The Grifflet: A Project Wardens Short Story

Violet promised to be careful while Vincent was away on his mission. She guaranteed that she would keep a watchful eye on Liam, keeping his young apprentice out of trouble and not stirring up anything with her… unorthodox methods. He trusted her like a falling griffin needed to trust its wings to fly: out of necessity, and with no absolute certainty of the outcome. Still, she had come to trust him like a griffin would its claws, and would not do anything so foolish as to neglect that trust by fooling around with his apprentice.

That was what Vincent thought, until she admitted she let Liam wander the streets of Dethden on his lonesome. She called it “a little coming-of-age adventure,” before demanding Vincent to lighten up a little. It was a stupid request, given that the sun was getting low, and the hour of Liam’s curfew had arrived and the boy had yet to return. Vincent would sooner combust than allow Liam to get caught up in any fool’s folley, and he would just as soon take all of Dethden with him if anything happened to him.

Vincent darted through the city’s sullied roads, scouring every inch of cityscape in sight. Though his sword was readied, he did not need it to slice through the Dethdenian masses, for his presence alone alarmed them enough to part them. He continued ceaselessly there was nothing but the city gates before him, then he paced clockwise around the inside of the city’s worn walls fast enough to turn the improvised art into streams of color.

The sun touched down on the horizon and propelled Vincent from a brisk and calculated march into an unstoppable blitz. Agitation and anxiety had Vincent courting his boiling point. He starved for even the slightest sign. A sight, a sound, even a lingering sense.

Suddenly, as he rushed past the beast markets, Vincent felt something familiar ring at the furthest edge of his hearing. It was not Liam, but its familiarity was uncanny, somehow.

Behind the idle chatter and calls of beasts… a pained, high-pitched sound, rough but not rugged. He was certain about what it could be—Vincent knew the cries of a griffin like a sibling’s voice—but it was not part of the chorus of caged creatures. It was distant, coming from one of the southbound alleyways.

Then, mixed with the griffin’s call… a voice, stealthily crying out. Just barely, Vincent could make out.

“…please… okay… Don’t…”

Without a doubt, it was Liam, and he sounded troubled and panicked. Vincent wasted no time in racing to his apprentice’s voice, and he was rewarded with the sight of him bent over something on the ground.

“Liam!”

As Vincent ran instinctively to him, Liam turned and stood up by reflex to his mentor’s voice. “S-sir! You’re here!”

Though he was shrouded in shadow, Liam could not hide the mess he had been reduced to. He was covered in fresh cuts and bruises from head to toe, and his eyes were stained pink exhaustion. Vincent minded them, but knew Liam was well enough for admonishment.

“I don’t know what errands the Anarch sent you on, and I don’t care.” Vincent was completely unaware of the anger in his tone. “You’re out past twilight against my wishes.”

Liam was trembling in breath and body, but not of fear at Vincent’s reaction. If anything, Vincent’s presence seemed to revitalize him.

“Please, sir! I need your help!”

Taking Vincent’s hand, Liam hurriedly pulled him down the alley, then returned to where he had been: at the side of a hurting griffin laid upon the stony street. Its pitch-black plumage and blood-red eyes distinguished it from any bird Vincent had seen before, but it did share the indications that it was male. There was no sign of any juvenile down and its wings appeared fully developed, yet the bird could only stand as tall as the top of Vincent’s thigh. At a glance, this one was still a grifflet, though it was an estimated guess at best.

More glaring than its unfamiliar traits, however, were the myriad of injuries it appeared to have sustained. Thin streams indicated whips, and the blood around them indicated that the damage was done recently. Its wings were displaced, possibly even broken, but in no shape to fly regardless. The shrieks poured from its beak, though still comparable to other griffins, were very clearly pained and faint.

