Redux: Lineage

"I'm gonna die," I gasped, collapsing on the ground of the area we'd chosen to camp that night.

I was panting with exhaustion, dropping the pack I'd been forced to lug for several miles, and rolling over onto my stomach. Grael rolled his eyes as he walked over to me, looking down at my sweating-yet-freezing form before biting down on the scruff of my collar and dragging me over to a rock, resting me against it and dusting my torso off with his tail.

"I told you we shouldn't have made him carry it that far," Annerose said, dropping down off her horse and untying the saddlebags.

"And I told him that he'd conserve both breath and energy if he didn't fucking complain the entire time," Grael said, looking back at me with a bemused expression. "Seriously, it's only been twenty miles since we had to give your horse away. How are you this exhausted?"

"That fucking pack weighs nearly two hundred pounds!" I exclaimed, regretting it immediately as I started coughing, not having the air in my lungs for yelling. "If Luna had sorted out a horse than wasn't one foot in the grave already..."

"To be fair, I don't think Luna anticipated you leading the thing into a fucking trench and cutting its legs open on the rocks," Zane said, hopping down gracefully and hitching his horse to a nearby tree.

"I've said it a thousand times-" I began, only to be cut off by Grael.

"-it was a squirrel or a badger on the path and the horse got spooked, which is why it took off," he growled. "Or whatever excuse you use to justify being such a shitty rider."

"Hey!" I barked, coughing again. "The horses are already scared thanks to you being here. Some fucking rescue dog you turned out to be."

"I will bite your foot off," Grael said in a warning tone.

"Go on then, bitch," I said, scowling at him. "Fucking fight me."

"Alright, alright," Annerose said, getting in between the two of us. "We don't need Grael tearing you limb from limb."

"I'd fuck him up," I muttered under my breath.

"I believe that after you nearly murdered your horse," Grael spat.

"Say that to my face."

"Guys!" Annerose snapped, slapping us both around the back of the head. "We've all had a long day, okay? The last thing we all need is to spend the rest of the night hearing you two fannies angst and moan at each other. So with all due respect: shut the fuck up, you absolute twats."

With that, she moved away from the two of us to go and help Zane get out the camping supplies and set everything up.

"Prick," I growled at Grael.

"Asshole," he snorted, moving away with the others and leaving me sat on my own.

I continued to stare up at the starry sky, marveling at the constellations and beautiful scenery, only having the moment ruined by the slowly-creeping-in northern chill. We were nearly on our fourth day of the journey, just over the halfway point, and were drawing close to Winter's Maw. The landscape also started hinting at the cold we were due to face soon enough, with the ground frosting over every night, the trees changing from deciduous to evergreen in the forests, and the aforementioned northern wind starting to bite into our flesh. We were a day's ride away from needing to wear furs to prevent from freezing and it would only be made more difficult as we were down a horse after today's trench accident.

She'd gashed her legs and chest in a rocky trench after she'd bolted, leaving her in no shape to continue to travel, even with medical care given to her by Annerose. Luckily, we were close enough to a town to sell her off to a farmer for a pretty penny. The home-grown Equestrian Shire Horse was imported from the Kingdoms years ago and grew big and strong, much better than the usual runts in the border countries; even an injured one was worth more than a good amount. She'd said she'd wait for the girl to heal up before putting her to the fields, something the Shire Horse was bred to do; she is capable of pulling a plough that often needed two horses on their own through sheer strength.

So, after that debacle, I'd been forced to make the trip on foot, switching out with Zane and Annerose every now and again, and, much to our dismay, we believed that the lack of a horse would bump up the journey time by a good few hours, possibly an entire day if I got overly tired. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the thoughts of the still-long journey, and focus on something else. Though try as I might, I was barely able to think over the wind that had picked up, even hearing Annerose make a comment about it as she got the trovel out of the saddlebags to dig a firepit for us to sit around and warm up.

"Fuck me..." she said through chattering teeth. "I don't have enough blubber for this weather."

"I don't think any of us do," Zane said, rolling his own shoulders and blowing warm air into his hands. "It might be time to break out the fur coats for bed, methinks."

"Aye," she nodded, rubbing her slender arms to try and warm them up. "Are you good here while I grab a few of them?"

"I'll be fine," Zane nodded, taking the trovel when handed it and beginning to clear a spot where he'd dig. "Who's on for firewood and tinder duty tonight?"

"Richter is," Annerose said as she dug through the saddlebags.

"Rick?" Zane asked.

"Right," I sighed, getting to my tired legs and rolling my shoulders, teeth beginning to chatter as the wind started cutting through me. "I'll be back in a while."

