The Famine Wars

Silver Rain shook in his steel armor as he stood amongst his brethren in the torchlight. He was acutely aware of the sheathed sword resting against his left flank, and his right hoof held a pure deathgrip on the pike thrust out before him. Somewhere off in the distance, a thunderstorm raged, and a distant flash of lightning briefly illuminated the row of stationed pegasi, at least a hundred, spanning in either direction. Dawn was somewhere on the horizon, but the clouds concealed and choked it away. The earth underhoof was still wet, and although the rain no longer fell, the air was still damp, and carried with it the scent of soaking earth and musk. Dew perspired on his armor, occasionally accumulating enough to roll down the smooth surface and drip onto his gray fur, further chilling him, as if the bite of the cold night wasn’t enough.

His comrades shuffled around him, their armor polished and new, unused, novice to the name of war.

“I can’t stand this waiting anymore,” said the pony to his left, voice little more than a whisper. The stallion, a smaller red pegasus with a blue mane, shifted his grip on the pike held out before him, then lifted a hoof to readjust his steel helmet. “Two weeks of training,” he blurted, his voice high, thin, and nervous. “A draft, two weeks of training, and then they send us to the front lines. I-I’m not ready for this. We’re not ready for this!”

Silver took a long breath, then let it out in an unintentionally shaky exhale. “Malt, right?”

The red stallion nodded. “Yeah.”

“Just try not to think about it, alright?” He looked off into the darkness ahead, then up at the night sky—there wasn’t a star to be seen, not through the thick layer of claustrophobic clouds that darkened the night and snuffed out the moon. “We’re two-hundred strong.”

“Have you ever even seen a griffon!?” Malt blurted in a whisper. Silver tensed up, then swallowed. “Well!?” the red pegasus pressed. “Have you?”

“No.”

“When we marched through camp, the wounded were talking about them. The griffon’s are nearly twice our size! One said... their commander doesn’t provide them with rations, so that their only source of food is the ponies they kill in battle. It’s to make them fight harder.”

Silver felt a tingly shiver run down his spine, and his whole body shook a little bit, his armor clattering. He fired a glare over at Malt. “Would you stop it!? You aren’t helping!”

Malt blinked a couple of times, then turned his head back to stare out ahead. “Sorry...”

A different voice chimed in from the right, from a white pegasus with a golden mane. “I heard their commander eats ponies whole, and alive.” He shuddered at his own statement, then lifted his pike and hugged it up against his chest for a moment as he stared off into the distance.

Silver turned his head sharply to him, jaw half-open in disdain. “Come on, man!”

The braying of a ram’s horn rang out clear and sharp from above, a warning call to those on the front line and the ponies lined up behind them ready to serve as the relief rotation. A collective tension filled the two-hundred or so pegasi upon the hilltop. From somewhere far ahead, through the mist, a single torchlight winked to life, then another, then three more, followed by a dozen. The rattle of heavy armor filled the night, accompanied by the scrape of talons on stone and the sound of swords being drawn from their sheathes. At least fifty torches now.

Silver gulped down deep breaths of cold air, looking around in panic at his comrades to see them in a similar state.

“They approach!” a booming voice shouted from just ahead. A green pegasus, clad in decorated armor, a brilliant fan of blue and white bristles atop his bronze helmet, hit the ground like a wrecking ball before the line of pegasi. “You all know why we’re here!” he bellowed, standing tall and firm before them. He turned his gaze left, then right, looking slowly down the line as more torches appeared behind him, the firelight flickering in his yellow eyes and dancing off his armor. He took a long, deep breath, then turned and started down the line with confident, firm and sharp strides, passing by Silver, inspirational in his very presence. “We are to stop the enemy advance by any means necessary! You are the only thing that stands between them, and our citizens retreating to the southern cities. Every stallion who can fight, will fight, for your sons, your daughters, your wives and loved ones as they flee to safety from the advancing griffon menace!” He paused once more, stopped, then turned and started back down the line in the other direction. “If any of you try to flee, you will be struck down by your comrades taking up the rear.” His words hung in the air for several seconds with a certain morbid ring. From behind him, the screech of a griffon pierced the night.

“Oh man... oh no oh man,” Malt whispered frantically from beside Silver. “We’re not supposed to win. They sent us out here to buy them time to regroup.”

“Shut up!” Silver hissed back.

The green stallion stopped once more, snapping his wings open, displaying a brilliant wingspan with majestic valor. “Many of you will die; there is no denying the cruelty of war. But by the Goddess, if I die then I’ll take at least ten of those oversized pigeons with me!” He thrust one hoof into the air and jeered, spurring a cry from the two-hundred pegasi in formation. As he turned to face the griffon advance, shady figures now moving in the mist, they let out their own jeer, and it was terrifying, like a million eagles screaming at once, so loud that it overloaded the ears and distorted the sound, like someone screaming in your ear.

“Military tactics one-oh-one!” Malt spluttered. “Feed the enemy so they stop to eat, and give the experienced soldiers time to regroup and form a proper defense!”

Silver snarled over at him. “I said shut up!”

