A Journey of Bonding

by PurpleFire18

Chapter 7: A Shortcut

Continuing the journey without anything to eat for breakfast was a challenge in itself, but doing so knowing there wouldn't be any food for the entire day was worse. Souvenir certainly wasn't used to this, her travels always turned out to be lucky and she'd find food when she needed it. Alastair was in a similar situation, while he was able to go several hours without even thinking of food, he never had to walk without eating, and flying would have definitely helped him get somewhere quicker than hunger would get him. In an effort to get their minds off of thinking about how hungry they were, Souvenir tried to start a conversation, but soon realized there was nothing to talk about unless it was something personal. One topic came to her mind, but she knew he wouldn't like it.

"So...if you are a survivor of a house of nobles, how come no one treats you as such?" she asked.

Souvenir was right, Alastair didn't like the question. "No real reason...other than only a handful of griffons know who I am."

"I figured, but why?"

"House Bloodfeather was respected, but feared as well..."

"And why?"

"You don't want to know," Alastair said, looking at her. "Trust me..."

Taking that as a warning, Souvenir stopped talking. They didn't talk for a couple hours until they reached a mountain. She could tell it wasn't made for earth-walkers as there were barely any flat surfaces to walk on. Climbing the mountain would certainly require a lot of help and it would be nearly impossible for them both to climb.

"We have to climb this mountain?"

"We should, but we can't since we have a heavy cart with us." Alastair began looking for something on the rocks.

"What...are you doing?" asked Souvenir, confused.

"Looking for a shortcut."

"On the rocks...right, that only happens in Daring Do books and in movies, Alastair." Souvenir began to laugh, however the sound of a rock falling over silenced her. She looked to see Alastair standing in front of a tunnel that was covered with a big rock. Her jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide. 'You HAVE to be kidding me!'

Alastair smirked and looked at her. "Only happens in books and movies?" He began to walk into the tunnel.

It took Souvenir's brain several seconds to begin functioning again, and she quickly followed him into the tunnel. It was dark like a stormy night, but a couple lights of various colors could be seen in the distance. She knew that they were magic gems, a special kind of gems that radiated magic and had its own light. She herself had acquired a few of them in her travels, and had heard that they could be used as magic amplifiers and could even give non-unicorns some degree of magic, but she dismissed the latter as rumors and was backed up by Ponyville's librarian on that thought. As they got close to the magic gems, Souvenir had the idea of taking the smaller ones with her, not because she was greedy, but those things were a sight to behold. While she began taking the small ones, Alastair took notice of something scary: there was a griffon skeleton on the ground. It must have belonged to a warrior as it was holding a broken ax and a worn buckler. Alastair thought for a second and carefully took the buckler from the unfortunate warrior's corpse, he couldn't properly hold it with his hand but he was able to use it on his arm. It was big enough to provide cover and had a spike on its center, and he thought he would need it since the part of the road after the mountain was the most dangerous. Once Souvenir was done picking up gems she looked at Alastair and noticed the shield, but chose not to ask about it and they kept walking.

After a while they saw the tunnel led them to a dead end. What would have been the exit was covered by a giant rock. Frustrated, Alastair turned around to see that the path behind them now had a hole, big enough for them both to fall in with the cart if they they had walked back. He knew what this meant and reached for his sword.

"What's wrong?" asked Souvenir, hearing the sound of his unsheathing sword.

"Diamond dogs..." he replied as he held his sword.

Something jumped at them from the hole, but it was too quick for Alastair to react. It was indeed a diamond dog, but much larger than normal, and was followed by another creature resembling a wingless griffon with spikes coming out of its body. Souvenir and Alastair were quickly trapped by them, and were dragged into the hole along with the cart. It was a painful fall though fortunately nothing was broken. The diamond dog took advantage of the landing and delivered a strong blow to Alastair's head, knocking him out. Souvenir was shocked and screamed a little.

"How can you do this to him?!"

"Silence, pony!" shouted the diamond dog as he took the sword from Alastair's hands.

"You are coming with us, along with your precious items!" said the strange beast as he forced her to pull the cart away, some items falling from it in the process.

