Bad Mondays

by Handyman

Chapter 36 - A Short Story

They came in the dark of the night and with the wind on their backs.

She didn’t see their faces, only the harsh shadows and silhouettes as the fires burned brightly in spite of the rain, burning down the hovel that had always been her house and home, her safe place. It was hers, her sister’s and her mother’s – she rarely got to see her father as he usually worked the fields far from home. Now it was no more, its meagre treasures stolen, its roof collapsed and burning, letting in the elements to ruin what little was left amongst the ashes. She didn’t get to see her mother’s eyes one last time. All she had managed to glean, upon waking up that dreadful night through bleary eyes, was the strange shapes made by shadows of panicking village griffons upon the walls of her room. Shadows cast by orange light from somewhere beyond her window.

The door to their room had burst open, and she was bundled up into her blankets with her toddler sister. She could barely make out the words her mother was saying through the panicked babbling and her sister’s wailing sobs. She only clearly perceived the sound of the window being thrown open and the weightlessness as she was dropped from her mother’s claws.

She had landed hard in a puddle on the far side of the window, spluttering and struggling. She threw the blankets from her, looking up only to see the window close shut behind them, hearing the screams of her mother and the horror as they was swiftly silenced and watched as the fire engulfed what had once been her home.

She had shouted then, but she could no longer remember what her words might have been. She knew she had cried. It was all she could do to dive into the bushes near where her house had been to avoid the roving bandits that had torn her hamlet down to ashes, her wailing sister bundled in her claws as she prayed desperately for her to calm down and be quiet before they were found.

Whenever the brigands passed their hiding spot, she covered herself with her wings, cradling her infant sister in her forelegs and quietly sobbing through the remainder of the night as the flames turned to embers, until the baron’s troops finally came to pick up the survivors. They had been elsewhere, dispatched to village after village to put down the shattered remnants of the force of brigands who crossed over from the kingdom of Jerminok. They had been led by a petty would-be warlord ousted from his roost in that benighted land who had sought easy spoils in the next kingdom over. He had been promptly stomped into the ground by a small army of an attentive duke who wanted none of that nonsense. Not that it comforted her much.

But there were consequences even for the greatest of victories, and while the countryside had been spared the ravages of a thousand-strong force of rampaging griffons, the tiny bands that had bled away after the army was routed and destroyed fell upon the unprotected villages. Many of their griffons of spear-wielding age had been away to the fight, including her father who had gone with the baron’s soldiers. He was not among them when they returned.

Every night since then, she had thanked the All-Maker that her younger sister hadn’t been old enough to remember their mother, at least enough to miss her. Her harsh raspy voice from lungs hardened by the wracking cough that swept through the region a decade earlier, the soft edge to her wizened features that only a mother could achieve despite a life of hard toil, the distinct tinkling sound of her laughter and how she had called them both her little miracles. She had been a beautiful griffon, so very beautiful even in spite of her age, well past child bearing age when she had them both. It was too much to bear, too much to see the light of those beautiful magenta eyes snuffed out forever. It was a pain that bit too deep to bear whenever she recalled her beauty. How she chided herself for a fool to have gone back to see only the charred ruin that remained of her.

The image had stuck with her, as did the hatred, burning hotter than the sun within her. She had sworn then and there by the All-Maker, the old gods, and whomever else had been listening, that never again would she be left so helpless, be found so unready and be so unable to stop harm coming to those whom she loved.

On the very break of day after her life had ended, with her baby sister clutched in her forelegs, the griffon who would only ever bear the name of Shortbeak was a changed creature.

“Come back here, thief!”

Shortbeak ran, the paltry few edibles bouncing precariously in the worn cloth she clutched in her beak. Her breath frosted upon the cold winter air as she sped across the cobblestone streets, splashing puddles of icy water as she ducked and weaved beneath the legs of the townsfolk milling about the market place. She didn’t fly – that was a rookie’s mistake, for she would be too easy to spot from below. The guards would have had no problem catching her, even if her larger wings gave her more wing strength and speed than most griffons her age.

Instead, she capitalized on her thin frame, ducking left and right, through legs and beneath stalls and over crates, swimming through the sea of bodies like a fish through water, leaving the angry produce merchant far behind where he could not follow. She slowed down when she got to the back alleys, on the bad side of town, far from the noisy chatter of the streets, and where the sky was obscured beneath full clotheslines and boardwalks that connected the roofs of buildings. She was safe here now. She took a minute to catch her breath and listened carefully for the sounds of anygriffon following her.

After a while, when it became evident nogriffin was after her, she relaxed, letting the makeshift bag fall to her claws as she slunk further into the shadows, taking shelter behind the broken remains of half a cart around one particularly dank corner, flanked on the far side by a rather torrential downpour of water that had gathered in the corner of one of the roofs far above her, and was overflowing and falling to the muddy ground below.

She uncovered the bread. Several large slices that had been whisked away from the stall of the merchant still radiated with the warmth of the stone ovens they were cooked in. The smell was rich and heady, and she felt her beak water as her mind began to ponder the taste. She closed her beak and shook her head. No, if she took a bite for herself, she wasn’t sure if she’d stop to ensure there was enough left for both of them, hungry though she was.

Satisfied with her haul and confident she had avoided the authorities, all that remained was to get out of these alleys and back to their little hovel. If they were wise, they could make this last for at least two days between them before she’d have to go out again. Tying the cloth up and holding it beneath one wing, she emerged from the alcove and took a left turn.

And ran straight into a wall made out of muscles, fur, and feathers.

She fell back on her hind quarters with a startled shout and looked up about to cuss out the fool who had clearly not been watching where they were going. The words died in her throat. “Well what d’we have here then eh?”

The question was followed up by a bark of harsh laughter from the griffon’s crony. She knew who he was – everygriffon on the streets knew Sharpclaw. He was tall for a griffon, dark brown feathers with yellowish eye shadows, with the exception for a bloody streak going down across one milky eye. He took a step forward, and Shortbeak hurriedly found her footing again. She knew she should apologise – hopefully he’d not take offence and go and ruin somegriffon else’s day instead – but Shortbeak wouldn’t. She would never allow herself to, and her defiance had bought her an unwelcome reputation on the streets of Downsfallow. One the griffon before her wouldn’t appreciate coming from anyone, especially not from a child.

“Nothin’ t’say fer yourself then?” he said before lashing out with a closed talon, punching her straight in the chest and sending her to the ground with a pained yelp. She dropped her package, the baked goods spilling onto the broken cobblestone ground. “Oh lookee here, Jerm, chicken neck here has an awful lot of food on her claws. Perhaps we should do t’right thing and help her carry some of it, eh?”

The other griffon just chuckled before letting out a rattling cough and went to pick up the bread. “No wait, that’s mine!” Shortbeak shouted, getting back up and spreading her wings wide, only to crumple into a ball on the ground when Sharpclaw lashed out again, catching her full in the stomach.

“Stay down, kid. I’ve heard about you, causing all sorts of trouble for my griffons on the streets. Yer lucky I got somewhere to be, so I’ll just be takin’ your food in restitution for getting’ in my way.”

“Sit on my claw and spin, you piss-cub!” Shortbeak yelled. Sharpclaw’s brows rose at the venom in her voice, amused by all accounts as he watched the hurt young griffon struggle back to her paws. He grinned and gestured for Jerm to come over, reaching into the small bundle of cloth and taking out a half loaf of bread.

“Ya got a mouth on ya, girly. You want yer bread back that bad, huh?” he asked, waving the bread in question just out of her reach, snatching it back as she swung her claws to desperately grab for it, letting her fall face first onto the ground. He then casually tossed it behind him “Fetch it then.”

Shortbeak saw the half loaf bounce on the ground before landing in a puddle next to a gutter. She shouted in outrage and leapt into the air, seeking to scratch out the one good eye of a griffon that was much bigger than her.

Pity he was stronger and faster too.

It was over before she knew it, and the next thing she knew, she was dazed on the ground from a tremendous series of blows to the head, followed by a surprise collision with the ground. Her left foreleg throbbed in pain while her right was pinned behind her back, pulling straight as a damp paw stomped down on the small of her back between her wings, keeping her pinned.

“Not too smart, are ya?” She screamed in pain as he began pulling on her foreleg, threatening to break it. She wanted to cry, but she would be damned if she would give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears. “Shout all ya want, but I own these alleys. Nogriffon’s coming. Now all ya gotta do is say sorry and I’ll let you go. Is that too much to ask?”

“Not… g-gonna…” was all she managed before letting out another cry, her free foreleg scrabbling at the ground uselessly.

“Boss, we still got eight more doors t’knock,” she heard the other griffon say casually through a mouthful of bread. Sharpclaw sighed and let go of Shortbeak, but not before swinging around with his rear leg and kicking her once more in the stomach for good measure.

“Next time, kid, I’ll break those freakish wings o’yers, you get me? Now be grateful, you little gutter pigeon.” He swiped the ground with a claw, casting dirt and stone fragments in her face as she lay on her side, clutching her midsection and groaning. She lay there for a while, occasionally letting out a shuddering breath as she covered her head with a wing, accompanied only by the sound of the wind and the spattering noise the water made as it fell onto the ground.

Slowly, she recovered enough to pull herself to her feet and shuffled over to the discarded piece of bread. Half of it lay within the puddle. She looked at it with an unreadable expression, her eyes hard and her beak tightly clenched. She picked it up from the ground nonetheless, studying it in her claws for a moment before carefully tearing the soaked portion of the bread apart. It was fine – she could let it dry for a while, and her sister could have the good bit. She wasn’t too picky herself.

Her stomach growled, and the thought wouldn’t leave her of the wrong she had just suffered that was completely humiliating! They had had enough to last them a few days. Now all she was left with was one good piece that might keep one of them well fed for a night, and a soggy, dirty half she’d probably get sick from eating. The thought burned. She had sworn she’d never be so defenceless again, and just then and there, she had the stuffing knocked out of her by some gutter snipe low life who thought he was cock of the walk.

The soggy bread was crushed in her talon as her wings rose and splayed as anger rocked through her, her fist shaking. The smart thing ,of course, would be to forget about this altercation, go home, share their meagre food for the night, lick her wounds, and try to be more careful when she went out tomorrow for another food run.

Of course, she’d be having none of that. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that. She would never let anygriffon get away with doing that kind of thing ever again, and if she didn’t start now, she’d only be creating excuses for herself later in life for being too weak to make a stand. She cradled the remaining good portion of bread in her wing, turned on the spot, and ran down the alley, seeking to follow after Sharpclaw and his crony and reclaim her lost property.

She’d show him and everygriffon else she was not to be messed with.

It was only really when she had actually caught up with Sharpclaw that common sense kicked in.

He had a lot more griffons with him now. She had emerged from an alley onto a short street containing a few rundown houses and a number of stores, mainly an iron monger, a grocer, a rather grubby-looking tavern, and what looked to be some kind of florist.

Why anygriffon would spend hard earned crowns on flowers of all things was beyond her, but apparently the proprietor made enough trade to keep afloat… and attract Sharpclaw’s attention. He was on the outside of his shop facing Sharpclaw and his gang of louts, six of them in all, including Jerm who was casually eating what little remained of the bread they had taken off of her. The rest seemed to just mill about or lean up against walls, giving anygriffon who so much as looked in their direction a mean look. She stayed behind a relatively large crate full of iron bars as she watched the proceeding events. She wanted to stop them, to help the florist and get Sharpclaw back for beating her… but there were a lot of them.

“I’m s-sorry, business just hasn’t been good this month. Give me another week.”

“I’m tired of your excuses, pony. Give me my money or else.”

“I will! Just give me some more time! I-It isn’t even due yet.”

“Yeah, well, there’s t’rub, you see? Me and the boys had to change the rules around to, uh, what was the word, Fingle?”

“Adjust to shifting economic conditions.”

“Yeah, see, totally reasonable,” Sharpclaw said, idly picking his teeth with a talon as he eyed the intersection the florist’s shop bordered. Shortbeak looked around as the pony florist continued to blubber and beg. The street had a good number of griffons about it, but most were distinctly not looking their way, the other shopkeepers keeping their head down and trying not to be heard so as to not draw the gang’s ire. Only one griffon seemed to be eyeing the altercation, a middle-aged fellow speaking with the iron monger, but otherwise everygriffon kept their distance.

She turned back when she heard glass breaking. The pony let out a terrified yell as Sharpclaw loomed over him. Griffons on the whole were larger than ponies, though not by much, but Sharpclaw’s height helped add to the intimidation factor nonetheless, just in case the horrendous scarred eye wasn’t enough.

“I’m sorry, was that your window?”

“Please…” the brown stallion backed up to the door of his property, stopping only when he ran into the club of a yellow griffon who had placed it in his way and was just shaking his head at him.

“It’d be such a shame if anything were to happen to your shop because we couldn’t be around to keep it safe, now wouldn’t it? Why, All-Maker forbid, something might happen to you.” By now the pony was utterly blubbering, looking left and right, wondering where the guards were. He needn’t have bothered. Sharpclaw knew the streets too well, knew exactly which guards who’d give enough of a damn to come looking if someone called and which ones to avoid. More importantly, he always knew where and when they were hovering about. There would be no help coming, and even if it did, it would be too late. Everygriffon there knew it.

“Please… just… please, give me more time.”

“Excuse me, could you please move?” Nogriffon reacted initially, rightfully thinking no single person would be audacious enough to see this particular scene and think to themselves that it was a good idea to walk up to the gang and ask them to politely move out of the way. Sure enough, however, that was exactly what happened, and the six griffons, and terrified pony florist who stuck out like a blooming rosebush in winter, turned to look at the interloper.

Shortbeak had barely noticed the middle-aged griffon as he passed until he spoke, so focused was she on the unfolding scene. He was short, with white feathers on his head and his wings, his coat a pale yellow that matched the shadows of his brown eyes. You couldn’t see most of his pelt though, covered as it was by piecemeal leather armour and tightly bound belts and bandoliers filled with All-Maker knew what, with nothing more than a small, cracked mace at his side for protection that looked like it was made out of wood. She had seen this guy floating about before, usually around taverns. He was there talking to the iron monger not too long ago in fact. What did he think he was doing?

“If you’d be so kind that is. I need to buy some flowers,” the griffon said, smiling genially. At that, Sharpclaw broke the spell that had lingered over the street that had reduced everygriffon to silence and let out a laugh.

