The psychotic gentlegriff

It was time.

Anubis had left Canterlot and was now in front of the portal to the Dreamscape, if he timed this right. Celestia wouldn’t be none the wiser of his absence from the castle.

Despite himself he was scared, no he was terrified. His opponent was the lesser god of ice, Zodiac hadn’t even told him a name but even if it’s a lesser god it was still a god.

“Okay Anubis, you got this. Just kill it and go home, no sweat.”

‘Mortal, hurry up and go or do I have to take control to get you through the portal?’

“Oh fuck off, I’m just trying to calm myself.”

‘Why don’t you just force yourself to calm down?’

“How?!”

‘By suppressing and dampening all the chemicals in your brain, that are responsible for fear and anxiety.’

“I can do that?!”

‘Yes…. You didn’t know, did you?’

“No…. But here goes nothing.”

Following the great ones guidance, Anubis felt the fear, anxiety and all other negative emotions disappeared. He was grinning wildly now thanks to the chemical imbalance in his brain, with his new found confidence he flew into the portal.

———————————————————————

Meanwhile Celestia was looking over the journal, what she had found shocked her. She wanted to believe that this was just his over stimulated imagination but she had a long since forbidden tome that described similar beasts and the few unicorns that could summon them.

She compared the drawings and shivered, but Anubis’s journal had names, abilities and capabilities of these abominations in it. Something all others lacked, Celestia had hoped Anubis wouldn’t attempt to summon and tame any one of these things.

“To think that over 2000 years ago ponies were believed to have tried to control these accursed things for power….”

But she was glad that Anubis’s journal didn’t contain anything about the dark magic, especially necromancy. But what it did have was detailed designs for weapons to kill, no to hunt these monsters down.

She looked through her forbidden books and found that the only recorded way to kill one of these beasts was to have one stronger kill it. For conventional weapons were ineffective because they couldn’t prevent the beast from regenerating itself.

Another way was to kill the summoner but once summoned, the beast would defend its master or mistress with terrifying loyalty. Or so the books stated.

She closed the books and locked the ancient forbidden tome in the royal vault, then sneakily placing Anubis’s journal back where he kept it.

The thought of such monsters actually existing scared her, not to mention that she had lost one ever so close to her roughly 800 years ago to a similar obsession and curiosity in the Dreamscape.

She went to check on Silver who was still asleep, when the solar Alicorn pulled the bed sheets off the resting hen. She noticed that Silver had been sweating and losing a lot of her feathers, wasting no time Celestia teleported to retrieve Dr Tender Care.

———————————————————————

Meanwhile Anubis was face to face with Zodiacrdanals.

“Anubis we must share your body, I’m already connected to you via your mind. Now I must become one and the same.”

“Nope I don’t approve!”

“Then you will die again the rapidly approaching lesser god.”

“But…. Can’t you control my body like you did before? And I have way better control of atoms out side of my body.”

“And yet I fear it isn’t enough, so let me in.”

“….be gentle….”

Anubis was surprised by his lack of flinching when the inky mass shot at him, he felt nothing and looked around in confusion.

“Zodiac? Hello?”

‘Relax mortal, I’ll leave your body once this is over but you shouldn’t feel any differently from before.’

“Sigh* I don’t, this doesn’t seem any different from what we had going on before….”

“It really isn’t, it just allows me to control your body in the Dreamscape.”

“Y-you spoke? How, I’m in control.”

“Look at the underside of your claw.”

Anubis flipped both of his claws and on the left one was a mouth. “Wow, fascinating but disgusting.”

“Okay listen closely, you have two options that can kill the lesser god of ice. First the star plasma blades, the second option is to make contact and rapidly deconstruct his body on a cellular or atomic level.”

“So cut until there’s nothing left or cause his body to explode into a red mess…. Or whatever colour your kind bleeds, sounds good and with my new lack of fear. I’m feeling confident about this.”

“Remember a lesser god is still more than a threat to your life and I will take over if necessary.”

“Don’t worry, the only limiting factor is my biomass and I’ve been bulking up for the past six or seven months.”

“I might be able to assist with that, you can take from my formless mass if needed.”

