“FATHER!”
Aeus and his mother’s hearts came up in their throats at the sight of Bryce, his blood pooling around his frail form. Hacking a cough that racked his entire body with pain, he attempted to speak through gritted teeth.
“My dear... my son... I’m so happy you are both alive...”
They quickly moved to the side of his broken, bleeding form, all semblance of composure that Aeus usually wore was forgotten. Tears blurred his vision, but he could see the multiple stab wounds and lacerations that covered the senior Cousland’s body, viscous life-fluid leaking freely, staining his fine silks and painting the floor red.
“Howe’s men... got to me first... almost did me in... right then...” He uttered. Scarlet fluid dribbled from the corners of his mouth.
Aeus put a hand on his father’s head. “We need to get you out of here!”
Teyrn Bryce Cousland looked into the weeping eyes of his son. “I... will not survive the standing...”
“That’s not true! You’ll be fine!” Aeus’s voice choked, knowing that this was, in fact, the end for him. His father was, to him, an endless fountain of love and wisdom. He loved him, and his father did the same. Even though at his age he’d know better, but Aeus never thought he’d lose him. He’d always been there for him: when he was ill, when he was injured, when he lost his first dog to a rabid wolf. Now, his father was on the precipice of death, and there was nothing he could do in his power to change the cruel flow of fate.
“Oh, Bryce... my dear Bryce!” Aeus’s mother started to weep, her sorrowful moans accompanied by her husband’s attempts to calm her.
He once again turned to Aeus. “Someone... must reach Fergus... tell him what has happened.”
“We don’t have to leave you!” Eleanor sobbed. “The servant's exit is right here! We can get out, find you healing magic!”
His weary eyes met his wife’s, agony and disbelief evident. “It’s... no use... The soldiers surround the castle... we would not... make it.”
“Unfortunately, the Teyrn is right. We cannot hope to make it with Howe’s men at the gates.” A newcomer spoke, entering the larder. He was fairly tall, dark skin covered his mug alongside his gratuitous, dark facial hair. He sheathed his sword next to his dagger in a scabbard on the back of his armor.
“I know you.” Mrs. Cousland recalled. “You’re Duncan, the Grey Warden!”
“That is correct.” He nodded, kneeling down to the dying body of the Teyrn.
“Are you going to help us?” Aeus implored.
“If you’re going to do something, do it quick! Howe’s men have nearly broken through the gates!” Eleanor urged, but Duncan only looked over the bleeding wounds on Bryce’s body and shook his head.
“Duncan,” Bryce started. “You are under no obligation to me, but please... take my wife and son to safety!”
“I will, but... I fear I must ask you something in return.”
“Anything!” The Teyrn nearly shouted.
“What is happening here pales in comparison to the horrors about to be unleashed on this world by the darkspawn. I came here looking for a recruit and situation demands that I leave with one.”
Bryce rasped a sigh. “I... I understand.”
Aeus turned to Duncan. “Are you talking about me?”
Duncan nodded. “You fought you way to your father and I. I think the Maker’s intentions are clear.” He once again addressed the Teyrn. “I will take the Teyrna and your son to Ostagar and find Fergus and the king. Then, your son becomes a Grey Warden.”
“Ok. So long as Howe gets justice...”
Duncan’s eyes met Aeus’s. “Then I offer you a place among the Grey Wardens. Fight with us.”
Aeus started to breath heavily with indecision. A commitment to the legendary league of warriors was something he had never truly pondered, even when Duncan arrived at the castle and spoke to him alongside Howe...
Howe...
Determination set itself on his brow. He met the aged Grey Warden’s face. “I accept your offer.”
Duncan stood up. “Then we must go quickly.”
Bryce’s wife grasped her husband’s hand. “Darling... are you sure?”
“Our son will not die because of Howe’s treachery. He will live, and make his mark on the world.”
She turned to her son, her mace un-slung and cradled in her hands. “Darling, go with Duncan. You have a better chance to escape without me.”
“Eleanor...”
“Hush, Bryce. I’ll kill every bastard that comes through that door to buy them time. But I won’t abandon you.”
Aeus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself!”
She looked at him with tears in his eyes. “My place is with your father. To death, and beyond.”
Bryce slumped lower to the ground, his voice even weaker than before. “I’m... so sorry it’s come to this, my love...”
Eleanor embraced the bloody body of her husband, tears streaming down her cheeks. “We had a good life and did all we could. It’s up to our children, now.”
“Then... go, pup.” He urged his son. “Warn your brother. And know that we love you both. You do us proud.”