“Take a sight o’this one, ey fellas? Flutter off, you useless old bird. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Didn’t say it did, young griffon. I only want a few flowers,” the older bird answered, still smiling happily while the gang began growling and casting dangerous looks his way. Sharpclaw put the pony down and turned towards him. The pony scarpered back into his shop.

“Listen, old bird, you must be new here, so I’m—”

“I’m not old.”

“What?”

“I’m not old. It’s rude to assume a griffon’s age if you don’t know them. Did your parents not teach you that?” the upstart replied, tilting his head slightly as he regarded the group’s leader, who promptly spluttered in outrage.

“My pa taught me plenty! And I think it’s about time I passed on some o’his lessons! Boys, teach this miserable cub fondler a lesson!” he said, jabbing a finger at the interloper. Shortbeak almost wanted to turn away; she didn’t want to see yet another griffon get beaten to a broken wreck in the middle of the street. Indeed, she had even raised a wing to cover herself so she wouldn’t have to. But curiosity made sure she spread her primary feathers just enough to sneak a peek.

What she saw would later change her life.

The first of the griffons lunged at the mace-griffon with nothing more than his claws. He was a big, burly, brute anygriffon would recognise as Bricker. If his size didn’t give him away, his distinctive ululating yell whenever he went to town on some poor bastard would, such as right now. Wings splayed, he closed the small distance in a heartbeat.

And in another, the mace griffon had reared up on his hind legs and lashed out with a closed claw. The blow collided with Bricker’s throat with a sickening crunch. As the large griffon fell to the ground, the older griffon grabbed him by the head and bashed it once against the ground, leaving Bricker dazed and gasping horribly for breath, his voice gurgling as he pawed at his collapsed throat. The older griffon just stood there on his hind legs for a minute more, his wings outstretched from his sides but resting downwards, just enough to help him keep his balance. His smile had fallen away to be replaced by a simple, expressionless beak, and his eyes had gained a dull, faraway look to them.

The remaining five, one would imagine, would have been momentarily stunned at the ease of which the interloper had dispatched the largest of their number, outraged at the defeat of their comrade, slightly afraid that the same might be done to them, and unsure of which of them would be next if they made the mistake of attacking him, thereby being easily defeated one at a time.

If you had assumed as much, you had entirely too much faith in the comradery of back alley scumbags.

Without so much as an erstwhile glance at the choking wretch that had been made of Bricker, the rest swarmed him, with three taking to the air, jumping over their fellows in order to catch him if he should retreat, while denying him the chance to attack them from above.

He did neither and ran head on, ducking low to the ground with his wings outstretched as he fell to all fours. Shortbeak looked on disbelievingly. She wasn’t sure when he drew that cracked and broken wooden mace, but it was out all the same as the closest two, the ones who remained on the ground, lunged for him. He twisted, his wings enclosing in him, and he dived between the two of them. His centre of mass changed in an instant, and the two fell on the ground, misjudging their leap in the quarter second it took for him to remove himself from their sight.

He stopped to a skid on the ground and whirled, rearing up with a swing of his wooden mace in a vertical arc and bringing it down on the skull of the first fool to turn his head around. In two more rapid swings, his friend was down on the ground, bleeding. The three in the air quickly corrected their course and descended upon him. He was swarmed as the three griffons clawed, kicked, punched, and pulled at his wings.

An upward swing of the mace, still clutched in his claw in a death grip, cracked another one’s beak. Another was winded by a powerful kick to the gut, and Sharpclaw himself reeled, screaming, his one good eye now sporting three claw marks across it. The dagger fell from his claw as he cradled his bleeding face.

In another instant, it was all over. The griffon was up and breaking bones with every swing of his mace until they were all down on the ground. He stood in the midst of the ruin of bodies, none the worse for wear for the brief beating he had received apart from breathing slightly heavier than he had been. It had all been over in less than a minute, leaving the street in stunned silence, punctuated by the pitiful noises of the gang griffons who had the misfortune of still being conscious.

He turned quite simply on his paws and walked casually to the florist’s shop and disappeared past the doors. Shortbeak blinked, giving a quick glance to the litter of bodies that carpeted the ground before her and the murmuring crowd down one end of the street, and swallowed. She emerged from her cover, flapping her wings to carry herself over the bodies. She landed on the far side, scurrying along the wall until she was beneath the window of the store.

“G-Go away.”

“Please, I just want to purchase something.”

She looked up, glancing through the ruined glass panel Sharpclaw had smashed. She could barely see the top of the mane of the pony florist from where he cowered behind the counter. Also, the bowls and pots of stupendously colourful flowers might have something to do with it. She actually had to blink her eyes several times, so jarring was the sheer variety of colour on display within this one little store in comparison to the near uniform grey and ashen brown of the town within which it resided.

The griffon was standing calmly on the other side of the counter, trying to coax the shopkeeper out of hiding.

“Sorry if I was interrupting anything,” he said with a small smile. “I just want to know if you have any white carnations available?”

“Wha— White… carn…” The florist put his hooves on the counter and rose up just enough to eye the griffon across the counter. “I… I don’t think I have any carnations in st-stock, right now… Is… Is that all you want?”

The griffon let out an almost imperceptible sigh as he closed his eyes for a moment. He looked back up at the pony with that same friendly face before asking, “Will you have some in soon in that case?”

“I… I s-suppose so,” the pony said, slowly recovering and speaking properly to his rescuer. “I can get a hold of some is… Are… those fellows going to be alright?” he asked, gesturing to the window. Shortbeak ducked down as the two of them looked her way. She heard groaning coming from the ground next to her. One of the gang members stirred and was waking up. She quickly kicked him in the face, and back into unconsciousness he went.

“I wouldn’t worry,” she heard the griffon say. “They won’t be bothering anygriffon for quite some time at the least. I can guarantee that.”

“A-Are you sure?”

“Positive. Now, about those carnations?” Shortbeak spied the remnants of the bread that had been stolen from her earlier, lying on a ground on the cloth that cradled the bread. She hurried over to them and scooped them up. She took one last look at the devastation the old griffon had left in his wake. Her wing twitched, and she felt a surge of satisfaction that they had gotten what was coming to them.

Pity she couldn’t teach them the error of their ways herself. The thought stung, and she grimaced. She ran back down the alley she had emerged from, finding her way back home before any guards decided to actually do their jobs and investigate the disturbance that little street fight had caused.

“Amelia?” she called out as she lifted the wooden sheet that blocked the door to their little hideaway. It hung on a single wooden peg, meaning you had to push it up to the side to get it to lift up. She ducked under the entrance and stalked inside. It was small and cramped – such was life living under the foundations of a mill. It was loud and far too warm in the summer, but it was dry and kept the chill out in the winter, and frankly, that was enough.

She looked into the alcove where Amelia slept. The tattered thick mat that served as a mattress was empty, yet the hooded candle still burned, and she spotted a pile of her scavenged parchments lying nearby. She called out again, putting the bread on a relatively clean spot of the ground where it wouldn’t be covered in dust shaken from the rafters by the work happening above them. “Where in Tartarus did she get off to?”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth then she felt claws go over her eyes, obscuring all light, and a voice whisper in her ear, “Boo.”

To say the following events were dignified would cause an objective observer to seriously call into question your method by which you measured propriety. Needless to say, however, the mill worker above the floor, currently carrying several kilos of finished product over his back, raised a brow at the sudden jump the floorboards made at his feet before shaking his head and dismissing it as vermin.

Amelia rolled on the floor, laughing as her sister cradled her head in her claws, groaning. “Oh All-Maker, your face! You should have looked above you. How many times am I going to get you with that trick?”

“I can’t keep an eye on all the rafters,” Shortbeak grumbled, rubbing a sore head as she gave her sister the stink eye. Amelia was smaller than her, little more than a cub, dark brown feathers, with a dirty golden ring of feathers around her neck where the head met the bronze fur pelt. Yellow claws were clasped over her beak and her chest as she sought to stifle her laughter. Topaz eyes encircled by a yellow shadow of feathers sparkled with mischief and intelligence as she wiped away the tears.

“Yeah, right, whatever helps you keep your pride intact, Feely.”

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Ohhh, is the big scary griffon going to stop me?” Amelia teased, wiggling her talons at her sister, but her teasing petered out as she saw the darkened look crossing her sister’s face. “W-Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You are entirely too clever for your own good, Amelia,” Shortbeak said as she stalked slowly closer to her sister.

“Aheh, Felicia, wha-what are you…”

“And you know what happens to griffons too clever for their own good, don’t you?”

“Wait… Wait, let’s be reasonable here! You don’t have to—”

“They get the claws!” Shortbeak leapt at her sister, who promptly shrieked and scurried away, futilely trying to flee her sister’s wrath as they chased each other in and around the wooden supports. Her pleas for clemency were callously ignored by her relentless pursuer and thus, with a yelp and a tumble of feathers and fur, she was captured and her sister proceeded to tickle her remorselessly. Each tortured squeal and fit of laughter was a sign of defeat and loss in the face of the unremitting tickle claws of the devious Shortbeak and a harsh lesson learned for embarrassing her sister.

She tried everything in her might to maintain what remained of her dignity and pride, but alas, in that respect, there were no survivors.

“Bread again?” Amelia asked. Shortbeak nodded.

“Uh huh, it’s what I get paid in, remember?” she said, settling in with a blanket thrown over her as she lay across from her sister who, somehow, had gotten her claws on a rather ratty-looking book of some sort. To anygriffon with any coin in their purses, the book was probably worthless, but she felt a pit develop in her stomach when she imagined how much Amelia had to pay to get her claws on something like that. “So… new book?”

“Yep! Mister Hren was just throwing it away anyway so he let me have it.”

‘Oh thank the All-Maker.’ “So what’s it about? More alchemy?”

“Feely! I keep telling you it’s not alchemy!” Amelia whined. “It’s so much more than that!”

“Right right, I keep forgetting,” Shortbeak said, rolling her eyes while resting her head on a claw as they both lay under the warmest part of the mill. “So then why don’t you tell me what it’s for?”

“It’s about the theory of Everfall the Wanderer. She had this idea that magic was so much more than what we thought, using zebra potion traditions as an example of rituals and methods that fall outside our expected norms!”

“So… alchemy?” she teased.

“Nooo! The opposite! Sometimes you can make potions without using magic at all!”

“So, brewing?”

“Feeeeely!”

“I am just yanking your tail, go on.” Shortbeak chuckled.

“It isn’t like that at all either; that’s just chemistry. It’s something else entirely!”

“Mm-hm,” Shortbeak intoned, whiling away the night listening to her sister go on and on about her endless fascination as they ate their bread, letting her sister’s boundless enthusiasm distract her thoughts from wondering where she was going to have to get tomorrow's dinner. Eventually she moved from whatever nonsense she was trying to explain to the more usual affair of talking about technical wizardry like steam engines and how they worked and the new machine created in the neighbouring kingdom of Altas that could apparently create fabric at many times the speed of griffons by claw – her usual favourite topics.

These were topics Shortbeak was more familiar with, if only because Amelia talked about them all the time. A small part of her realised she should probably encourage her to focus on this side of her interests more than the esoteric theories of somegriffon whose book was apparently worth throwing away rather than selling. No good could come from it, but she didn’t have the heart to spoil her fun. At least one of them should be happy after all.

It was some time later, when the moon was at its zenith in the sky, that she found herself lying awake. Her sister was curled up at her back, breathing softly as she slept. Shortbeak wished she could join her but couldn’t rest easy no matter how hard she tried. She had failed. Her sister had not been in danger, but she still failed, and for that they almost went hungry for another day

The thought ate away at her. Yes, she was still young, still small; she couldn’t have hoped to have stood a chance. That didn’t matter to someone who was too bitter to think rationally. Her thoughts drifted to the street and the lump she felt in her throat when she almost blundered out into the middle of it, in between Sharpclaw and his goon squad. That was when her courage failed her.

But it had not deterred that old griffon.

She saw him just… dive right in, unafraid or just unconcerned about what they’d do to him, and he still won. ‘Because he knew how to fight and overcome them, even despite the odds.’ She shuffled and brought up the remains of the damp bread that, thankfully, neither of them had to eat. Sure enough, it was looking decidedly unappetising now. If she never wanted to worry for her or Amelia ever again, she was going to need to do what he did: learn how to overcome all challenges.

And that meant doing probably the most demeaning thing she could think of.

The stone bounced harmlessly off of his back. He looked behind him and raised a scarred brow at the sight of the young griffon. She was on her hind legs, evidently trying to get the most out of swinging the stone. Her almost comically oversized wings were partially outstretched, struggling to keep her balance. It’d be funny if she didn’t have the look of somegriffon with murder on her mind.

“Can I help you?” he asked, bemused.

“I… I need your… Your hheeeel—” She shook her head. “I need your heee, your heeeel.” Nope, try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words until, finally, groaning in frustration: “I need you to teach me to fight.”

Now, in fairness, the griffon didn’t immediately laugh. He did, however, adopt an amused smirk. “I’m sorry, but what did you say?”

“I need you to teach me to fight. Like you did yesterday in the street,” she said bluntly, still, for some reason, standing defiantly. The griffon continued looking at her, not entirely sure what to make of the situation. He looked about, and the few spectators who had stopped to watch the altercation pretended to continue about their business, trying to spare him the awkward embarrassment.

“Aheh, kid, look. I’ll overlook the thrown stone but just go home. You shouldn’t come up to strangers and challenge them to a fight like that.”

“I don’t want to fight you. I want you to teach me how to fight!”

“Look, kid.”

“Stop calling me kid.”

“Right, just stop, alright? I’m not going to teach a kid how to fight. How old are you anyway?”

“Old enough.”

“I’m sure you are. Go home, little one, before your parents find out what you’re doing.” And with that, he turned and left, disappearing into the mass of griffons, unaware of the effect his final words had on the young girl who he had so quickly dismissed. One would normally think that that would be the end of it all and that the older griffon, rightfully, assumed the child was properly told off and that he needn’t worry overly so about her for the rest of his days.

How very silly of him.

The next three weeks his life was nothing but near constant hounding. Between times when he simply tried to relax at a bar, to going to the market for food, to simply retiring to his own little abode at the end of long days. How he regretted not being careful enough to evade her, for now she knew where he lived. Once he even caught her following him in one of his excursions outside the city, determined to find out what he actually did on those sojourns. He wouldn't admit it if you asked him, but more than once he sincerely wanted to just kick the kid away and be done with it, or just report her to the guards. If he had the heart that was – he knew how the guards of this town treated troublemaking kids. So it was that his patience was tried and tested until finally, one sunny afternoon upon his return from a particularly arduous errand beyond the city walls, one involving far too many sharpened pieces of metal and fresh lacerations to add to his collection for his liking, that he finally caved.

