Lineage

I sat down on the edge of a wall in the Academy, staring out into the snowy wilderness as Grael padded up beside me, the large wolf sitting down and admiring the scenery himself.

“I heard you handled yourself rather well on the battlefield today,” he said, dragging his eyes over to me. “Impressed a large number of the students here. Even heard a few impressed words from Zane.”

“I guess,” I nodded, resting my arms on my knees.

“So how was your first taste?” he asked.

“Of what?” I responded. “Battle or magic?”

“Either or,” he shrugged. “Whichever left a lasting impression.”

“Killing is killing, really,” I said with a hand gesture. “Cutting someone down in a tavern over a woman is the same as cutting a man down on the field of war over a woman with a crown. I’ve been used to brutal slaughter ever since I was eight.”

“That’s not a good quality for a boy to develop with,” Grael commented.

“I’m not a psychopath, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I retorted.

“No… but you could’ve been,” he said with an inclined head. “If that behaviour is not addressed it can lead to serious problems. For instance, would you have sworn as a child if your mother had not told you it was wrong?”

“When I was really young, probably not,” I shrugged, looking at the black and white beast with another gesture of my hand. “But once I realised how ‘wrong’ it was, I started doing it more to sound more mature. Is that the point you were making? That I’d kill more people to seem more mature?”

“Not at all, my friend,” he said. “The point I was making was that you were taught that swearing and cursing is wrong, no? You may have still done it a lot of the time, but you understood there was a time and a place for it, as well as there being enforced punishments if you were to be caught swearing at such a young age, did you not?”

“I did,” I answered. “What point are you making again?”

“I’m just allowing you to ponder what you would’ve turned into if you’d not been taught that killing without remorse was not something to embrace or revel in,” Grael said sideways. “Just a thought.”

“No, you don’t get ‘just a thought’ in that head of yours,” I said, poking him in the shoulder. “You’ve been thinking about something and this is your sly way to poke and prod at me without seeming obvious. That doesn’t work with me. What are you really after?”

The Direwolf was silent for a long moment before sighing loudly, looking directly at me with a worried tone in his deep, gravelly voice.

“I merely worry about what you’ll become should you allowed to be trained by Aunt Luna,” Grael finally admitted. “She’s somewhat emotionless when it comes to day to day life, only knowing how to express anger and rage almost all hours of the day. The two of you are radically different to one another, but I still worry that half a decade in isolation with you will… taint the person you’ll develop into.”

“Do you really feel that way about her?” I asked in a surprised tone, turning to face him and leaning on my knee. “She may be a pain in the ass, but she’s still family.”

“I’m aware of that, Richter. But the things I’ve read on our Aunt make me worry both your psyche and your humanity,” he added.

“I’m not human,” I pointed out.

“You know what I mean, dickhead,” he growled, getting a small chuckle from me as a response. “Luna has trained herself to master nearly every form of combat, magic, and knowledge there is in this world, and the life she has lived has turned her into one of this world’s greatest warriors. It’s what sets her apart from her older sister, while Celestia excels in diplomacy, politics, and matters of the mind, Luna is a bare-knuckle fighter that was trained to be a princess, whereas Celestia was born to wear the crown.”

“So you’re saying that I shouldn’t become a great warrior?” I asked. “That I should settle down, get old, get fat, and sort out trade negotiations all day?”

“No, what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t sacrifice your humanity in order to achieve that status as a great warrior,” Grael said. “It’s true that Celestia’s life is a lot more uneventful than Luna’s. She doesn’t hunt monsters, slay militia groups, or train soldiers herself. She has more of a life that involves peaceful talks, warm conferences, and audiences with fellow monarchs.”

“Which is boring as fuck,” I pointed out.

“Irrelevant. The point still stands that Celestia has more of a calmness about her,” he continued. “Do you want to know what else Celestia has in her?”

“I get the feeling you’re going to tell me,”

“Life,” Grael said with emphasis. “Luna is dead to the world and dead on the inside, as anyone would be from the life she’s had to live thanks to her drive to become a great fighter. Have you seen half of the things she’s had to do in her life?”

“She told me about a run-in with a conjoined she had once,” I answered. “That was pretty brutal.”

“That’s one of her lighter tales,” Grael said. “I’ve read stories where innocent women were possessed by demons, with the only option being to slaughter them to free their suffering souls. Stories of her having to cut down entire villages of boys no older than thirteen due to them picking up swords to rebel against a government she was hired to defend. Stories of her needing to sit and watch over mass graves of former upper-class citizens for days on end to make sure they weren’t robbed or resurrected by necromancers. She’s trained students and become so close to them that she has considered them her children, only for them to turn on her in their adult life and need to be killed by her own hand.”

“She seems stable enough, from what I can see,” I interjected. “Sure, that’s fucking horrible, but she seems to cope with it.”

“A mirror shatters the most when first broken, less on the second after its repair, less on the third, and practically not at all on the fourth. Soon the mirror is broken so many times that it’s shards are nothing more than grains fitted together. These grains may be impossible to shatter from now on, but they will never function the way it was meant to again,” Grael quoted. “A passage from chapter 1, page three of ‘The Fragility of the Human Psyche’ by Vecturn Karla, a man who wrote that book after thirty years of treating soldiers exposed to carnage and war for most of their lives. Luna may have made her spirit indestructible, but this is because it has been broken too many times to have anything left to break.”

“And you don’t want that to happen to me, do you?” I asked.

