I was stuck in a cave; travel plans kind of dried up when I had to worry about accidentally running into someone I knew.
I sighed and walked over to my blanket. It wasn’t plush anymore, but it was more comfortable than the bare stone. I lay down on it and closed my eyes as visions and sounds swam through my head: memories of my youth, reminders of my current situation, and fantasies about the future.
Like they always did, my thoughts turned back to Dash. She was the reason for my banishment; even worse, she was the Prüfung...
“And I’d rather die than do it,” I reminded myself.
Even with my eyes closed, I cringed. Every day, it felt more like I was only reminding myself out of habit. But she was innocent in the whole situation. Killing a squirrel for food was one thing, but honor killing someone intelligent? A funny one with hopes and dreams and a contagious smile?
It was ruthless, and evil. It was exactly how Father wanted me to turn out.
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. A Verbannungsprüfung for one of his “lessons” was a little extreme, or at least, it was more... intricate than he usually was. Plus, he had tried to kill me first, which didn’t really fit into a “plan,” if he had one. Then again, nothing from my childhood really added up.
I wasn’t even completely sure on the terms of my banishment. Yeah, I was supposed to be shunned by every tribe, but I didn’t know if they still honored those laws. I tried hunting that down at an Equestrian library one time, but I didn’t get very far. Given how seclusive we were, that didn’t surprise me.
So it’d be risky to try and learn more about the limits of the Verbannungsprüfung, but I also didn’t know what would happen if I killed Dash in her home country’s borders. That one, I could look up, but every time I thought about it, I felt sick to my stomach.
On an international level, I reasoned, the consequences of killing Dash probably wouldn’t be too bad. Father might’ve been cruel, but he wasn’t stupid enough to risk a “war” with Equestria. After all, there were hundreds of thousands of ponies that lived under that nation’s banner. Substantially more than the fifty-six Sharfkral griffins.
With a sigh, I looked down at my blanket and gently traced the stitching with a finger. There had been fifty-six three years ago, but that number had probably shrank by two or three since I left. But who?
It was a bleak truth, but it was absolute: griffins were a dying race. My tribe had been the largest of three, but it didn’t matter. All three tribes were shrinking at a slow, steady rate. In a few centuries or so, our numbers would probably fall into the single digits.
Looking back, it was easy to see that most of the adults in my tribe had given up on anything more than “subsisting.” Sure, there were a few exceptions to that rule. Some of us devoted ourselves to the gods, begging them for salvation; others gave themselves to more earthly pleasures to pass the time.
Others, still, tried to live by older traditions. If we were dying, we could at least do so with honor, damn it. Back in my tribe, I had wanted to live like that. Ironically, so had my father. That was probably where he found the energy to torture me, and to levy a Verbannungsprüfung.
Or maybe he just hated me that much. One way or another, I’d never know.
I tried to blink the burning out of my eyes. I hated him. Even now, three years later, everything he had done to me just left me broken and alone. All of his stupid “lessons” amounted to nothing: I never had to fight anything, or identify poisonous herbs, or make remedies. They had just been excuses to hurt me. Growing up, I had averaged three broken bones a year, “to teach me how to set them.” After I left, I hadn’t broken anything in three years.
My hands curled into fists, and tears fell out of my eyes. I tried to console myself with the words of the Artifacts-Vendor, an elderly griffin who I used to hang around and hear stories from. “You mustn’t blame yourself for any of this,” she had told me the first time I had shown up in her cave wearing a makeshift splint.
I wanted to believe her words. But there must’ve been something wrong with me, if he paid all that extra attention to me. It was my fault I had gotten into my current situation; my fault that I was so weak and helpless that I even needed to go to some foreign kids’ flight school to relearn the basics.
It was my fault that I was completely alone.
I stopped crying and wiped my eyes. Lying down was getting uncomfortable, so I got up and walked over to the entrance of my cave and sat on the outcropping. The treetops below provided me with something interesting to watch; from that height, they were pretty much safe.
Safe, I mused, watching a flock of birds take flight. There was security in being isolated like I was. There were risks, too. If I had a flying accident, or if I got seriously sick, no one would come to my rescue. My best prospect in those cases would be to die outright, but only because it beat the alternative: dying slowly, in agony, as my hopes of salvation eventually dwindled down to nothing. And then blackness.
I cringed at the thought. It wasn’t that I was a stranger to the concept of death; given my race’s situation, I thought about it a lot. I didn’t want to die. Yet there I was, dying alone, and there wasn’t really a way to change that.
Unless I changed it myself.
With a harsh scoff, I reminded myself that the only reason I hadn’t killed myself was because I was afraid to. In a screwed up way, that was optimistic: life sucked, but dying might suck more.
Then again, wasn’t that hopeless. When I wasn’t hunting, I spent a lot of my waking hours—roughly ten a day—with hopes and fantasies of finding another griffin like me. Sure, it was virtually impossible that we’d find one another, especially if she had been cast out of one of the other tribes, or if she had gone in a different direction from me, and of course, she would be a female, and probably a pompous bitch, too...
I shook the idle fantasies out of my head. They didn’t do anything but waste time. If I wanted real companionship, or at least the next-closest thing, I knew where I could go. Up north, there was a pony city where I did all of my correspondence with Dash. Over the past years, Dash’s few-and-far-between letters had dwindled, but they were still probably the only real things that I could look forward to.
I wonder if she’s written back yet. I tried to remember when I had written her; it had been in early March, so it had been nearly two months. With how things worked with Dash, there was at least a chance she had written back by now.
I didn’t make it a habit of visiting the city up north, but I had just taken a bath. By the sun’s position, I’d have enough time to get there and back before nightfall. I’d just have to leave soon or put it off until tomorrow. Or the next day, or next week...
With a frustrated sigh, I turned around to walk back into my cave. Yeah, checking my mail might be pointless, but so was moping around, daydreaming. And besides, maybe something interesting would come from a little trip.
That hope made my mind up more than anything. I walked over to my little traveler’s chest; I still had it from Junior Speedsters’. I couldn’t remember how I held onto it during the escape from Sharfkral-Grat, my tribe’s nesting grounds. The chest held some of the small keepsakes that fourteen-year-old me thought were of dire importance.
One of them was a small leather pouch that the Artifacts-Vendor had given me for my thirteenth birthday. The pouch had once belonged to another griffin who, sort of like me, had been cast out of his tribe by a monster. That had been about two centuries ago, but the pouch was still sturdy. I used to collect rocks in it, but after my exile, I had grown out of that. Now that I had all the time in the world, geology seemed like a waste, somehow.
Instead, I used the pouch as a wallet for the money I needed when I left the forest and entered Equestrian borders. From what the Artifacts-Vendor had told me, that was exactly what Louis—the original owner of the pouch—had used it for, before he settled down in Sharfkral-Grat.
After closing the chest, I walked back out of my cave and stood on the stone outcropping again, this time getting ready to take flight. Like always, I felt kinship with Louis: he had once set out on a journey, and here I was, about to set out on a journey. Checking the mail. Such an epic quest of the gods, I mocked.
Still, the weather was good for flying, and it felt good to have something to do. Before I could change my mind, I took off from outcropping and flew north.