Alastair didn't wake up until a couple hours later. While the blow was strong, he had been through worse. He was, at first, unaware of his surroundings, but slowly remembered what had happened and where he was. He sighed as he saw his sword was missing. 'Bloody hell, not again!'. He saw he still had the buckler, and looked around hoping to find Souvenir or the two beasts. All he saw was one of the items that had fallen off the cart, namely a golf club. He took the golf club and realized it was heavier than he had expected. Not wasting time, he began looking for any traces of Souvenir and to his delight saw that the cart's wheels had left a barely noticeable trace, but it was better than nothing. He followed it as fast as he could until he heard someone coming, and hid behind a rock. From the sound of the steps it was clear it was a creature walking on four legs without hooves, and remembering the earlier incident it was likely a diamond dog or a keythong, the wingless, earth-dwelling cousins of griffons. He realized that besides the buckler's spike he had no way to defend himself, but then an idea came to his mind as he looked at the golf club. '...I must be crazy...'.

As the steps became closer and louder, he held the golf club ready to swing. He did so as soon as he saw the creature's head was within reach, hitting it with so much force that it made the creature fall back. It was indeed a keythong, but not the one that had attacked them. Alastair moved closer to the keythong and held the golf club menacingly. To anyone that would have seemed ridiculous, but the keythong had just experienced what it was like to be hit with a golf club, and didn't want it to happen again.

"I surrender! Don't hit me again!" said the keythong, covering himself with his arms.

"Where is the yellow pony with the cart?" asked Alastair.

"The pony? Oh, the slave! I-I mean, I have no idea!"

"Don't make me use this again, mate..." Alastair was ready to swing the club again.

"Alright, alright! They brought her to the mines, down that tunnel!" The keythong pointed at the tunnel he came from.

"What are they going to do with her?"

"Force her to pull the carts for the gems and all the things we steal."

"And just what are you?"

"Not telling you-" The keythong saw Alastair preparing to swing again and cowered in fear. "-I mean, we are just a group of keythongs and diamond dogs stealing from anyone unfortunate enough or simply dumb enough to travel by these mountains!"

"I see...you have been most useful, coward."

Alastair hit the keythong again, knocking him unconscious. He was amused by how easy it was to interrogate thieves like these, but knew that the same tactic would not work on all of them. He began to fly through the tunnel to get to the mines as quickly as possible, encountering diamond dogs and keythongs along the way, beating them with his somewhat threatening golf club or charging into them with help of his buckler. After making many bandits develop a fear of golf clubs, he found the mines. Many diamond dogs and keythongs were mining for diamonds and other gems, but there was only one cart pulled by only one pony, Souvenir, who was under constant vigilance and threatened with a whip. Alastair was furious and knew he'd have to act quickly. Looking around, he found his sword and the rest of the lost items, along with several others he knew weren't Souvenir's, next to a very well-decorated chair, although the word "throne" might have been more accurate. He soon saw who the throne belonged to: an elderly black and grey keythong who had apparently been through many fights, since most of his spikes were broken, he was seemingly the leader. Alastair tried to think fast, he had to create a diversion to get his sword and then he'd have an advantage. He saw a stone on the ground, and maybe it was coincidence or irony, but it was very similar to a golf ball. He would have laughed but he wasn't in the mood and simply brought the golf club down ready to hit the ball...or stone. Aiming at the leader, he hit the stone and sent it flying towards him, hitting the keythong's beak. The results were satisfying, the keythong shouted asking who threw the stone and the other keythongs and diamond dogs were distracted, giving Alastair time to quickly fly over to the throne and grab his sword. However he did not go unnoticed as others ran to the leader's side.

The elderly keythong looked at him with piercing, sinister eyes and spoke with a tone that was just as grim. "What do you think you are doing here, winged freak? Your kind are not welcome in the ground..."

"You can avoid losing your followers if you do as I say..." said Alastair with a threatening tone.

"You are outnumbered, griffon. You'd be better off running for your life!"

"I will not leave unless you release the pony and give back what you stole from her." He looked at Souvenir, who had seen the distraction and how it was going.

"I don't think so..." said the keythong as he snapped his fingers.

In less than twenty seconds, Souvenir fell victim to fifteen painful strikes coming from the diamond dog with the whip. Seeing her being subjected to such torture enraged Alastair, to the point where his mind was filled with fury and he no longer cared for anything but making them pay. He squinted his eyes shut and held his sword tightly, so strongly he would have crushed bones with his hand. He opened his eyes and the bandits in front of him took a step back, surprised and scared by what they saw. Alastair's eyes now glowed with an orange, fiery color, and looking into them was like looking at a huge consuming fire. With seething rage, Alastair charged at the leader, the spike of the buckler going through his right shoulder, then kicked him off. As the leader fell unconscious to the ground, Alastair attacked the other bandits that rushed to their leader's aid, and soon the fight became a bloodbath. Limbs fell as the Bloodfeather sliced and cut through the bandits that had decided to attack, while others fled in fear. Souvenir herself was afraid of what she saw, and her heart nearly stopped when Alastair stood in front of her, having beaten all the attackers. What she felt at the river paled in comparison to what she was feeling now, and thought for a second that Alastair was going to kill her in his blind rage. However, to her surprise, Alastair let go of his sword and threw his arms around her, holding her in a tight embrace as the fire in his eyes faded away. Souvenir felt the blood on Alastair's fur and feathers, and the hug slightly hurt her thanks to the whipping she had received earlier, but she ignored all of it as she hugged back just as tightly.