“Mhmmm thanks, so how much do you weigh?”

“A unquantifiable amount mortal.”

“Oh…. Okay…. That’s not really a number, you know.”

CRASH!*

Shing*

Shing*

Shing*

Shing*

Anubis had very little time to react to the giant spikes of ice shooting out of the ground towards him, flapping his wings with all his strength he shot up 200 feet into the air in a matter of seconds.

Realising where he was he narrowly dodged a incoming tendril and significantly lowered his altitude.

Remembering his plan he began to pull and compress all of the nearby particles in the air into two fine invisible blades. But an ice spear came directly at him and grazed his barrel, it wasn’t major enough for him to heal it actively.

“Ffffffffuck, he’s fast!”

He had no time to think before he felt an appendage collide with his chest, completely evacuating the air from his lungs as he crashed into a wall of ice. Rolling with the punch he got to his claws and concentrated on quickly accelerating the atoms in the particle blades.

As his opponent crashed into the ground, leaving a crater. Anubis got a good look at this lesser god, his appearance was angular and somewhat transparent resembling ice. He had no mouth or eyes but Anubis got the impression that he was grinning at him.

The atoms in his two particle blades began to heat up and bounce off the atom wall that kept the blades shaped.

Veeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuum*

Now two blades of whiteish blue plasma were visible on the ends of Anubis’s forelegs, charging at the ice god he was met with a 2 metre thick wall of permafrost that upon contact with his plasma blades evaporated in a giant explosion of steam.

This sent him crashing back into a frozen tree, regaining his balance he looked around and realised that the environment was changing.

He looked to the dull throbbing in his chest and found a shard of ice sticking out of him, pulling it out and making the cells it that area rapidly regenerate. His eyes went wide as the healing process was significantly slower, realising that it was because of the temperature he abandoned healing it with cells and trying using atoms to build the replacement cells.

Smack!!*

His opponent didn’t let this play out and kicked Anubis into a now frozen lake.

———————————————————————

Meanwhile at Canterlot Castle.

“P-princess, she clearly has the feather flu but I’ve never seen it this bad before. It must be a new strain of the virus because nothing we have is helping.”

“Sigh* then find one that does doctor, I can’t let princess Silverfeather die.”

“We have our best on the job your highness but where is Anubis? There’s a chance that he might have it too….”

“ACHOO!!* ah~ c-could I get a tissue? P-please?”

“Right away princess…. Oh…. Here.” Dr Tender grimaced at the sight of blood.

Whilst nurses tended to the hen.

“Princess I want this wing of the castle isolated from all winged creatures, we can’t risk this spreading.”

“Understood doctor.”

“That means you too.”

———————————————————————

Crash*

Twack*

Crunch!*

“Shit my claw.” Anubis healed it and went back in to combat, he had shifted the star plasma blades from his claws to the scythe like appendage. This gave him more mobility and reach, he rushed the lesser god.

Veeeeeeuuuuum*

He sliced through the spear of ice and swung with the other foreleg.

Veeeeuuum*

The god of ice easily ducked and formed his claws into a sharp point, plunging it into Anubis’s chest. Luckily his ribs stopped it from going through but it didn’t save him from receiving the painful gash from it being dragged down his stomach.

Anubis fully committed to landing a counter blow but when his plasma scythe came into contact, the plasma was dispersing and his bone blade bounced off the crystal like surface.

“No!” He had lost concentration but luckily it didn’t explode on him.

Thwack*

Crunch!*

Crash!*

Anubis was clothes lined by his opponent and sent flying into a tree with enough force to fell it and a tree of the Dreamscape was 2 times stronger than those of the Everfree.

“Fffffffffffff~ ouch, that hurts…. And that’s blood.” A few drops of his own blood had stained his coat and he took note that the cells were freezing.

SMASH*

“Argh!”

Shing*

Shing*

Shing*

Slash*

Kaboom!*

Crash!*

“Cough* cough* ssssssahhhh f-fucking hell, I can’t land a single blow on this thing and I’ve lost a lot of my mobility already.”