“ALRIGHT!” he roared, forcing Shortbeak to back up a bit and more than a few townsfolk to do a double take at the violent outburst. “If it means that much to you and you’ll get off my back about it, I’ll teach you. Happy? Can I go home without having you henpeck me all the way there? Can I have one day without being pestered? Just one?”

Shortbeak simply beamed in response. He growled as he ran a claw down his face. “Just… let me go get paid and we’ll talk.”

She followed obligingly, her stern demeanour cracking and giving way to a victorious grin. They weaved their way through town until her soon-to-be mentor told her to wait as he went inside a particularly ramshackle building, coming out with a fresh pack of coins that jingled noisily as he tied it to a belt before gesturing for her to follow him. He took her to a rather well-known inn she had seen him enter from time to time in her quest to get his attention, one she had been chased out of on more than one occasion, it must be noted.

“Afternoon, Joryl.”

“Fallow,” the innkeeper replied as he cleaned the tables in preparation for that night’s latest round of punters looking to blow off steam in return for mind-piercing pain the following morning. He paused as he spotted Shortbeak following him in, and his expression turned sour.

“I’ve told you before, beat it, kid, and stop bothering my business. Now go before I—”

“It’s alright, Joryl.”

“What?”

“She won’t be a nuisance anymore. Can you get me my usual?” Fallow asked as Joryl eyed the younger griffon with suspicion, and like always, Shortbeak returned his caustic gaze with a defiant glare of her own.

“Your midday usual or your ninth candle usual?”

“Whichever you feel like. I got nothing more going on today.”

“Quitting early?”

“Got paid early. I intend to lick my wounds just a bit before going out again.” And with a smile and a shake of the head, Joryl left them in peace and Fallow led her to a table. It took her a second to hop onto the stool and get settled to the point where Fallow didn’t loom over her too much. He winced as he shifted his weight to sit down before drumming his talons on the table and looking the young griffon in the eye. Shortbeak wore a severe, determined expression, prepared to handle anything Fallow could throw at her. “Why?”

Except that apparently. She blinked in confusion at the unexpected question. “Because I… well I want to be able to defend myself.”

“A fine cause,” he said before resting his head on a claw and idly playing with a silver coin on the table, flicking it between two talons of his free claw to get it to spin on the table. “But why?”

“What? Well, uh, because I don’t want to be weak.”

“Mmhm. Why?”

“What?”

“Why are you worried about being weak?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“A very telling one, depending on the answer,” Fallow replied, his expression neutral as he studied Shortbeak.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she stated, head tilted. Fallow sighed and sat up straight.

“You said you wanted to learn how to fight.”

“Yes.”

“But that doesn’t mean learning how to defend yourself. What you’re asking is for me to teach you how to beat griffons. To learn how to pick a fight. And you went through an awful lot of effort to get my attention when there were other options available. Which means you’re planning on trouble in the future, and for some reason you want me, particularly, to teach you. If I am going to spend my time on you, girl, you are going to tell me what I want to know,” he said, flicking the coin and sending it spinning again. “Why?”

Shortbeak didn’t answer immediately, her tail swishing back and forth behind the chair in agitation as she fought with herself, looking anywhere but in Fallow’s direction. She eventually let out a groan and admitted it. “That day you beat down Sharpclaw’s gang, outside the florist, remember?”

“Is that what his name was?”

“You mean you didn’t know?”

“Small time guys like him aren’t really worth committing to memory. If I hadn’t put him in his place, somegriffon else would have eventually. Probably an even meaner street thug. His gang would dissolve and be replaced by another, rinse and repeat a few years down the line.”

“Err, right. Well, I was following him after he… Well, after he stole my dinner.”

“...Your dinner,” Fallow stated more than asked. Shortbeak rubbed the back of her head.

“A few loaves of bread I got for me and my sister. It was supposed to last us several days.” Fallow raised a brow at that.

“Alright. And you chased after an apparently well-known street thug to get your bread back… on your own?” he asked. Shortbeak looked down and nodded. “After, I am assuming, he gave you a thrashing?” Another nod. “And you thought you could take him on after that?”

“I wanted to! I couldn’t just let myself be treated like that and have nothing to show for it.”

“Bread isn’t worth dying for, lass.”

“I still had to try!”

“Why didn’t you just go back and get some more bread?”

“I—!” Shortbeak cut off, mouth gawping, trying to find the words. She realised she had been getting angry and had placed both her claws on the table and pushed herself up. A moment of self-awareness later and she was sitting more comfortably and slightly more abashed as Joryl came over and put a wooden cup of something or other in front of Fallow. “I, uh, couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“I just… couldn’t.”

“...You didn’t get that bread the proper way, did you?” Fallow asked. She looked at him indignantly.

“I couldn’t afford it. I have a sister to feed.”

“So you stole it?”

“Yes.”

“Then how can you complain that you, in turn, had it stolen from you?”

“Because it was wrong!”

“But stealing it in the first place, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Wh-Why, what, we were hungry! I couldn’t pay for it any other way.”

“And that makes it right?” he asked one more time before taking a draught of his drink before sputtering, glaring at it suspiciously before casting a glance at Joryl, who was currently on the far side of the empty tavern floor, whistling innocently as he continued cleaning. Turning back to Shortbeak, he found she was still struggling to come up with an excuse. He let out a breath. “Well, seems the first thing I need to teach you is proper ethics and reasoning.”

“What? Why?”

“Because if you just go around knowing how to fight without the skills necessary for knowing when to do so and when you should do otherwise, you will know neither restraint nor peace, taking refuge in only violence and your own emptiness.”

“...What?”

“Basically you’ll just become exactly like Sharpclaw, a brute with neither direction nor purpose.”

“Look I don’t want to go throwing my weight around. I just never want to be a victim again.”

“And can you guarantee me you won't ever use what I’ll teach you for your own gain? To intimidate others into doing what you want? Not even once?”

“Well… I could, I could try,” she said uncertainly. Fallow just gave her a blank stare. “Probably.”

“Well,” he said, getting up and taking off his packs.

“What are you doing?”

“Starting your education.” He threw the packs at her. She flailed to catch them and fell unceremoniously off the back of her seat with an ‘oof’

“Hey wait, what are you… What do you expect me to do with this?” she cried from under the heavy packs as Fallow strolled towards the door, whistling. She shoved the bags off of her. “Where do you think you’re going!?”

“Pick it up,” he called back, pausing at the door.

“You can’t be serious! This is yours.”

“You’re right. Pick it up and carry it for me.”

“Why on earth would I ever—!?”

“Because if I see you leave this building without it, the deal is off, and you can find somegriffon else to teach you. Your call,” he said as he strode out the door. The innkeeper looking on, bemused by all accounts. Shortbeak almost stormed out after him, screaming profanities, but paused as she drew nearer to the door, eyeing the packs left behind her, spying them through the intervening tables and stools between her and their position. She was so close now. Could she really risk it all because she refused to swallow her pride?

She almost didn’t go back, grinding her teeth, fuming with incredulity at Fallow’s arrogance. To think he could just foist that upon her! Like… Like she was a pack animal or something! He sat there out in the street, waiting patiently, head turned and eyeing the door expectantly. She clicked her beak and decided at last, running back over to their table and slipping the packs over her. She had to double them over just so they didn’t drag along the ground, but even then she found herself wobbling while trying to find her balance. What the Tartarus did this guy pack into his bag? Rocks?

She nearly stumbled out the door and had just barely managed to stop her momentum before running headfirst into Fallow’s back. He looked down at her and smiled. She scowled.

“Happy?”

“Quite. Your first lesson is discipline. I dare say you’re off to a fine start.”

“Why, because I picked up your saddle bags like a good little girl, you tired old goat?” she snapped. He snorted in amusement.

“Because you swallowed your pride,” he said simply, walking down the street at a brisk pace. “Come on, we’re a long way away from teaching you common sense, so might as well work with humility first.”

“Hey, I’m not stupid!”

“You bothered me for weeks. Do you know what most griffons would have done in my place? Kicked you in the face and be done with it. So yeah, not all that bright, are you?”

“I’ll show you bright,” Shortbeak muttered under her breath.

“I’m sure you will,” he said. She blinked up at him in surprise, and he casually pointed at his flicking ears with the arch of his wing as he continued on. He was one of the rare breed of griffons with large ears. “They’re not just for show, you know. Who knows, maybe in time you can probably put that short temper and sharp tongue to good use.”

“Language!”

“Oh come on, that wasn’t even fair!”

“Battle is often unfair. You want to learn how to fight? Then be prepared to fight griffons who won’t—” Fallow was cut off when, in a burst of speed and anger, Shortbeak rushed forward and swung her stick at him. He batted it away easily, using her momentum against her as he stood out of her way. She stumbled to regain her balance and was helped on her way to the ground by a short, sharp smack to the back of her rear legs. She fell with another curse. “Language.”

Shortbeak muttered nonsensically as she pushed herself up from the dry dirt of the ground, casting a dirty look back at her sister who was quietly chuckling to herself whilst seated on a rock, scribbling away at her book with a quill. Made from one of Shortbeak’s own feathers, mind you, as Amelia had literally plucked at one that was on the verge of falling out anyway while she had been sleeping. That had not been a pleasant wake up call. At least Amelia had found it amusing at the time.

“You really do curse too much, Feely.”

“Yeah, well…” Shortbeak caught herself before she let slip another tirade, biting her tongue and sighing. Fallow cocked a brow, smiling approvingly. She pointed to him with her stick while talking to her sister. “It’s not fair. He’s so much bigger and stronger than me.”

“By the time we’re through, the size and strength of your opponent won’t matter,” Fallow said.

“Well fine, but why does Ami have to be here?”

“I like to watch!”

“She likes to watch.”

“‘Sides, you lied to me,” Amelia said, frowning at her sister. Shortbeak suddenly found the ground very interesting to look at.

“Well… no one hires orphans. What else could I do?”

“You could’ve found something. Mister Hren pays me two fifthlings for every book I help rebind, and Mister Fallow pays me a silver for every carcass I help skin when he comes back from hunting,” Amelia said proudly.

“Who taught you how to skin?” Shortbeak asked curiously. Amelia cringed in embarrassment.

“Uhh, trial and error mostly.”

“I’ll admit, I lost quite a few pelts while she was learning,” Fallow said simply as he picked a few twigs and plant life that had somehow managed to lodge itself in a crack in the wooden shaft he used for training.

“I said I was sorry!”

“I know, and it’s okay,” Fallow said, ruffling Amelia’s head. Shortbeak sighed. It had been a week or so since he had agreed to her demand, and it didn’t take long for him to drill every bit of information out of her that he could, including the situation with her and her sister. She kept avoiding the topic of where her parents were, at least long enough for him to finally get the point and drop the issue. She didn’t particularly care for the fact that he put both of them to work even when he was not teaching her, but Amelia seemed happy to have things to do and, well, at least they had some money now. That was good, for Shortbeak absolutely refused Fallow’s charity in buying food for them. “Again.”

“Huh?” was all she managed before getting smacked in the face by Fallow’s stick and falling back on the ground, to more of Amelia’s snickering. She groaned as she got back to her feet, shaking her head. Her eyes widened and she raised her stick just in time to block a downwards swing, lowering it again as Fallow followed that up by swinging the stick around to hit from below her vision with the stick’s reverse end. She ducked as he swung the stick in a horizontal swipe, forcing her to back up as he kept it up with each breath.

It continued on for another hour before, at long last, she thought she had a chance and seized upon an opening. Exhausted wings flapped and she jumped and lunged, swinging—

And managing to only hit air, Fallow having ducked below her and spun so fast that she barely saw him. That was when his rear paw slammed into her back and she hit the dirt hard, skidding to a halt, her stick knocked out of her grasp as she moaned like the adorable bundle of feathers and pain she was. Amelia rocked with mirth as she hopped down from her perch to help her sister up.

“You’re fast, I’ll give you that, but you telegraphed your movements.”

“I… what?”

“I’ll explain in a bit. Basically, you just made it altogether too obvious what you were about to do,” Fallow said. Amelia snickered, and Shortbeak gave her an exasperated look.

“What?”

“Got some dirt on your nose,” she said, Shortbeak went cross-eyed. Sure enough, there was a tuft of dirt sitting right on the crest of her nose. She brushed it off as Amelia continued to snicker. Shortbeak flicked her on the tip of her beak, causing her to squawk and cradle her face.

“Not fhuny, Fhelee, that tickles and itches now,” she whined. Shortbeak snickered before she got flicked on her beak too, causing her to squawk in turn.

“Knock it off, you two. That’s enough for today.”

“Yeah, you sure did look like you took enough of a beating. Maybe you should get some rest. Want me to kiss your boo-boos and make them better?” Amelia teased, picking up her book and quill.

“You know, how about you try it for a bit, see how you do, Ami.”

“Oh no, you volunteered for this. I’m happy doing the odd jobs.”

“Come on, it's getting late. We’ll pick this up in the morning before I leave.”

“Hey, can I come with you this time?” Shortbeak asked.

“No.”

“I can help!”

“I’m sure you can, but not until I’m sure you’re ready. Now go on, I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

And with that, he left them, taking to the air and heading back into the town. The pair of them remained on the hill, idly watching the sunset below the mountains in the horizon that marked the border with the Kingdom of Skryke, the High King’s seat. She watched the landscape and the dancing long grass of the surrounding hills turn a queer shade as the orange light spilled over the land. A bell from within the city sounded out the eighth candle as they sat and ate the sandwiches Amelia had brought with them. It was good to just be able to sit like this, listening to her sister’s latest spiel over her interest of the day and not have to worry about what they were going to do tomorrow. Sure, it was not an easy life, but it was better than what they had before. The money made from the odd jobs Fallow had them do for him and for the shopkeepers he had recommended to them was more than enough to keep them fed.

“Feely?”

“Yeah?” she asked, her smile shrinking somewhat as she saw the odd expression on Amelia’s face.

“Why’d you get Mister Fallow to teach you to fight anyway?” Shortbeak paused at that, thoughts flashing in her mind of a dark night and a fire that burned away all the happiness in the world, and a cold, dark feeling deep within her that ached to be let loose, that felt like it was scratching at the walls to get out. She gave a small, faltering smile before swiping her sister closer to her under her wing.

