Vengeance would have slipped into another guilt induced state of derealization, had it not been for one of the ever helpful voices making itself known.

"Dance puppet, dance.
Tap dance to be exact.
Then grab the keys and stab the man in the urethra with them."

The dragon just stood still for a few moments and pondered the total inanity of this request, and whether or not it was worth even dignifying it with a response. Were they just torturing him for shits and giggles at this point? Why him? What did he do in some past life?

"Hey!" the quick squawk of a golden feathered griffin knocked him out of his contemplated state. He clapped twice "Chop chop we REALLY haven't got all damn day". Much to his ere the other griffins look just as impatient and unthankful, except perhaps the grey feathered one... goldie slammed his talons on the bars impatiently, "HEY! What the fuck is wrong with you, what are you staring at son?" A wall perhaps?

Right right, the key, what was he doing. The dragon chalked it up to the recent drama he'd been going through- oh that griffin was looking pretty pissed off he'd better get moving. On the table lay a saddlebag that presumably carried the key, a quick search confirmed this fact, knowing there'd probably been a need to carry things later one he slung it around his shoulder so that it hung from his stomach. It was pretty uncomfortable.

"Come-on, come-on they'll be reinforcements here any damn minute" the griffin he'd designated as goldie spewed impatiently.

Just as he was about to slide the key into the lock, a rather crazed voice spoke up.

"Hug the griffin!! HUG IT NOW!"

'wha- no fuck you you that-ah' Vengeance winced at the sudden headache that interrupted his thoughts, fuck no he wasn't hugging that guy, it'd be so awkward. He managed to unlock the door at least before the headache brought him to a crouch. He briefly acknowledged the air currents of four bodies moving past before the outside world became blurred from pain. It was an overwhelming unearthly pain, it didn't originate from any part of his body but rather seemed to come from his very soul. It manifested itself like an all encompassing cloud around his mind, twisting and working violently in more than 4 spatial dimensions, this alone caused a nasty headache.

The grey feathered griffin glanced back worriedly once he realized his new comrade was not following him, he came back to find the dragon crumpled to the floor, his head clasped tightly in his claws.

"Comrade? Comrade!" he came forward and shook the lizards arm, the dragon leapt forward and ensnared him within his arms.

Once his vision had cleared and the pain had almost receded, vengeance became aware that he had a ball of feathers pressed into his chest, he quickly became very uncomfortable and tried to let go or push him away before a voice quickly interjected.

"While you're hugging it, reach around and feel up its ass."

Barely able to curse his existence in time before the pain came back in full, the urge to do it's bidding akin to that feeling a generally content, non-suicidal man gets when confronted with a grisly bear and attempts to ignore his instinct to run away. To say the least the dragon soon became aware that his hand was full of coarse fur. He really didn't want to think of where it came from and the thought disgusted him.

After a while he realized he had been clenching his eyes shut in an attempt to make the situation go away, and still hadn't removed the claw partly due to a state of shock. He flinched away as if stung.

"I-I..." words failed him, spaghetti was falling out of his pockets at an alarming rate and all he could do is sit there chest to chest with the griffin too overwhelmed by nausea, embarrassment and shame to even move away. And then he felt the griffin return the favor, thus he continued to set a record for the number of times a dragon can enter shock in the course of one day.

A pair of male talons rested lightly on his shoulders before pushing the two persons apart slowly, he dared look down from the ceiling and instantly regretted it. The griffin held on his face a very coy expression of a man who'd just got lucky after a lifetime of blueballs. And it was directed at him... 'oh god why'.

"We should discuss this later... in private comrade, for now we must go" He separated the two and walked ahead, "come friend, the ponies have no doubt sent reinforcements"

"Cornelius" The female voice of the previous griffin hang out down the halls. "What the fuck are you doing, we gotta go man!".

Cornelius nodded "I know, we're coming" and with that he charged forward leaving vengeance to sit staring at the ground, wondering what the fuck just happened. And he stared, and stared. Then a tallon gingerly grasped his forearm, he flinched away as if burned.

The dragon looked up to see the griffin staring into his eye's with a look of utter concern "are you alright..." he asked as if talking to a crying woman he fancied. It made vengeances skin crawl. He answered coldly.

"Yea... yeah I'm fine, lets just go"

He tried to ignore the slightly hurt look on the griffins face before hurrying after him and out the building.

Taking flight was second nature to him, just as walking had been when this form was first adopted. It also had the unfortunate effect of giving him a lot of time to think about what just happened, it was honestly hard to decide which was worse, the guilt or the molestation. 'Seriously, fuck my life...'.

An Hour later the group had been flagged down and met up with another, larger force of griffins stationed in the nearby cave. It turned out they had been planning a rescue mission. After the brief commotion concerning the dragon where several soldiers attempted to stab him, it was eventually explained that he'd been the one who'd single handedly rescued them, as an apparent reward he was gifted with a sword and conscripted into service with the kings army. Which the dragon supposed was little better than slavery, but hey, at least they weren't killing him.