“I’ll make it home for you,” the white stallion to the right whispered, pulling a pendant out from under his breastplate by the necklace string and pressing it briefly to his lips. He held it there for a second, then tucked it away and steeled himself, taking a firm grasp on his pike and jutting it forward.

Silver did so with his as well as their commander beat his wings to soar over the first line of defense and land just behind. “Thirty seconds, then you rotate! Remember, you just have to last until your turn is up! Then you get a break!”

They came all at once, out of the mist and out of the darkness like hellspawn, all different colors of brown and white, beaks of yellow and black and brown and gray, eyes like fire, burning with bloodlust and hunger. Their torches were tossed aside and to the ground as the feathered beasts advanced at full pelt, some flying low, swords already in taloned hands, while others ran on all fours.

The first griffon hit the line somewhere to Silver’s left, attempting to leap over the pikes with a mighty cry, but one caught him in the throat and that cry turned into a gurgle as the polearm snapped at the middle and the flailing griffon bowled through several pegasi standing just behind. They pounced him. Another reached the line to the right and knocked the leading stallion’s pike aside with his sword, but was subsequently skewered by two others, dropping dead on the spot. Shouts and screams and caws and cries and jeers and the screaming clash of metal-on-metal filled the night in a deafening cacophony of chaos as the first wave of attackers surged into the line, attacking weak points. Malt let out a feral scream of terror and forceful determination as a griffon threw itself at him, and steered his pike to catch the bird in the shoulder. The sharpened steel spearhead plunged into the creature, along with about a foot and a half of the haft before the wood snapped under its weight. The griffon screeched like a banshee and made a snap for Malt’s face with its beak, but missed.

Silver felt his hooves move of their own accord. He steered his pike to the left, and with a firm thrust, jabbed the lionbird in the side, just behind the foreleg—a clean kill, just like in training. It’s eyes shot wide, pupils amidst yellow irises swelling to an impossible size. It’s beak fell open, then it died.

“Look out!” the white stallion to Silver’s right yelled.

Silver turned just in time to see a white griffon soaring at him. He got his pike around just in time to stop it’s razor-sharp talons from digging into his throat, but not enough to line up the spearhead. It knocked him backwards, the two somersaulting into the relief force, the bird’s hind paws kicking and battering his armored belly, denting in his chestplate some. The bird’s massive wings extended, and it shoved away, taking to the air, making it a good five feet before the glistening end of a sword burst from its chest. The creature let out half a screech, then went limp and dropped back to the ground next to Silver like a sack of flour. Above, the commander hovered, a now-bloody sword held between his teeth. He flashed Silver a look, then dived off to the left.

The entire line was being forced back, and by the time Silver got back to his hooves, he was right at the front of it again. Left in their wake were bodies of both pegasi and griffon alike. Malt had since switched to his shortsword, having lost his pike, and was fighting with tears in his eyes as he stood up against a black griffon nearly twice his size, blocking blow after blow with his sword with surprising finesse. Silver made a stab at Malt’s foe with his pike, but the griffon snapped it’s left arm out, grabbed the wooden haft of the spear just below the spearhead, then snapped it right off.

It sent a bolt of pure terror through his body, a white-hot, lancing fear so great that he almost threw up. Malt screamed around the sword in his mouth. The golden-maned stallion to the right yanked his pike from a griffon’s neck, blood spattering his face and armor, then swung his weapon left and clobbered the black griffon in front of Malt across the back of the head with the flat of the blade. It was enough of a distraction for Malt to duck and plunge his sword into the beast’s neck, between it’s helmet and chestplate.

Silver just didn’t have enough time to warn him. From the sky dropped a sandy-brown griffon with broad shoulders and a black beak, glinting, and sharp, wide open. It locked around the golden-maned stallion’s throat, the curved tip ripping his flesh like tissue paper. The avian gave a powerful wrenching motion of it’s head, and ripped free all the flesh that came with it, and much of the meat of the stallion’s neck. His blue eyes went wide, and his body gave a light spasm before he staggered backwards and fell.

The tan griffon made eye contact with Silver; it was smirking around the mouthful of fur and flesh, a silver pendant hanging by it’s string from the left corner of its beak. The creature jerked his head and snapped down on what was in it’s mouth, then swallowed it whole, necklace and all, a little lump traveling smoothly down it’s throat as it took a step forward, licking the blood from its beak.

“Rotate!”

A hoof wrapped around him from behind and wrenched him back as the fresh wave of fighters surged forward to meet the griffon horde. Silver was left panting, blood spattered across his face as he hunched over and wheezed. A quick look over to his left showed Malt, bloody sword clenched between his teeth as he hunched over and sobbed.

“Forget this!” a yellow stallion screamed as he staggered back away from the line. “I’m not going back into that.” He turned and bolted towards the line of pegasi taking up the rear, their pikes up.

“Stop!” One of them yelled, lowering his pike. The yellow stallion didn’t stop, and Silver watched as he charged right into several outstretched polearms, skewing himself on them in an attempt to get away while the pegasi who’d stopped him stood with wide eyes. A blue stallion, who’d been attempting to flee as well, turned himself back around at the sight and then walked in a frantic circle, hyperventilating, shaking like a leaf as he clutched at a gash on his shoulder, helmet gone.

