The Game is On

Thunder still refused to believe his ears (now that he thought of it… griffins have ears?). Karmyl, that gorgeous and gentle-looking female griffin was Karyn’s daughter? Well… not that Karyn was to be called ugly; no… she was beautiful indeed. But… but Karmyl was… she was a princess!

“What, Thunder?” Karyn asked looking at him. “Is there a problem with her being my daughter?”

“NO! No… It’s just that she seems so… delicate…” Thunder quickly tapped his beak with his talons before saying anything else.

Karyn raised an eyebrow in mocking anger. “Yeah… please continue…” she said looking at Thunder.

Karmyl just chuckled then. “Stop that, mom. He’s getting nervous. It’s just because you’re his master. It’s always hard for a student to learn their masters can have a family.”

Thunder just nodded, trying to have an easy escape from this. “Yes, sorry… it was just a bit of a shock…” and to avoid saying anything more to put him in a dangerous situation, he just took the fork in his talons and took an amount of salad with a piece of fish down his beak.

Karyn gave him a smile, “Tell me, Sparky… How does fish taste?”

He was looking at Karyn curiously when the fish touched his tongue. Thunder’s eyes widened suddenly and he looked at the fish in his plate. No way could it be that tasteful! Thunder couldn’t even choose his words to say how it tasted! All he did though was eat with gusto from his plate.

Karyn chuckled at the sight as Karmyl looked at her puzzled, “Am I missing something, mom?”

“I guess you are, dear,” Karyn said with a smile, “Thunder here is our reinforcement. He claims to be from somewhere called ‘Equestria’ where he is a pegasus and by means beyond my comprehension was changed into a griffin when coming there.”

The other two griffins also started to eat by now. Thunder just nodded, looking at Karmyl, “Back at Equestria I was studying weather magic in a city called Cloudsdale. I was going to be one of the weather patrol ponies of my birth town, Ponyville, and my parents wanted me to have the best education on weather magic and weather control.”

“But I thought that pegasi couldn’t use magic…” Karmyl half asked.

“Weather magic isn’t exactly like unicorn magic. Don’t you have weather patrol teams here?” he asked a bit surprised. Karmyl and Karyn both gave a headshake, Thunder decided to explain with a bit of pride in his voice. “You must at least know that, while compared to birds, both pegasi and griffins’ wings are far too small and weak to lift our bodies. There’s where the flying magic comes in…” he then opened his wings a bit, so he wouldn’t hit anypony. “It’s a natural magic that both pegasi and griffins have and know how to use by instinct. Another magic inherited by instinct is the weather magic: pegasi and griffins can touch and manipulate clouds with their bare hooves or talons.”

Karmyl gave a quick glance at her talons holding a metal fork. Thunder continued, “Thanks to that magic, we can hold, compress, open and even walk, sit and sleep in the clouds. And hear me when I say… a cloud mattress is unmatched to any other. It's the best for us, winged beings, to sleep on. If you happen to have stiff wings, they won’t wake you up in discomfort.”

“I didn’t know griffins could do that,” Karyn said surprised. “I mean… if we can, we could create villages above the clouds and avoid most of our enemies’ attacks.”

“But think about your non-flying friends for a bit, Karyn,” Thunder said pointing around. “How would they get up there? If you had some griffin to take them up, your enemies would figure it out and if you used some kind of transport, they would see it flying from miles way. Griffin and pegasi would not have a problem, but haven’t you told me that it’s only the goddess and each pony by themselves that can decide when they stop learning? If you move the whole city up towards the clouds, many of them will have no choice but to stop their learning.”

“And all of Equestria has weather patrol teams?” Karmyl asked with wonder in her voice.

“Yes,” Thunder said with a smile. “Well… almost. Some towns are still too small to afford a full weather patrol team. And while in subject, for ten years running, Ponyville’s weather patrol team received the title of the best weather patrol in all of Equestria!”

“Sounds impressive,” Karyn agreed with a smile. “So you were going to join them?”