***

The leader woke up to feel his blood rushing to his head and saw that the world was upside down, but then quickly realized he was the one who was upside down. He looked around to see Alastair flying above a giant, deep hole in the center of the mine, holding him above it.

"AH! Let me go!" The leader squirmed in fear but stopped once he noticed his own words. "WAIT, NO! DON'T LET ME GO!"

"If you want to live, tell us where the exit is," Alastair said as he lowered him a couple inches. "My arm is getting tired."

"Alright! You can leave this tunnel network following the tunnel over there!" The leader pointed to a tunnel and kept talking. "It will lead you directly to the south east!"

"Good...and we are taking your stolen goods with us."

"WHAT?! Never!" It only took Alastair letting him go for one second before grabbing his leg to convince the keythong. "Alright, you can take all you want, just let me live!"

Alastair dropped the keythong in a safe place, but made sure the fall was painful enough to prevent him from running away. He walked over to Souvenir, who was placing the stolen items back into her cart, and also taking any good-quality items the bandits already had, especially the "throne". Alastair was amused by this, the cart was already heavy enough and this wouldn't be any better, but Souvenir couldn't leave a good object lying around like that. The cart was just enough for everything to fit in there, though this meant Alastair would have to carry his bag the rest of the journey.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yes, I think this is everything that is worth something."

"Good, did you find any food in there?"

"Oh, I don't think we're going to have empty stomachs for a while!" Souvenir happily announced.

The pair walked through the tunnel and found no hostiles in it. It took them little time to reach the end of the tunnel, and came out of it to find themselves in a place even Souvenir recognized. The tunnel had led them near Equestria's northern mountains, and she was so happy she jumped with excitement.

"Look at those mountains! We are close to Equestria!" she said with a huge smile on her face as she pointed at the mountains.

"Well, you don't see that everyday. Our wingless friends shortened our journey by about two days." Alastair looked up to see the sun was setting. "Too bad we need to find a place to set up camp...and a lake or something to wash off this blood."

They walked for one hour until they found a good place to camp, and to their delight, it was close to not a lake, but to a hot spring. Once they set up camp they both hurried to the spring and had a well-deserved time to relax. As the warm water covered and cleaned their bodies, Souvenir looked at Alastair and thought it was about time to ask about what had happened in the mines.

"The thing at the mines...with your eyes going all glowy and stuff...what was that about?" she asked, determined to get an answer.

"That...that was the reason my family was respected and feared. What you saw is the Bloodfeather's secret. When a member of House Bloodfeather is enraged by someone wronging them, the sword will strengthen the user's fury. To put it simply, it turns the user into a mortal vessel of wrath until the payback is done."

"Wow...wait, you said it wasn't a magic sword!"

"I said NOT EXACTLY a magic sword..."

"But...that is the same..." Souvenir brought her hoof to her face. "...whatever...so, why did it work now but not when Graham insulted you and your family?"

"I'm not sure..." Alastair looked at the sword on a rock close to the spring. "I guess this time I had someone I wanted to protect," he said absent-mindedly.

Both of them blushed as they realized what he said, and looked at each other. Alastair quickly looked away but Souvenir felt a strange joy in her. She moved closer to him and gave him a tender hug, rubbing her head against his neck. "That is so sweet of you, Alastair!" she said as she backed away and left the spring. "I am going to get food ready, you coming?"

Alastair sat where he was, his wings open spread. "No thanks, I will stay here until you are ready..." he said somewhat nervously, tough fortunately she didn't notice and kept walking. Alastair looked at his wings and crossed his arms, as if somewhat frustrated. He looked at the sword and began talking to it as if it were a living being. "What are you looking at? You are ALWAYS hard!"

Author's Note:

This chapter took a while to write. I had a lot of fun with this one though.

Comments

[Stellar starry night]

I love this story dude, it's an interesting pairing that I haven't seen before, and I just love the characters too!

[Grekoy]

At the mention of the word keythong I thought you made that creature up, but after a little research turns out it is an actual creature that shares a resemblance to the griffons. Thanks for introducing the keythong.