Anubis’s physical condition was not good, any other creature would have been a corpse by now whilst the lesser god of ice was still untouched.

‘Mortal let me take over before you die, your soul is weak.’

“I’m fine! I just need to land a hit! Aarghhh!!!”

Using his hind legs and one functioning wing he propelled himself at his target, just before he collided he extended one of his spikes in his left rear leg and spun. Cutting through the icy defences it just barely missed its mark but now he was close, swinging, hacking and striking.

Slit*

Anubis managed to land a hit on its face and a grim dark liquid sprayed out, the lesser god jumped back but Anubis had grabbed onto his shoulder and began to rapidly stab the chest of his opponent.

“Take!”

Veeuum* Stab*

“That!”

Veeuum* Stab*

“You!”

Veeuum* Stab*

“FREAK!!”

Veeuum* Stab*

Now gasping for air he let go of the lesser god and weakly stumbled away with a grin on his beak, that quickly faded when he felt a sharp pain in his chest and turned his head around.

“Oh f-cough-uck~ that doesn’t feel good….”

He fell unconscious after looking back and finding the presumed to be dead lesser god completely fine and a crimson ice spike as thick as a tree through his midsection.

The god of ice closed the distance and removed the ice spike from his kill.

Then proceeded to dig around in Anubis’s body but jumped back upon touching something wrong.

The downed griffon got up and began to heal despite the ice god’s constant freezing of his cells, in a split second the newly revived griff had his claws around the neck of the lesser god.

“Look at you~, such a primitive form of existence, it’s funny to think that in one point of history. You lesser gods were servants to powerful mortals, even if it was rare.”

CRUNCH!*

Slam!*

“How revolting.”

Zodiacrdanals was now behind the wheel of Anubis’s body whilst the griff regained consciousness and watched.

Zodiac had snapped the ice god’s neck and thrown him into his own ice wall.

“Sigh* it’s far too cold here, let’s fix that….” He coldly stated.

Putting both claws together and from what Anubis could tell, he began to pull as many atoms to him and formed an unbelievably small and compact mass of hydrogen.

Anubis couldn’t believe his eyes, Zodiac was making a hydrogen bomb. From what he could tell it had little mass but enough to completely destroy anything in a 100 metre radius.

He kick started nuclear fusion and the atoms rapidly split, bounced into each other and repeated the process until the atom wall that held it together broke.

“Release~.”

KA* KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!*

Anubis felt his own body get incinerated but it happen so fast that there was no nerves to receive pain. Over taken by a mixture of fear and wonder he watched as Zodiac reformed his body nearly immediately.

Once the explosion had subsided and the mushroom cloud had blocked out the sky, Zodiac let out a disappointed sigh.

“Mortal answer me, are you okay?”

‘Yes I think so, I didn’t feel physically tired just…. Well tired, if that makes sense.’

“It does, your soul tired and you fell unconscious.”

‘Oh wow I didn’t know that was a thing that could happen?”

“Well.” Zodiac was cut off by the lesser god trying to get off a sneak attack.

CRASH!*

The attack proved to be fruitless, all Zodiac did was duck under it whilst his opponent slammed into the crater wall.

“This is interesting, but not unpleasant.”

The god of ice made some unusual sounds which Anubis didn’t understand but Zodiac just sighed.

“Who'd you think you’re talking to?”

In an instant the lesser god had been decapitated, Anubis had no idea how or when it happened but one minute he had a head the next it was gone.

Then Zodiac gently placed his claws against the stiffly standing body of his opponent.

Splat!*

A black mist filled the surrounding area before raining down and painting everything in its remains.

All that was left is his head that had some sort of consciousness but Zodiac showed no mercy to it and formed a star plasma blade.

Veeeeeeeeuuuuuuuum*

Plunging it into the head, it immediately bursted into flames and turn to ashes.

“Sigh~* I was hoping that you’d ask for my help earlier?”

‘I thought I could take him, I don’t know why I thought that but I did.’

“Probably because you didn’t have fear or anxiety, a lack of them is useful but you lost a bit of your reasoning too. So you couldn’t have been able to tell if you had everything under control or not.”