“So I can be big and strong and look after my little sister of course,” she said happily.

“Lemme go.”

“No, you’re mine now, little one.”

“I’m not little!”

“Littler than me,” Shortbeak said, wrapping her foreleg around her neck and digging into her scalp with her closed talon. Amelia squealed in frustration and flailed to get her off.

“Stop it!” she pleaded to no avail. There was no escaping Shortbeak’s grasp, so she let out a growl and lunged at her sister, knocking her over. The two sisters wrestled on the edge of the hill before tumbling end over end towards the bottom, leaving Shortbeak dizzy and discombobulated for a moment as Amelia jumped off and scarpered for the town gates.

“Hey!” Shortbeak called, spitting out some grass. “Where are you going?”

“Home! Race ya!” she shouted back. Shortbeak almost went to go after her before she stopped and realized that they had both left their things behind them on the hill. She shouted after Amelia, who promptly didn’t reply and kept on running, making the most of her head start. Shortbeak fumed and went to gather their belongings before taking to the air, determined to make up for the lost time as the pair ran across sunlit fields towards home.

It wasn’t the best life it could’ve been, she decided, but it was a good one nonetheless.

The anfer carefully stalked through the thin trees, delicate limbs picking their way across the underbrush and negotiating the treacherous ground as it made its way to a particularly tempting bush. It was blue in hue, with a white fur undercarriage that ran down the inside of its four, long delicate legs to its hooves which had a conspicuous golden colour. Its thin wings rested by its side as the long-snouted head twisted this way and back as its disproportionately long neck let it peer around corners before exposing its body.

Its tail swished back and forth in the air, split in two towards the tip. It functioned almost like an additional set of ears to help the anfer navigate the forest and avoid predators. Its ‘normal’ ears rotated and flicked, swivelling in the direction of far off sounds. Dark eyes darted to and fro, analysing its surroundings before venturing further. It crept further, its head extending down close to the ground, sniffing as it came closer, its face dotted with white spots that broke up the field of blue fur between its eyes.

It tentatively licked the leaves of the plant before chomping down on it and began chewing, enjoying the pleasure of simply eating as it raised its head to observe its surroundings, passively listening to the quiet sounds of the forest. Then, in the last moments of its life, its left ear rotated towards the direction of a short thwip noise, a fraction of a second before the broad-headed arrow shaft neatly cut through the flesh of its neck, severing an artery as it pierced deeper into its oesophagus and cut into the flesh on the interior due to the neck’s movements as the anfer fell, spasming and thrashing.

Shortbeak lowered the bow as a form descended from its perch high up in the trees and landed by the fallen animal. There was a short snapping noise, and the pathetic painful mewlings of the creature were silenced. Shortbeak looked up then.

“Nice shot,” Fallow said as she stalked through the brush. “I see you’ve been paying attention.”

“The wings are more of a nuisance than a help. They get skittish if they hear wingbeats that large,” she said simply as she slung the bow over her shoulder. “What I really want you to teach me is how to stay in the treetops without scaring off the birds. That’s a dead giveaway all the other times I tried.”

“Oh that? Simple enough. Here, help me carry this first,” Fallow said as the two took their prize and moved out of the woodlands towards their camp. It had been a few years now since they had met, and in that time, Shortbeak had proven herself an apt student. It did come with the downside of her becoming much more reserved than she had been, but the trade off being discipline, iron will, and a determination to succeed. Whereas before she had jumped into every trap and feint he pulled, now she carried herself with a knowledge and experience borne of many days being thrown to the dirt for her failures and now didn’t do anything without thinking of at least three different strategies.

It had long since gotten to the point where she quickly equalled him in sparring matches, and he found he was impressed with her speed and finesse, her dedication to her training driving her to practice long into the nights on her own on some occasions. She had joked that the student was beginning to surpass the master. He had retorted, with all the injured dignity that was befitting him, that she was just consistently lucky.

Even though they both knew it was because he was getting old.

“So when are you actually going to take me out on those little jobs of yours?” she asked, breaking the silence that had fallen as they were skinning and preparing the anfer, carefully separating the pelt from the flesh before beginning to work with the meat itself. It needed to be cleaned and salted before it could be safely packed and brought back home. There wasn’t much meat on an anfer between three griffons, but what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in taste and nutrition. They could easily get quite a few sovereigns for just a pound of this stuff, never mind the pelt and the bones. The nobles encouraged their population growth like nogriffon’s business. Sadly, that also meant most of them were found on private hunting grounds, so if you didn’t want to be caught for poaching, your best bet was getting somegriffon’s permission for hunting on their land. Either that or be really really quiet.

“I told you, they’re just errands,” Fallow said, humming away as he finished constructing the fire before preparing some of the fish they caught for consumption. Shortbeak gave him a flat look.

“Errands. Where you come back with new cuts and bruises. Every time.”

“Sometimes the road can be a bit dangerous, what can I say?”

“And where you have to occasionally get your armour replaced.”

“It’s not my fault Tanner can’t get his head together for a decent suit of brigantine.”

“He’s the finest armourer in town.”

“He also owes me twenty sovereigns but whatever.”

“Fallow!”

“Look you’re just… I don’t know. I suppose you know I go out and take care of things for griffons in town, yes?”

“I got that impression yes,” Shortbeak said, a deliberate understatement.

“Right. It’s very specific work I do for the guilds in town, merchant guild mostly since they have the most money and face most of their troubles on the roads to and from town. Sometimes it’s delivering things, sometimes it’s checking up on the farmsteads that do business with the caravans and the halfway houses along the major roads. If they have problems, I take care of them.”

“Like… violently?”

“Sometimes. Most of the time it doesn’t come down to that, thankfully.”

“And when it does?” Shortbeak asked tentatively. Fallow didn’t answer immediately as he began working on some of the pelt Shortbeak had already skinned.

“It can be pretty bad,” he admitted at last. “Although do it long enough and the patrols become mighty friendly towards you for helping out. Helped save my hide more than once. Although anygriffon willing to risk the wrath of the guard patrols in the first place either knows what they’re doing or they’re desperate enough for anything, so when they see me on my lonesome, and don’t know who I am, it can get hairy.”

“Maybe if I tagged along it wouldn’t be much of a concern?” Shortbeak ventured with a smirk. Fallow frowned.

“You’re still too young for that sort of thing.”

“I am not a little girl anymore,” Shortbeak snapped, giving Fallow a hard stare.

“Neither is Amelia, but you still put the fear of the All-Maker into any of the young lads who try to talk to her.”

“I just… I’m just looking out for her.”

“And is it so wrong I look out for you too?”

“I don’t need anygriffon to look out for me,” she said quickly, focusing on her work. He left her to her devices for another minute before speaking again.

“You know, when you first came to me, you tried to say something but could not get it out. Do you remember?” he asked. She didn’t answer so he continued on. “Shortbeak, it’s alright to ask for help sometimes.”

“Then why won’t you?” she asked pointedly. Fallow flinched before sighing. He looked up, studying the swaying branches in the dying light.

“Fine.”

“What?”

“You can come with me on the job. I’ll introduce you to the guilds first. Just… Just be careful, alright? When I’m on my own, I can handle whatever is thrown at me, but only because I don’t have to worry about anything else. Just—”

“I can handle myself, Fallow.” Shortbeak snorted indignantly. He watched her as she finished with the carcass of the anfer before turning to maintain her bow and recheck her quiver and her equipment belt. The meticulousness of her care betrayed not only accumulated skill and eye for detail, but an underlying enjoyment she found in what she was doing.

“Yes, I suppose you can.”

Her head hit the desk and she groaned audibly, grumbling in discontent. She had envisioned many things when she had first set out with Fallow on his odd jobs for the guilds, even considering most of it probably would be nothing more than boring courier jobs that would be better suited to be given to some young griffon that had nothing better to do to earn his squander money. What she had not accounted for was the inevitable boring tedium that came with the fact they were working for merchants.

“Five sovereigns per ounce.”

“Robbery. Three.”

“Four.”

“Scandal. Three and a half.”

“Three and a half plus three fifthlings.”

“Three and a half plus one fifthling.”

Oh, did that sound like they were close to a deal? How very naive of you. This was only the third item out of an itinerary of twenty they were set to bicker over. See, that was the thing about merchants. They were all in competition with one another, even if they were supposed to be tacitly co-operating under the banner of a guild. Thankfully, they didn’t handle what issues one silk merchant had with the new upstart who just waltzed into town. What they did handle was negotiations about prices between other merchant guilds from the other towns. Hey, Fallow was on his route outside of town anyway, and he bumped into representatives of other guilds regularly, why not throw this on top of everything else he did for them? It was not as if he was helping keep the roads safe or anything.

“Three and a half plus two fifthlings, with a discount on the alfalfa.”

“Deal… what’s alfalfa?”

“No idea, but the ponies love the stuff. You got a lot of them in that town?”

“Very few, but we got griffons who deal with them regularly anyway.”

“Hrm.” The wizened old merchant tapped his yellow beak, his oaken brown feathers emphasizing the tan shadows around his eyes. Red and contrasting sable robes were wrapped around his form to keep out the chill as he contemplated the situation, eyeing the table between them, strewn as it was with weights and a measure, a map detailing the local towns and the roads between them, several coins and, for some unfathomable reason, a stuffed teddy bear. Shortbeak eyed the doll evilly, as if blaming it for the interminable migraine these meetings tended to be. “No sense giving you a discount on something you’re not likely to sell. Hang on, I need to go check something.”

And with that, he pushed away from the long table, the dried, sun bleached wood creaking under the movements as he negotiated his way past the small crowd that huddled near the roaring fire pit in the centre of the long hall. Why the Broken Wheelbarrow was built to be reminiscent of some ancient tribal long house was anygriffon’s guess.

“You know, it’s really bad form to slouch over like that,” Fallow said with a small smile.

“I can’t take this,” Shortbeak admitted. Fallow gasped and clasped his cheeks.

“You!? No, the great and the brave Shortbeak can’t handle a minor negotiation?”

“This is soul crushing, Fallow.”

“You don’t have to pretend to like it. I certainly don’t, just pretend not to hate it.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’re paid to do the latter,” he said. She grumbled before slipping off of their bench and meandering to the door.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced.

“Alright, but you can’t put this off forever,” Fallow called back, humming a tune as he idly turned a dagger over and over again as its point bit into the top of the table.

She stepped outside and immediately flinched and shivered as a gust of wind blew into her face, bringing with it a flurry of snow. She shook her head and brought her scarf tighter about her face and neck, her head covered in a light leather skull cap before soldiering on. She passed through the large number of carts and beasts of burden hitched outside the inn, lumbering fenwyrs, their bare grey skin barely discomforted by the bitter cold as their great horned heads shook in irritation at their fetters from time to time. She spotted two guardsgriffons at the walled entrance to the inn, huddling around a burning brazier and chatting idly. One nodded in greeting as she passed.

The landscape was a complete whitewash. The snowstorm wasn’t particularly heavy, but it was persistent and long-lasting. She was tempted to take wing and fly into the air, get above the cloud layer and just spend a few minutes in the sunlight. Although she knew from experience that was a bad idea, as that wouldn’t protect her from the wind chill, and there was a very good reason why weather griffons got out of a storm’s way once they had it corralled and settled in place. Storm clouds could be wildly unpredictable sometimes.

She meandered around the perimeter of the inn. As cold as it was, it would at least wile away some of the time otherwise spent arguing pointlessly over prices for goods they personally were never going to sell nor see the money for. She supposed she should be grateful, however, for it was good money, and she had proven herself more than invaluable to both Fallow and the guilds in the year since he had taken her with him, which she was distinctly proud of. Amelia was happy too, managing to afford her own equipment for… whatever the Tartarus it was she was doing. She kept insisting it wasn’t alchemy despite the copious amounts of glass beakers and tiny fires and weird coloured liquids in jars. Wasn’t potion brewing either, nor was it chemistry. To her credit, she had tried explaining it to her, but Shortbeak couldn’t for the life of her understand what she was on about. What the hell was the point of distilling a different kind of water, one that could be used to change what it was absorbed by without the use of chemicals or magic? And for what purpose? She knew she should have discouraged her studying that esoteric nonsense. What kind of proper mage or alchemist would consider her for an apprentice if she kept going the way she was? Okay, the alchemists maybe – those guys were nuts – but the point remained.

Amelia was happy nonetheless and, she supposed, that was what really counted now, didn’t it? She was still unhappy with Fallow convincing them to move under his roof, even if it was much more convenient for everygriffon involved. They could hardly keep living under the mill forever, and while the money was good, inn hopping wasn't the most stable way to live. They had butted heads as Fallow was adamant he wasn’t going to leave his pupil and her sister mendicant while he could help it, but eventually he had conceded to at least extracting a rent from the two of them so Shortbeak could keep her pride.

She stopped for a minute between a pile of cut wooden logs and the shade of an old oak tree to take a momentary shelter from the biting gale. She sat for a moment and hugged her arms, shivering as she tried to warm up a bit more. Maybe putting up with the interminable debate over the ever so important price of scraps of chicken bones wasn’t so bad considering she’d be inside near the fire pit. Still, she was already halfway around the inn by now, and she’d be damned if she gave up half— Wait a minute, who was that?

From her position behind the log pile and tree, he hadn’t noticed her yet. She raised a claw to shield her eyes from the flurry as she tried to get a better look while sidling closer to the cover. Yeah, that was definitely a griffon, even if he was hard to distinguish from the snow drifts with his white coverings. He was close to the ground and seemed to be eyeing the inn intently. Shortbeak got a creeping sensation along the back of her neck. This didn’t bode well.

She backed up, trying to keep close to the ground. In a burst of inspiration, she extended her wings and lowered them to the ground, rubbing them quickly along the piles of snow and trying to ignore the biting cold as she covered her feathers with snow to mask the stark black colour. She retreated just far enough until she was sure the griffon hadn’t noticed her, even though he was little more than an indistinguishable blob on the hillside in the midst of a snowstorm. Confident, she hurried up and over the hill ringing the back of the inn and made her way back to roughly where she knew the griffon was. Quietly, she made sure to make as little noise as possible as she trudged up through the snow behind him. He didn’t react, not until she had already jumped him and had a drawn dagger to his throat.

