Once a Noble

“What do you mean it’s gone?” the large griffon asked with a low, intimidating rumble in his voice.

His advisor, a much smaller griffon with white plumage and a snowy coat, flinched away from the small bedroom table, then cleared his throat and reared up to point a talon at a line of numbers. “W-well, Sir. These are your finances from last quarter, around the time that stocks crashed, a-and all your investments went with them. The current cost of maintaining your assets is more than you’re making, and with such little working capital—”

Gris sighed and rubbed his eyes with his talons. “You’re saying I’m broke.”

The other griffon, somewhat small in comparison to Gris, cleared his throat, then gave his beak a couple of nervous clicks. “Well n-not broke... yet. But... you will be in about two months. Even if you sell all your assets, with the current market, it’s not enough to make up for—”

Gris silenced him with a gentle wave of his talons. “Okay, I get it.” He growled low in his throat, then leaned back in the chair and crossed his talons over his belly, drumming lightly on the smooth fur. “What exactly do you suggest I do?”

The little griffon gave a nervous chuckle, then glanced away, towards the window. “Well, as a professional, I’m obligated to tell you to hold on to what you can and set aside what you have left for taxes.”

Gris nodded. “Okay, now what would you do if you were in my position?”

He hesitated, then steepled his talons on the desk and looked over at Gris with an apologetic squint. “Bail. With the government failing and the economy nosediving, I’d bail—withdraw as much as I could in gold coin and run for the hills, because they're going to hit you for tax fraud, especially with what you had me write off last year.”

“Ah, yes... that.” Gris remained still for a moment, then slid his chair back and stood. He was large, even for griffon standards, towering over the other griffon by at least a foot. “Mind comping me a train ticket?”

The white griffon blinked. “Sir... I can’t afford—”

“I’ll let you stay in the house until it's seized,” Gris added with a little, charming flair to his voice.

His accountant hesitated, glanced around, then pushed back from the desk and stepped away. “Deal.”

Gris groaned under his breath and spared a hand to rub at his growling belly as he sat back under the shade of a roadside tree. The train had taken him to the edge of the griffon territories, and he had spent over half of his remaining currency on a ticket for the ship ride. Amongst him, thousands of others were fleeing the collapsing infrastructure of the Griffon Kingdom, and ticket prices to Equestria had absolutely skyrocketed.

It had been two weeks since then. Once he’d landed on the opposite shore, he’d taken to the trails. It hadn’t taken more than a day or two to realize that ponies, for whatever reason, seemed to absolutely hate griffons. The ones who weren’t biased towards him were scared of him, and anyone else who didn’t fall into those two fields couldn’t find a good use for him, considering his size. If Gris ducked and tucked his shoulders, he could fit through a normal Equestrian doorway, but it was tight. He was too big for most indoor jobs, and most outdoor ones required labor that he was just a little too prideful to do.

The once-prouder griffon watched as a wagon rolled by, two stallions pulling it. Once glanced his way, and his eyed widened. He looked over at the pony beside him, muttered something, then they both looked over. Gris looked back and felt a low, frustrated grumble rising in his throat, and again, his stomach growled. The griffon had never once experienced a time in his life where he was this hungry, and the blow it delivered to his pride was almost too much to bear.

He forced himself to look away, then stood and grabbed his pack to fish around inside. Soon, he pulled out a little sack, then dumped it out into his hand. Six Equestrian bits gleamed in the afternoon sun.

Gris sighed.

The little bell above the door jingled as Gris ducked his way through the doorway of the small store and glanced around. Dusty shelves were stocked with cans of this and that, bags of chips, salsa, jars of fruit, and whatever else. He moved forward, reading the labels on the cans as he passed. There was corn, beans, more corn, more beans, some carrots.

His belly growled again, and Gris was reminded frustratingly of the fact that most Equestrians didn’t stock anything with meat in it. He was starting to like ponies less and less with every passing day. After a couple more moments of glancing around, he grabbed himself a can of beans, a can of corn, and some assorted fruit slices in a jar. The serving sizes were pathetic for a creature his size, but he didn’t have the bits for anything else.