"Take a knife," Zane said in a cautionary manner. "We don't know what's out there,"

"Will do," I nodded, turning to the raven-haired woman digging through the bags.

I walked over to her, looking over her shoulder and spotting the knife in a side pocket, reaching around her to stick my hand into the bag when she stepped back, accidentally pressing herself into me.

"Hello there," she said in a surprised manner. "You're nice and warm."

"Thank you," I said, placing another hand on her waist and spinning us both around, putting me in her place and her in mine. "You gonna help Zane with the food tonight?"

"If he needs it," she nodded. "Though I think the big guy can handle 'overly-salted hunk of beef and water'."

"Then I best get a start on that firewood," I said, grabbing the well-used hunting knife from the bags and fastening it to my belt. "You two have fun."

"I shall," she said, handing me one of the rough-looking fur coats, made of ugly-yet-warm sheepskin and barely holding together. "I gave you the one that smells kinda like piss. Because you're a good friend."

"Thank you," I said, rolling my eyes as I pulled the thing on and fastened it up. "And you were not kidding."

"Nope," she said, flashing me a smile. "Have fun out there!"

With that, she headed off back to Zane, taking up his job of setting the tents and bed rolls up while he dug out and constructed the fire pit.

"Grael!" I called, the wolf's head darting up from his lying down position as he heard me. "You coming?"

"Of course," he said, standing up and padding over to me. "Someone has to keep you from getting eaten. Or maiming innocent horses."

"Ha, funny," I said, walking ahead of him while he chuckled to himself.

The two of us took to the woods, heading into the evergreen territory and picking apart dead and dying trees, and testing the wood for dryness by splitting it open and not just the outside.

"Mind if I ask you a question?" Grael opened after a while.

"Go ahead," I said, using my weight to snap a large branch from a tree as I spoke.

"What are your thoughts on the dragon we're supposed to kill?"

"It's big and dangerous," I answered, using my knee to snap the branch into smaller and smaller pieces. "And it's gonna be tough to take down. Why?"

"Just wondering how sound the ethics are to this little journey," he responded. "If this dragon is as bad as we've been told, surely the other dragons would've stepped in and taken care of her?"

"If she was smashing eggs and killing their own, then yeah, they probably would've," I said, picking up the small bundle and carrying it in my arms. "But do you think the high and mighty dragons are going to come down from their mountains and plateaus to slay one of their own because she's killing a bunch of humans? We both know that dragons are stuck up and arrogant by nature. They feel they’re above everyone else and hate it when anyone thinks they're better. Why d'you think they've been at war with the High Elves at least once every two hundred years?"

"Still... I would've hoped they'd be willing to punish their own," Grael sighed, sniffing around old dens for rabbits or foxes to add to the fire.

"They did, remember?" I asked in a bitter tone. "They banished her. They washed their hands of her, so to speak, so anything she does isn't their problem anymore."

"That's..." he began, trying to find a word for it as he sat down, waiting for me to gather more sticks.

"I know, Grael," I nodded. "It's disgusting. But what can you expect from people that think they're better than everyone else?"

"Some attempt to prove that on at least a moral level?" he proposed.

"But they're clearly so above us that they don't even need to prove themselves to us vermin," I said, putting on my best snobbish voice. "They'd rather eat their own feet than seek validation and approval from the lesser beings."

"That sounds like a familiar attitude," Grael said.

"Yeah, it's called 'any noble that's never spent a few years of their life slumming it with the common folk'," I said with a smirk, stuffing several handfuls of Old Man's Beard into my pocket for tinder. "Though, on an unrelated note, wanna know one thing that annoys me?"

"What?"

"When a prince or princess isn't allowed to call their parent mom or dad," I said, airing a grievance I'd had for a while. "I think it's one of the most disgusting practices a parent can do, where they constantly treat their kid like just another subject and not something you're supposed to love and adore as they grow up."

"It could be done to teach them respect?" Grael offered. "Know who and when to bow your head to."

"Right, as nice as it is to be respectful to people and get along, allow me to indulge my bratty royal side, lemme channel my uncle for a second here," I said, clearing my throat. "As the Crown Prince and son of one of the most powerful beings on the face of the planet, who the actual fuck am I ever going to bow to? If I were a normal functioning Alicorn, I'd be a god walking among mice and wouldn't need to respect or bow to anyone's whims except my own."

"Wow. That is a phenomenal Blueblood impression," Grael chuckled. "But you sound like you've actually got balls between your legs and some manner of respectability. Try harder to sound like a whimpering cuck with no backbone next time, and you'll have it down-pat."

"Ah," I said, chuckling quietly to myself. "I'm positive Celestia wouldn't be too happy with this."

