Redux: Lineage

"You two really need to find a healthier way of working out your problems," Grael said, giving me a check-up in the form of sniffs as we sat down at an outcropping of rocks.

I'd been given a once-over by Luna, having my injuries healed up nice and easy, thankful that the Rite's rules didn't prevent her from healing me because the injuries I'd received were not sustained during the trial itself. We'd all headed back to the inn, the daylight hours still being in great supply, and with the day off, Grael and I soon wandered out of the city to see what was happening in the hills.

"It's bad for your health," he finished, sitting down on his haunches and cocking his head at me. "Is she alright now?"

"Yeah, just her usual attitude," I nodded, rubbing the back of my head and sighing. "She wants to be Lil Miss Perfect at everything, even if it's not within her physical boundaries to be."

"She works herself too hard," Grael said, licking his right paw as he lay down.

"I know," I nodded, sitting down on the ground and resting against him, the Direwolf flicking his tail over my waist and allowing me to fidget with it again. "I should make her take a few weeks off when we get back."

"She'd go stir crazy," Grael commented. "She can't sit still for more than three hours without needing to fight someone."

"Yeah, you're right," I said, looking up at the clear blue sky. "Weather's pretty good today. The sun's lovely."

"It's just a shame the air's so cold, especially up here," the Direwolf nodded, looking around at the higher area we'd wandered up to. "You sure you want to go check out the mountain top?"

"Yeah," I said, patting him on the ass as a signal that I was ready to move again. "I wanna see how nice the view gets."

"Very well," Grael agreed, getting up after I did and plodding along beside me. "How are you feeling about the wyvern nest?"

"I wasn't thinking about it until you mentioned it," I sighed, feeling that sick lurch in my stomach again. "Thanks."

"Just wanted to bring it out to air rather than let it stew away inside you," Grael said, shrugging as best he could while moving. "You think it's going to be a bad memory forever?"

"Probably not," I said, shaking my head. "Most likely going to be the same thing as killing someone: it's a horrible, soul-shattering experience until you eventually get over it. In fact, I think I feel worse about killing the wyverns."

"How so?" he asked, keeping to his usual standpoint of never providing judgement of me until he'd heard my reasoning.

"A human is something you can justify killing, you can reason with yourself that it needed to be done. Maybe they were a bad person, maybe they'd killed innocent people before?" I explained. "Humans, Elves, or whatever can live sinful lives by their own choices, and become objectively bad people, and that's what it's 'okay' to kill them, because you're getting rid of bad people that do bad things willingly."

"But that justification doesn't work for animals?" Grael asked.

"Exactly," I nodded. "I kill I guy because he killed someone, he deserved to die. I stab a dog through the skull when it's on guard duty because I need to get through there... what's the justification for that? I just killed an innocent animal that was only doing it's job, and wasn't doing it with malicious intent. Most animals don't hurt people for a sick sense of pleasure like people do. That dog did that because it had been trained to do so, because someone had shown it love and affection its entire life, praised and rewarded it for barking at strangers, thinking it was doing the right thing and making it's master proud..."

I trailed off after a moment, merely visualising and explaining that scenario making me feel sick to the core, Grael coming to a halt and looking at me with a worried gaze.

"That really upsets you, doesn't it?" he asked.

"Yeah, it does. I don't like killing innocent things, and what's more innocent than a dog doing what it was trained to do?" I asked him. "It's the same as stabbing it in the face when it sits on command... and it dies confused and in pain, being killed by some random stranger when it thought it was doing a good deed..."

"I think it'd be best if we stop talking about this," Grael said, gently nuzzling my cheek with his own. "You're getting more upset than this is worth."

"Yeah..." I sighed, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. "Probably for the best."

Grael then turned around and began to walk up the mountain while I was still holding onto him, now proceeding to drag me up the side of the hill.

"Why do you have to ruin everything?" I asked him in a bemused manner.

"It's what I was born to do," he chuckled, continuing to drag my further and further forward.