“I was walking past the stores, staying on the main roads like the Anarch told me to,” Liam explained. “I heard a ruckus near the animal place, then I saw this griffin charging and running all crazy! I followed it and-and it looked hurt. I want to make him feel better, but… but I can’t… I can’t…”

Vincent placed his hands around Liam’s arms, where he had the most severe injuries. “You were hurt trying to save it.”

Liam nodded as he placed his hand on the creature. “I tried to take it away, back to the Tower, but he kept fighting, and then he… fell over like this. We’ve been here ever since…”

Holding back tears, he looked to Vincent. “You told me about griffins. You know how to help them! I-I don’t want him to die! Please!”

Vincent took time to look at the grifflet once more. Liam pleaded for hope, but Vincent knew that this bird was dying. More than that, it had all the traits of a soul that had given up on itself. Though it still breathed, the look in its eyes were hollow, as if devoid of life. All it wanted to do now was surrender its body. Any creature in such a state were hopeless barring the miraculous.

It was a lesson Vincent understood, both from war and from survival in the Western Anarchies, that every living being had its limit. Pain, anger, loss, pride, desperation—too much of those emotions cause existence to feel like a sickness. In the wake of such despair, some might dare to seek death through any means necessary. Others, however, seem content on letting it come when it may. Vincent knew this as both a witness and a victim, and was spared from it only by finding new purpose through Violet, through Championship and, ultimately, through Liam.

Even so, that did not stop Liam from endeavoring to save this grifflet. He paid in suffering to hold onto a small ounce of hope that his actions would rescue the grifflet from all it had endured. It was the first time in his life that Vincent saw Liam truly fight for something, even if he was too young to realize it, and if Vincent denied Liam aid in his fight now, then all that built-up resolve would be rendered worthless, and he would learn the wrong lesson about the ways of this world they were forced to live in.

…But no. Vincent sighed to himself. To say this would be for Liam a fraction of the truth.

Vincent knew griffins well, for they had been with him throughout his life. When visiting the Pellish ranches as a child, he felt the innocent compassion of a freshly-hatched grifflet as it nuzzled itself into his arms as well as the gentle tolerance of its mother to let him hold and relish its newborn. In the legion, he saw the inseparable bond of griffiniers to their bonded partners as they celebrated victory, consoled each other in defeat, and, if duty ever demanded, united together for one, final sacrifice. Even in the Anarchies, those few domesticated griffins he occasionally saw mirrored the hearts of their masters, for better or worse. Griffins were more than just steeds—they were counterparts.

Now, he saw such a creature lain low by heartless neglect and cruelty. Letting it die meant not just betraying Liam—it meant betraying a part of himself that Vincent simply could not allow to die.

Kneeling alongside Liam, Vincent reached to the griffin with as gentle a touch as plated gauntlets could allow. He worked to lift the creature, then to lift himself, having forgotten how heavy even the younger griffins got. Though it could only muster the strength to screech at him, Vincent could sense the creature’s immense pain, and the sliver of spirit that persisted in its wake.

“We’ll take him to Violet’s stables. Then… then we’ll go from there.”

Liam was still rife with worry, but Vincent’s support brought enough peace for Liam to smile, however briefly. “Th-thank you sir!”

Vincent walked swiftly with the grifflet held in his arms. Liam stayed practically glued to his side from the mouth of the alley to the Anarch’s personal stables, unable to keep himself from trying to help in any incremental way.

--

The hours that followed the grifflet’s rescue felt as though they were the longest three hours of Vincent’s life since exile. Hours of cleaning away blood in filth at the expense of countless rags. Hours of prying open a reluctant beak to slide small strips of whatever meat they could find. Hours of waiting silently until that joyful moment where it finally showed strength, only to be greet its saviors with a dramatic lashing out.

Retreating to the far side of the pen, the griffin’s small rampage rescinded to territorial defensiveness. Once it sensed no violence, it guarded its food and water, before finally buckling to exhaustion.

“I’d call that a success,” Vincent said as he inspected the fresh claw marks on his chest. “…For the most part.”

Liam winced sympathetically. “Are you going to be ok?”