A lanky brown-yellow stallion awaited him at the counter, a white, backwards baseball cap on his head. Up until then, he had been busy counting the till, but as the griffon approached he looked up with a small jerk in surprise, then watched with unbridled repulsion. “The hell are you doing in here?” he asked with a bit of a drawl, looking the massive creature up and down.

Gris fought the urge to growl, and once again swallowed his pride. “Buying food,” he said, his voice tense.

The cashier lowered his brows, looked the griffon up and down, then shook his head. “Well you’re gonna have to go do that somewhere else, cause we’re damn tired of servin’ you griffons ‘round here.”

"We're?" the avian drawled, letting his eyebrows narrow some. "Who's 'we?'"

The yellow stallion seemed to get snagged up on that thought for a moment, then snorted and gave his eyes an over-dramatic roll. "Me an' the ponies who live around here."

Gris tensed, then sat back and set the groceries down on the counter with a light thud, then threw the pathetic bag of bits on top of them. “Just take the damn money.”

“No. My pa’ and my pa’s pa said one day you guys were gonna ruin Equestria, and now with alla’ you lot runnin’ from where you came from, I have to deal with you stupid birds more and more.”

Gris felt his eye twitch and he clenched his right hand on the edge of countertop, talons digging into the wood. "Just take the money, and I'll be on my way." His left arm tensed, and ground the talons on his hand together in anxious frustration.

“And still you guys keep comin!’ Can’t follow our laws, our rule, eatin’ meat and lookin’ at us like we’re rude for not havin’ it.” The yellow stallion took of his baseball cap, revealing a messy, short-cut green mane, then spit on the table in front of Gris. “Fuck you, and fuck your—”

Gris hardly even thought about what he was doing when he lashed out with his left hand. All three talons collided with the lanky stallion’s face, and with a smack from his palm, and a rip, the stallion’s head jerked hard to the right, a vicious spray of blood coating the countertop and the wall behind him. The stallion staggered, then fell and hit the floor out of sight, screaming. Gris let out a sharp breath, then inhaled slowly and reached for his groceries with a bloody hand. A moment later, however, he found himself stuck, eyeing the blood on his hand. Slowly, he raised his hand up in front of him, watching the blood drip from all three talons. There was another growl from his stomach...

Gris brought his hand closer, then slid out his tongue and licked the blood off the center talon, the coppery tang clinging to his taste buds. His eyes flicked back to the corn and the beans, then the stallion lying on the ground behind the counter screamed again. “Fuck man!” he slurred, thrashing on the ground. “You fuckin’ killed me! I’m gonna die!”

Gris wasn’t sure if he’d made up his mind, but his body had. Before he knew it, he found himself scaling the counter, talons ripping deep lines in the wood as he clambered over. The yellow stallion lay on the floor below him, his face torn, blood running in thick rivulets down his neck and pooling on the floor below. Gris licked his beak, then ducked his head and scrunched his brow, thinking of the best way to go about feeding on the stallion. Griffons, of course, had the ability to swallow prey whole, but he himself had never had anything larger than a rabbit. He could always just gut him, chew off a leg and leave him behind the counter, but that was a waste. He'd always looked down upon killing for sport; if a griffon was going to kill something, they should at least have intentions of eating it.

Gris’ stomach growled again, and that was it. He would grab a leg, break it or dislocate it, tear it free, then run for the hills. But he was certainly hungry enough to eat more than just a leg...

Again, instinct seemed to make up his mind for him. The bird of prey grabbed both of the stallion’s hind legs, then lifted them with a sharp tug and stuffed both hind hooves into his beak. The taste of dirt and sweat hit him immediately, and he grimaced a little, but pressed on, quickly pushing the stallion’s hooves through his maw and into his throat.

The yellow stallion thrashed, completely blind in his right eye and with blood pooled in the left. His forehooves scrabbled at the floor and he shook his head. “What the fuck are ya’ doing!?” he said in a flustered cry, attempting to kick his hind legs. “You gotta get me to a hospital!”