Then, in an instant, the line broke. About ten ponies down and to the left, the griffons burst through like water through a damn, surging into the relief force and turning what had been an organized front-to-front sparring into a skirmish free for all.

Silver could feel himself starting to hyperventilate, his breath catching in his chest as he watched their defenses crumble. The commander hovered just above the battle, spattered and streaked in blood, a vicious snarl on his face as he fought a smaller griffon with the remaining foot of his sword that hadn’t been broken off. He stabbed and the griffon spun into a dodge; the stallion pulled back and kicked him hard in the belly before giving a spin of his own and plunging the broken tip of the sword right through the griffon’s iron chestplate from the left side.

An almighty pair of wings framed the both of them from behind. Silver screamed for the commander to look, but his cry was lost amidst the screams of battle as an absolutely massive griffon surged out of the mist. It was the biggest creature Silver had ever seen, easily two, no, at least three times larger than an average pony. Were they standing side-by-side, the top of Silver’s head wouldn’t even have come up to its belly. He wore little armor, no more than bracers and a brilliantly intricate brass and steel helmet. His fur was dark brown, his plumage, a nightmarish ashy gray and his beak a brassy sort of yellow. His eyes were orange, and it may have just been an illusion, but they seemed to glow with a cool and mathematical precision.

The commander shoved the spasming griffon away with a snarl, then turned his head just in time to spot the beast as it outstretched it’s black talons. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. Those massive, taloned hands wrapped around his middle from both sides, and his momentum whiplashed the green pegasus so hard that his helmet flew off and went spinning away into the darkness. Flaring it’s oversized wings, the creature dragged through the air and pulled up into a hover, a snarling grin forming on it’s beak while it gazed into the eyes of the shocked pegasus. The two shared a look—it was brief, but the pegasus had a cool understanding about him, defeat in his eyes. He gave a tiny nod of his head to the griffon that held him like a toy, and the griffon gave a tiny nod of his head back.

Silver hadn’t expected it to eat him.

The creature opened his beak wide in a yawning stretch, then thrust the fully-armored stallion up into the chasm of its mouth. It was fast, and vicious, the bird threw his head back, opened wide, and with a series of harsh, jerking swallows brought the stallion in down to his upper chest, then his shoulders, then his rump, then just the tips of his hind hooves as his form bulged out in the front of the beast’s feathered throat. The fifth swallow, and the final one, sent the tips of his kicking hind hooves into its beak, which closed with a menacing ‘snap,’ the rest of the stallion sliding swiftly down the bird’s gullet to disappear completely from view into the massive barrel of his chest. A light bounce signified the stallion’s drop into the creature’s stomach, but aside from a slight rounding, there was no sign that he had even existed at all. The beast grinned to himself—it was a perverse sort of grin, one that reeked of ego and an almost sexual satisfaction as he half-lidded his eyes and took a moment to bask above the chaos and the fighting. He had enjoyed that, thoroughly.

Silver vomited right then and there, spilling his meager serving of beans and stew into the bloody dirt, his stomach tying itself into a knot as he retched and staggered to one side.

He looked up just in time to see the flash of a sword swiping towards his head. With no time to dodge, it struck the side of his helmet like a wrecking ball. Silver saw stars, then black as the sound of the battle around him started to fade.

A brilliant, orange-white light pierced his closed eyelids. Everything ached, from his head right down to his hooves, but especially his head. There was a throbbing in his right temple, somehow managing to be both dull and sharp at the same time, like a hangover crossed with a concussion. A low, barely-audible whine left his mouth as he opened his eyes to gaze up at the gray sky above. The sun had since crept over the horizon, but not by much, the mist in the air alight with it’s warm rays from clear skies to the east.

His helmet was gone, his armor scuffed and battered. Drunkenly, he let his head roll over to the left, and found himself staring at a gray griffon in light armor, his beak open in a silent, neverending cry, blue eyes wide open and glazed. Silver flinched, then lifted his head and immediately regretted the movement. Another corpse lay at his hooves, this one a blue pegasus.

“Hey, Baron!” a female voice called from a short distance away. Silver lifted his upper body with a small groan and turned to look to the source of the voice. It was a griffon, decidedly female, brown with dirty-gray plumage. She was also pointing directly at him.

Silver panicked and scrambled to get his hooves under him, roughly pushing up to all fours, despite the pain in his skull as he turned to run in the opposite direction. What met him was a solid wall of steel and graphite-colored feathers, and with a yelp, Silver bounced shoulder-first off the scuffed chestplate of an avian twice his size. He staggered, then crashed down on his side, wheezing. A powerful, black pair of talons pressed down on his flank, and he turned with a wince to look up into the brown eyes of a black-beaked, mud-brown griffon.

“Yeah,” the griffon said with somewhat of a deadpan to him. “Don’t try to run.” With his right hand, the bird took a firm grasp on Silver’s shoulder while he worked the sharp talons of his left hand under the pony’s armor to hack at the leather strap holding his chest and backplate together. His eyes flashed upwards, to the female griffon. “He’s not wounded by the looks of it!”

