Chapter 7
Something struck the snake creature with great force. I felt the impact through the stone floor, a tremor that surged up my chest and rattled my teeth. The creature hissed loudly, exhaling forcefully from an unseen mouth, then the tunnel was filled with the sounds of two bodies colliding in the darkness: weight against weight, muscle slamming into muscle, talons scraping scales, and a wet tearing noise echoing through the stone, making my stomach churn. The snake thrashed violently, whipping its body across the tunnel floor. Its tail caught my ankle, pulling me two feet before releasing its grip. I hit my head on the stone; my vision, already dark, momentarily went white.
As the atmosphere cleared, the sounds shifted. The hissing diminished, replaced by a gurgling that echoed off the walls. Heavy, feathered wings flapped once, then again. Something with weight hit the ground, shaking dust from the ceiling. The gurgling ceased. I lay on the ground, with my forearm bleeding from where the tail had scraped it, and my ankle throbbed. My head throbbed where it struck the wall. The smell of rot lingered in the air, now mixed with a fresher scent, blood.
Talons clicked on stone. Coming toward me.
I backed against the wall, unable to run as my legs trembled and weakened. The claw marks on my back had reopened, blood seeping through my shirt. Something warm touched my hand; I jerked back, but the warmth remained. It was not teeth or scales, it was a beak, smooth, hard, and warm, coated with fresh blood from what it had just killed. It pressed against my palm and lingered. I moved my fingers, feeling feathers, dense and layered, with warmth beneath. I laid my hand flat, discovering the feathers covering a broad, muscular chest underneath. I could feel a heartbeat.
A griffin. I gasped.
It loomed over me in the darkness. I couldn't see it, but I could feel its size, heat, and the weight of its presence filling the tunnel. Its beak remained gently pressed against my palm, and I could feel its warm breath on my wrist. It didn't move away; it just stood there amid the blood, stale air, and decayed flesh, allowing me to place my hand on its chest and sense its breathing. I sat against the wall with the griffin keeping watch over me, closed my eyes, and felt that the darkness was unchanged, but now it was warm.
I sat quietly in the dark, my hand resting on the griffin's chest, remaining still for a long time. The blood on my back had started to dry, pulling at my skin when I moved, an itch beneath the sharper pain of the claw wounds. My ankle throbbed at a slow, steady pace. My head ached from hitting the wall. The smell of rot from the dead creature faded, replaced by the cool, mineral scent of the cave and a warmer smell, the griffin's. It carried hints of dust, dry feathers, and a faintly sharp aroma reminiscent of flint.
The griffin remained still, with its beak resting on my palm. Its breathing was calm and steady, and I could feel its ribs expanding under my hand with each inhale. It was a large creature. Though I couldn't see it, the heat from its body enveloped my entire right side, and when it shifted its weight, I sensed the movement through the floor.
The wolf pup returned to me, its pale eyes and wet fur visible. It pressed against my knee for shade, and I remembered the sound it made when I pushed away. I kept telling myself I had no choice, constructing my reasons like bricks: the egg was mine based on trial rights, the pup came to me, Risol had no claim, and I couldn't predict what my magic might do. Each reason felt solid and weighty. Yet, sitting here in the dark with the animal's heartbeat beneath my hand, I sensed one brick shift. The pup, panting and flinching from the sun, was a creature of the moon, born on hot stone beneath a sky it was never meant to see. It crawled toward the only shadow available, mine.
The instructor had said it. I did not believe her. I believed that the pup had chosen me, that amid a garden full of people, it looked at me and saw something worth approaching. I needed to believe this because if the pup chose me, then our bond was genuine, and if the bond was genuine, then what followed was tragic but not my fault.
In the dark, with the taste of blood in my mouth and the sting of wounds on my back, the story was harder to hold. The griffin shifted beside me. Its beak lifted from my palm and pressed against my wrist instead, higher up, where the skin was warmer. I felt the smooth edge of its beak against my pulse point. I let out a breath I did not know I had been holding.
I'm not sure how long we sat there. Maybe an hour, maybe five. The griffin had rested its weight on the floor next to me. I could feel its side against my hip, and one of its wings was stretched behind me, not quite touching but close enough that the warm air between us was noticeable. I turned my head toward it. "Hey, little guy," I said, my voice hoarse. It sounded strange in the tunnel, too loud after so much silence. "Can you get me out of here?" The griffin huffed.