‘That makes sense, now that my consciousness isn’t being flooded by my brains chemical imbalance I can now see where i went wrong.’

“Yes, I’m working to fix that and once I’ve done that I’ll give you, your body back and leave it.”

‘Thanks, Zodiac you saved me….’

“You’re welcome…. Oh and I should mention that I’ve went through the trouble of resurrecting this lesser god and taming it for you.”

‘What?! Why? How?’

“So you can summon it and have it do your bidding outside of the Dreamscape, lesser gods…. No, most of the inhabitants of the Dreamscape and nightmare realm can’t access the waking world. So they either get summoned and make a deal if they are powerful enough or get tamed to be able to access the waking world.”

‘Fascinating? So I can summon this entity and is there a time limit?’

“Nope, it’ll stay with you until you dismiss it or it dies and even then you can re-summon it.”

‘Re-summon?’

“Yes through necromancy, a sub-magic of the biomancy category.”

‘Oh yeah I can do that! I’ve done it before.’

“But I have one question, why are you using the trial and error method to make cures, medication as well as viruses and diseases? You can just alter them yourself to fit the right requirements or needs with cellular manipulation.”

‘What!!!’ Zodiac flattered his ears and shook his head.

“I thought that was obvious, you know with you being able to alter yourself and others with a touch.”

‘Now that you say it, I feel stupid but the method I use does yield results just at a much slower rate. I’ve just been conditioned to use and rely on that method when I’m at a loss, you know just throw shit at the wall until something sticks.’

“Well here you are.” Zodiac gave Anubis control and left his body to catch him. “Easy there Anubis, your soul is still tied.”

“Y-yeah okay but why when I used the star plasma blades he didn’t burst into flames?”

“Because your souls conviction, you attacked with frustration whilst I attacked with controlled disgust.”

“And the difference?”

“Simple, one is more powerful. The two most powerful of the controlled convictions are love and hate whilst the two powerful ones of the wild convictions are lust and rage. You used a weaker wild conviction, frustration. That’s what was in your soul and that’s why your attacks weren’t as effective as mine, because your soul fuels your magic.”

“Sigh* thanks for telling me after the ass whooping I received.”

“Ah that was sarcasm, I could tell.”

“Huff* no shit…. Anyway let’s get me home.”

“Yes the portal is about a 30 minute walk away.”

“But you need to help me out of this crater, I mean nuclear fusion was a bit overkill.”

“I held back quite a bit, probably why it didn’t kill but how do you know what I did?”

“I don’t know the exact process but I’m very well educated.” Anubis kept his answers vague as to not give anything away, now that he realised it he was more than thankful that all his memories were griffon-fied.

“Mhmmm okay let’s get moving, climb on mortal.”

40 minutes later Anubis had left the Dreamscape and closed the portal, he noted to himself that he should change the power source to one of his magic-tech engines.

The base engines work by taking mana from the surrounding area and converting it into unformed magical power, allowing him to choose what it could be used for.

For example the anti gravity engines or the wind and fire turbine engines on his airship, he could also use a magic-tech engine to make electrical power.

Jotting the idea down he went up stairs and grabbed himself some bits he had stashed away and went to leave but a tugging on his tail caught his attention.

Spinning around he noticed Eclipse giving him the cutest puppy dog eyes he had ever seen, they almost worked but Anubis steeled himself and commanded the cub to fall unconscious.

Letting out a soft sigh and kissing Eclipse on the forehead he took her down stairs and placed her somewhere safe.

“I’m sorry little one but I’ll bring mummy over and we can spend the day together soon….” Now that he really looked at her, he noticed that he couldn’t sense her presence easily.

Anubis really had to focus on her but everything else was fine, her scent was detectable so why wasn’t her presence?

“I’ll give you a soul my baby girl, don’t you worry.” And with that he took his leave and headed for Canterlot.

Flying into the city he landed outside of the Brown Bean cafe and he popped in.

Ding* ding*

Anubis bounced in, grinning wildly. “Good afternoon Tea Creamer, how’s business?”

“It’s Coffee Creamer and business is good, so what brings you here? My Graceful send you?” She just smiled at the bouncy griff.