Que the voices:
"Well, you can be mister grumpypants all you want, but someday you will learn that being serious all the time will only get you to die alone and unhappy"

The dragon looked up from the stream he'd been staring into, after being conscripted he'd quickly secluded himself next to a small stream a short distance away from the camp in order to brood over his problems and reevaluate his extremely short blip of existence. He was what? 7? 8 hours old...? He wasTechnically too young for this bullshit. He briefly considered taking his anger out on the voices, but realized they'd never really responded in real time and so found the idea pointless.

*sigh*

"....He does have a good point though, fucking asshole...", he supposed that it might not be the worst idea to try and lighten up, it really couldn't hurt. 'Start by taking your mind off your problems', '...oh look, a bird, taking a bath... fuck I hate birds... why do I hate birds?'

" Ignore the Bird, follow the river...
and then chain all the fillies by their ankles, hanging from the trees with the chains you just acquired. Then eat the keys. Trust me. They're a good source of iron. Then, go bake a cupcake. With Cyan frosting. And Rainbow sprinkles."

Unable to deduce the source of the voice he settled for looking at the sky "Ok seriously... fuck you guys and your shit..." then glanced back at his bag, 'on second thought I am kinda hungry'. More like starving actually, he'd never eaten anything as of yet. Reaching into the cloth bag he eyed the key critically... it was a little rusted. He seemed to recall dragons eating gems and minerals from somewhere but as usual could not figure out where.

Shrugging he popped the key into his mouth and started chewing, it tasted like dirt. But to his great surprise his teeth cut through it like butter and the chunks seemed to melt. It was like his teeth and saliva contained magical enzymes designed to break down rocks and such... 'cool'. Now what...

"Assemble an army and conquer a slice of Equestria for yourself. Build a castle and live out your dragon days in luxury with dragon concubines as your empire grows. Come on, Celestia doesn't need all that land anyway..."

'Oh god not these fucking prinks agai-' He reconsidered, "actually... I kinda like this one... s'not a bad idea. Don't see how I could but, eh, I'll see what I can do".

The flapping of wings brought the dragon out of his stupor, a quick glance confirmed that it was cornelius. Vengeances went rigid and having no idea what to say, decided to totally ignore him by staring at a rock and hoping he'd go away. He quietly contemplated the way the stream made the reeds sway when a tallon gently brushed his thigh. It was quickly swatted away in disgust.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing... just... go away" The tallon quickly found it's way to the dragons shoulder, this caused the release of a long sigh of exhaustion.

"Listen, about what happened back there-"

Vengeance napped "NOTHING HAPPENED BACK THERE! Seriously man, just... drop it"

"You can't say that was simply nothing! Because-"

Some kind of dam broke, "Fuck! I'm not gay dude!"

"What... yes you are, you-" Cornelius was cut off again.

"NO! no look.... listen I... There are voices in my head ,that.. that tell me to do things... and I have to do it or-"

"You can just come out and say it, you don't find me attractive do you?"

"No, no I- wait what!?"

The griffin turned away, hurt and upset, "It's the scar isn't it, I would have understood comrade.. I would, but it's the fact you lied to me... made up this stupid tale..."

"No no that's not it at all!"

"Then what is it!?" a tear glistened in the birds eye as he turned to face the dragon, face balled up in frustration.

"....I seriously have voic-" The dragon recoiled as the slap whipped his head to the side. A slap from a trained soldier with a higher than average muscle mass. After coming back from his brief loss of consciousness he looked up to see grey feathers disappearing into the distance. It took a moment to collect himself after the realization that, yes, he'd just been slapped by a homosexual.

"Urgh..." Groaning he felt up his aching jaw, wincing as he found 3 new scratches added to the collection, oh and his nose was crooked and bleeding again. He'd have to set it... again. "Fucking asshole..." Perhaps he just wasn't suited to interaction of any kind with other sentient creatures, actually at this point he could happily go live by himself forever and never regret a thing. 'now I remember why I hate birds...'.

The cartilage between his nose, now bent, clicked as he forced it back into place again, a fresh wave of pain and blood ran from the injury and he lowered his shaking claws to the ground, letting out a shallow breath. He half wanted to rant about the overgrown bird, the other part was fully willing to forget about the entire ordeal, just glad the dickhead was gone. 'Seriously that faggot slappd me hard enough-'

"If we have Armok on our side, then we should dig deep. Get to the adamantine, then unleash hell. Hello little ponies, 300 or more demons the size of the statue of liberty are pointing themselves at you, led by one who was chosen by the god of blood. Blood will be shed, that is DAMN sure."

Sigh in a rather subdued manner the dragon asked himself, "Who the hell is this blood god they keep mentioning?" He had to admit the idea did fascinate him, pondering on whether or not to go learn some more about the subject, the dragon got up and washed his face in the stream.

>>Ditch the griffins and try to learn more about Armok

Ditch the griffins and fly in some aimless direction.
Trudge back to camp.

Or as always make a suggestion.

Author's Note

As always I didn't edit anything, so there will be a fuckton of grammatical/spelling errors. Also I overused "he". In conclusion I cannot write fanfiction.