It soon became a test of commitment at this point, both of us testing the other to see which of our resolves would break first. Would I let go and start walking again or would he stop dragging me? The wolf had much more strength than I did, being able to carry me along as if I was a small satchel at his side, while I was supporting the entirety of my body weight with a relatively bad grip and bad position, and it soon caused my arms to ache. They eventually gave out, causing me to flop heavily onto the stone ground, knocking the wind out of myself and curling up into a pained ball.

"I honestly think my job as your babysitter would be so much easier if I didn't spend ninety percent of my time preventing you from doing something stupid," Grael said, walking over to me and biting down on the scruff of my collar, picking me up and dragging me once more. "Because you seem to be your own worst enemy so far."

"I'm not that bad," I said.

"The riverside at Manya's wedding party, the desert dunes in Aijhtahriah, the mountain climb on the coasts of Ard Cnoc, the ocean in Xiadian, the rainforest in Verdura," Grael listed, running down a long line of places where I'd nearly died thanks to my own stupidity. "And that's not even mentioning all the times you've nearly killed yourself in your own home."

"You have to give me points for never failing to idiot my way through an idiot-proof set-up," I shrugged, looking down at my boots to see how well they were dealing with the scraping of the rocky surface. "Say, do you wanna go back to the Zonghlu Monastery one of these days?"

"What inspired that question?" he asked me.

"Just getting chucked about on a rocky surface reminded me of Sifu Liang and the fact I said I'd go back to training with him one of these days," I shrugged.

"Is that Sifu Liang or Jiao?" Grael asked, dropping me from his maw and sitting down. "Because he will murder you if the answer is the latter."

"I mean..." I smirked, rolling onto my back and staring up at the blue sky as Grael settled down beside me. "It'd be nice to catch up with Jiao, she how her studies are going and everything, but I wanna get back to training with Sifu Liang because those hook swords of his were fucking awesome."

"You were terrible with them," Grael said. "You took what was meant to be a slashing-and-hooking weapon and turned it into a club."

"And that's why I wanna get back to training with him," I said, looking at the wolf's furry side. "So I can get better with them."

"The reason you can't do that with Luna?" Grael asked.

"Because I don't wanna use her for every single thing I learn," I shrugged. "I might find other trainers that have other ways of doing things, people that'll teach me something or some way to do stuff that she doesn't know."

"But do we have to go so far?" Grael asked, getting to the root of the problem.

"Really?" I asked him, rolling my head to the side and shooting him a questioning glance.

"Yes, really," he nodded. "I hate trekking through hills and dirt roads for hours and hours every day, only to get about four hours sleep in some ramshackle tent that falls down if I so much as sneeze near it."

I was silent for a moment, staring intently at the enormous Direwolf, the creature that was supposed to be the apex predator of the frozen plains of the north, as he continued to whine about travelling.

"You're such a bitch," I said, rolling my head away from him and looking back up at the sky.

"How is not wanting to walk my paws to the bone every day for six weeks being a bitch?" Grael demanded.

"Because you're supposed to be built for the wild," I said, sitting up and looking at him. "Wolves are some of the most versatile creatures in the world. You have cousins all over the world in all kinds of terrain. I think being brought up in a cushy castle has just made you soft. You've lost your animal edge and instinct over the years, and you're just a throw pillow that needs to be fed nowadays."

"Say what you will..." Grael huffed, lying flat on his side and staring off into the distance. "You at least get shoes..."

"Ugh..."

The two of us fell silent for a long while, merely lying down with nary a word nor wind between us, finding the warm sun breaking through the wind and weather to give us a relatively nice day amidst all the snow storms and blizzards this place seemed to get. The cloudless sky kicked up a memory in me, something from a long time ago. The last holiday my family had taken that wasn't a political trip with a few days off, but instead a real week to relax and do nothing. I remember looking up at a similar cloudless sky while lying on a white sand beach, next to my mother.