“Easy,” she hissed. The griffon struggled to escape her grasp. She only constricted her grip more and pressed the blade closer to his flesh. “For your sake, you had better have a good reason why you’re scoping the place.”

He didn’t reply, and Shortbeak felt a cold feeling settle in the pit of her stomach. Fallow had talked to her before about… about reasonable use of force when dealing with bandits. Not all of them were evil murderers. Most were just desperate griffons who had fallen on hard times. She had pretended to listen; she had pretended to take his advice on board; she had pretended it changed anything about how she had felt back when she was barely more than a cub. Just like she was pretending, really hard, that the griffon currently at her mercy wasn’t what she knew he was.

There was the sound of wingbeats and a heavy thump as a body landed in the snow behind her. “Yeah, I checked the roads, both ways, nothing a dozen or so—” The voice paused as Shortbeak whirled around, dragging her captive bodily around with her and saw a stunned-looking yellow griffon with heavy weather gear and far too many daggers for her liking at his side. It clicked and the illusion she had forced upon herself to keep her from doing what she wanted fell away. The inn was full of wayfarers, a fair number of traveling merchants, and relatively unsecured goods lying in the courtyard with the wagons and the fenwyrs needed to carry them. Not to mention the wealth in the inn itself, and however much they could scrabble together by holding merchants for ransom from their rich friends and family. Between them, they had only a handful of guards, two trained soldiers, herself, Fallow, and about four or five caravan guards. If they had enough griffons…

The moment shattered when she felt an elbow digging into her ribs, winding her. The captive griffon shoved her off and shouted at his friend. “Go! We need to go now! Tell them to move it before any get away!” The yellow griffon booked it, launching into the air and struggling against the buffeting winds. The grey griffon she had been holding onto tripped over her rear paws as he tried to get away, but she was already upon him in a confusion of flaying limbs and wings. A short shout, cut off before it could finish, and Shortbeak found herself on the ground beneath an unmoving body, dazed. She had to get back, she had to warn them, and to Tartarus with this arse holding her down. She launched into the air and flew back to the inn, her claws catching on the tiles of the roof as she nearly fumbled her flight path in her hurry. She landed hard in the courtyard, shouting at the guards by the burning brazier, who looked confused by her sudden landing. She didn’t stay long as she burst into the hall.

“Shortbeak, wha—”

“They’re coming. Hurry up, we’re getting raided!”

“What are you blithering about, girl?” the merchant asked as the various travellers by the fire turned to see what the commotion was about.

“Outside, I caught somegriffon watching the place. They sent a scout away to get the rest of them. We’re going to be attacked!” Shortbeak pleaded desperately as she began shaking the snow from her back and wings. The proclamation brought with it a noisy murmur from the rest of the crowd before Fallow placed a hand on Shortbeak’s shoulder.

“Is that yours?” he asked, his face a stony mask.

“What?” he pointed down at the blood staining the front of her raimant, and then she looked down further at the bloody dagger still in her claw. “...No. No, it’s not.”

There was the sound of breaking glass and general chaos above them. Fallow’s eyes widened as he turned back to Shortbeak. The next thing she knew, he had grabbed her by the shoulders and thrown her bodily across a table, just moments before the door was blown open and dark forms spilled into the inn. The next few minutes was a flurry of horror as more than twenty of the brigands descended, spilling from the entrances and from the upstairs, cutting off all avenues of escape. The two soldiers outside were easily overwhelmed, leaving the unarmed majority to the dubious protection of their hopelessly outnumbered guards.

Shortbeak slowly recovered, having hit her head badly when she landed, the leather skull cap doing hardly anything to lessen the impact of stone upon her skull. Her vision blurred for a moment as she fought off what would almost certainly be a concussion, her claw gripping the edge of the table as she pulled herself up to see the room in chaos. Somegriffon was screaming, looked to be one of the guards. A hippogriff who had been pushed into the fire pit was screaming and rolling away, some of the others trying to put him out. One of the brigands, easy to distinguish with their white cloaks covered in snow, was down, bleeding. The remaining three caravan guards were each facing multiple opponents and fell in rapid succession. Fallow was holding his own just barely. The old fool still insisted on wielding that old, worn wooden mace that never seemed to break apart no matter what abuse it was put through.

He couldn’t be everywhere at once, and one of the brigands pierced his left wing with a short sword and tore it back out, ruining the wing and causing him to let out a terrible, pained cry as well as an instinctual cringe in anygriffon who witnessed it and imagined the pain in their own appendages. She didn’t have long to process everything she saw, for a dark form loomed over her from one end of the table, and she just barely managed to bring up her dagger, parrying the axe that was coming down on her just before her assailant collided with her and sent her straight back to the ground. A desperate struggle followed as she tried to bring her dagger to bear as the throbbing in her head and swimming vision made it hard to think. She didn’t remember much about what she looked like. In fact, she didn’t remember much about what she did that day in the following few minutes. She saw Fallow go down from her position beneath the table legs, bleeding and not moving. She saw another griffon getting up from where he lay by some broken chairs, and she stalked over to him with murderous intent in his eyes.

She let out a horrible scream of rage, and her assailant was launched off of her, powerful back legs getting under her and pushing her off. Shortbeak used the momentum to launch herself up in turn, wings extending to their full length as she vaulted the table and launched herself into the air, dagger grasped firmly in one talon and her other claw fully extended, ready to gouge and rend.

The first to fall to her, before any of the others could adequately respond to the sudden threat she posed, was the griffon who was getting prepared to put a final end to Fallow, who was barely stirring now. His eyes bore a confused look an instant before Shortbeak closed them forever with a single swipe of her dagger. The griffon fell on his back, and the room descended into chaos once more, but Shortbeak would not be overcome. In the proceeding flurry of bodies and blades, Shortbeak’s terrifying visage, now stained with blood, dominated the room, her outstretched wings casting terrifying shadows that stretched to the high ceiling and darkened entire portions of the main room.

Between the sudden shock of her violent entry back into the fray and the speed with which she dispatched target after target, turning her years of training and education by Fallow into a brutal, bloody-minded efficiency, that was truly a sight to behold. Another five were down before any of them managed to leave a mark on her, a pressure on her side and the sound of torn leather the only thing given her any indication she had been hit before she whirled around, her wings knocking another assailant away as she rounded on her latest victim. He was young, ice-blue eyes wide with fear as he realised his mistake before her dagger slid in between his ribs. Another, the girl who had previously pinned her to the ground before she went on her rampage, foolishly tried to jump her from behind. She ended up on the ground, her skull cracked.

Shortbeak lost her dagger when a heavy club smashed into her wrist. She responded by pivoting on the spot, turning her entire body around in a blur of motion, bringing her rear legs to bear and kicking another opponent hard enough to send him sprawling as she focused on another newcomer with her free claw, slashing through his leather armour and raking the chainmail underneath and then cutting up across his face with a backswing. She used her wings to maintain a near constant hover, which was as much a constant slow fall from the occasional leap and jump as it was actually maintained by wing power alone. She manoeuvred on the spot before one of their numbers managed to get a clear shot and pierced her wing with an arrow. She shrieked in pain and floundered. They didn’t wait; another three were upon her as soon as they saw a moment of weakness.

She was a blur of motion, grasping at the nearest discarded weapons, two short blades from the brigands themselves. A moment later and the three new attackers had fallen. Over half of the brigands were now lying dead or dying on the floor of the inn. They broke and fled after that, fleeing through windows and doors, no longer seeing their goal as attainable, and even if it was, the cost would have been too much.

The remnants of the griffons staying at the inn stirred in the wake of the attack, groans and muttered curses mingled with relieved gasps and shouts of joy at surviving the assault. Mostly. At least two of the guards were dead; the two soldiers were little more than mounds of snow by the gates to the inn courtyard; and Fallow was badly wounded. He stirred and was helped to his feet by another griffon who was saying something in his ear but he wasn’t listening. One eye blinded by the blood flowing into it from a gash on his scalp, he scanned the room to find somegriffon in particular. He saw what she did and found himself desperately praying she had got a hold of herself before she went off and did something he knew would only make her a worse person. He didn’t find her.

“Where’s Shortbeak?”

She didn’t let any of them get away when it was all said and done. She came to after landing on one brigand who had been desperately begging for his life, as she snapped his bow underfoot and put an end to his pleas. She wasn’t sure how to feel after it was all said and done. Numbness was all she could recall, numbness and emptiness. And bad dreams. She kept telling herself she’d treat other griffons better, even if they were enemies, but she could never be sure, not after what she had done. She could barely face Fallow when he had found her.

It had been a long time before they talked about it. While he was recovering from his wounds, he had limped awfully and favoured his right wing and almost never used his left wing for anything. She never had to express her concern – he always saw the look in her face and assured her everything would be alright.

It wasn’t, of course. He took to fever not long after and was barely conscious most days. No physician in town could have helped. the best that could be done was have some potion concocted and Fallow would recover on his own. He never did. On the last day he was lucid, he had called out to her, and told her exactly why it was he lived here in a remote backwater town, and why it was he never got rid of his wooden mace for anything better. It was his weapon. More to the point, it was his family’s weapon, and he’d be damned if a Cloud Knight turned his back on his heritage, even if he retired from his work.

That was a bit of a surprise to her. A Cloud Knight, a noble griffon without land, without lord, and without purpose, roaming the land and sleeping on passing clouds at night. Figures of romantic legends and sordid tavern tales. She had never known he was one himself. She supposed the hints were there that he wasn’t an ordinary hired blade. The guilds only ever dealt with him instead of any number of toughs that could be hired from a bar. The professional conduct, the rules and discipline he had instilled in her. She supposed something had been off about him in that respect but had never thought to question it. He revealed he had grown tired of the life, and even though he still wanted to work, he wanted to finally settle down, live comfortably instead of wandering aimlessly, hanging his life on some romantic notion that some king would finally make use of his services and he could finally restore his family’s honour and dignity. To that effect, he had never thought to marry and sire a child, nor take on a squire.

Until Shortbeak had forced his claw in that respect.

She was still stunned when he placed a claw on her head and mouthed the words that symbolically transferred his title to her before drifting off to a fitful sleep, one from which he would never awaken. Amelia had taken the entire ordeal very hard. Shortbeak did her best to console her, but she refused to be comforted. In time, this turned into a melancholic depression from which she never seemed to emerge. Gone were the days of her playful, scatterbrained shenanigans and her interminable lectures that seemed to hop from one thing Shortbeak didn’t know nor care about to another. She missed those days.

It had begun no less than three months after Fallow had passed on. Shortbeak had continued her work, just to keep her mind off of things. She almost didn’t notice how Amelia confined herself to her room for all hours of the day, the sound of bubbling liquid and the whistle of steam from her contraptions audible from everywhere in the house. She ignored it at first, thinking it was just her way of coping, like how she turned to her work, growing more distant, cold, and brusque in her dealings.

Then Amelia started acting strangely. Shortbeak occasionally found odd scribbled notes, uncaringly littering the house, nonsensical rambles and strange patterns, repeating numbers and a single phrase repeated over and over: ‘to see and to see beyond’. Amelia herself hardly ever emerged from her room to eat, becoming more ashen in appearance and thin. Shortbeak began to seriously worry. She found a strange book one day when returning from a trip, half of its pages torn out and written in frantic claw writing that was evident of a terrified person desperately trying to commit what he was discovering to paper. She was trying to make sense of the confused, inane script, the odd word choice, the poor sentence structure, and a subject matter that didn’t even make sense. How the Tartarus could somegriffon grasp without grasping and see while blind where another could see and yet not follow?

She couldn’t enquire further as Amelia had materialised behind her and snatched the book from her grasp, her wide bloodshot eyes staring into her own accusingly with an intensity that, frankly, scared her. She refused to explain, refused to discuss the matter, and had even refused to leave her room any further, except only when Shortbeak was not there. Something had to be done. And it was her delay in doing so that would haunt Shortbeak for the remainder of her days.

She had come home, determined to confront her sister and get to the bottom of it. Grieving was all fine and good, but whatever Amelia had been doing was simply wrong and unhealthy. However, as soon as she opened the door, she knew something was off. Everything was far too still, as if the very air itself was afraid to be moved by so much as an errant gust of wind. A palpable malevolence hung on the air that pressed down upon her, not unlike the oppressive humidity found in summer after a thunderstorm but without the physical source to justify it.

It was a sepulchral quiet that pervaded the house. A near tangible sense of trespass and wrongness struck her with every step she took. It was if she shouldn’t be here, as if no one should ever be here, as if a great wrong had been committed, so vile that the very world itself revolted in indignity of suffering such a wound upon its surface. She was honestly reluctant to call out.

“Amelia?” she managed. Her voice sounded so small yet seemed to echo and ghost from the walls around her as she stalked down the corridor. The wooden planks at her claws, which had always creaked and groaned in protest of the weight that pressed down upon them daily, did not so much as squeak, as if fearing causing further offence. The corridor itself seemed much longer then she remembered it. A lightheadedness came upon her as she reached for Amelia’s door and found it unlocked. She pushed it open with all her strength. It felt like it was made of lead, and her movements were slow and sluggish. It reluctantly gave way and swung open.

Amelia was sitting on her haunches, back facing the door. Nothing was out of place. The room was as Shortbeak remembered it, as untidy and chaotically organized in such a way that only Amelia could possibly know where everything was. The stillness and wrongness was heaviest here. Amelia’s claws were outstretched to a corner of the room that had been cleared of everything, a strange words were clawed into the ground at her feet, incomplete symbols and nonsensical, mad writing criss-crossing sentences and pictograms covered the floor. There was no sound. She could not even hear Amelia breath. Nothing. “Amelia?”

“Go away,” her voice replied, but she didn’t move. The voice sounded distant, as if calling into the house from the outside. “You cannot be here, not for this.”

“What?” was all Shortbeak managed, a strange fatigue overtaking her, and she struggled to remain standing.

“You cannot be here. It will not work.”

“What are you doing?”

“I am fixing it,” she said, a dull monotone, almost bored, with an odd distinct click that just sounded off. “I am going to fix him, and then I can fix anything I want. Forever.”

“Fix who?”

“You know who, Feely,” she said, now sounding even more distant. “I will retrieve him. He will come back to us.”

Shortbeak felt horror grow within her at those words, “Necro… Amelia, you can’t. You never properly studied magic, let alone a dark ar—”

“It is not magic!” her voice screamed, a horrible, cracking sound that seemed to come from one place and then another as if she were jumping from area of the room to another. She pushed through the fatigue and took another step, causing her let out a winded breath over an exertion of effort that was far in advance of what she had actually done. “It is something so much more.”