“No. You’re my brother and I love you with all my soul,” Grael commented. “And I would rather spend my life protecting and defending the weak Richter that could not raise a hand to defend himself, then be pushed away by a Richter that can’t allow anyone into his heart because it’s too damaged to open.”

“Grael… c’mon…” I said, at a loss for words.

“Promise me she won’t ruin you,” Grael said. “I don’t expect you to come back the same man… but I do expect my brother to walk through the castle doors, and not the monster Luna has a habit of turning people into.”

With that, the Direwolf stood up and walked away, leaving me and my mind whirling with puzzlement as to where in the hell that came from. I got that he didn’t want me turning into some cold-hearted bastard, but was he seriously worried that I was going to become some sociopathic monster because Luna was going to train me? I figured I’d get to the root of the worry if I just talked to him a little more, but I figured he’d said all he wanted to at this point and wasn’t willing to say anymore.

I exhaled loudly, scratching the back of my head, at a loss for what I was meant to do. I realised now more than ever that I had a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders. Not just as a prince or a son, but also as the last surviving male of my species, as a fighter, as a warrior. I had a lot more expected of me than most eighteen year olds and I wasn’t sure if I could handle the pressure. Not to mention being dragged off to train for half a decade in a place I’d never heard of with a woman I didn’t exactly have the best relationship with. There were also the good things I’d have to leave behind: My family, all of the girls I had formed a connection with, the three children I was expecting to see in less than a year’s time that I’d have to up and abandon.

I placed my hands on my sides as I walked towards the drawbridge to the Academy, or at least what was left of it, before deciding that I’d solve my problems in the only way I knew how: Ignoring them and having sex with someone. I would’ve personally liked to drop in on Karra and Cadance, but since I didn’t really want to expose a history of incest that trailed back thousands of years to a Nekomata I’d only known for a week, I figured that was out of the question.

So I had my next best option: Ignore all of my problems and go to sleep. We were set to have a busy day tomorrow and I didn’t want to oversleep or be too tired to be useful when we marched for the Mother’s hole in the ground. Cadance had said that we were finishing this soon enough and I was more than ready to be done with this whole ordeal. I’d spent enough time in this frozen place. So first: Bed, second: Victory.

It turns out I was more on point than I thought I’d be with my guess, having been woken up by my mother at a relatively early hour to be taken downstairs, fed, watered, and armoured with the rest of my family as they all prepared themselves for battle. I knew that it wasn’t going to be a straight walk to the finish line as we still had one more champion to go through before we got the completed key, as we had two from the first and the door to the richer estates opened, but still lacked the final piece. We didn’t know exactly where the third key fragment would be, but it would be an obvious guess to say it was deeper down in the city.

“So are we sticking to any specific formation today?” Luna asked across a table as she adjusted her gauntlets to sit better.

“Not especially,” Celestia responded as she tied her long hair behind her head in a ponytail, similar to the style Cadance had hers in when scrunchied up. “We aren’t going to be dealing with more than one opponent at a time if this goes well, so we don’t need colour coordination or magical buffing lines this time. Thankfully so, as having Richter with us puts us to five, which throws off the system a little bit.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“Don’t worry about it,” Celestia said, sliding several inches of her sword out from her side before hitting it home again. “Like I said: We aren’t going to be using our usual formations today. It’s just going to be a uncoordinated dust-up.”

“About as uncoordinated as a recon-informed infiltration team can be?” Luna asked.

“You know it,” Celestia winked. “Now while I’m not giving specific orders for who goes with who, you can buddy up and trade buddies with whoever you think would benefit the most from your company. Remember not to be selfish with your partner if they’re needed somewhere else. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team’”

It was less than a second after the sentence ended before I was grabbed from both sides by Twilight and Cadance, both hugging my arms tightly with wide smiles on their faces. Luna rolled her eyes and walked over to Celestia, patting her on the shoulder as she walked past and nodding at her.

“Seems this went exactly as anticipated,” she chuckled, tucking a leather strap into her leg guards before straightening up again. “Are we ready to move out?”

We all gave the all-clear, the five of us using a portal to teleport outside the city and remembering to use the door Svea had made to prevent the curse of the city from affecting us. With access to Alicorn magic, there were several floating orbs of light illuminating our path as well as a good ten minute walk session where my family threw as many wards and defensive spells on me as they could think of.

“How come you guys don’t need any?” I asked.

“Because the armour we’re all wearing has been enchanted with so many different wards, defenses, and resistances that have been continuously strengthened by us pouring more energy into their reserves that we could survive being thrown into an active volcano,” Luna explained.

“What about the parts of you it doesn’t cover?” I asked.

“The wards can be engineered to cover parts of the body that the armour doesn’t cover,” Luna continued. “Why do you think you see women running around in armour that’s essentially nothing more than lingerie?”

“Huh…” I nodded, scratching the back of my head. “I never knew that was how that worked.”

“Yup,” Cadance nodded. “I own one myself, but the lack of padding in the breast cups for the armour makes them really uncomfortable to wear after a few hours, especially if the armour is fitted and not just literal cups.”

“I can imagine,” I nodded. “What do you do with it now?”

“I usually just wear it for sex,” she shrugged.

“Can we get back on track here?” Celestia asked in an irritated tone.

“Right, fine,” Cadance with a nod. “Let’s start talking about all the other interesting things we’ve got going on in this boring as fuck corpse of a city. Anyone wanna go first?”

The silence was only kept at bay by the sound of footsteps hitting the stone floors before I opened my mouth.

“I know that there are thirteen different knots that you can use to hitch a horse,” I said after a moment.

Nobody seemed willing to inquire about them. That made me sad.