Aeus was on the verge of tears yet again when an echoing, splintering crack resounded throughout the castle. The gates had been broken. Howe’s soldiers were not far behind.
Duncan gently grabbed Aeus’s arm and tugged, advocating the need for action. “They’ve broken through the gate. We must go now.”
Aeus look at his parents, the couple who raised him since birth, who showered him with affection and warmed him with their love. He didn’t want their lives to end like this, but for him to survive is what they have always wanted. They would sacrifice themselves to allow their son to live. He stole one last gaze before he turned away, eyes clenched tight as Duncan led him through the hidden servant exit.
Eleanor uttered her last words as she watched her son disappear, hopefully, to safety. “Goodbye, darling.”
+++++
Aeus and Duncan fled through the Forest, the Cousland castle aflame behind them. Aeus stumbled to the ground, unable to deny his parent’s fate any longer. On his knees he broke into racking sobs, wailing and calling out the names of his mother and father. Duncan put his hand on his shoulder, attempting to comfort him.
“I am truly sorry for your loss, Aeus. I swear by my title as Grey Warden that everything shall be done to make sure that your parents get the justice they deserve.”
He pretended not to hear him, his sobbing slowly deteriorating into a hushed whimper. “But what about the justice I deserve?” He thought. His family didn’t deserve what was done to them. Everything he ever loved and cared for was stolen from him so Howe could make a personal gain. His brother’s wife and child, his mother’s friend... everyone... none of them deserved any of this. As Aeus sat there, and underneath his grief, anger and hatred rose up inside of him. He made a promise to himself that moment, and swore it upon his mother and father’s graves.
Howe would die.
He’d kill him himself.
+++++
Dominic wiped the sweat off his brow with his foreleg, carefully picking up the filled flask of chemicals and pouring a precise amount into a beaker containing a blue liquid. As soon as he did so, the mixture started to fizz and change color. With one swift, practiced movement, he set the flask down on the table and trotted over to a smudgy blackboard where he took a piece of chalk in his lips and added to his findings on the reaction. Chemical formulas, mathematical equations, and prior observations already covered more than half the board, all scribed in Equestrian rune. Quickly, he checked the clock. Two hours had passed since he began his afternoon work, and he felt like he could continue working for another hour or two.
“No...” He admonished himself. “I’m at a good stopping point and Twilight will find out if I’ve overworked myself.” Dominic sighed and brushed a few stray, greasy strands of his long, unkempt salt-and-pepper mane with his hoof. He traversed across his laboratory, past the several tables cluttered with idly bubbling glassware and stacks of parchment, past his unusual magic distillery as it groaned softly while it worked. He resolved to take a half-hour nap before he went back to work, if not for himself, then for Twilight and her friends. He owed everything to them, after all.
He passed by a table with a mortar and pestle in the center, surrounded by jars of poultice and containers housing clumpy powder. A sudden thought struck him as he remembered. “Those herbs should be dry now, I could NO! I MUST rest myself! The last thing I want is to relapse-” That did it for him. Dominic tore himself from the temptation and headed toward the cobbled steps that lead to his study where he slept. The dim candlelight flickered, sending his shadow dancing across the floor. He stopped as he felt a small breeze present itself, accompanied by a soft ringing of a bell. Somepony came into his shop, but he wasn’t expecting any of the six for at least three hours, so that meant he had a customer! Dominic felt excitement and joy inflate inside of him and nearly galloped to the front counter.
“Welcome to Dominic’s Apothecary! How may I be of service to you?” He jingled in a deep, yet raspy voice, due to his damaged throat and lungs from a few unfortunate accidents involving corrosive vapor. He noted with quite a bit of surprise that the one who entered his shop was not a pony, but in fact a gryphon. A female one to be exact, judging by the slender body and purple coloration around her eyes. He had not expected much of any business this week at all, but Twilight’s word-of-mouth advertising must have worked wonders. He’d gotten four ponies in the last five days, just about an all-time high for him. His shop being located at the very edge of Everfree Forest didn’t help in terms of business.
“Hey.” The gryphon lazily replied, her eyes ferreting around the room, observing the shelves of vials of various shapes and sizes filled with liquids of various colors. They had labels on them, mostly fine text, sometimes pictures. They advertised their purposes, things like stamina, alteration, vitality, enhancement... but the gryphon didn’t really care.
Dominic walked around the counter to meet her and voiced his question, being upfront and to-the-point as he is. “Now, what would a gryphon possibly want from my shop?”
She glanced in the direction of the ebony-coated stallion, his cutie mark displaying a collection of three different flasks with differently colored, bubbling contents, all overlapping each other.