A few mares from his college and their mums giggled at his antics but this went unnoticed by Anubis.

“Ha no but I can make a special delivery for you, I just wanted to pick up some cakes and cookies, maybe a muffin or two.” Anubis chirped.

“Mhmmmm I don’t know, you seem energetic enough. I’d rather not give you more sugar, so who’s got you smiling like that?”

“I’m just happy to be alive and….” He leaned in and whispered. “I also want to get Silver and Celestia some treats but mostly happy to be breathing.”

The mare shook her head and began to fill a paper bag with chocolate chip cookies, rainbow sprinkle cup cakes and two toffee muffins.

“That’ll be 19 bits.”

“Here’s 30, keep the change!” He took the bag in his beak and pranced out before shooting off into the air.

One of the mares at a table turned to her friends and said. “Girls did you see how tall and jacked that griff was! D-do you think he’s into mares?”

“Hopefully because he goes to our college~, I know I’d let him have his wicked way with me.”

“Cough* you can’t just say that?”

“What? So you wouldn’t if he asked?”

“Huff* well of course I would but it’s kinda intimidating to think about.”

“Yeah especially with those muscular hind legs….”

Brown Bean just let out a sigh and got back to work, it was only mares being mares but it rubbed her the wrong way especially with what her colt-friend had told her about the griff’s past.

Meanwhile Anubis landed outside of the castle gates but just before he could go in, he sensed a small colt running towards him. It was the little colt he saved from being crushed by an ice sculpture and not far behind him was his mother.

“Hey mister griffon! Look look, I got my cutie mark! It’s a shield with light’s shooting off of it! Isn’t it cool?”

“Wow, it’s awesome little dude.” Anubis ruffled the colt’s mane. “But maybe running off and making your poor mum chase you, isn’t such a good idea.”

“Oh…. She looks mad.”

“Nova Sparkle! Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to run off like that young colt?”

“B-but mum, I saw mister griffon and wanted to show him my cutie mark.” He turned on the puppy dog eyes and Anubis could see lady Velvet’s resolve crumble.

“Look I just don’t want you to get hurt is all sweetie.” She turned to Anubis. “Sorry mister….”

“Grimgost, Anubis Grimgost.”

“Sorry Anubis grimgost if my boy is pestering you, he’s kinda been obsessed with protecting others ever since you saved him.”

“Oh really~, well I think that in itself deserves a cookie.” He pulled out a chocolate chip cookie and gave it to lady Velvet, Nova whined.

“You can have it when we get home young colt, now say bye to mister Grimgost.”

“Bye mister Anubis. And thank you for the cookie.” He hugged the larger griff leg.

Anubis only had a few seconds but that was all he needed, he went through the process of upgrading the colt’s horn and giving him two soul techniques that related to his cutie mark.

He waved goodbye and walked through the gate, now making his way through the castle Anubis was happily bouncing towards Celestia’s magical presence.

Two unicorn guards blocked his way and he shot them a questioning look.

“Sir please halt, Princess Celestia has ordered this wing of the castle to be quarantine from anycreature with feathers. Other than herself.”

“Why?”

“We can’t say sir.”

“Excuse me? I want to know.”

“Sir we can’t.” The guard was cut off.

Wuuuuush*

Anubis had flown past, giving the guard no chance of catching him. Flying down the hall and coming to a stop when he sees unicorn and earth pony doctors and nurses going in and out of Silver’s room, he freezes.

Celestia notices him and hastily trots up to him, pulling Anubis into a hug making him drop his bag of treats.

“Anubis you need to leave this part of the castle, Silver’s ill. She’s got a really bad case of the feather flu and I don’t want you catching it.”

“Is she going to be alright?” Concern in his voice.

Celestia looked away and went to answer but Anubis pulled her off him and walked towards the sick hen’s room.

She grabbed him and used her magic to anchor him to the ground but this did little to stop Anubis’s march.

“Please Anubis, I don’t want you getting sick!” She was shocked at the griff’s raw strength, he was pulling her with him and she was trying hard to hold him.

“Is, she, okay….” Anubis hissed out.