(For best effect, play Griffin's Lullaby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJyuUY2K8Jg)
The night was smooth, the world was peaceful. As the fires of the hearth gave warm light to the home and its inhabitants. The calm, still winter night was serene, as peace came to all that looked at the gentle sight. The glow the street posts lay upon the snow giving the view a warm personality. The moon gives the mountain above a lovely blue tint to the white snow that covered it.
A warm sound reaches the ears of a newborn child, as the gentle light made by the hearth is cast upon his mother. A flamboyant gryphon is what he sees, her eyes tinged with the golden reflection of the fire that was inside the home. Out on the balcony the mother soothes the child with a lullaby that blends with the environment
In the sky, a gryphon approaches and sets down on the balcony, careful not to stir the child. As the mother walks back in the house, the father puts up a curtain in front of the entrance and comes to sit next to his wife by the hearth. And they both sit in silence as the moment is far too precious to disturb.
The perfect start, for a life of a child. The perfect balance of a family with a bright future and a bond stronger than anything the world has seen in a long time.
The mother looks down at the child and up to her husband. Today was a special day, for today is the day they would name their child. It is an important day for newborns to receive their name, for it signifies the child has overcome its first weeks of life’s challenges. With the care and love of the parents, the child has been developed into what he will be named tonight.
With all their discussions, they will do the appropriate rites for the child to be named, as have agreed to the name already. The child was taken into the arms of the father as he looked into the eyes of his son. He saw the potential for the child to be whatever the world shaped him as. And with a strong but gentle voice said
“By the world we have what is given to us, and it has given us you. But now we have a gift for the world, and we give it a name. We name you…”
A loud roar shrouds the land and frightens the child. The parents quickly go to the balcony, but when they pull back the curtain it only gave them fear. A beam of black magic shoots into the sky on top of the mountain. And the moon was blocked out by sinister black clouds surrounding the mountain.
The mother ran inside to grab blankets and a winter cloak as the father flew into the pantry and wrapped a bundle of food and supplies. The child cried. Startled, scared, and simply terrified by the sound and the panic that ensued. Unable to comprehend what is happening.
The father pulled the bundle onto his back and ran to the window. What he saw was terrifying. The snow on the mountain was on fire, acting as fuel to feed it’s insatiable hunger. The sky tinged with blood red clouds and black lightning. At the center of the anomaly, came a deranged laugh that echoed throughout the valley.
“Discord has come! We need to leave!”
The wife had a look of pure horror on her face, she looked down at the child and saw him in distress.
“Where will we go? How can we escape?”
The child let out a cry with vigor and stirred in his mother’s arms. This was enough for the parents to take notice and act. They ran down the stairs and out into the street, the mother cloaked and the father at the lead. They cleared the side of a building and saw the panic the town was in. All able guards were called to arms as the families ran for their lives to the hills.
The family saw the square in a full panic and the father turned into an alley to avoid the panic. The three gryphons ran to an old bridge and heard a horrible scream of pain from somebody in town, followed by a spine-chilling laughter. The parents turned to see another gryphon ensnared by a veil of grey magic that belonged to none other than the terror himself. Although it was far away, they watched as the poor soul was smashed into buildings and thrown about the area. Then as he was let go, he fell from about a rooftops height and slammed into the ground at a horrible angle.
He looked up at his assailant and cowered in pain and fear. Until the terror unleashed his fury upon him and with a sickening snap, the victim fell limply to the ground.
Unable to bear witness to this no longer, the father rushed his wife down the street they were on. They pressed on through the city until the three were met with a group of ponies on their way to safety. As the father was just about to turn down a street, one of them stopped him.
“No! Don’t go that way! It’s coming our way!”
The father quickly turned around and they all ran down the sloped street. One of the ponies looked at the father with a worried glance.
“Where are we going? How do we get out of here”
The father gryphon look back at him with a look of submission.
“All of the main exits to the city are blocked. The skies are surely a death trap. I don’t know”
The pony looked upon the gryphon with fear. Then looked back at his wife as she nodded at him. While the gryphons came together and it slowly sank into their heads that the danger was absolute and merciless. Their thoughts went towards their child, still crying and scared.
They looked at him and realized how beautiful he really was. Even though he was scared and wailing, they saw the bond that would never die. The parents looked at each other and their conscious was clear, their love true, and their life was glorious. They looked at the ponies who were drawing a large circle in the dirt. The father spoke.
“What are you doing?”
“We are getting out of here. We are making a teleportation spell.”
