Lineage

I entered the castle’s kitchen, smiling at the servant girls as they hurried about their duties, the mouth-watering smell of bacon, eggs, sausages, sauce and toast filling the pristinely-kept room, all managed by one Madame Vortega.

“Boy!” I heard an angry voice bark from behind me.

“Madame Vortega,” I said with a smile, turning around to face her only to receive an fork with a sizzling piece of bacon on the end of it inches away from my face. “Whoa, what seems to be the problem, Madame Chef?”

“You keep that fuckin’ mutt of yours out of my pantry,” she spat. “Or else I’ll cook the bastard over the spit myself.”

I stared at her for a long second with my mouth agape before leaning forward and closing my mouth around the bacon. I pulled my head back and moaned in food-induced orgasm as the delicious taste of the meat lit up my tastebuds.

“Yum, delicious as usual Madame Chef,” I said, my mouth now filled with more liquid than a plunge pool, giving the older woman a thumbs up before cutting through the kitchen as I’d intended. “I’ll go have words with my fuckin’ mutt and tell him to stop raiding the pantry.”

“You’d better, otherwise roasted direwolf is gonna be on tonight’s menu!” she snapped, turning back to face one of the servants girls and begin barking orders at her. I watched the ordeal for a moment, feeling sorry for the relatively beautiful brunette girl receiving a reprimanding for showing up to work late. With a shake of my head, I ducked out of the room and made my way down the corridors.

“Hell, Vortega works those girls over almost as hard as I do,” I said aloud to no one in particular, a cheeky smirk appearing on my face. “Speaking of which… wasn’t Caletera supposed to be visiting today?”

Caletera was the name of one of the Andalusian delegate’s daughters, a beautiful, well-spoken tanned girl who was only a few years older than myself. The last time we’d spoken, if my memory served well, was not a very insightful conversation, as I find it is quite difficult to have a detailed discussion about the Kantian ethics behind the true value of Subjects and Predicates in regards to divine beings, real or false, when one member of said conversation is screaming in ecstasy into a pillow while the other one is making sure she isn’t gonna be able to sit down for a month.

But besides the roll in the sheets we’d had, as with a lot of my lovely ladies, we’d spent a lot of time in the castle gardens discussing different topics of wealth, responsibility, power, luxury and love well into the late hours of the night. Her mother, the Andalusian queen, had approved of her daughter interacting with a male member of the royal family, she herself having slapped the taste out of Blueblood’s mouth the last time they’d met for the way he’d spoken to Caletera, and that she’d hoped to use myself and her daughter as leverage to continue to relations between our two nations.

So that ended with us fucking in her room at the Andalusian embassy and Caletera reporting back to her mother, voicing her liking of the Equestrian kingdom, and her mother entering discussions with my Aunts about trade routes and war pacts. She’d said before that if she came back to Equestria she’d have no issue rekindling her holiday romance with myself, the one known as myself never having an issue bedding beautiful women, and today may be the day for that. At least I’d hoped so.

“Honestly, if you put as much effort into studying and training as you did fornicating with as many foreign women as possible,” I heard a familiar voice in my head chuckle, “You’d be running this country yourself by now.”

A smile came to my face as I heard the light chiding from my oldest friend, looking down at my palm to see the symbol that connected us: a three-teardrop, pyramid design. The top being the longest with the lower two being at an angle and slightly shorter, the skin this mark appeared on being a dark grey, glowing as our mental contact continued.

“That may be true, my dearest Grael,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and looking around for any sight of my companion. “But there’s more fun to women than there is to politics and the sort.”

“For the uneducated, remember the legends of Rognar the Insatiable?” Grael asked me from wherever he resided.“The ancient king of the south who, once in power, created his own little gaggle of women who swore allegiance to him? Bore fourteen children from him in their thirty years as his lovers?”

“Maybe you’re right, old friend,”  I chuckle, hearing the sound of claws clicking on stone behind me and the thick scent of water, meat and fur behind me informed me that my old friend was behind me. “Maybe I should try a little harder in my studies if the reward for it is an nearly infinite, and renewable, supply of nookie.”

“And I’m sure your mother would be proud,” the direwolf chuckled, his genuine, wolfish grin revealing his sharp teeth.

Right, lemme explain here. You guys know Philomena, right? Aunt Celestia’s pet phoenix? The red and yellow bird that’s belonged to her for thousands of years? Well, Philomena isn’t a one off just for her. Most of the royals are given pets to stay with them at birth, Celestia being presented with a Phoenix, Luna being given a Netherfalcon, and Cadance being gifted a three-tailed, golden fox from the Empress of Nippon, which Celestia explained was known as a kitsune, the Nipponese word for fox.

Or Kitty, as my one year old mother addressed it, being unable to actually pronounce the word kitsune. She was told a thousand times as she got older to rename the poor thing to an actual name, but she’d grown fond of the name, as had the animal itself. Which was, luckily, a female.

My animal, also being the only male one, was presented to be by the King of the Norsemen, Hrathald Grallson, on the grounds that “The only thing sharper and more dangerous than a king’s tongue is a wolf’s tooth.” So he presented to me the most powerful and deadly animal on his lands: a direwolf.