“Nah….like everyone else, I started from the low ranks, with something rather simple… I didn't actually join the main teams straight away,” Thunder answered. “But I was aiming to do that someday. And there I’m no different! Before I return to Equestria, I pretend to be on the top ten of all the Keura Rangers!”

“You don’t aim small, do you, chick?” Karyn chuckled. “But that’s the spirit. Don’t let anyone put you down, Sparky.”

“And about your parents, Thunder?” Karmyl asked. “What can you say about them?”

Thunder had a smile from ear to ear, or whatever equivalent griffins used, when he was asked that, “They are the most loving parents of all Equestria! My father is actually the leader of Ponyville’s weather patrol and he always, made sure it would be a sunny day on my birthdays and whenever I had some special celebration.

“And whenever he couldn’t be present, my mother was there for me. She wasn’t as good with weather magic as my father, but she is the descendent of one of the most important mares of all Equestria, she’s a descendent of Fluttershy, bearer of the Element of Kindness.”

“Element of Kindness?” Karmyl and Karyn looked puzzled at Thunder.

“Yeah. The Elements of Harmony were six magic gems that held the power of the ponies’ main virtues: loyalty, kindness, laughter, honesty, generosity and magic. They were so powerful that they could imprison Discord in stone for over a thousand years!”

“Imprison… Discord? No way!” Karyn said not exactly surprised, mostly just unbelieving what she heard. What puzzled Thunder, though, was that they knew about Discord at all. “Keura and our other gods tried that with all their might and they didn't manage that in ten thousand years until Discord fled!”

Then it was Thunder which looked at them puzzled, “Now would you care to tell me about how you know Discord?”

“Well… It’s not only Discord…” Karmyl decided to answer that. “We have a total of thirteen gods and goddesses. Six of them you already know, they are the creators of the six grand clans. Keura, Goddess of Hunters; Horgen, God of Battles; Shivon, God of Magic; Irilka, Goddess of Healing; Lenya, Goddess of Life; and Ternatta, Goddess of Travelers.”

“There are seven other gods though,” Karyn explained. Gyara, Goddess of Sun, and Deora, Goddess of Moon, are the main ones we venerate but for the six gods of clans, of course. Discord is also one of our gods, as you may know, the God of Chaos. The other four are Ilixia, Goddess of Knowledge; Rahirin, God of Agriculture; Nyaky, Goddess of Creation; and…”

Thunder noticed as Karyn trailed off. He made a quick mental count and there was still one missing, “Karyn… the last one is…?”

Karmyl looked at her mother and looked at Thunder, “My mother believes that calling his name announces your death. Many believe in that actually. He’s Keonte, the God of Death. That’s why many ponies don’t like calling his name. It’s said that Keonte had started his own clan, but we’re not sure. We are sure, though, that he has taught someone, as Keura and the others taught the original of all our clans.”

“Teaching of the God of Death?” Thunder looked somewhat puzzled.

“A forbidden kind of magic…” Karyn answered. “It’s called necromancy, the magic to control the dead, used once when priests and monks tried to restore life to people. It was then forbidden, banished and everypony that kept using it was sentenced to death without a second thought.”

“I guess I never heard about this necromancy magic…” Thunder commented.

“Not surprising. It has been banished for generations…” Karmyl said.

Thunder nodded, “I see… well, returning to the family subject… who’s Karmyl’s father may I know?”

Karyn just chuckled at that, “A bunch of bright feathers with a beak too big for his size. All talk no actions, but I was young and foolish and he was kinda cute. And I was drunk. I never again wanted to see him until I felt something strange. A few days later, I visited a Shaman and a Sage to be sure, but neither had ever been wrong in this matter before: I was pregnant. Then, when I wanted to find him, the bastard disappeared and I never heard from him. He probably doesn’t even know he has a daughter.”

“Oh… that must hurt…” Thunder commented.

“Well… I can’t really say it did,” Karmyl smiled. “After mom confirmed she was pregnant, she decided to make a living so both she and I could live comfortable, so she joined Keura Rangers. Since then, she met Baldok and he had been a father to me. Not my sire, but my father same way. Trying to mimic my mother’s strength and independence, I decided to enter Keura Rangers as well and I would do my best to protect our world.”

