Exodus, The Beginning

So it’s been roughly about 6 months since I arrived in this world and some of the memories of the first days are a little fuzzy. I remembered that after being woken up by Lucy from that strange lucid dream, 4 people of the group or at least what the Griffins authorities believed to be the “leaders” of our little company had already explained the general situation in the meeting.

First, we were not in trouble of being incarcerated or detained in anyway at the moment, according to Captain Silver monster activities has escalated and some nearby towns were on danger of being attacked and were calling for assistance. And to add the strange element, our little group just walked out of the most dangerous forest unscathed avoiding all type of patrols on the border. So the griffins wanted us to work with them apparently as a support to the town militia and the guards, until new reinforcements arrive from the nearby City.

Second, because of the importance of the location of the city, even though it was a small in comparison with the others places in Griffonstone, it was located in a cross road between 2 of the main important roads leading to the rest of the capital cities, so it was more like a gate to the rest of the country considering that it withheld the wildlife and threats of the untamed forests of the Eastern border. At least we now we knew were the hell we were, but entering a country with out money or documents seems a little sketchy since we weren’t refugees from a nearby town or country, specially with this situation happening on this side of the kingdom.

And Third our little group was having a discussion on what to do, mind you dear readers, that some of us were hunters by hobby, not tracers or hunters for the profession of it, or even had any experience in conflicts whatsoever. And to add a little drama on the matter, many of the people of our group myself included, didn’t like the idea that our so called “leaders” just took a decision with out our consent specially since some of us were asleep.

All of this happened when I was dreaming about doors, pretty horses and books, kinda felt like an idiot at first, but the more I thought about it....I’ve never remembered dreams with that much clarity or detail. I was questioning that in my mind, when Austin spoke up along with Prag (one of the Slavs that didn’t want to be excluded from the leader meeting), they explained that our little Cpt. Silver was more than willing to vouch for us and reward us for our help if we wished to take the job. Otherwise we would have to be taken to border in shackles and be deported from the country. The guy was a good, honest leader and didn’t want to cause any conflict between us, but he was loyal to his people and his duty to his kingdom, seeing a bunch of illegal “aliens” just trotting around seemed suspicious and couldn’t be ignored regardless of the nature of our arrival, I guess we did leave a lot of unexplained on that matter. But deportation was the lesser of evils, at least that way we still had a choice on were to go next, but we were going into the unknown alone.

We thought about it for a coupe of seconds and we all chose to take the job and went to rearm ourselves thinking about the pros of the situation and how well equipped we were in comparison to some of the guards here, THAT gave us some confidence. Some of the griffins were looking at our gear with curiosity, the way the bolts, wheels and magazines just make a little but ominous noise when locked, and the clicks of the bullets being loaded into chambers seems to get the attention of everygriffin in the armory.

Like I told you before the most advanced weapons in the armory of the griffiins were medieval and there were located in the hips of the knights, a single handed short crossbow with detailed ornaments, dangling from the upper flank of the Knights. The knights themselves looked more like shining gothic knights from medieval Germany with a few changes in details here and there, aside from Halberds, they were equipped with beautiful swords and their armored claws seemed a little bit longer than normal. They wore some sort of protection on the wings, covering most of the upper part that connected the wing muscles.

The rest of the guards were armed with segmented armor and pieces of chain mail, their weapons were pole arms, for example, spears and variants of the same weapon or they were armed with longbows and short swords for those who were part of the ranged troops.

Finally the militia, who were the poor unlucky sods that made up the most numerous part of the force, armed with equipment that had seen better days. but were maintained. Still you could see scratches and dents, old swords from the armory and normal axes that were reforged to give them a more “combat” use, the one thing that did looked well maintained was their daggers and knives, I guess family heirlooms or personal weapons being passed down from generations to another, tools that were the important part of the daily life of the common griffin living in the Borderlands of the kingdom.

Our equipment besides our guns was made out with what we were carrying the moment we “poofed” into this world,
our clothes were suitable for the cold of the mountain but didn’t had any of the “tactical and militaristic” look, typical every day fashion combined with our bags that were made of different bright colors. If we somehow we needed to be stealthy, the only thing enemy was going to see was our fashioned clothes and the trend we followed, we got better chances of hiding in a house party rather than the woods, still it gave a great protection from the elements, at least we got that covered.

Aside from electronics like cellphones, solar or external battery charges, tablets and eBooks, we got miscellaneous stuff, like glue, Swiss army knives of different sizes, multi tools, duct tape and one of the guy got one of those fire starters, the one you use a knife on it and it throw sparks?, small size and it was dangling with the rest of his house keys, not exactly useful it looked more like a prop. Yours truly got my notebook and wireless headphones. All in all nothing that could give us some advantage if we were going to be attacked by some mutated bear on steroids or something.