“Amelia, this is wrong. You can’t do this. He’s gone.”

“He is not beyond my reach,” Amelia intoned, and then she saw it. She saw the world seemingly shift, and the entire section of the room Amelia was facing seemed to vibrate, up and down, shaking violently, but nothing moved, nothing was put out of place despite the violence of the motion. The sense of wrongness intensified, as if an awful crime was being committed that ought not to be, that shouldn’t be. It grew and grew to the point where it seemed as if multiple instances of the corner and everything near it existed in the same place at the same time, just out of synch with each other. Yet still nothing was out of place, no magical arcs of energy sparked nor flew. The markings at Amelia’s feet remained nothing more than some scratches in the wood.

And yet the world was being violated before her eyes.

“Amelia stop! Please!” Shortbeak begged, another step forward after an exhaustible exertion.

“I will not,” Amelia replied simply.

“Ami…. please…” she begged, barely more than a whisper. Amelia did not respond. What was happening was happening, and she could not stop her sister. Then it stopped. The world returned to normal, the corner ceased moving in violation of the world around it, and she could hear Amelia’s voice return from that distant place where it had been towards her body as she spoke, confusion evident in her voice. Confusion and fear.

“What… But I don’t understand. I had… I had everything right. I understood, I saw! What did I… Why couldn’t I—” She screamed. The oppression of the air vanished, and what had been weighing the world down suddenly lifted. Shortbeak took in a desperately needed breath and watched in horror as her sister bolted straight upright, as if locked in the vice of a gigantic fist and spasmed violently, black plumes of mist rolling off of her face as she heard the sound of something boiling and the smell of burning flesh.

She cried out her name and ran to embrace her sister, who was still locked in a violent paralysis. She fell back into her sister’s grip and struggling in pain as feathers moulted and the flesh of her face gave way to an ashen, cracked substance not unlike the texture of a log once burned away to nought but ash. And Shortbeak could do nothing but look on helplessly and running her voice hoarse in desperation, calling for help.

It wasn’t contagious, but you try telling that to everygriffon you met.

It had stopped when it had covered her entire scalp and her eyes, spreading down the left side of her neck and infecting her front fore leg and over the small of her back to her right wing. And it was spreading bit by bit, hour by hour, day by day, and there was nothing Shortbeak could do to stop it. Amelia couldn’t walk, she couldn’t see, she could barely hear, and Shortbeak knew, someday, she wouldn’t even be able to open her mouth. The ashen plague, the doom of Kernistad, Henorivale, and worse names besides, had been infectious and had killed thousands hundreds of years ago. Everything that had been done to treat Amelia indicated it was the exact same illness, yet nogriffon ever got infected.

Didn’t stop the kindly insistence that they should leave town. It seemed the goodwill they had built up over the years was good for only a minor indulgence of patience before fear got the better of reason and they simply had to go. And so it was Shortbeak found herself, quite disbelieving one might note, forced to wander by necessity, from town to town, with her sick sister, taking what work she could find and spending whatever coin she could gather to help Amelia. Sometimes griffons would find out and they had to move on. Other times they would be living somewhere that was just not safe nor healthy to remain in, and other times there simply was no work for one such as her, no matter how menial. As Amelia’s condition grew harder to hide, she soon took to carrying her everywhere in a carriage, on a litter made from bed clothes and linen.

Those had been dark days for them both, and Shortbeak was utterly torn with grief. Oftentimes, when she knew Amelia was safe, she would go off to be alone, somewhere dark and secluded, and just think. It had taken a while before Amelia spoke to her again, and when she did, Shortbeak felt her own heart break with the sorrow and regret in her voice. How she had sobbed into her shoulder when they embraced, and Shortbeak assuring her that it would be okay and that she would look after them both, like she always had. Amelia believed her.

Shortbeak, however, did not believe her own words. She had failed her, failed them both, failed herself, and nothing she could say or do would ever undo it, and she refused to believe in the folly that she somehow could. So she found herself, a Cloud Knight, wandering the countryside, without land, without lord, and without purpose save for finding a cure for her sister. She knew Amelia was in pain throughout the entire ordeal, but she never breathed a word of it to Shortbeak, ashamed at what she had done, at what she had tried to do, and the burden she became to her sister. She never explained what she had done. Shortbeak had decided she didn’t want to know if it meant whatever darkness it was would never touch their family again.

She had tried to find succour at the various courts of the land but found herself turned away. Nogriffon sought the services of a Cloud Knight these days, however skilled. Not King Fredrik of Houndsdoom, not Queen Stratabreak of Allsreach, neither the Free Marches, the Grand City of Qurent with its ivory fortress, the kingdom of the Hebrides, the Everlast Republic nor the petty lords of the realm. She spent no less than five years crossing the high kingdom of Griffonia, plying her trade honestly, be it the sword or her use as a courier or anything else she could do honourably. Every penny that wasn’t spent on her sister went into keeping them both fed and not much more. It seemed she was doomed as Fallow was, to wander until her heart grew weary and she gave up, to wait while her sister slowly turned to living ash inside and out and die long before her time. To fail.

It was in the north west of the high kingdom, in the pine forests of Gethrenia, when at last it all changed.

Amelia was in a nearby village. A kindly old farmer had agreed to house the two of them and, thankfully, had asked no questions about the small carriage Shortbeak brought everywhere as she set about to work the best way she knew how as they made their way between major towns: by going to the local land owner and requesting permission to hunt on the land. It turned out that Gethrenia was one of the few places that allowed near universal rights to hunting. Being so heavily agrarian and focused on herding animals, hunting was done more for sport than in most kingdoms. Permission was granted by some functionary at the door at the local earl’s estate without so much as a second glance, with the only stipulation being that the results of the hunt would be sold within earldom. She readily agreed. All she needed was the spare leather and the coin she could get from the rest, she didn’t care who bought it or why. She set out in earnest.

She had her longbow prepared, her armour largely left behind, for it would only constrict her out here. Besides, it was mostly in tatters and rusted anyway. It could create more noise than was necessary. She took to the trees at once and proceeded to get herself lost as she headed into the center, occasionally climbing to the very top to keep an eye on the position of the sun in relation to where she had come from before descending again. Once she was settled, near the heart of the forest, she lay down on a particularly strong branch and waited, occasionally making small movements and being sure to watch the ground. It had been a trick Fallow had taught her, done in order to relax the birds in a given area. Remain too still and too silent, and they would see you as the predator you are, even if what you are focusing on is something far below. The lack of birdsong in an area was more unnerving for the local wildlife than the occasional rustle in the branches far above them. Very few of the bigger game ever looked up anyway, after all.

That said, it had been slim pickings, Several large forest fowl fell to her arrows, strange cousins of the owl of some description that had two long legs and two stubby clawed arms and atrophied wings, along with long serrated beaks despite their mostly herbivorous nature. A hare or two, and she shot a wolf whose pelt might be worth a coin or two, but the creature managed to tough through its wound and disappeared into the brush. She moved on; soon enough she would have to walk with her kills rather than fly with them strapped to her back and sides.

And that was where she came across them. She had been drinking from a stream when she heard an incredibly loud swear echo through the trees and perked up. Another hunter perhaps? She stayed and listened for a moment longer, and sure enough, she could hear voices, two of them, bickering fiercely. Curious despite herself, she crossed the river on a gentle glide before stalking close to the ground, not keen on revealing herself. She crested the rise and, for the life of her, couldn’t understand what she was looking at. Not at first.

“I simply cannot believe this. Of course you’d be so awkward as to tie an acadian knot wrong in such a way, that I can’t even move my feathering talons!”

“Oh, I’m the awkward one, dear brother? Tell me, who is it that intends to build a pitfall and somehow causes an entire tree to fall on somegriffon!?”

“That was your own damn fault and you know it.”

“Tis not.”

“Tis.”

“Tis not.”

“Tis.”

“Tisn’t and that’s final!”

“So its my fault that you walked right across a trap you know I had placed there and things went so horribly awry that a tree fell on you.”

“Correct and right.”

“And yet it is not your fault that I am now hanging upside down, nearly ten heads off the ground, and with my arms wrapped in ropes because somegriffon thought it’d be fun to play daredevil!?”

“Right and correct.”

“You’re impossible!”

“No, father is impossible. I don’t know why he insists on sending us out into the middle of nowhere like this. We go on plenty of hunting trips.”

“He just wants us to put what he taught us to good use.”

“Well I for one know that I wasn’t taught to be some wild-winged survivalist out in the wilderness, and I am offended he thinks so little of us.”

“Don’t say that. Father knows best.”

“Hmph.”

When the pair finally ceased their bickering and decided to wander off into a kind of tense silence, Shortbeak saw that their discourse proved no more illuminating about what lay before than it otherwise might have. One of the griffons, grey-headed but with black wings and a stark white coat, hung with resignation on his features. His forelegs tied across his chest with rope, and with a rear leg ensnared in a hang trap, he looked rather ridiculous, as what would have been fierce red eyes regarded their surroundings as he slowly turned with the wind. His compatriot, black-feathered and noticeably smaller than him, lay partially buried in a pitfall, with the husk of tree indeed pinning him there as it covered almost the entirety of the pit mouth, pinning his upper body against its edge.

“You know, you could just cut yourself down,” the pit griffon stated, sounding bored, his head resting on a claw as he picked at a stone in the dirt.

“Oh, I would if I could, you know, use my bleeding claws!” the hanging griffon replied.

“Language.”

“Well you could just dig yourself some extra room, wiggle out, and free us both.”

“And get my claws filthy!? How dare you!”

“Uhh…” Both of them snapped their heads around at the voice of the new arrival, pinning Shortbeak in place with disbelieving stares with a mixture of hope and embarrassment in their eyes. “I’m not sure what happened here but… do you need some help?”

“Oh yes! Please!” hanging griffon pleaded.

“If you would be so kind, ma’am,” the other agreed. So she readily enough did, first flying up and cutting the hanging griffon loose with a dagger before turning to the griffon trapped in the ground, pushing the tree out of the way with the help of the recently freed hanging griffon.

“Thank you for your help. We are ever so grateful,” the larger of the two said happily, extending his claw to shake. Shortbeak was slow to accept it.

“Yes, quite,” the other said, an aloof expression as he dusted himself down. “Please, if you would be so kind, keep this story between us?” he asked, giving her a sideways glance.

“Uhm… of course, I suppose.” It was all very odd. Their accents weren’t local. They spoke Equestrian much the same as all Gethrenians seemed to, this close to the Equestrian border, but their tone and manners were distinctly higher than most. Probably related to the Earl? It would make the most sense, and it would also explain why’d they’d rather not have this get back to him.

“Very good!” the smaller of the two said, brushing his companion aside, much to the larger griffon’s annoyance, and reaching out to shake Shortbeak’s claw in his turn. “Geoffrey, a pleasure to meet you. Might I say, you have a fine collection of game there.”

“Oh, well yes, I was out hunting when I came across you,” she explained, glancing back to her catches.

“Skilled as well as a sight for sore eyes. The All-Maker certainly smiles upon us today, doesn’t He, brother?” he said amicably. Shortbeak wasn’t sure how to react to that.

“Yes, we are most fortunate you came when you did. I am Johan.”

“...Shortbeak,” she hesitantly said in reply. “Might I ask, what are you two doing out here?”

“An excellent question! One I’d like a proper answer myself.”

“We were supposed to be hunting,” Johan explained, rolling his eyes at his brother.

“Although I will admit we got a tad lost,” Geoffrey said simply.

“I am never lost!” Johan said adamantly. “North is right over there.”

Shortbeak resisted the urge to tell him he was pointing South West.

“Well fortunately, wherever we are, we are glad to have a professional hunter with us now. Perhaps you may assist us?” Geoffrey asked.

“Oh, I’m not a professional hunter.”

“You aren’t?”

“I am a… well, I am a Cloud Knight, as much as that mea—”

“Like in the stories!?” they both practically shouted, startling Shortbeak.

“Really? Traveling all over the land, fighting evil and whatnot?” Johan asked, curiosity evident in his face.

“Well… I have been all over the High Kingdom but I wouldn’t say—”

“Can you fight well? I know some griffons who boast and boast but are not all that they’re built up to be,” Geoffrey asked in his turn.

“Well yes, I was a squire for many years before my knight passed the mantle to me. I’ve fought a lot—”

“Oh you must tell us!” Geoffrey said excitedly. “Please, regale us of your exploits.”

Shortbeak really wasn’t sure what exactly was happening here, but it happened nonetheless. She continued her hunting trip, but this time doing so on her way back to where she started, pointing out the two griffons’ mistakes in their trap-laying as well as pointers on hunting. Oh yes, and telling of her ‘adventures’ as a Cloud Knight. Seemed the two of them had a rather energetic childhood when it concerned storytelling, the heroes of such tales prominently being Cloud Knights. Geoffrey had insisted they were so much more interesting than ‘regular’ knights, though Johan seemed a tad more reticent about dismissing knights in general.

To her credit, she tried to emphasis that the reality was nothing like the stories, but that really did not stop the two of them from listening intently to everything she had to say. Soon enough, the hunt was forgotten as they found the journey back out of the forest proceeded apace, time flying as they conversed. She found Geoffrey to be an amical griffon, quite fastidious and annoyingly aloof at times, but to an extent the same could be applied to his brother. He was however polite and attentive and took a keen interest in what she had to say about hunting. He had this odd glint in his eyes when she told him about the thrill of the kill, and the cleaning and preparation of the carcasses afterwards, but she had passed it off as nothing more than the keen interest it appeared to be at the time. Johan, on the other hand, was decidedly more brash and clumsy; quite bookish and educated by all accounts, but not nearly as erudite as his brother. He seemed far more interested in the more obscure lore about hunting and forestry than Geoffrey did and was the most enthusiastic about her tales as a Cloud Knight, such as they were.

Soon enough, they had emerged from the woods proper, slightly off course from where Shortbeak had entered. She had clucked her beak in annoyance. Clearly she had become distracted from her course as they had went. The two brothers seemed quite relieved to be out of the woods and thanked her profusely for her help, and then Geoffrey asked her a question that would change her life. “Say, Miss Shortbeak I believe it was? You are not currently employed, are you?”

“No, I’m still searching for work mostly.”

“Care to come to Skymount?”