Thunder grinned, “The big guy? So you like it big, Karyn?” he chuckled.

“It was not me staring at flanks on the food line, Sparky,” Karyn counterattacked. “Or even after barely waking up in a completely unknown place. Before saying whatever you want, try being an example yourself.”

“Wait… you knew that?” Thunder blushed under his white fears.

“What kind of Ranger would I be if I didn’t know what was happening around me?” Karyn answered with a large smile. “Don’t worry, Sparky. Looking isn’t a problem. But if I see you ‘touching’, you will get lessons of shooting with pegasi, got it?”

Folding his wings back and curling a bit in fear, Thunder just nodded. Karmyl though chuckled at the scene. Karyn then got her plate and left.

“Mom likes you. A lot, by the way…” Karmyl said.

“What? Hello! She threatened cutting my talons!” Thunder reminded her.

“Yes, she threatened. If she didn’t like you, you would have already lost them.” Karmyl said casually, but with sincerity in her voice. “She has always been hard to deal with; after all she had to raise me alone. It’s a bit of an understatement that she’s a bit overprotective of me, but she'll also listen to what I want.”

“You love her dearly, don’t you?”

“She’s a good griffin, her heart is always in the right place,” Karmyl said. “She was just thrown around a lot through her life. Her mark is her will, though, never giving up. She can bend, but she never breaks, and she will always return stronger from it.”

Thunder gave a smile. “My mother is a lot softer than her. But from her side of family we inherited what is called the stare… Well… not all of us. Just the mares actually, and my mother was not an exception. When she stared at you with the stare, you got rooted to your place and simply couldn’t take your gaze away. Also you never think on what happens if you dare give her a ‘no’ during a stare. But beside it, she always did whatever we wanted and whenever we wanted it. More often than not, it was our father to place some limits on us.”

“But even being born in a family where you were that free to do whatever you wanted you decided to make something worth with your life?” Karmyl asked.

“In Equestria, being important doesn’t mean you’re rich,” Thunder answered. “My family is very simple and besides we had great freedom to do things, we normally didn’t have resources. That lead us to valorize every little thing we had, so my sisters and I decided to do something constructive with our lives. One of them followed the family’s tradition of animal care; the other became a mechanic and now lives in Cloudsdale with her husband. Last I heard they were already planning on a foal even.”

“And you were kinda of deprived of these choices, being summoned here to help us…”

“As I said, my family is from the line of a bearer of the Elements of Harmony. Back at her epoch, Fluttershy and her friends were called to solve the strangest problems all around Equestria!” Thunder said with a smile.

Karmyl chuckled with that, “Seems like you’re just living by your family’s standards then?”

“At least I can say that I had my share of crazy adventures. That is, if I ever manage to return home…”

“In due time we’ll find a way to send you back, Thunder, I promise,” Karmyl said with a smile.

Thunder nodded and smiled back at her.

“Tell me more about your sisters!” Karmyl grinned, just pushing her empty plate aside and placing her elbows on the table.

Doing the same, Thunder asked back, “What do you want to know of them?”

“How is it having sisters?”

“Well… At one side, it’s great because you've got ponies that you can trust both in getting you out of troubles or to help you create them,” Thunder chuckled. “There are fights of course, we’re still different ponies with different minds, but no matter how angry I am with them, or them with me, any of us would give our lives to protect each other. The downside, though, is that you have to share your toys…”

Karmyl chuckled at that last comment, “The advantage of being the only child, it seems. However, it sometimes feels lonely, like something is missing… even more when you don’t have a sire to look over you.”

“You had Baldok, right?”

“Having a true sire is completely different, Thunder,” Karmyl answered him. “I like Baldok a lot; he has done many things to help me grow like only a father would do. But there's still something missing. My sire is out there and he doesn't even know I exist…”

“Do you at least know his name?” Thunder asked.

“No… not even a photo to tell the truth… Only that he was the only griffin to ever lay with my mother in bed. She has been pretty much closed ever since.”