“Good find!” She paused. “You deal with him; I think I saw movement a little further down the hill.”

Silver could feel himself starting to tremble once more as the griffon almost effortlessly yanked him to a sitting position, his armor falling away to leave his coat fully exposed. Trying not to look at the beast of a creature in front of him, he instead looked around. There were bodies everywhere, abandoned swords, weapons, helmets. The morning sun seemed to illuminate the still-wet blood that stained the ground and painted the grass of the rocky hilltop. Amongst the dead were both pegasi and griffons... but there were a lot more pegasi by the looks of it. The further back he looked, the fewer griffon carcasses there were, a rather definitive sign of just when the battle had started to turn, and how.

“What’s your story?” The griffon before him chimed gruffly as he carelessly yanked the bracers from Silver’s hooves. “Get your lights knocked out, or did you hide?”

Silver shook his head, looking down to the ground as his head started to swim in panic. They had lost. They had been completely and utterly destroyed. Had anyone survived? Had there been a retreat or were they all dead on this hilltop?

He whimpered as a powerful set of talons wrapped around the top of his skull and yanked his head upwards, forcing him to look up into those large, brown eyes. “Speak.”

“I-I got hit!” Silver tried to shrink away, feeling those talons slip from his skull and slide dangerously through his mane.

Baron clicked his beak. “Well ain’t it your lucky day. Unless of course, you try to run.”

The screech of a griffon just over the hill caused Silver’s head to snap around, and some distance off, his eyes landed on a butter-yellow pegasus taking off towards the sky, frantically beating his wings as he climbed, stripped of his armor and cradling his right foreleg in the left, his shoulder and flank bloodied A second later, the female griffon he’d seen earlier appeared behind him, easily closing the distance between them as she gave chase.

Baron pointed with a single talon. “Watch. This is what happens if you try to run.”

Silver would have loved to see the stallion get away, but there was no chance in hell. The griffon hit him like a sack of bricks, tackling him right out of the air in a puff of yellow feathers before extending her wings and going into a light glide towards Silver and Baron with the thrashing pony in her grasp. She landed hard, just before the both of them, making sure to slam the yellow pegasus into the grass belly-first before pinning his shoulders with her talons and sitting herself down on his rump.

“Baron,” she said with a polite nod of her head and a small smile.

“Shale,” Barron said with a small nod of his own.

Silver looked between the two. It was strange seeing a griffon smile. He didn’t even know how they did it with those beaks, but the two were... quite obviously showing each other a likeness. He’d grown up under the impression that griffons were monsters—terrible creatures without emotions or sympathy. Even in training they’d pounded that into his head.

The yellow pegasus flapped his wings like a trapped canary, molting feathers and battering Shale’s sides with them as he tried his very hardest to wiggle free. “Let me go!” His eyes snapped to Silver. “H-help me! C’mon, we can take em!”

Silver swallowed, then looked up to Baron, who looked back to him and quirked an eyebrow.

“Talon wouldn’t want him,” she said with a grunt as she squeezed his shoulders with her talons. “He sure looks tasty.”

Baron gave his head a little shake. “This one I’ve got here seems well-mannered. Didn’t hide either. He’ll do.”

She looked down at the thrashing pegasus and licked her beak. “So, can I?”

Silver, thoroughly confused, snapped his eyes between the two. Eventually, Baron turned to look down at him. “Yes,” the griffon said firmly, keeping eye contact with Silver while he spoke. “Set an example for our new friend.” He reached out, talons extending, and Silver started to shy away, but the firm and dangerous look on Baron’s face froze him where he sat, and there was little he could do but let the large avian squeeze his shoulder and drag him up against his chest. Sitting back, Baron turned Silver to face Shale.

The large female had since sidled herself backwards with an eager wiggle of her hips, her talons sliding and groping down the pegasus’ body. “Finally. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve had a live one.”

“Get off me you fucking freak!” the stallion wheezed, looking back over his shoulder with terrified eyes.

Silver tried to look away as the griffon firmly grasped the stallion’s hind hooves in her talons and lifted them into the air, but Baron grabbed his head and turned it back. “Chances are no harm will come of you if you do as you’re told,” he rumbled.

Shale opened her beak wide, terrifyingly wide as she loomed behind the stallion’s upraised hind hooves, then stuffed them both in, right down to his knees. The stallion responded with a scream and a series of thrashing kicks, but she held him firmly in place with her talons before leaning in and dragging more of his hind legs into her gullet, talons sliding down to squeeze firmly at his hips and use them as a sort of handle while she started to shovel his rump past the edges of her beak.

Silver had flashbacks to the battle, the sight of the massive griffon looming towards his commander... how fast he’d made him disappear. What terrifying creatures griffons were that they could consume an entire pony whole, and alive. Worst of all, judging by the look on Shale’s face, it was more than just food to her. It seemed... sexualized, her eyes almost blissful as she jerked her head forward and stuffed the pegasus’ toned rump into the back of her mouth, the underside of her throat starting to bulge out with the girth of it while his forehooves dragged through the grass in panic.