“It’s only flesh, Liam. It hardly matters.”

“Still, you got hurt…”

Embarrassment and guilt repelled Liam’s eyes from Vincent. Instead, they returned to the griffin, curled into itself in a heavy-breathed slumber.

“What will happen to it?” Liam asked.

“We’ll see how he fares in the morning,” Vincent said. “If you’re asking if we’re going to keep him, well… that’s not going to be up to me.”

“I understand, sir.”

After a brief, awkward moment of silence, Liam cleared his throat, took a breath, then cleared his throat again. He tried his hardest to focus on Vincent’s eyes, but the apprentice’s struggle to do so was painfully apparent.

“Sir, I know I wasn’t…I asked a lot of you, and I worried you, but you still helped me with the griffin. Thank you, so much.”

Vincent met Liam’s gratitude with a hand on his shoulder. “You chose to do a good thing today, Liam. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But with that said,” Vincent continued, “you still disobeyed me by not returning before your curfew. For that, you’ve earned an additional hour to running the spar-course.”

“What!?” Liam’s smile dropped with his jaw. “You just said I did something good, though!”

“You did,” Vincent acknowledged, “but good deeds do not exempt you from consequences, no matter how unfair. In the future, when such consequences are not mine to issue, you’ll find that they will not be nearly as kind.”

Liam’s bitter frown indicated he understood Vincent’s words well enough. Closing and locking the grifflet’s pen, Vincent decided it was time for the last word.

“If you truly believe that what you did is the right thing, though, then it should be well worth whatever trouble befalls you. Understand that, and you’ll have the heart of a Champion.”

“Thank you, sir,” Liam said, his smile returning. “I won’t ever forget. I promise.”

From near the entrance, a familiarly feminine groan could be heard. Walking down the stables with tired eyes, Violet appeared in her signature overcoat with an outfit of silky lavender pajamas and a glass of what was likely something alcoholic.

“So, this is where you both’ve been? Did we have our happy ending yet?”

Liam looked at Vincent, uncertain of what he should do or say.

“Get cleaned up and get some rest,” Vincent commanded. “Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” Laim said in return. “Please excuse me, Anarch.”

Liam left quickly, so as to not bother either of his two masters.

“You know, I may have expected the squirt to have been late, but you, dear Vincent, never struck me as the ‘hooky’ type,” Violet said with a raised eyebrow. “What kept you?”

“Helping Liam,” Vincent answered, blunt as he typically was with Violet. “He found a wounded grifflet.”

“…A what?” Violet couldn’t help but look dumbfounded.

“A young griffin,” Vincent clarified.

“Ah… so, I’m guessing that’s what raked you across the torso? And what you’ve got locked behind that door?”

“Yes.”

Violet walked past Vincent and peeked into the grifflet’s stable. Her face indicated that she wasn’t exactly impressed with what she saw.

“You come back from a manhunt unscathed, but let yourself get sliced up by that thing? But it’s so small.”

“It’s still growing. Probably.”

Violet’s eyes rotated to Vincent, “What do you mean, probably?”

Vincent shrugged. “It’s not a breed I’m familiar with. Some full-grown species are much smaller than this one is now.”

Violet rolled her eyes at Vincent’s deductions. “So, what you’re telling me is that it’s either a baby or a midget.”

“Regardless, it’s still a potent asset,” Vincent reassured. “At any size, griffins are capable of feats well beyond their size.”

“Yeah, well… at least it’s got wings,” Violet said as she crossed her arms. “It’s got that over Jaxon’s oversized hen. And if it’s not ridable, then maybe it’ll make for good entertainment in the arena. Oh! Or maybe as a guard beast…”

Violet’s index finger tapped playfully on her smiling lips. As she calculated all the possibilities, Vincent knew that, once again, he would have to filter through them, at the very least for Liam’s sake.

“By the by, does it have a name yet?”

Vincent shook his head. “That will be for Liam to decide.”