Gris was lost now. His hunger, combined with the rage towards the pony in his mouth pushing him onwards, and in no time he had taken the stallion up to his rump. Gris wondered briefly and comedically if what he was doing was considered gay as his tongue groped the stallion’s sheathe and sack, but that thought was gone a moment later as he squeezed the pony’s chest with both hands and stuffed his scrawny rump into his beak.

“No way! No fuckin’ way!” the yellow stallion cried with a bit of a gargle to his voice, forehooves scraping frantically at the wooden floor, smearing his own blood about. “You’re eatin’ me!? You can’t do that! I ain’t food!”

Gris moved his talons to the stallion’s shoulders, then lifted and flopped back on his rump, leaning against the cashier’s counter to let his hind legs splay out across the floor. He could feel the yellow stallion thrashing and squirming, trying to kick his hind legs in the tight confines of Gris’ throat, and Gris was taking more satisfaction than he’d like to admit in having complete control over the cashier.

He tilted his head back, then instinct took over and he gave a hard swallow, pulling the stallion down to his upper chest, his tongue probing and licking over his belly. “No! No Celestia please!” he blubbered, forehooves pedaling uselessly in the air in front of him. Gris swallowed again, and the stallion’s shoulders were pulled into his beak and forcefully pinned to his sides. Gris was in bliss, and he could already feel the pony’s hind hooves pushing into his stomach. Every breath the yellow stallion tried to inhale stretched Gris’ throat, and if Gris were to tense, he could push the air right back out of the pony’s lungs. The taste of blood ran over his tongue, still running thick and plentiful from the stallion’s torn face.

The yellow stallion had given up on words, and was now screaming incoherently. From where he sat on his rump, Gris tilted his head back a little bit more, then pigeon-swallowed a few times. In seconds, the stallion’s head, and his messy patch of green mane disappeared into Gris’ ravenous maw, leaving only a pair of squirming forelegs that were trying desperately to grasp at the edges of Gris’ beak. The griffon moaned—he couldn’t help it—then continued to his progress, moving a hand to his throat to massage it with his talons as the lump of the stallion started to glide down. Slowly, those forehooves disappeared as well, until Gris was finally able to close his beak with a violent ’clack,’ turning the stallion’s screams muffled and nearly-inaudible.

His hands went from his neck to his gut as the constrictions from his throat pushed the still very-much-alive stallion down his gullet, and he felt the bony shape of the stallion filling out in his gut, forced into a ball.

“Shoulda just let me pay,” he mumbled in a quiet voice, feeling a shudder run through his body as the outline of the stallion’s face disappeared into his chest. Two more swallows and his belly fully rounded out with the shape of the stallion. Gris grunted, then tensed his stomach and immediately felt it constrict the squirming stallion within, who screamed in agony this time, rather than fear. He shouted something, but it was too muffled for Gris to make out. Instead of replying, the griffon let out a shameless, borderline-perverse groan as he ran his talons over his squirming gut.

If the griffon had been in a more private area, he probably would have teased his member out of its sheathe and rubbed one off for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, but he was currently sitting in a store he didn’t own, with blood spattered all over the walls. So with a grunt, Gris rolled over onto his side, then pushed himself to all fours, his swollen stomach hanging below him. As large-bodied as he was, he probably could have passed the bulge off as a bad case of indigestion if it wasn’t still kicking and screaming... and sobbing.

It felt good, which was a strange feeling to experience for the griffon. He was snuffing out the life of a rude, bigoted pony because he was hungry... and it felt good. With this new, strange thought in his head, the griffon started for the door, his squirming gut swinging a little with each step. He could practically feel the bubbling in his stomach, and could only assume what his digestive enzymes were doing to his bigoted guest.

The door jangled on his way out, and he made sure to glance around sharply to verify that no one had seen him leaving the store. Once he was sure he was in the clear, Gris spread his massive wings, then leaped into the sky and started a gentle spiral upwards, his heavy gut weighing him down a little more than he had anticipated. It was a little difficult to compensate for the weight of another pony.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of this being a regular thing.

And it would be.