“I dunno. What do ya have?”
Not the first to come into his shop absolutely clueless, but it still irked him nonetheless. Keeping his facial composure, he listed off the options to his newest customer.
“Oh! We have a variety of potions and brews that can suit just about any need! Though, I’m afraid some choice ones may not work with gryphon biology, we still have quite a selection! How about one for augmented awareness? Once sip of this, and you could observe a dragonfly’s wings in motion! Or how about this one? It will give you an electrifying burst of energy! You may want to handle this with care...” He gestured to and displayed his products, relishing the chance to present his hard work and genius for everypony to appreciate. The gryphon only half-paid attention, still perusing the room.
Dominic was beginning to lose his patience. He felt his blood get a little hotter and his eye twitch a bit, an idiosyncrasy that his friends can use to identify his annoyance. Attempting to calm himself, he moved to the side of the browsing gryphon.
“Are you looking for something in particular, ma’am?” He implored with earnest. The gryphon merely shrugged.
The nerve! The audacity! Dominic could hardly believe it! His eye twitching again, he was about give a restrained, but polite suggestion of action, when he noted that she began to study a large, framed parchment entitled “Essay on Natural Magics and Practical Distillation” by Dominic. She seemed to have a genuine interest of it, her eyes going back and fourth, extracting the information from the text. His annoyance was now forgotten, as he takes immense pride in his lifelong work.
“Ahh... I see my essay has caught your eye. It is not as up-to-date as I want it to be, as it was written nearly twenty years ago, but the fundamentals are still consistent.” He ran a hoof down the edge of the frame, fully engrossed into describing his passion. “It is my pride and joy. Frontiering magical distillation is my life’s work...”
But the gryphon didn’t care about the essay in the slightest. Instead, she pretended to focus on what he was meandering about and slowly brought up her tail to the small, corked vial filled with a bright yellow liquid. She decided to make conversation to keep him distracted.
“That’s really awesome. Name’s Gilda, by the way.”
Dominic’s eyes shot wide open. “Gilda?!”
She only saw a burst of movement, a blur. Gone was the end of her flexible tail prepared to snatch away the vial, in it’s place was Dominic’s hoof, the one that swatted it away with unnatural speeds. He glared at the gryphon, now properly and justifiably pissed, his ocean-blue eyes coldly piercing hers. She merely gawked open-mouthed back.
“I do not tolerate thievery in my shop, Gilda.” He spat with venom. “Fun fact, though: the vial you nearly stole,” He flung it far away onto the floor where it shattered. To Gilda’s horror, the liquid splashed and sizzled on the floor, vapor rising as it ate a crater into the stone. “...It was acid. I dearly hope you weren’t planning on ingesting it. That would make for a very painful death.”
Gilda nearly panicked. “Wha... how...”
Dominic pressed on. “I also don’t appreciate your kind in here, either.”
She summoned her usual composure and retaliated. “You got something against gryphons, pal?” Gilda glared back, unfolding her wings and bringing her face up to his.
He didn’t waver the slightest. “No, Gilda, just you. Rude, inconsiderate, thieving. I know who you are. Rainbow Dash told me all about you and that ‘episode’ a while back. Remove yourself from my apothecary, now, and don’t even think about coming back.”
Gilda gritted her teeth and summoned her last reserves of her assertion. “She told you, eh? Well I got news for you, you shut-in dork! She’s my friend, too!”
“Was.” Dominic replied coolly. “She was your friend.”
Gilda blinked. Her stance shrunk dramatically. “She... she didn’t say that.”
“Is it such a surprise to you? You haven’t seen her or talked to her in over a year.” His gaze intensified. “You hurt her and her friends due to that attitude of yours. She never wants to be associated with you. Ever. Again.”
Gilda stared blankly, seemingly lost in her thoughts as the realization echoed in her mind over and over again. Her face turned to an angry scowl.
“Well you can send a message to RD for me!” She huffed and made for the door. “I don’t care! If she wants to hang out with dweebs like you, then she’s not cool enough to be friends with me!” With that, she carelessly flung the door open, Dominic wincing as one of the fragile hinges clinked broken, and took off into the air with an angry hawk-like screech.
The earth pony chemist sighed and glanced at the clock. 2:17. He then looked at the acid pool slowly dissipating on the floor.
“I guess I can say goodbye to that nap, then...”
+++++
Gilda fought back the freezing tears as she aimlessly soared over Everfree Forest. Her only friend was gone. Gone because of her. Again.
“Who needs friends, anyway...”