“Oh yes!” Johan readily agreed. “I am sure we can convince father to give you some steady employment. If even half of what you say is true, you’d be an excellent addition to security!”

“I… am flattered really, but Skymount is the capital, is it not? I can’t imagine you have much need for security.”

“Oh we have the biggest!” Johan emphasised. “In fact, I am pretty sure father may indeed lynch us when he finds we have ditched our guards… again.”

“What my brother is trying to say is that we are always on the lookout for exceptional talent, particularly in the skills you display,” Geoffrey said easily, which sent warning bells off in Shortbeak’s mind.

“I thank you, but I am not a simple sell sword, no matter how many griffons like to make the comparison.”

“Perish the thought!” Geoffrey said laughing. “No, it is explicitly because you aren’t a mercenary that we wish to bring you to father’s attention.”

“I am not so sure about this. It is a rather sudden proposal.”

“Well, should you ever wish to change your mind and consider it, please, come to Skymount and ask for an audience with Count Heinrich of Munister. He resides in Skymount and can usually be found in the central registry building at the foot of Mount Hern, across the river from Castle Blackwing,” Johan explained before sighing. “Come, brother, we had best make it back before sunset.” Geoffrey made to follow before pausing and snapping his talons, he spun around and pointed to Shortbeak’s catch.

“How much for two of them? We cannot very well come back with nothing,” he asked with a winning smile. Shortbeak cocked a brow at him, and he shrugged. “It’s either that or tell the truth, and what would be the point of asking you to keep our little embarrassment to yourself in that case?”

Shortbeak relented at that. Technically it was still selling within the boundaries of the earldom, so why not? She gave him two of the forest fowls she caught along with a hare for a decent sum of money. “And please think about what we said. We really are grateful for your help and we would be glad to have you with us,” he added at last, clasping his other claw on top of hers as they shook to conclude the deal, looking her dead in the eyes with a warm smile. She was actually taken a little aback by the gesture, but before she could compose herself to respond, he had already turned and took to the air to catch up to his brother.

She had continued on with her business deep in thought, taking care of her spoils from the hunt and bringing dinner to Amelia. It was then she had broached the topic with her after telling her about the day. She had found it amusing, and it warmed Shortbeak’s heart to see her smile as much as she was able. Amelia felt it would be good to take up their offer. She could finally get steady employment, and they could stop traveling everywhere. She said the last part more for Shortbeak’s benefit than her own. She knew she had adored all the wonders and sights they had seen as they traveled but knew she could never fully enjoy them, not confined as she was to the carriage for fear of the public. And especially not now when the ash had spread to make her wings immobile and her forelegs near useless.

She thought about it long and hard that night. They had said to go see a count, so it couldn’t be too suspect. Still, she had to admit she was worried. Even if it all went well and she could find steady employment, better still, the ability to find some physician or apothecary who could in some way lessen her sister’s suffering, there was still a chance it’d all come crashing down about her wings. If Amelia was discovered, afflicted as she was by the Ashen Plague, how soon would it take for the griffons of Skymount to turn on them? For those two brothers to turn on them out of fear? No amount of gratitude could cover the risk they’d be taking by allowing her to stay.

But if she didn’t take it then, she’d just be leaving to wander aimlessly again, moving from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom until the inevitable occurred.

When put like that, there was hardly a choice at all really.

To say that Shortbeak was shocked would be something of an understatement.

Things had advanced to such a point in such a short period of time, it wasn’t until she found herself in the royal armory, being shouted at by a disdainful quartermaster and having used and near broken equipment foisted on her before being shoved out the door to get beaten to bloody pulp by her newfound comrades, that the reality of how much her life had changed finally materialized in her mind.

Not the typical way a prince changed a girl’s life but hey, it was a thing that happened.

That was the point, wasn’t it? Her life had changed. What had once been a crushing exodus from one kingdom to another, desperately providing for her and Amelia, had finally come full circle and achieved by chance in a few years what her mentor could not throughout the entirety of his life. Coming to Skymount had seen to that. The two princes had been as good as their word, better even, when she was brought before the king himself. Of course, the gratitude of royalty was one thing; the respect of knights was another, and more than a few aspirant knights of the kingdom were incensed that a lowly Cloud Knight had ascended so high as to become a royal knight and a part of the king’s personal guard.

It was an interesting if rocky transition. She had to earn her place amongst the royal knights, and that was not an easy prospect. Fallow had taught her well, and she had taken to her lessons like a natural. However, that did not mean she did not have more to learn. She was young, she was new, and more importantly to the other knights, she was unproven. They were not gentle. It had taken her a little over three years to earn their begrudging respect, and in that time, she had given as good as she had gotten. She had grown to become the grim, determined griffon she would later be known. As her prowess increased, the more she was pushed. It was, nonetheless, the happiest she or Amelia had been in years. The position of royal knight came with ennoblement, and ennoblement came with something she knew she could put to good use: land.

She was quick to act, having Amelia moved and cared for, with only the absolutely most trustworthy of servants allowed to work on her estate. It was outside of Skymount, a short ways north of a little hamlet simply called Gnoll that was hers. Amelia was safe, cared for and, most importantly, unknown to all but her and a very select group of servants. With that, she could turn to her duties and make contacts. Knowing now the circles she was traveling in could be put to use, perhaps even help her find somegriffon who could help Amelia. It was not easy, especially not when the jovial and friendly court that Skymount had seemed at first seemed darkening as every year past.

Shortbeak was no wide eyed, naive idealist. She knew first impressions could be deceptive and frankly had been waiting until the initial veneer of novelty and culture shock had subsided, as Gethrenian highborns were decidedly more raucous than ones in her home kingdom, before seeing exactly the sort of nest she had made for herself. She had been rather alarmed when first impressions were a fairly accurate portrayal. There was the expected jockeying and political hemming and hawing, but it was nowhere near the vindictive viciousness she had been expecting in her cynicism.

Gethrenia was known as the ‘kingmaker’ when it came to higher tier politics in the High Kingdom, sometimes literally when it came down to crises of inheritance. It was always known for patient kings who stayed out of a political Gerlick game until it reached a point where its intervention could be definitive, be it nothing more than the High King trying to enact kingdom wide legislation, capitalizing on the opportunity to be the primary entry into Griffonia from Equestria for that huge train she had seen pass through Skymount from time to time, or indeed, backing the High King in whatever endeavour that had gotten up everygriffon’s gizzard that week. She had expected a viper’s nest of intrigue. Instead, Gerhart’s court reflected the griffon himself: forthright, boisterous, and larger than life. That was not to say the griffons there were unintelligent brutes -- just less cynical than most.

So it was when one courtier began acting furtively around another that the subtle changes began to creep up. Dinners, feasts, and court functions became increasingly colder and colder, more formal and formulaic, to the point that they became shorter and shorter until only the bare necessities of decorum and form were adhered to. The knights changed too. these brave, professional griffons, one by one, changed. They became less outspoken and less close. No longer did they linger in their free time in one another’s company. No more were their playful barbs and jests bandied about as the inconsequential posturing it once was. They became suspicious and reclusive from one another, and then one by one they seemed to leave to be replaced with younger knights, less experienced. The servants became fearful, courteous to the point of sophistry before they too seemed to be replaced. Nobles began attending court only when strictly necessary, and for the life of her, Shortbeak could not understand what was going on.

Whatever change had befallen Skymount, it had seemed to affect the king the most, who had grown despondent. She had overheard him one night confiding in his chaplain, the High Feather, that he had no idea what was going on or what had become of his court or why his own vassals and friends seemed afraid to come near him, or how recalcitrant they became when he left Skymount on business to their own domains. If even the king himself did not know the cause of what was happening right before his eyes, then something has really gone afoul. Even his sons had grown distant from one another. It was as if some dark pall had fallen over the entire castle.

She dedicated herself to her duties from then on. For three years she tried not thinking about it, only training in the arts of combat and war, patrols, and the occasional bandit hunt. Those were particularly bloody exercises as it turned out, to the point where she had gained a reputation for brutal efficiency and a bloody-mindedness that frankly scared some griffons. It was not surprising to some, who attributed it to the seeming corruption that seemed to be infecting the heart of the kingdom. She could think of a few other reasons why she persecuted her duties more vigorously than strictly necessary but felt fine in not correcting their assumptions. By the time things came to a head, she was the most senior knight in the king’s guard, but that was mostly due to the fact that the old guard had seemingly vanished off the face of the world. She heard one of them had died in a tavern brawl, which seemed very unlike him to be honest. She should have been more suspicious.

It had been the day that a servant had been found, beaten and bleeding on the kitchens floor, that the tension and anxiety Shortbeak had been repressing would finally find an outlet. Other than hapless highwaygriffons who didn’t have enough sense to quit while ahead that was. It had been a bit of a scandal, and Gerhart had handled the matter aptly, but Shortbeak found herself fuming. She had known the griffon – he was one of the number of nameless servants that seemed to come and go – but his death had resonated with her. Something was rotten in the state of Gethrenia, it was getting to the point of senseless violence, and the cause was as invisible as the air itself. It frustrated her to no end that there was no one she could bring to account for it all.

Not until Geoffrey had provided her with one.

She was walking along a rampart set just outside the main dining hall. The tall windows revealed only the dark, partially moonlit interior while the landscape below was bathed in pale blues and greys as the valley slept. There she had come upon Geoffrey, who seemed to be muttering furtively around a corner and in the shadow of a tower.

“My prince?” Geoffrey jumped at her voice and turned to her, wings flared in surprise and his face full of fright. He let out a relieved breath as he clutched his chest.

“Oh, Dame Shortbeak, it’s only you.”

“What are you doing out here at this hour?”

“Just… clearing my head,” he said, wringing his claws together. She eyed him for a moment, everything about his body language screamed fear.

“My lord, is something amiss?”

“No, no,” he said, giving her a faltering smile. “You can continue. I was just going to return to my chambers anyway.”

She stopped him before he could pass her.

“My lord,” she said sternly, glancing at the nearby window of the dining hall before shepherding the prince somewhere where they wouldn’t be seen. “What is wrong? Is this about the page? Is somegriffon targeting you?”

He was silent far longer than she was comfortable with. He licked the edge of his beak nervously as he glanced around them one more time before answering. “Its Johan… my brother, he… I can’t believe it.”

Shortbeak felt her skin crawl at the thought. Johan? He was behind the page’s death? But why?

“It’s not just today. It’s everything. All these years, ever since father named him heir. He’s gone mad with control.”

“My lord, what exactly are you saying?” Shortbeak asked carefully.

“He’s been scaring everygriffon!” Geoffrey said desperately, his voice low and spoken through clenched teeth, eyes wide with desperation. “The knights being replaced, servants coming and going, the dukes afraid of the king and walking on eggshells, absolutely terrified of stepping out of place, all of it! Johan is behind all of it! He is tying up this kingdom with fear and threats! Nogriffon knows it's him, but everygriffon knows somegriffon is threatening them, blackmailing them. I fear the page was disposed of for getting too near the truth.”

Shortbeak reeled. The enormity of Geoffrey was suggesting was insane. He had to be exaggerating, at the very least. “How do you know this?” she asked seriously, her expression hardening, Johan? Orchestrating all the fear and distrust in the kingdom? To what end? “Why would he even do this?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t. Maybe he fears being opposed when he comes to power, I c-can’t…” He paused to run his claws through the feathers of his head. “The page… he was one of mine. He brought me the information I needed to connect the dots. And he paid for it. I am afraid… I am afraid Johan knows of my involvement.”

“No,” Shortbeak said, partially in disbelief in what she was hearing and partially in denial of Geoffrey’s belief any harm would come to him. He blinked in surprise. “I don’t… I am not sure I can see this, my lord, but I assure you, whatever the truth of the matter, no harm will come to you. I have sworn to protect your family. It will not come to pass.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey said, smiling warmly, relief washing over his features. “I had no doubt of that, Shortbeak. You seem to be the only one who hasn’t succumb to this… this madness, the paranoia.” He paused for a moment. “Dame Shortbeak if you would, I think I can arrange things to remove Johan from his position, and end this, all of this.”

“...My lord?” Shortbeak asked cautiously, not liking the images coming to mind.

“I intend to challenge him. For the title, I mean, remove him from his position in the eyes of the whole kingdom.” Shortbeak felt herself relax. That was considerably better than what she had thought he was implying. “If I convince some of the nobility to petition father, I can get it done but… I’m not much of a fighter. This is where I must ask you a favour, Shortbeak, please.”

“What—” She was stopped when he reached out and grasped her claw.

“Please! This may be our one shot. You’re the only knight who I can trust, the only one who seems detached from all of this. Please, if I can get this set up, if I can get enough nobles on board to convince father, will you be my second? The fate of the kingdom is on the line here!” She was momentarily silenced, unsure of herself. Not a few hours ago, she had been silently fuming over being utterly unable to do anything to affect the corruption that had turned her adopted home to a poisonous den of paranoia. Now her she was being offered a way to not only do something, but to do so decisively. Perhaps it had been that desperation to do something, perhaps it had been her own cynicism had been worn away by her memories of how Skymount had been during her early years there and she simply wanted to believe this all could be fixed with a single bout in the ring of honour. Perhaps it was the memory of the prince when she first met him in the forest and how he had been so enraptured with her for her status as a Cloud Knight. Whatever it may have been, she had given her assent that night upon the ramparts, and she never forgot how happy she had made Geoffrey when she did.

No matter how much she would come to want to.

It had been a month after she had reduced Johan to a mewling heap on the ground with a broken and bloodied wing when it happened. She was returning to her estate, entering her manor to the customary welcome of her clawmaid, when she noticed something was off.

“Welcome home, milady.” the maid said, inclining her head in acknowledgement. Shortbeak noticed the torn scarf she wore immediately. The maid avoided her lady’s searching gaze.

“Amelia?” she asked lowly, barely more than a whisper as fear gripped her. The maid only glanced towards the stairs. That was all the answer Shortbeak needed before she tore up the flight of stairs with a blinded speed, moving with such violence that the door to her sister’s dorm had been nearly broken as she entered it. The bed was empty, and Amelia was nowhere to be found. Shortbeak’s world fell apart around her. The light of the midsummer sun itself seemed to dim, and the colours seemed muted. A sense of unreality descended upon her, slowly, as if a heavy garment was being placed about her shoulders. She felt her head swim as she moved. Everything felt like a dream as she turned. She noticed a door ajar at the very opposite end of the corridor at the top of the stairs. Hers, she never left it unlocked.