The parents eyes lit up and realized that they might have a chance yet. They looked at the ponies and saw that they lacked the trait that gave unicorns magic. They were earth ponies.
“How will you do that? You are earth ponies.”
The female pony spoke this time and replied.
“We have a gem imbued with the magic, we draw the appropriate glyphs and the gem does the rest.”
Just as she finished explaining, an explosion of a nearby house caused them all to fall down. The group looked above the explosion and saw Discord approaching from the far side of the city. The father quickly turned to the ponies as they re-doubled their efforts to finish the rune on the ground.
The male pony walked to the family and had a somber face, for what he was about to do would break their hearts.
“I’m so sorry. We cant take you all.”
The father looked at him with utter shock. He couldn’t believe what he just heard. But the pony still spoke.
“We can only take three of us to safety.”
The father looked back at his wife, she was utterly heartbroken. She couldn’t take it, and with the child, started to cry. The father was no less heartbroken, but knew what this meant. Ke took his claw, and pulled his wifes chin to him and looked at her.
“We know what we must do.”
The mother couldn’t hold it any longer, she wailed into the blankets that wrapped her child. The father felt the tears fall from his facial feathers and looked back at the pony.
“Please take care of him.”
Before the pony could respond, another explosion caused them to look away, and when their gaze returned, they dreaded what they saw.
The blood tinged clouds held a slim silhouette of a demonic creature and the air was heavy with the maniacal chuckle of a demon. Discord sat in the air and put himself at a distance to the group.
“My my, what a surprise, a teleportation rune, and an earth pony as the pilot?”
They all stared at the Draconequis with fear as he slowly made his way to the house he just blew up.
“I’m sure you remembered you could only bring three through right? I mean not even I could resist such an opportunity for this tough decision.”
The group simply stared at discord, but soon something clicked in the father’s head and the instinct to protect the family broke him from the stun of fear. He approached Discord and entered a defensive position. Which amused him.
“Okay kitty. Since you seem so eager to learn your final lesson, I will humor you.”
With that, the father lunged at the beast with the fury of all of his being, as the beast dodged him he took to the sky and went for a power dive. His swiftness was reciprocated as Discord swiveled around and put his lions paw in the air as an orb of black magic formed in his palm.
The gryphon was quick to react and pulled out of his dive in time to evade the magical ball of energy. He looked behind him and saw his chance to strike. As he came around he banked right with his talons charged for a swipe. His claws sliced through flesh and grinded against bone. And after he raked Discord’s face with his talons he felt his sides getting torn by Discord’s own talons.
Needless to say that discord was clutching his face, as the gryphon shrieked like an eagle and fell. Bt as he fell, he saw his wife handing their child to the female pony, tears in her eyes as the child wailed from being taken away from his mother’s grasp. This infuriated him, and fueled his efforts. He wasn’t fighting to survive, no it was too late for survival. But he was fighting for the life of his son, as for the lives of the ones saving his son.
He turned and went for another swipe at Discord, but was met with a lion’s paw in the face. The father fell to the ground, he was clawed from his beak to his neck, and through his feathers were four clear red streaks.
The mother, fully prepared to defend her son let loose an ear piercing eagle shriek at discord. This was no shriek of just anger, this was a shriek of pure, relentless rage. Rage caused by her life, her son, and her family being torn away from her by the thing she was shrieking at.
She ran towards Discord at a supernatural speed, and tackled him to the ground. And was soon consumed by his veil of grey magic, and was cut off from the air around her. She soon started writhing on the ground as Discord looked down upon her smiling a toothy grin. His fun was soon interrupted by another shriek from behind him. He turned around and reacted just in time to release the mother and capture the other in his veil of magic.
The mother was released, and gasping for air as she looked up to her husband and heard a demented voice speak to him.
“I think I have humored you long enough.”
Upon his last words, he focused the magic to the gryphon’s chest, slowly crushing him. The mother watched in horror as her husband was getting the life crushed out of him. Still unable to stand, she looked at the ponies, who pulled out the large blue sapphire charging the spell.
The father felt nothing but pain, but his vision turned to the ponies who had his son. He saw the look on the male’s face as his wife dared not watch. The look was of pure agony, still, they locked their eyes. The pony then looked at the child, and back to the dying gryphon and nodded. With that, the gryphon closed his eyes for what was about to come.
The mother looked at the ponies as well, but her focus was on the child in the hooves of the female. With a light at the center of the rune building in intensity. She knew this was the end.
The ponies finally disappeared, and not a moment later came the end of the father’s life, and soon after the mother.