“Help me!” the stallion gasped, pupils mere pinpricks as his wings buffeted the surrounding air. He stretched out a hoof to Silver as she dragged him back another foot, a strong and heavy gulp swallowing down his midsection while her talons slid down to his forelegs to pin them to his sides and stuff them into the corners of her beak. “Please, don’t let them do this!”

Silver gulped, unable to look away, both physically and mentally. It was horrific, and terrifying... but morbidly fascinating. He gave a tiny, daunted shake of his head before diverting his eyes from the fellow pegasus and instead, glancing into the hungry eyes of the griffon consuming him. She straightened up, throwing her head back and lifting the pegasus with her, straightening her body. He screamed at the sudden shift in posture, looking down in terror at the squirming bulge his body created in her throat as she jerked her head and swallowed. He was down to his chest now, and the top edge of her beak met his flapping wings. Considering they were still unfurled and beating at the air, and they couldn’t be folded back down, there wasn’t anywhere for them to go—Shale seemed to notice this, and with a particularly wide stretch of her beak, she scarfed him right down to his neck, his wings forced to fold upwards before she bit down on him. He screamed, and a brittle pop and a crack punctuated his cries of pain as one wing snapped at the base and the other dislocated entirely

Silver shuddered as the yellow stallion made eye contact with him one last time, one terrified eye framed in the bottom corner of the griffon’s open beak, his twitching, yellow wings extending out above his head, his body a wriggling, tight bulge in her throat that stretched all the way down to her chest.

Shale finished him with no grace whatsoever—she gave a small push off with her hind legs, jerking her body upwards and swallowing as her beak snapped down on his protruding wings. A muffled scream escaped her throat as the shape of the stallion slicked down it, his belly and shoulders clearly accented below her plumage as Shale almost venomously hacked down his wings, his body dragging them down with the rest, a couple dozen feathers molting off in the process and fluttering to the ground.

Silver watched the bulge of the stallion transfer from her throat to her belly, clear as day. Even though she was female, she was still large, and as the wingtips of the stallion slipped into her beak and the lump that was his head slid neatly into her chest, Silver was sure he saw the light bounce of her gut as the pegasus was deposited fully. Had he not been screaming and kicking, sending her gut jiggling and swaying back and forth, Silver likely wouldn’t have been able to guess that she’d eaten anyone. She just looked... pregnant.

Shale burped, and a collection of yellow down feathers misted the air in front of her. The griffon shifted, then sat back on her haunches and tilted her head back, letting out a pleased groan of self-satisfied, perverse pleasure as her left talon slid down her chest to her belly and took a handful of her own fur and healthy chub. It was rather clear, from her expression, and the weight around her belly and hips, that she had done this before.

Baron grabbed Silver under the chin in a gesture that would have been endearing, had the situation not been so dire, then lifted the stallion’s head in order to peer down into his eyes. “She likes them whole, and alive.” He paused. “Do we have an understanding?”

Silver gulped, then gave a minuscule nod of his head.

Baron nodded back. “Right, then walk with us, pegasus.” The griffon reached back, and from one of his bags, he retrieved a leather belt. Grabbing Silver by the hips, who squirmed ever so slightly, he wrapped the belt around his middle, then cinched it tight over the pegasus’ wings and set the buckle.

Shale stood with a happy sigh and made a slow, blatant show of stretching, letting her hind legs slide out through the grass while her swollen, heavy belly dipped down towards the ground. From within, there was a terrified, but muffled scream, and Silver couldn’t help but spot a series of light kicks and pushes against the inside of her stomach, outlined rather distinctly in her thin fur. “Hey Baron,” she chimed. “Not time for a quick romp, is there?”

The large griffon made a rumbling sound low in his throat, then chuckled and shook his head as he gave Silver a push to get him walking forward. “I wish there was.”

“Shame. It’s always better when they’re still kicking.”

Silver found himself walking between the two griffons, the female on the right close enough that he could hear the sloshing and gurgling from within her swollen gut as the griffon walked with a blatant sashay, purposefully swinging her belly left and right as she walked. Silver found himself clambering over bodies, and while there were plenty of swords within reach, he didn't dare to try to grab for any of them. They seemed to be walking towards what had been equine territory, only further reinforcing to Silver his presumed outcome of the battle.

The bodies stopped all at once. One moment, he could hardly even see the ground below the macabre carpet of corpses, then it was just grass streaked with the occasional bloodtrail. Further down the hill, towards the distant town nestled in the cleft of the valley, there were a couple more colored lumps lying in the grass, but it seemed that that was the end of it. Silver narrowed his eyes now, scanning the hillsides, and after some time, spotted what seemed to be a camp, small pillars of smoke rising from a dozen or so campfires. There was smoke from chimneys down in the town as well, which left Silver unsure of himself. Had the battle been lost? The fact that the griffons hadn’t yet taken the town could only mean that there was a garrisoned force there.

It appeared that the camp was where he was being lead, however, as it drew into sharper contrast, it became quite clear that it belonged to the griffons. Avians circled above, and a makeshift flag had been hung from the tip of a stripped sapling, it’s brilliant crimson crest against a white background flying against the morning sky.