We didn’t put that much importance into our gear, because apparently we were going to hunt some dangerous animals and not face a medieval army of barbarians, we were going to shoot them from a distance not fight them in close combat. That’s was the thoughts that ran through my mind, until we saw the surprised look the griffins gave us, it wasn’t the fact that we were not carrying any type of armor at all, but most of our changed apparel had different designs, the girls of the group changed into typical sports clothing on the top and jeans, some light jackets that looked like designer brand, the guys went from simple shirts to puffier jackets, black or dark jeans or cargo pants of the same color. All of that with out taking in consideration our footwear, not exactly mountain wear but way better than bear footed like most griffins.
I guess the texture of our clothing was real alien to them, or that we just prove them that we could afford more than 1 piece of clothing, I also guess that luxury is only reserved to the higher classes in this world.

We forgot that comfort was a real luxury that most people couldn’t afford, I felt a little sad until one griffin got close to me and asked about my shirt, I was wearing one of those printed Lord of the Rings shirt, you know the one with the White Tree and the crown (old design but I bought it brand new because I like it better than wearing pajamas at home), I tried to explain to him the meaning behind it, but the moment I started to introduce the whole world of Tolkien, I realized that I had a whole audience looking at me asking all sort of questions, Who’s Isildur? What happened to the Ring? Did your kings really fell into darkness? and on and on. Never got the chance to tell them it was just a story. But to them seeing a bunch of human telling the history on how humanity fought against dark forces of destruction and win to tell the tale seems to only push them to ask for more, that’s when we all got into telling them about other epic tales of our world, knowing that another race was going to help them face the dangers that threaten their kingdom and that their exaggerated idea that we came from the very same world that braved even darkness itself, put them in a good mood.
I didn’t want to break their hearts telling them that it was fiction but morale was high and we needed that. That's when we changed the subject and asked them for stories of their heroes, and boy let me tell you how they almost were familiar references to the classic tales back home.

One of the most curious female knights kept asking me questions from the moment we left the armory to the open road, her name was Leonie Brunhilde, a younger noble girl from a small noble household that was famous not because of the riches or power but for their ancestry, one of the few older houses of nobility that has been with king Grover ever since he united the kingdom all those years ago.
The king regent carried his named like so many others like a title, his real name was Ferdinand Alexios Grover the Third.

He was related by a few branches of the royal tree, technically making him a proper descendant to the throne, but with out the chalice that First Grover used to united the kingdom, an important relic that was lost because some sort of goat monster stole it and then fell into his death in an abyss, because of that the chances of uniting a kingdom again were few. Many nobles were pushing their own agenda and only when the kingdom needed to appear united is when they acted as one, in present days as a way to keep the country united and to not sully the name of their founder Griffnstone remained as one kingdom, at least from the outside.

Leonie was giving a great explanation of their national history so far , until she came to the part that the reason they lost their fancy important magical cup, is because a couple of equines decided to try to retrieve the relic from the abyss.
When I pried for more information she explained about the races of ponies, yeah ponies, tiny little fluffy color pasted equines creatures that have magic and can control the weather, day and night.

I didn’t believe anything about it, even though magic could be a reason why we were there or at least it was one reasonable explanation, control weather? move the sun? I kinda remembered that even nobles in the dark ages were a little bit ignorant and not all of them got a proper education like the modern person.
Still the fact that is a whole kingdom of talking horses gave me a flashback to that weird dream, I was going to ask her about the monarchy of Equestria, when all of the sudden we heard screaming.

Further down the road a small pack of griffins were low flying as fast as their wings could carry them, we broke into a formation, spears and pole arms at front and archer behind. While the rest of the small army just positioned themselves at the sides in order to avoid an attack from the flanks,
We, humans, were in the small space between the spears and archers, while the knights formed a spear head and flew high in the direction of the coming griffins.

Leonie flew straight up to get a a proper view and yelled, “!!!Dogs, twenty and a bull!!!” and ”!!they’ve got nets and have taken prisoners!!”. we couldn’t see much, I didn’t understand why dogs were THAT dangerous and a Bull? and actual bull?, when the enemy force got closer to us we understood what those words now had a different meaning, the “dogs” were more like werewolves and the big mass of muscle was a fucking Minotaur, a bipedal monstrosity wielding a battleaxe the size of a round dinner table.

In total we were just a small army, the majority of our force was in the city far behind us and we were just a scouting party no more than at least 50. It was going to be our first engagement in our lives perhaps the most important one. only 6 knights, 14 humans and the rest were 10 archers from the guard and 20 from the militia, according to the old Iron Beak leaving most of our forces behind a wall while we scouted the roads was the best solution until the reinforcements arrive.