“Not that you can blame her after what happened…” Thunder said. He then took Karmyl’s talons on his own and grinned to her. “Know what, you promised to help me find a way back home, so I will promise something for you: I will find your sire and have him chat with you.”

“That’s very kind of you, Thunder, but you can’t just go around asking all and every griffin if they had an affair with my mother,” Karmyl said with a smile.

“Never said I would do that, but I will think of something…”

“So what else do you have to do today?” Karmyl asked.

“I guess it’s just more training, why?”

“Do you happen to know what training?” Karmyl said getting up. At Thunder’s headshake, she grinned. “Better stop by Baldok and get a bow and some arrows for you first. You’ll meet your instructor at the northern exit.”

With a nod, Thunder got up and they parted in different ways. Thunder quickly made his way to the armory looking for Baldok, and as it always seemed to be, he was there and working.

“Baldok… I need a bow and some arrows…” Thunder said as he approached the counter.

The efficient griffin just reached under the counter and brought a bow and a quiver full of arrows.

“Survival training, I guess?” the bulky griffin asked while Thunder donned all the straps.

“I don’t really know…” Thunder answered.

“Very big chances,” Baldok said with a smile. “I heard your instructor is known to break the weak.”

Thunder just chuckled, “So there will be a good battle for her to fight!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Baldok said with a chuckle.

Thunder then gave the older griffin a smile, “And also thank you for the bow.”

“You’re welcome, Thunder,” Baldok answered with a smile and saw Thunder leaving the room just after. As soon as he was out of the room, though, Karyn came out of a shelf in Baldok’s side of the counter.

“‘I heard your instructor is known to break the weak’?” Karyn asked.

“Better than saying she might have a crush on him,” Baldok said with a chuckle as he returned to his work on a ranger suit. “And about you, Karyn? Why pairing him with her for survival training?”

“She’s training to be a guide. This way, both can be trained properly and without wasting the time of anyone else.”

“You being practical? Now I've seen everything!” Baldok laughed.

Karyn was about to say something, but decided not to. Turning around the counter she only looked at him. “You big old chicken! You know I’m better than what my cadets make me out to be!” Karyn called from the doorway.

“Well… then you should start acting like that a bit more, don’t you think?” he asked teasingly. “You aren’t getting any younger if you’re to find a mate, and that attitude of yours doesn’t help a bit.”

“You only think on that, you sick bastard…” Karyn said with a head shake and left just after. Even so, she had a small smile in her face.

***

Thunder reached the north exit gate before his instructor, so he used the extra time to check on his bow. Making sure it has a good tension in the string and that it wouldn’t break anytime soon like he did in the training range, he grinned and placed his bow on his back, where it would rest until needed.

He then used his time to watch the ones that composed Keura Rangers. Griffins were in large majority, followed by pegasi. From other tribes, only hippogriffs had a smaller increase in number, probably due to their shared blood with griffins. Like in Equestria, females greatly outnumbered males, and by what he could count, Austarak had a rate of 4 females for each male. And very few of the females he could call anything less than beautiful, he agreed.

He sighed. His instructor was probably putting on her suit. Baldok did hint at a female instructor after all. Thunder looked up and saw the white clouds. In order to pass some of his time, he opened his wings wide and flapped them strongly, getting higher and higher until he came to a cloud. Using his talons, he began playing with it, shaping it and a few others around him into a large cloud-sculpture of a flower. When he was satisfied, he came back to the ground and noticed Karmyl there, admiring his work.

“So that is what your ‘weather control’ is all about?” Karmyl asked with a smile.

“You said you've never used your weather magic before…” Thunder answered with a giggle. “It’s a pretty fun way to pass the time around when you’re in weather patrol and it’s scheduled to be a bit clouded. You can be very good at shaping clouds.”

“I see,” Karmyl said with a genuine smile. Then she looked back up at the large flower-cloud in the sky. “Are you able to do anything else but a flower?”

“As you can see, it’s a very simple flower at that. I’m not that good at it,” Thunder said with a smile. “True cloud-sculptures can be found all around in Cloudsdale, a town back in Equestria. The whole city was crafted using clouds as the primary materials.”