A particularly feral scream from within Shale’s belly broke Silver’s focus, and both he and Baron glanced over at the same time. Shale just smirked.

The camp was much smaller than Silver had been expecting. From what he’d seen and heard of the griffon armies, they had camps that took up entire fields. This... likely wouldn’t house more than fifty griffons. As they drew near the edges of the camp, Silver was bombarded with the scent of meat, the roasting of it over fires. Past the tents, in the center of the clearing, there was a cart laden with the dead, and several fires all around where legs and wings and other cuts of meat were being cooked. Near the center, there was an entire pony on a rotisserie, skinned, only slightly charred; a bored-looking tawny griffon turned the handle from where he sat back on his haunches, a talon idly tracing through the fur of his lithe belly as he watched Silver pass with mild interest.

He tried not to look at the roasting bits of pony all around him as he was lead through the camp, to a particularly large tent near the back. He could feel every pair of eyes on him—every pair of hungry eyes.

Baron stopped him just outside, then sat back on his haunches and looked towards the closed tent flaps. “I’ve found one, Sir!”

There was a moment of silence, in which Silver felt himself start to shake, until a deep, rumbling voice spoke coolly from within. “Hiding?”

“Nah!” Shale called back. “Knocked out—isn’t wounded.”

Silver felt his heart beating in his head over the next couple seconds of silence.

“...Send him in.”

Baron drew in a deep breath, nodded to himself, then looked down to Silver. “I’m sure this goes without saying, but be respectful. Talon is known to be creative with his punishments.”

Silver let out a nervous chuckle, almost a sob, then looked over and up at Baron. “More creative than Shale?”

Shale snickered. “He’s funny. Can we keep him? I’ve always wanted a pegasus.”

Baron rolled his eyes, then reached over and grabbed Silver by the back of the neck. “Yes,” he said to Silver. Casually, but roughly, the griffon thrust him into the tent, throwing him down on his belly just inside as the flaps swung and closed behind him.

Silver felt the presence of the griffon before he looked up. Slowly bunching his shoulders, he pulled his forehooves forward, then slowly sat up, letting his eyes linger on the ground for several seconds, seeing nothing but the intricate rug that had been laid out across the floor of the tent and a pair of dark brown, and very large hind paws. Feeling himself start to tremble, Silver lifted his attention fully to gaze upon the griffon.

It was the same one he’d spotted in the battle, and now he knew his name—Talon, and he could see why. The griffons forearms, where the fur stopped and the birdlike part began, were the same brass-yellow as his beak, but the talons on each finger of his were black, and polished. He was even larger up close, even as he reclined back in what appeared to be a noble chair carved of wood and trimmed with fine metals. He didn’t have the posture of a noble, however—the griffon sat slumped, rather blatantly protruding his slightly-rounded belly, his forearms resting comfortably atop it while he drummed gently upon his fur with his right talons.

“So you’re the one?” he asked his voice low, booming, rumbling in his chest.

Silver couldn’t help but notice a rippled scar along the creature’s left shoulder, and other smaller ones on his belly. A mark speaking of a particularly bad, past wound traced along his inner right thigh, all the way from his hock to the cleft between his leg and his groin, where it tapered off. He was also no longer wearing armor of any kind.

Talon lifted his right hand and gestured Silver forward with a gentle curling of one of his three forefingers.

The pegasus felt himself obey, his hooves moving of their own accord, padding lightly over the rug underhoof as he drew closer. On the motion to sit, he did so, about five feet away from the griffon’s paws, neck craned to peer upward into those piercing orange eyes. “The... the one for what, S-sir?”

Talon narrowed his eyes some. “Do not call me sir,” he rumbled. “I am no authority over you.”

“Sorry, S—” Silver shut up, then gave his head a vigorous couple of nods. “Yes of course.”

Talon gazed down at him for several seconds, then rested his hands upon his belly and steepled his fingers. Silver shuddered as he felt a nearly earth shaking gurgle from within it, haunted with the remembrance of what it contained. “So,” the griffon finally spoke. “What do you think of this whole ordeal?”

Silver blinked. “Uh... excuse me?”

Talon gave a small wave of his hand, motioning circularly around the tent and to the implied countryside beyond. “This, all of this. The war, this battle. I want to know about you, how you got here.”

Silver gulped, glanced around some, then looked back to Talon. “...Me?”

The griffon narrows his brows. “You know I can just eat you and find another.”

“Sorry!” the pegasus blurted rather quickly, taking a moment to quell his case of the shakes and take a contemplative breath. “Truthfully?”

“I expect nothing but honesty, even if the reality of your words may be insulting.”

Silver took another moment to contemplate, letting his mind drift back to three weeks ago. “This... this was my first battle.”

Talon lifted a single brow. “Unfortunate.”

Silver gave a tentative nod, then continued. “I don’t even know what this war’s about. I was a baker’s apprentice. That’s what I do. I make bread, grind wheat... from a small town south of here. The army came with a draft, took any stallion old enough to fight. I’ve been a soldier a whole of two weeks.” He felt himself start to tremble again, a seething frustration coupled with resentment and disdain welling up from his belly. “This isn’t my war.”