The two of us didn't talk much either, but we were happy to be sitting around and relaxing after spending the morning plodding through the ocean to find seashells and the sort. I would've been only... seven? Eight? Definitely one of those two, after Celestia had managed to stop a war in its tracks a few months earlier and Luna decided to cut her hair short. I remembered rolling over and snuggling into my mother, a warm arm wrapping over me as she snuggled back. It was just the two of us on that end of the beach at that point as we'd wandered pretty far. Grael had gone with dad to learn to catch fish, Celestia and Luna were at a spa of some sort, if my memory didn't fail me, so it was just us.

Though I'd never commented on it at the time, nor had I ever considered it as a child... my mother looked really good in a bikini. The loose string and lack of covering fabric really helped show off her phenomenal-

I was torn from my thoughts at what sounded like a tornado, powerful gales blasting over the hill we lay on, followed by an immense roar that seemed to shake the very ground we lay on. Grael and I rocketed up to our feet, our lazy-day attitudes gone with the wind as we both readied ourselves for combat, waiting for whatever was making such a noise to come and attack us. Seconds ticked by, Grael's fangs bared and my sword in my tight grip, only for us to realise that there was no threat closing in on us.

We remained completely still for a longer moment, eyes and ears peeled for any sort of movement or sound closing in, but the only sound we heard was the blasting of winds staying at the same distance it had been before. I motioned for us to see what it was over the hill, Grael taking point as he often did, and we crept up to the top of the rocky outcropping, eyes wide with horror as we saw what was making the noise:

Wings.

Colossal ones, spanning around one hundred and eighty feet, attached to the top of a snow-white dragon that stood at around sixty feet tall, currently waking up in the enormous valley beneath us. Shock and disbelief ran through both of us, amplified over our link, as we both saw how titanic this thing was. We knew it had to be the Narrowscale we were looking for, the colour, the closely-knit scales, the slender neck and smooth, angular head. This behemoth of a creature was supposed to be taken down by us, but from where I was lying then and there, it didn't seem like this thing could be killed by mortal men.

"How the hell are we supposed to kill this thing?" I asked Grael over our link.

"Weak points," he responded in a semi-calm manner. "If we aim for its belly and mouth, it should be too damaged to fight properly during the battle."

"That easy, huh?" I snapped.

"Obviously not," Grael said with his own snarling tone. "But if we forget this thing has weaknesses and start panicking right now, it'll chew us up in a matter of seconds when we actually need to fight it."

"Right... you're right," I nodded, looking over the enormous creature with a mix of shock and awe. "How do you even fight something this big?"

"I'm sure Luna's taken down bigger," Grael said in an attempt to be comforting.

"She has near-godly powerful magic and thousands of years of experience and training with killing monsters," I said, looking at him from the corner of my eye. "We have two mages that couldn't even climb a quarter of the way up the pedestal Luna's been napping on in terms of power."

"Do not lose hope," Grael said. "We can beat this thing."

"We need to go back and tell the others she's here," I said, looking back over the ridge.

"Worthless bastards!" we both heard the dragon scream, getting our attention immediately. "How dare they do this to me?!"

The two of us fell silent, our ears and eyes locked onto the dragoness as she began to rant, seemingly at someone we couldn't see.

"I was the one that built their temples, I was the one that laid their eggs!" she screamed. "I built the Citadel up to what it is today and they still banish me!? I'll kill them! I'll kill every single one of them!"

Whatever she was talking about, whoever she was talking to, she sounded angry about it, and it was a rage that made the hills themselves shake with fear.

"I am the Grand Matriarch of this entire Council, and here you stand, threatening me, a whelp such as yourself, demanding that I cease my actions against the filth of this world?!" she bellowed.

Okay, she was definitely talking to somebody else down there, and it seemed that she was about to blow her top in a matter of moments if the other person didn't calm her down.