My mother was, of course, horrified that I’d been given a wolf as a present, especially seeing as how I was a newborn baby, due to the numerous documented accounts of wolves stealing children from their cots and tearing them apart, but my Aunt Celestia was able to calm her after she reminded her that the wolf wouldn’t want to harm me after the two of us went through the Writ of Kinship, an ancient rite that few went through that permanently bonded the mind, body, and soul of two beings together.

This created a telepathic link between myself and Grael, as well as two parts of us being exchanged, my immortality being given to him as well as the mark on his forehead appearing on my palm; this mark served as a warning system to one of us when the other was in danger, as well as signifying our link.

“Eh,” I shrugged, walking towards the five-foot-tall, jet black and white wolf, with a grin on my face. “She already thinks I’m a failure anyway.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Grael chuckled. “She has great expectations of you and believes you’ll do incredible things… I have no idea why, given the lack of accomplishments under your belt, but hey, you’ve always gotta have someone backing you up, right?”

“Alright, you don’t need to tell me I’m worthless,” I said with a shake of my head. “I get that enough from my Aunt Luna.”

“Speaking of our dearly beloved Aunt, she had a message for you actually,” Grael said, lowering his head to the floor and closing his eyes, using our link to send the memory directly to me.

I closed my eyes and watched through Grael’s colourless vision, seeing my Aunt Luna standing in her combat gear, consisting of lightweight, black leather armour, her long blue hair tied back into a high ponytail and her two swords belted at her hip, one steel and one silver. She had her usual angry look on her face, but it was less extreme than it usually was, always preferring Grael over myself, and she opened her mouth to speak.

“Tell Richter when you see him to come and meet me out at the Drowned Dales,” I saw her say, leaning down to Grael’s height.“I’ve got a little test lined up for him and I want to see how he performs in the field, instead of a classroom.”

Grael severed the link and allowed me back to my own sight, my blue eyes opening once more and breathing a sigh of relief as colour returned to the world, the once seemingly normal greens, reds and blues now being explosively saturated beauties I never knew I’d miss.

“A test?” I asked us both. “Great.”

“Indeed, we both know how that’ll go,” Grael nodded. “If it’s anything like the wyvern test, you’ll be in the infirmary for at least a week.”

“In my defence, I would’ve killed the fucker if she’d told me it could spit poison at me,” I said, a bitter taste forming in my mouth as I remembered the sting of that fucking reptile’s acid spit, capable or burning through even the best of armour within seconds.

I should be thankful for Aunt Luna saving me after it had melted through my sword, cutting the thing down in seconds and tending to my wounds, but as much as I’d like to kiss for her saving me, there was also the forty minutes I spent wanting to headbutt her as she continuously lectured me about footwork, staying back and learning an enemy’s movements, not getting greedy with attacks, and constantly replenishing the magical wards I’d set up for myself.

Though, at the risk of sounding like a whiny little bitch, it is quite difficult for a novice swordsman to remember footwork, guard, surroundings, enemy movements, correct posture, swing with the wrist and not the elbow, never attack unless your stance is perfect, withdraw the blade immediately for defensive movements, knees bent, shoulders relaxed, eyes forward, body turned, on your toes, weight on front leg, turn with hips upon swing, step forward for a lunge and immediately leap back but make sure you land perfectly on your feet again… and remember to add more of your magic energy to your fucking wards.

Did you get all that? Easy to remember right?

Wrong.

When you’re in a training hall, fighting dummies, it’s extremely easy to slowly work through the motions of these ‘boring and too easy combat styles, can’t we do something else, Aunt Luna?’ actions. But the second you get out into the field and have to not only stand toe-to-claw with a nine foot, flying, acid-spitting, clawing, biting fucking reptile, but also kill it? Forgive me if I sound like a pussy, but when you’re eleven years old,  roughly five-foot-nothing, and not too busy shitting yourself to remember to breathe when fighting a wyvern, then you might barely remember how to raise your arms, let alone killing the cunt.

“Richter… you’re doing it again,” Grael said, clicking his tongue to bring me out of my memories.

“Oh, right, yeah, sorry,” I said with a shake of my head, running my hand through my thick hair. “Oh, and Vortega has a message for you too, she says to stay out of the pantry or she’ll cook you and feed you to the guardsman.”

“Heh, I’d like to see her try,” Grael chuckled. “I’d tear her to pieces.”

“I know, killer, I know,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and sighing, staring down at the floor. “Right, now I need to head out to the Drowned Dales and have Luna do something like make me fight off ninety-seven Bloated using a Nipponese chopstick.”

“It must be fun to be you,” Grael said with a amused look. “All that seems to happen is you either flunk your studies or get beat up by your Aunt.”

“Don’t forget the sex,” I said, pointing at him with a wink. “The pussy makes it all worth it.”

“Ugh… where did Mom and Dad go wrong with you?”

“I’m sure they’re asking the same fuckin’ question, brother,” I said with a laugh.