Talon gave a simple, solitary nod. “Your unit was sacrificed for a tactical advantage. The rest of your forces have burned the countryside and retreated further south to regroup and form a proper defense of the southern cities. Were you aware of this?”

Silver stared at the ground for a moment, then gave a tentative nod. “I... had suspicions.”

“Welcome to war, pegasus.” Talon lifted one hind leg, then crossed it somewhat eloquently over the other before continuing. “What do you know of us griffons?”

Silver looked up. “Should I be talking to you about this?”

Talon just smirked. “No. However, if living is important to you, I would suggest you continue.

The air around Silver seemed to get frigid for several seconds as a wave of panic hit him like a wall and threatened to drag him out to sea. Be a traitor to his nation, or die; those were not good options. Then again... his nation had sacrificed him, thrown him away. “W-well... I’d heard that griffons were big... fierce, that they’d butchered entire towns, killed the stallions, raped the mares.” He gulped at the seething look on Talon’s face, then pressed on. “I heard that, to make you fight harder, they didn’t give you rations, so you could only eat if you won battles.”

Talon seemed to tense up for a second, then rather suddenly, a laugh burst forth from his beak. The griffon hung his head and spent a couple of moments chuckling before wiping away an imaginary tear from under his eye. “No, pegasus, we are not provided with rations, however it is not for that reason. We do not have rations, because there are no rations to give.”

Silver blinked. “I don’t... but the reason—”

Talon cut him off, his booming voice easily drowning out Silver’s. “Let me tell you how this war began. Many years ago, us griffons occupied much of the northern territory, pegasi, the south. Land was always disputed—there weren’t proper laws then—small quarrels between farmers and townsteads were common. Ponies outnumbered us by many. Your kind has a terrible habit of breeding like rabbits. Griffons reside from further north, where resources are often scarce—it has regulated our population. Most hens have no more than one chick over the course of their life. It wasn’t long before your kind realized that they greatly outnumbered us, and began to encroach upon our territories—pegasi needed more farmland to sustain a growing population; oceans surround this land on all four sides. There was nowhere to go but north. We resisted, but we didn’t have the numbers, and after all, we griffons had plenty of land and, and giving up some of it to avoid conflict with a powerful adversary seemed reasonable at the time.”

Silver found himself leaning in a little closer. He had no reason to believe what this griffon was saying to him, but Talon had proven himself to be honest so far. The tale he was telling certainly made a lot more sense than ‘griffons are greedy and evil’—the story he had been told back in training.

“So a hundred years go by, several generations, and the cycle repeats, pushing us further into the mountains to the north, into less fertile land. Another generation proceeds and we find ourselves with our backs to the ocean and our paws on the stone, high up in the cold where little food grows. Famine overtakes our flocks. A group of griffons, maybe numbering fifty, started to raid pegasus townsteads along our southern borders. Eventually, retaliation was launched from a coalition of the northern towns. The group was ambushed in a pass, slaughtered—they were fathers and sons, concerned family members feeding their loved ones, taking back what they saw as theirs.

Talon leaned in, narrowing his eyes at Silver as he loomed above him. “That’s when it started. Word traveled, and those mothers, those sons and daughters and friends of those slain spread about our lands with a message. The pegasi would tread upon us no more. It was sit and starve, or fight and feed. I was there when we launched the first attack with five-hundred strong, many years ago. We hit the town of Elnor. and devoured it.” Talon growled. “Every mare, every stallion, every daughter and son and foal. And for the first time in over two-hundred years, we feasted.” He rose up some with an almost gallant tilt of his beak. “One town was not enough for five hundred. We griffons can devour an entire pony, and back home, many still starved. We hit another, and a third, faster than word could travel south of our slaughter.”

Silver was trembling. His breath was tight in his chest as he chewed his lip. It... made sense, it really did, but one thing didn’t quite make sense to him. “But... wait,” he said tentatively. “It’s been years since the war started.”

“Four,” Talon rumbled.

“You’ve taken so much back. Why is there still a famine?”

Talon smiled. It was a bitter, hateful sort of smile that slowly turned into a sneer. “Because the pegasi could not simply relinquish our land!” he raised his voice, and balled up one hand into a fist. “They burned the fields, salted the land, poisoned it upon their retreat and slaughtered the woodland creatures! Nothing we took past the land at the base of the mountains would be able to yield crop or livestock for many years, with forests burned, creature carcasses scattered about and rotting in the baking sun, not even vultures around to prey on the remains!” He paused, drew in a long, deep breath, then smirked down at Silver. “We’ve grown... accustomed, to the taste of pegasus. You tell me, which is more evil—eating your foe, making them useful, even in death, rather than letting their carcasses rot in some field to be picked bare by the bees and the ants and the buzzards? Or salting the earth—destroying farmland and poisoning livestock, raping the land that was never even yours to begin with. I wonder if the pegasi know that we would have stopped long ago had we been able to. Our lands far to the north are only just becoming fertile once more—it’s nowhere near enough to feed our population. Griffons join the army to avoid starvation. Only the rich can afford to sit it out. Unlike the pegasi, almost every one of us fight.”