"To be honest, I'm pretty sure she wanted to strangle him by the time he was your age," Grael said, his tail wagging back and forth leisurely as he chuckled along with me. "I think she was always hoping he'd end up like you did, but he never managed it."

"I wonder why?" I said, kicking open a dead stump and looking inside, just out of curiosity's sake. "It's not like she's a bad parent. Look at how Cadance turned out."

"That brings me to another question: where are Cadance's parents?" Grael asked.

"I... they're dead, aren't they?" I asked in confusion, realising I had no actual clue where my other set of grandparents were.

"But they must've been Alicorn, right?" Grael asked. "They would've needed at least one of them to be in order to make Cadance. I've read up on Cadance before, and the history of her side of the family doesn't exist besides Luna and Celestia."

"I'm pretty sure that Celestia said they lived in hiding in another country after some witch hunt or something," I said, turning around and looking at him, realising that my arguments were sounding flimsier by the moment.

"And they just so happened to die seemingly days after Cadance was born, with no house, friends, or possessions, right at the same time Celestia just so happened to be in the country where, by her own admission, this family of hers was in hiding?" Grael asked. "That doesn't seem right to me."

"They were in hiding... for some reason... and then died," I said quietly, piecing it together. "So even if they were hiding from a witch hunt, it was in another country, so why would Equestria not have any records of them existing? The very fact they went into hiding because of the witch hunt means somebody knew they existed."

"Unless they didn't," Grael said.

"Go into hiding?"

"No," Grael said. "Didn't exist."

"And, what, Cadance is Celestia's daughter?" I asked. "Why wouldn't she just come clean and say that? There's nothing wrong with her having kids, is there?"

"Maybe there is," Grael shrugged. "Maybe there was some law, some agreement, or some bet made where Celestia needed to lie about having a child in order to have it stay valid."

"Must've been a pretty big bet to lie about having a child for," I said. "And how has nobody else put that together?"

"You didn't until just now," Grael said with a bland expression. "And they don't have access to the stuff we do behind closed doors. For all we know, there may be an entirely falsified library wing detailing everything about Cadance's parents that we've just never seen because we got the real version. And the real version that we got is 'Alicorn that bears a too-similar-to-not-be-the-daughter-of resemblance to Celestia appearing out of fucking nowhere, apparently from a family that is never mentioned anywhere, either by book or by Celestia or Luna themselves, and Celestia and Cadance seem to get on as mother and daughter without Cadance ever seeming to bring up her real parents."

"Maybe she doesn't know Celestia isn't..." I began, trailing off as I realised how stupid that sounded. "Lie to the public, sure, but why lie to Cadance? It's not like she was adopted into another family, and as far as I know, she's never called Celestia 'Mom' before."

"Publicly," Grael pointed out.

"That's a good point," I nodded, tearing a clump of dead moss from the side of the tree and stuffing it into the tinder pocket. "But why not tell us?"

"Afraid we might let it slip?" Grael suggested with a shrug. "I wouldn't trust a child with a secret that big."

"Yeah, not the best idea," I said, scratching the back of my head. "Maybe we should just ask them when we get home? I'm pretty sure they're not gonna throw us in the dungeon to never see the light of day again, is it?"

"It couldn't hurt," Grael agreed, sniffing the bundle of firewood and cocking his head. "This should be enough, right?"

"Yeah, it'll burn for a good few hours with this," I nodded, shaking the bundle of sticks. "Ready to head back?"

"Yeah, there's no good game around here to even bother chasing, so we'd best get back before the others get cold and hungry," Grael said, turning around and following our footprints back through the forest.

"I'm already both and about to be tired," I said with a yawn. "Think Annerose would let me snuggle in with her tonight?"

"For the millionth time: why don't you just try to court her already?" Grael asked in an exasperated manner.

"Because I don't want to court her," I said, unable to find the proper words to describe how I felt.

"You just want to fuck her then?" Grael asked, cutting straight to the chase.

"I... well..." I said, finally sighing and nodding my head. "Yeah... I mean, she's an amazing girl, she's funny, she's beautiful, but..."

"She doesn't get your heart going like she does your loins?" Grael offered.

"I'm so happy you're here to express my feelings for me," I nodded. "I've tried many, many times to try and feel romantic towards her, but it just doesn't click. I think about dates, and presents, and marriage and I just feel empty, but the second I think about her kneeling naked on my bed, with that big, smooth ass of hers pushed out, and those soft lips smiling eagerly at me from across the room-"

"-Richter, I can practically feel your brain melting from our link alone," Grael sighed. "Try to calm down a little, okay?"

"I can't help it, Grael. She just gets my fire going every time I think of her," I said, my smile fading as I faced reality once more. "But the reality is that I'm probably never going to get to sleep with her, not in a million years, without destroying her heart and her friendship."