"Grand Matriarch Heimili, I said no such thing!" a female voice, an extremely familiar female voice, said to her, clearly pleading with the dragoness to listen to her. "I am saying that I worry that your actions, these brutal attacks, against the other races of this land will not go unpunished for much longer. If you continue to burn and destroy their settlements, they will eventually rise up against you!"

"And if they so much as try, I shall burn them to ash and return their worthless ashes to the dirt they belong in!" Heimili roared, smoke billowing from her nostrils as she spoke. "And if anyone here need be burned, it is you, girl! You are the daughter to a Draconic Priestess, and here you are, begging a banished one like myself to spare the lives of vermin!"

"We do not need to start war with the other races, Grand Matriarch," the woman said, a pleading tone in her voice. "I will say the same to you as I have to the council: we only stand to benefit from an alliance with the others of this world, and if we merely drop this foolish pride we all cling to and accept that we are not perfect, then we can stand to-"

"Enough!" Heimili screamed, the sound of snow falling from mountain tops being audible moments after her screech, the woman falling silent. "I was willing to listen to you prattle on about your foolish desire for an alliance when you were but a hatchling, hoping that your pool of idiocy would dry up as you aged, but it seems that you've only become more foolish in your later years. I may be banished from our kind, but I still have the pride of our race burning in my heart, and I will not sit here and listen to your moronic drivel of unity and togetherness with creatures too weak to withstand our presence alone. We are a mighty race, the mightiest of them all, and we bow our heads to no one, not even in a friendly manner."

There was a silence between the two of them, neither speaking for a long moment as the sound of the wind rushing through the valley was all we could hear, only for it to be overwhelmed by a statement that sounded as full of apprehension as it got:

"If you're so mighty, then why aren't you sitting on the skulls of the Alicorn?" the woman asked, clearly aware of how much she was pushing her luck with this question. "Why haven't you taken Celestia's life and crown, if you're so mighty? Because I'm well aware that the two of you have battled before, and the only reason you still draw breath is because she took pity on you."

Heimili's nostrils began to billow smoke and fire out of them after this, her eyes glowing a bright red with fury and malice as she leaned down to the woman she obscured from our view, snorting loudly as she seemed to be preparing to vaporise her.

"Do what you will to me!" the woman yelled, a layer of anger now placed on her voice. "But they will know you killed me, and even for someone like you, killing one of our own kind is a crime punishable by death! You may brag about your strength and your might, Grand Matriarch, but even you aren't foolish enough to gain the ire of our entire race!"

Heimili froze in place for a long moment, her eyes still glowing and her nose still billowing smoke like a chimney, before the fire and smoke died down, replaced by a vicious snarl and a threatening growl in her voice as she spoke to the woman.

"I am giving you one last chance to drop your foolish crusade and return to your mother," Heimili snarled. "Because if you don't, punishment or not, I will kill you and strip the flesh from your bones for your insolence. Are we clear?"

"It's not too late to atone for what you've done," she responded in a quiet manner. "I'm sure if you ask me to, I can return to the Council and ask them what they need to void your banishment so you may-"

"Go," Heimili growled. "I will not tell you again, Svea."

The conversation went cold at that point, Heimili flaring her wings and taking off to the skies, Grael and I ducking as low as we could against the rocks and hoping she didn't notice us, leaving the woman, the same woman we'd seen in the wyvern nest, standing alone at the bottom of the valley, a look of conflict and anger on her face, gripping her hands down by her sides and gritting her teeth.

"We need to go back to the others," Grael said, getting to his paws. "Luna needs to hear about this."

I heard what he said but didn't seem to register his words, my mind instead completely absorbed in staring at the woman down in the valley. What had she been called? Svea, was it? An odd name, but fitting for her kind, it seems. I watched her move a lock of hair out of her perfect face, seeing her chest puff out as she sighed in anger, moments before she turned around and stalked away, her feet leaving molten prints in the rock where she stood.

"Richter?" Grael asked.

"Yeah," I nodded, looking away from her swaying hips and standing up. "I'm coming."