Silver braced for his next statement. “Okay but... eating them alive?” His eyes drifted down to the griffon’s belly. It was clear that Talon himself kept well-fed.

Talon blinked, then a slow grin crept onto his beak as he settled back into his chair. “Oh, you saw that?” He once again started to drum on his belly with his talons. “I will admit, I have worked up a particular... desire to consume creatures whole and alive. It is... absolutely divine. Even now, with you sitting before me, I must fight the urge to consume you, to let you slide down my gullet like a fish and let you drown in the remains of your commander.”

Silver felt his hinds start to shake, and he shrunk down before the beast before him. “P-please... don’t.”

Talon gave his head a light shake. “No. I need you. I’m actually somewhat fond of you, pegasus. You’re scared, and that is understandable, but you’re smart, and brave. And that is why you are going to carry my message.”

Silver’s ears perked up some. “Message?”

“I can foresee the end of this war, when we push the last of your kind to the ocean and devour them like the many before. This can not happen. With no pegasi left to eat, and no fertile land to farm, our collapse will shortly follow yours. I have seen what famine does to a nation, and I will not see it again. A compromise must be made, for the survival of both our nations.”

Silver stood up a little straighter, feeling a shiver run down his spine. Why him? Was it a simple case of being in the right place at the right time? After a moment, he voiced those thoughts in little more than a whisper. “Why... why me?”

Talon eased himself forward from his chair, haunches meeting the ground and resting there as he straightened his upper body and leaned in to make cold, objective eye contact with Silver. “Because you listened.” He turned and pushed up to all fours, and while the motion was little more than a casual shift for Talon, Silver couldn’t help but flinch away some as the massive griffon nearly bowled him off his hooves with a flick of his tail. “However, one pony’s message will likely fall on deaf ears, which is why I have a greater task for you.” Approaching a large trunk on the left side of the tent, Talon stopped just before it and lifted the lid with a dusty creak from the hinges. From it, he withdrew a small wooden box, and a pair of crimson red saddlebags fashioned for a pony. “What was left of your unit retreated to the town in the valley and took garrison there amongst the civilians, who were blocked from retreat by a second wing of my command.”

Silver motioned to the saddlebags with a small toss of his head. “What are those for?”

Talon turned and approached Silver, who did his very best not to flinch back when Talon reached down to snugly fit the two bags over his flanks, and over the belt that was still pinning his wings to his sides; it seemed evident that Talon didn’t want him to fly. “These bags contain documents, written accounts of the war that go much more in-depth than my own tellings.” Gingerly, he pried open the wooden box, then withdrew a large, golden pendant by the braided chain. Silver eyed it, spotting the distinct engraving of two griffons reared up facing one another, both clutching the hilt of a large sword which was thrust up into the air between them. “This is the crest of my king, which was bestowed upon his highest ranking official for this very task.” He spread the chain, then lowered it around Silver’s neck. “No griffon will dare to harm you while you and your party are in possession of it.”

Silver sat back on his haunches and lifted the crest with a forehoof, examining it further. “Party?” He looked up to Talon.

The griffon motioned away and to the left, the direction of the town. “You will rally the remnants of your comrades, and any of those in the town who wish to join your cause.”

Silver gave a gentle nod of his head as Talon stepped back, then squinted. “Why would they have any reason to listen to me?”

The griffon quirked a brow, then puffed up his chest some. “Aside from walking unharmed out of our camp graced with the highest mark of our authority?” He grinned, then made a hacking sound somewhere in the back of his throat. Silver tensed up as he watched a lump form in the griffon’s chest, then start to work it’s way up the creature’s throat as he gave several small jerks of his head, until with a hacking wretch, he spit up a massive pile of... pony onto the rug between them. Silver’s eyes went wide and he froze in place as he looked down at the messy ball of green fur and brown hair. Among it were the leather straps of what had once been armor and an etched steel chestplate, complete with all it’s decorations and four bracers, one for each hoof. The steel was twisted and bent, and among it were shards of broken bone and part of what Silver took to be the eye socket of a pony skull. What had once been a very much alive and gallant commanding officer, and his armor, had been reduced to little more than a boiling pot’s worth of soggy fur, shattered bone, and twisted metal.

“You will return to them their commander,” Talon said, his voice firm and resolute. “Any who do not wish to carry with them to the capital of your lands, the message that may save us all, will be free to follow instead in his footsteps.”

Silver retched and turned away, dry heaving a couple of times before giving a shaky nod of his head and slowly turning to face Talon once more, trying not to gag on the acidic scent of the pony remains before him. “Kind of a no-brainer.”

Talon flashed a brief smile, but it was gone a second later. “Assume his rank. Secure those in the town—they are likely presumed dead by now. Lead them to safety with the message of my kindness, and the threat of your, and our own downfall; let them spread across the land and speak it, spread it like the fire that that has ruined so much of this countryside. Take your troops, and take my message to your council with talk of peace, and compromise. Present to them the sealed documents within your bags, and return to me with their answer. I am the griffon ambassador, and you are my messenger.”