She moved to it, slowly opening it to find the curtains drawn blocking out the sunlight. The fireplace was lit. It must have been lit just as she arrived at the manor. She certainly didn’t see any smoke while flying in. But it was who sat before the fire that drew her attention. Geoffrey reclined upon a seat that must’ve been taken from one of the other rooms, reading a book taken from her drawers. Two large griffons she recognised from the castle guard stood in corners of the room, flanking the fire. She knew them. They weren’t knights, but they were the best archers the king had. Both had compact bows drawn with arrows ready, watching her intently. As fast as she was, she knew one of them would land a potentially lethal hit before she could do anything.

“You know, you really were a tough nut to crack. That night on the rampart? That was really my last idea. I didn’t expect it to work,” Geoffrey said without looking up. The floor creaked as she took another step. The two guards didn’t even move but both their eyes flicked sharply, judging all possible avenues of attack she could make. They needn’t have bothered. She was too stunned, too lost to try anything right then.

“Am… melia,” she managed, her voice small and her gaze distant.

“Yes, Amelia. Oh so very interesting little secret you had there. I do suppose she isn’t contagious, hm? Not really at least,” Geoffrey said, closing the book and rubbing the bottom of his beak, contemplating the fire next to him. “Otherwise, quite a few griffons would have already shown signs long ago. Of course, that wouldn’t stop griffons from panicking, now would it? I do believe I have found the real reason you were traveling all over the high kingdom. You must’ve really exhausted yourself finding such loyal and upstanding servants. Really quite exceptional. No vices black enough that I could use to twist them, and no price with which they could be bought. Remarkable, you must tell me where you found them. But where there are no prices and no sins, there may nonetheless be… limits which cannot be endured.”

Shortbeak was shaking. Everything felt cold, and there was a dampness on her scalp, a cold sweat appearing as her breathing became increasingly laboured. Amelia was gone. He had taken her. No. No she couldn’t be. She couldn’t be gone, alone and unprotected, at the mercy of anygriffon who saw her and panicked. She had failed her, she had failed to protect her again. She looked up at the prince, cold fury burning through the increasing fugue of despair. She did not know why, she did not know how. She didn’t care. Her sister was gone and this… thing took her.

She didn’t say anything, just calmly walking across the room. The guards drew back on their bows, and Geoffrey smiled. “And what would harming me achieve, really?”

“Give me... back... Amelia,” Shortbeak managed, her entire form shaking with barely contained fury. His smile widened.

“No.” She just acted and grab him, claws tightening about his throat, her wings flaring and her face a snarling mask of rage. It took her a moment to realise she wasn’t perforated by arrows and that Geoffrey didn’t seem to be resisting. She loosened as she heard him choke, thinking and realising her mistake with widened eyes. He took in a grateful few breaths before chuckling through wheezing coughs. “I was wondering if you’d follow through, knowing full well what would happen to your dear, sweet Ami should anything untoward happen to me. Really, would have been a waste of a lot of time and effort on my part if you had followed through, but I would have the last laugh in the end, even if you managed to survive my guards.”

“W...Why?” Shortbeak said through gritted teeth, still shaking, her claws retracting from his neck.

“Oh for the fun of it of course.” He beamed. She looked at him blankly at that. He frowned and let out a sigh. “Oh fine, take the all the joy out of it why don’t you? At least we can pretend to be civil about the rest of this conversation, yes?”

“Please just… give her back.”

“Oh why would I do that? She is such a very sick girl. I would be remiss to release her back to her family before she is well. And such a wonderful conversationalist. You know, she was so proud of you that you finally deigned to seek help for once. She’s been awfully worried about how much you do for her and how its affecting you. Such a sweet girl.” Shortbeak didn’t want to hear it. She turned her eyes screwed shut as she tossed her head. “And I had nothing but glowing praise for you, especially about how you singlehandedly saved the kingdom. Oh she was positively beaming with pride over you. I’ll be sure to take very good care of her.”

“What do you want!?” she screamed at him, her beak trembling. “Just tell me what you want! How could you do this!? I thought… I thought…”

“Mmm, yes, you thought. Clearly what you thought didn’t matter very much, did it?” he asked, raising a claw, making the guards slacken their bows and remove their arrows. He got up from the chair and paced over to her. She look down and off to the side, still shaking. “As for what I want…” He leaned close to her and whispered into her ear. “Absolute. Total. Obedience. When I call, you answer. When I tell you to do, you will do, and your sister will continue being a pleasant conversationalist. Am I understood? I meant it when I said we would have a use for a griffon like you at Skymount.”

He spent another moment looking her up and down before smiling again. She didn’t meet his gaze. She felt something stroke her cheek, but her mind was dead to the world around her. He said something further, but she didn’t care to listen. She didn’t dare so much as move. If she did, she might shatter and never recover. She wasn’t sure when they left, leaving her sitting there on the floor of her manor, cold, numb, a thousand and one thoughts trying to formulate but nothing coherent coming to the fore. Her clawmaiden might have entered at some point, she didn’t know, she wasn’t paying attention as she saw her world crack apart, threatening to fall to pieces.

She had failed. Here, at the height of her success, she had failed again, and now it had costed her freedom, Ami’s freedom, and her honour. She had been duped. The sun set, the fire burned out, and the only break in the darkness came from the candlelight in the hall outside that shone through the crack of the door. Then, after hours of holding it back, preventing herself from completely collapsing, she let go, burying her face in her claw, letting out a shuddering breath as she sobbed quietly in the night.

She was not the only one to be taken aback by Johan homecoming to Skymount.

It had been months, and in that time, things had been getting worse and worse as Geoffrey became drunk with power, brandishing his utter disdain for everygriffon around him nakedly. Her skin crawled every time he was near, and she hated herself for every moment she remained under his service. She was not alone in this sentiment. Many were those who were bound to the Blackwing clan by oath and honour. Now they were also bound to Geoffrey’s whims by fear. This was to be their fate for backing the wrong prince, it seemed, and it only became worse and worse when the rumours started of things happening to griffons who so much as murmured discontent. Strange things. Accidents and shadows.

So when Johan came waltzing back into Castle Blackwing, trailing a shadow of his own, she, along with everygriffon else, was a tad interested. It was a tall, armoured thing he had found in Equestria, perpetually cloaked in black as it followed the prince dutifully. She had heard the stories of the attack on the prince’s train as it came across the border to Gethrenia. She didn’t believe them, but evidently the prince trusted the abilities of this creature.

She didn’t particularly care. So what if the prince had come back? It was far too late, for the king’s health was failing, and nogriffon in their right mind would even think to look at him twice for fear of Geoffrey. She passed no remarks when she saw it about the castle those first few days. That was until something rather interesting had happened. The right of retrieval was pressed. The castle was rocked with the news, and Geoffrey was apoplectic. She didn’t have all the details, but she didn’t care, because in his fury, the prince had slipped up.

He was going around the knights, ordering them to leave the castle immediately to patrol the demesne. He didn’t specify where and had grabbed Shortbeak by the shoulder, practically hissing into her ear that she was to do as she was bidden and fight in the bout in his stead. She readily agreed to it, and he had sneered, muttering that it was good she knew her place and how it would be a shame if the inhabitants of the Vestibule were to come to light.

The penny dropped.

Shortbeak had followed the implicit command not to search for her sister, knowing she was being watched, and if she had even so much as sniffed around, something would have happened to her. So she never knew where exactly Geoffrey had kept her. It was a pity there was only one place in the entire city that was referred to as the Vestibule. A word any casual passerby would assume meant entrance hall, in Skymount it referred to a particular building in the eastern district that had once been a hospice run by an order of nuns, a place known for its welcoming atmosphere and care.

She had a place and her comrades were being sent away. An opportunity unlike any other was presented to her, and a plan began formulating in her mind. She had grabbed hold of Godfrey, the dour-faced knight before he could leave, pressing a bundle of notes into his claw and closing it over with her own talons, glaring desperately into his eyes before turning and walking away before anygriffon could see them. They were instructions, parts of her plan, and Godfrey was the most levelheaded knight in their entire cadre. The rest was in the hands of the All-Maker, and she prayed fervently Godfrey would pull through and gather the knights while they were away from the scrutiny of Geoffrey and the entirety of Skymount. She would explain things to them later, if they pulled through, if she pulled through, if none of them gave into their fear of Geoffrey and sold her out.

There was only one more piece of the puzzle remaining. And she found him in the kitchens, tending to cleaning his prince’s table. He had left and entered the wall, and she ordered the servants out, then she sat in an exterior corridor, waiting for him to return.

It was a simple part of the plan but the most fragile. She had to be sure this creature would actually fight her. It had to be believable. If it turned out he was just some sniveling sellsword Johan had picked up, then what would happen during the fight would become altogether too obvious. She had to be sure he would actually fight and try to win. To this effect, she had cornered him and started attacking his pride, goading him, daring him to run. He didn’t and she found herself on the receiving end of some pointed barbs herself, enough that he had genuinely riled her up after getting under her feathers, but she had challenged him and looked into his eyes when she had him pinned to the wall by his neck. He wouldn’t run now; he wanted this fight; he wanted to win, if not for his duty to Johan, then just to spite her, if nothing else.

Perfect.

She had left him then, stalking her way to the armory to prepare and found herself smiling at the tantalising possibility of a brighter future emerging from this particularly troubled chapter of Gethrenian history. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, after all, that the prince came back with his own shadow. He was already proving to be useful.

And then she woke up with a start. Birds chirped upon the wall outside of her window, and pale sunlight spilled into the room. She took a second to catch her breath, not moving from her comfortable position, her one open eye darting about the room before she curled up into her quilted bed covers, nuzzling her head down into the soft folds with a groan. It was another nightmare, a bad one, but not one about Geoffrey, oh no. It had been weeks now, weeks since it happened. Weeks since the rain and the fire, the burning tents and the strange magic that had forced the clouds themselves to fall to the earth. Weeks since she had chosen to help save trapped griffons and ponies while others sought to help put a stop to the rampaging dragon. Weeks since they had found the sundered shield, half buried in mud and water, on the edge of a shallow crater when it was all said and done.

She pushed herself up from her bed with a sight, lamenting the dampness of the side of her head from the cold sweats. She grumbled and turned the pillow over out of habit. She knew a servant was going to come in and change the covers for fresh ones anyway, but she’d be damned if she was going to change her norms now. The door opened, and she turned to give a tired look to the maid who walked in.

“Oh! Lady Shortbeak, you’re up early.”

“Early?” she groused, turning to the window, blinking. Damn nightmares. She let out a breath as she rubbed her eyes. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Should… Should I come back later?”

“Probably for the best,” she agreed as the servant retreated. If it was one thing she hated about staying in the castle, it was that the servants went by the king's schedule, not whenever happened to be sane and reasonable. And if the servants thought she was up early, it was a bad sign. It must be the very crack of dawn. She eventually extricated herself from the bed and went through her ablutions, coming to the mirror of the dresser, her claw falling upon the hat that denoted her new office.

She had declined any such promotions or advancements before, but now… now she saw the necessity of somegriffon doing what needed to be done. She donned the hat, a simple purple and black affair that had come with a ridiculous, red feathered plume that she had shortened and left her apartments.

“Lady Marshal,” she was greeted, the guards standing sharply to attention as she emerged. She nodded in acknowledgement and continued on, trying not to think about her sleepless night. She failed miserably in that regard, and it occupied her thoughts to such a degree that she almost didn’t recognise the king as he stood in the library, a pensive expression on his face, one foreleg crossed to support the other as he tapped his beak deep in thought, considering the vista outside the window. He looked troubled, understandable given the current absurd predicament Gethrenia found itself in regarding its neighbours, but this was different. He was muttering thoughtfully to himself, an odd look in his eyes as if he couldn’t quite make sense of something, not the same as his usual long-suffering grimace at a known problem.

“You’re up early, your Majesty.”

“Mmmyes, what?” he asked, turning around, pausing for a few seconds as he began working to try to recognise the person speaking to him. “Oh, Lady Shortbeak. Yes, good morning. Sorry, I haven’t slept.”

“Something amiss?”

“Everything’s wonderful!” he said with exasperation, stretching his forelegs skyward. “Fix one problem, another twenty spring up. Save the kingdom one day and then plunge it into crisis the next because I couldn’t keep my beak shut.” She cocked a brow at that, and he sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.”

“We’re all under pressure, my lord.”

“We’re in private here. You can use my name if you want.”

“Alright,” she said, looking around, trying to find something to distract herself or otherwise detract from the awkward lull in the conversation. She knew what was bothering him. He hadn’t talked about it since leaving Firthengart, but it was the real reason why he had blown up in King Goldtooth’s face. He had lost a friend there. They all had. She eventually turned to a shelf and picked out a book at random, pretending to flick through it.

“You know, it’s alright to grieve, Johan.” He didn’t answer, and she took it as a sign to continue. “He was your friend after all.”

“Not the first time I’ve thought he was dead.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just…” He hesitated, a thoughtful expression on his face as he studied the rich, carpeted ground. She considered him for a minute and noted with some confusion that he looked as if he was seriously debating saying something. He then just shook his head and smiled at her. “Nothing. You’re right of course, but I still have a crisis to put out. Thank you, Shortbeak.”

“Of course,” she said, curiosity piqued as he walked away. She turned back to the book. It was a discourse on sailing ships throughout the ages. She snapped it closed and put it back in its place on the shelf, any potential interest thoroughly ruined by the book’s topic. She had been on a boat once. Never again. Still, as she sat there in the midst of row upon row of books illuminated by the autumnal morning light, she considered her own words.

‘It’s alright to grieve.’

She had meant it too, but hadn’t really considered applying the advice to herself. She had not really known him all that well, not as well as the others did at least, but still. She liked to have considered him a friend, someone she could’ve related to at the very least. Perhaps in time the thought would have been reciprocated. She had certainly enjoyed what little time they had spent together before…

No. It wouldn’t do. She’d pay her respects to his memory and move on. He had been a knight in service to the kingdom. These things happened, no matter how unjust. She kept telling herself that, kept telling herself that it was normal and to accept it and move on, and for the large part, that was what she did. But she still found herself pausing every now and again, thinking, wondering.

She inhaled and rubbed her eyes. Whatever the case, she had a job to do. She turned and walked from the library, pausing to look one last time, thinking about Johan’s curious last words before closing the door to the room.