"And why's that?" he asked me.

"Because I know that with nary an effort, I could charm her, say all of the things I needed to say to get her to fall in love with me, get her to truly believe that our hearts joined as one, convince her to come to bed with me, strip her off, and smash her as hard as I want..." I said, thinking of the events playing out in my head. "And then that's it. I've fucked her, so I've gotten all I need out of that relationship. If it was just a 'friends-with-benefits' deal like I want it to be, we could just go back to hanging out, training, and adventuring while fucking on the weekend or something. But with the person she is, with how she approaches sex and intimacy, I would have to hold her heart in my hand for her to ever consider letting me see her nude... and can you imagine what it would do to her if I just dropped her like that?"

"I... yes. It would probably kill her," Grael nodded. "I see your point."

"I know I could get her to love me, and I know I could get her in bed in less than three months, but I couldn't live with myself after breaking her heart from being the selfish bastard that I am," I sighed, feeling sick and disturbed from merely thinking about what she'd be like if that ever came to pass. "So, no. I'm not going to court her and I'm not going to fuck her either because it's just gonna ruin everything we have."

"If I can say it without you being offended... you'd be a shit husband," Grael said, blunt as a hammer.

"I know," I nodded, feeling no anger or disrespect in regards to his statement, merely acceptance and understanding.

"You couldn't keep to one woman if you tried," he continued. "And I genuinely believe that if you forced yourself to be with a single woman for more than six months, you'd end up getting cabin fever."

"I was with Calatera for at least a year," I said, throwing up a meager defence.

"Mostly because that relationship happened when she wouldn’t let go of you and the two of you used each other more as test dummies to find out what you liked and didn't like when it came to sex," Grael answered. "There was no romance or passion in that, and it was nothing more than hormone-fueled humping that ended pretty much when you figured out how to make each other cum."

"I miss her, actually," I said, thinking back to the dark-skinned beauty.

"For fuck's sake, man," Grael said. "You really can't help yourself, can you?"

"No, not really," I said with a chuckle. "I wonder how she's doing."

"Probably doing what you should be doing: focusing on learning to run the country you're due to rule and getting as much experience with it as possible," he answered. "She turned out to be a very good princess, you turned out to be a horndog that can barely keep from humping his throne."

"I'm not that bad," I said, rolling my shoulders as I carried the sticks. "I haven't slept with a new girl in at least a month."

"Then tell me the names of the last two women you had sex with?" Grael asked me.

"Alright... I am that bad," I laughed. "But you can't blame me solely for this. Sex is a two-way street, and if I'm having consensual sex with a random stranger for purely aesthetic reasons, then the chances are that they're doing the exact same thing."

"It's not exactly the most honourable thing to do," Grael commented, padding through a small snowdrift.

"I don't tend to enjoy myself in honourable ways," I shrugged. "You do you, and I'll do me."

"And every woman within an eight foot radius of you," Grael said in a scorning manner.

I kept quiet after that, merely whittling the time and distance away with random thoughts of food, sleep, and training before we made it back to the campground. I noticed the individual tents set up with the bedspreads underneath them with the other two huddled around the fire pit dug about a foot deep and surrounded by stones, waiting for us to return.

"Took you fucking long enough!" Annerose snapped as we broke the treeline. "I think my fucking toes have frozen together and then fallen the fuck off."

"Eh, quite whining," I said, dumping the sticks next to the pit and beginning to pile a few in there. "Where's the striker at?"

"I'll grab it," Annerose said, crawling over to the bags on her hands and knees.

My eyes wandered from the fire pit, trailing up the backs of Annerose's legs and focusing on her backside, staring rather hungrily at the thick rump steak as it swayed back and forth, signaling me like a moth to a flame as she searched through the bags.

"Richter," Grael said over our link in a disappointed manner.

"I want it in my face," I admitted. "She's perfect. Everything about her is fucking perfect."

"You need to stop torturing yourself over this," Grael said. "You've already said why you can't and won't, so why don't you let it go already?"

"I can't..." I sighed, shaking my head.

"Richter?" Annerose asked in an awkward manner, snapping me back to attention and away from the contact with Grael.

"Yeah?" I asked, seeing her looking at me with an unsure expression.

"Were you staring at my arse just then?" she asked.

"A little bit, yeah," I nodded with a smirk. "Is that a problem?"

"Ugh," she said, rolling her eyes and moving back over to the fire pit, settling down and attempting to strike the tinder alight. "Fucking typical."

She always laughed off shit like that; it'd become the norm between the two of us. Though I wonder what she'd feel if I told her how desperate I was to fuck her...