“Wow, that’s neat!”

He just chuckled at that, “It’s a talent some pegasi had. Hmmm… do you know, by any chance, the name of my instructor?”

Karmyl looked at him with a smile, “Yes, I do. Her name is Karmyl Feathercrown.”

Thunder’s eyes widened and he looked at Karmyl again, “WHAT?”

She giggled at his reaction for a bit before looking him in the eye. “Here in Keura Rangers, we have a specific training structure that you won’t find in any other clan. When we decide to join the Keura Rangers, we're assigned a proper Master who will follow us along our whole process, and it’s the Master’s job to assign instructors fit with each part of the cadet’s training. I happen to be very good when it comes down to survival training, so your Master, Karyn Feathercrown, asked me to be your instructor.”

Thunder’s beak just hung open with that revelation. After threatening to cut of his talons, it was Karyn herself to place him in survival training with her own daughter?

Karmyl then smiled, “Well, I guess we’re ready to go.” That took Thunder out of his stupor and he closed his beak again. “Remember to always listen to what I say and if I order you to return and leave me there, I don’t want you to argue with me, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Thunder said, deciding to go all cadet-in-training with her in order to keep things from getting awkward.

“Good. Let’s get going then, we have a lot to cover. We’ll be entering this forest and walking around aimlessly while I instruct you on our way in. On the other claw, it’s you that will be guiding us back, as a test to see how fast you can learn.”

“Yes, sir!” Thunder agreed.

Karmyl chuckled and lead Thunder outside the gates to the forest behind it. A very dense forest surrounded them, the path out of it almost invisible to Thunder’s eyes while Karmyl walked about sure of herself. She walked in silence a while before taking in a deep breath.

“The forest air is very different from the city’s air, isn’t it?” Karmyl asked.

“Yes…” Thunder said also taking a deep breath. “It… feels more alive…”

“And it is… more than you know,” Karmyl answered with a smile. “Look here; can you see these markings in the trees?” Thunder approached her to see what marks she was talking about. Three deep claw marks were on the tree she pointed out. “These marks show you that predators live in the area. Which ones depend on the number of talon marks and, of course, the area you’re in. Basically, it’s an indicator of danger level and can vary roughly from one to the other. The higher the number, the more dangerous the predator living there. An acceptable level, that means predators which prefer not to face you unless you attack first, have three talons. Keura’s Rangers have almost catalogued every single part of our world, so whenever you see these marks, you can believe them. Of course, there are creatures that roam around and do not have a set territory, so there’s no way to foresee them. Always keep your guard up. And as a side remark, all the marks will be like this, horizontal. If you happen to see one crossed with a vertical talon, it means ‘pack predators’. These attack in groups and if you attack one of the pack, all the others around would probably attack you in a kind of pack defense.”

Thunder nodded, and they continued down the track. Karmyl was teaching him what he could and couldn’t eat, how to track prey and predators and find water among the forest, what was poisonous and what was safe, and even how to identify something that is safe but disguised as poisonous. Thunder learned everything she said with keen interest and for him it was as natural as his weather magic, as if he was born to be a Ranger.

Karmyl took him down a longer route, deeper and deeper into the forest, so she could explain more about survival to him. They had even taken some time hunting down a few mice and squirrels before she sat down at a small pond and looked up at the sky.

“I hope you enjoyed your time here?” she asked, sitting down and then leaning to take a sip from the pond. Thunder did as she did to refresh a bit. The forest could be beautiful and relaxing, but it was surely hot in there.

“Yes, I could say I did,” he grinned.

“Good. Let’s make a half-hour camp there and you get us back. Only clue I give you, is we’re northeast of Austarak. You have a limited time. It’s getting dark as you can notice. You must take us back before night fall.”

Thunder nodded, even if he suddenly felt a bit unsecure. He was going to start a fire to cook the small prey he caught when he glanced at Karmyl all but swallowing down a small mouse whole. A bit stunned, he just sat there, looking at her.

Karmyl giggled at his reaction, “Like the view?”