The knights flew like a deadly ballet, sweeping down from the sky, while shooting their crossbows as soon as they got closer to the enemy, doing all kinds of hit and runs trying to get as close to the captured civilians while dodging nets and arrows.
The rest of us were stuck, unmoving not because we couldn’t but because we didn’t know if those 20 “dogs” were the only ones, nerve glances between the front of the militia and the flank began to spread among the lines.
Leonie was the acting officer and she had no idea on what to do, we couldn’t move otherwise we could put the civilians in danger or it could all be a trap and we could be walking straight into an ambush.
That’s when Otto decided to volunteer along with others of our group to use the small mounds and little hills on the sides of the road to provide some sort of support.
Leonie agreed only if we didn’t got discovered since she was going to order a slow advance in order to avoid the casualties, Otto responded with a !JA! and gave us a determined look.

Now i’m not a coward, I believe that courage isn’t the lack of fear but the force of action despise that fear, I was willing to fight along with the Griffins but I wasn’t going to die for them, Otto sent me and Elsa towards the highest mound on the left side of the road and told us to start picking our targets with our bolt actions, meanwhile the 4 Slavs covered our back in case we got ourselves surrounded, the rest of the group move to the other side doing the same thing. I layed down my sights and picked my target, Leonie sounded a horn and began shouting orders to his troops to move forward. Many of those weredogs sprung out of the ground on the foot of the hill in which we were hiding and began their attack as soon as the militia began marching forward between the small hills.

There is no sound more Horrifying that the sound of a 30-06 hitting your helmet, don’t believe me ? go ask the German SS or any german troop in World War 2, I picked a target, aimed down my sights on the closest bastard , breathed in and out and pulled the trigger, the trap that the enemy had saved for us, was dropped.
Seeing their comrade in arms head being obliterated and his helmet flying around broken, put all of the dogs attention on us.
Many of those were-dogs were expecting just a bunch of small army militia and they’ve found themselves fighting royal knight and the sound of thunder and fire coming from the weapons of strange creatures.

They played a gamble and lost, seeing that in front of us there were nothing but full line of targets, all of us humans made a firing line and shot the newly found enemy on the lower ground in order to avoid an attack on the flanks of our approaching allies.

The differential gun fire coming from us allowed the knight to sweep down and picked the hostages from danger, it didn’t help the enemy that they put them on a single place in the open surrounded by only a few dogs, with little time to get their bounty moving before alerting the city guard.
Even if we didn’t kill them with a single shot ,it was the sound of our bullets hitting their armor or they falling to the ground badly wounded or dead that became the signal for our valorous knight to focus on tearing the nets, freeing the captives and carry them out of the battlefield.

The militia saw how fast we shot, picked another target and shot again, as soon as their morale hit the roof they let out a deafening roar that obscured the sound of our guns, that combined with a full blasting of the horn signaling a full charge against their enemy.

The battle was brutal and it ended faster than I thought, bodies were everywhere luckily our little army only got a few scratches and wounded but no dead on our side. The knight and all of the griffins were congratulating us for our support and for helping save the lives of their brothers and sisters.
Whatever negative though they had on us dissapeared the moment we decided to act, we stood there for a couple of hours cleaning out our mess, making a recount of our ammunition. One thing did escaped my mind and it was the fact that there wasn’t a Minotaur among the dead, and we are talking about a wall of muscles with horns, you don’t dissapear just like that from a battle without looking like a coward or anyone noticing you.
Maybe it’s the reason why they were so easily defeated, no commander and it’s everyone for itself.

Anyway, Leonie sent a messenger along with the refugees back to Erden to explain what happened, according to the captives the so called Diamond Dogs were fairly docile, kept to themselves and looked nothing compared to the werewolves we just slaughtered. They said that they usually were smaller, not so bright on the head and depending on who’s the Alpha, capable of reaching an understanding between other races, hell they even barter with them from time to time.

They said that the Minotaur that lead them showed up with other mutated monster at his command along with them dogs turned into what are they now and began hunting them, not killing but looking for more creatures to capture and carry them who know where. And how did they know they were diamond dogs? because one of the poor ugliest was still wearing a collar with his name on it, you could see it’s neck was bruised because it became bigger to the point in which the collar began to cut into the fur of the creature.

With grim determination on our heads we continued marching forward towards the town of Branwick, hoping to find survivors or more living captives.

AAAnd I’m ending it here, got a few more grim chapters to tell you people in the audience and how was my experience through this ordeal, all of sudden forgot to ask you how I should refer to you MS.Journal, MR.Journal?
Does switching in between makes you a transgender? I don’t know, I’m going to keep referring to you reader as my AWdience, and hope to keep down the references of our world.

See you soon.

Michael Keener.