The sound was sharp and sudden, a burst of air from its nostrils hitting my face and smelling like dry feathers and old stone. It was the most expressive noise I had heard from an animal in days, conveying something very specific. I thought about the creature it had just killed, the coils that had wrapped around my legs, and the force of the impact when the griffin struck hard enough to pull me across the floor. "Big guy," I corrected myself. "Sorry. Big guy." The griffin huffed again, this time more softly. It pressed its beak against my forearm, just above the scrape, holding it there. Its warmth seeped into the torn skin, and something loosened in my chest, a knot I had carried since the garden, the bonding hall, or the day I first walked through the academy gates. I didn’t smile; my face hurt too much. But for the first time in days, the muscles around my mouth moved.
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I put my hand on the griffin's neck. The feathers were warm and dense under my fingers.
"I need to go back up," I said. "The way I came. There's a chamber at the top with a hole in the ceiling. If you can fly through these tunnels, you could carry me there." The griffin turned its head. I felt it move beneath my hand. Its beak brushed my shoulder and then my face, outlining me. It exhaled softly, warm breath touching my cheek.
"I'll interpret that as a maybe," I said. I got to my feet, feeling my legs protest. My ankle wobbled briefly but then steadied. The claw wounds on my back stretched and stung. I rested my hand on the wall, waiting for the dizziness to fade. The griffin stood beside me, and I heard the click of talons on stone and the rustling of feathers as it settled. I reached out and touched its shoulder, which was higher than my waist. The griffin was bigger than I had expected from the initial touch. I wasn't sure if it would let me ride it; there was no bond between us. All I had were my hands, my legs, and the trust we might have built sitting together in the dark while my blood dried on its beak. I grasped the feathers at its neck's base and pulled myself upward.
The griffin tensed up, its wings spreading wide. I sensed the gust of air as they unfolded in the tight space, grazing the walls on each side. I held my position, my thighs pressing against its sides. The feathers felt slick beneath my hands, forcing me to clutch tightly to avoid slipping. The griffin remained still, one second, then two, without throwing me off. Eventually, it started to move.
The griffin darted through the darkness as I pressed myself tightly against its neck, holding on. It moved with incredible speed, faster than anything should travel in a space it couldn't see, yet its steps remained confident. Its talons struck the stone in a steady, quick rhythm. It navigated turns without hesitation, ducking under low ceilings just inches above my head. The air whooshed past, carrying the scent of damp stone and dust. It knew these tunnels well, they were its home, and it moved through them as naturally as I would through a house I’d known all my life: instinctively, without pause, from memory. We kept climbing as the tunnels sloped upward. I sensed the incline from how my weight shifted on the griffin's back, pressing me toward its tail. I gripped tighter as the claw wounds on my back stretched with each move.
The griffin halted, and I sensed the air shift, a vertical draft pulling at my hair and clothes. We were near the landing shaft, with open space above. The griffin spread its wings, its edges brushing the tunnel walls as it crouched. I felt the muscles in its back tense and compress beneath me. "Okay," I whispered, tightening my grip. "Okay." Then, it launched.
The force pressed me flat against its neck as we ascended. The wings beat once, then twice, and we started to rise. The shaft was narrow, and the walls scraped the griffin's wingtips with each flap. Stone fragments showered down on me. The air roared loudly. Beneath me, the griffin's muscles worked in perfect harmony, wings pushing down with a force that seemed capable of breaking stone. We emerged from the shaft, and the griffin landed on solid ground. Gravel crunching under its talons. I slid sideways, caught myself, fingers tangled in feathers. My legs and arms trembled. I slid off its back and placed my hand on the wall. The tunnel floor was smooth stone. The air here felt warmer. The griffin stood beside me, feathers settling, breathing calmly. The flight through the shaft had left it unscathed.
The landing chamber was near. I navigated there by feel, with the griffin padding softly beside me. Its talons clicked rhythmically on the stone, a pattern I was beginning to recognize. When the tunnel widened, and the floor evened out, and the open air remerged above me, I understood I had returned. I looked up at the sky, which appeared smaller than I remembered, dark, dotted with stars that seemed impossibly distant. Night. I had been underground for at least a day. The griffin pressed its beak gently against my shoulder. I sat against the wall, holding the book on my lap, with the griffin beside me. I felt exhausted, more than just physically; my body craved sleep, and my mind sought quiet. Yet the griffin's warmth beside me, its slow, steady heartbeat beneath my hand, and its rhythm drew me toward a kind of rest that was different from sleep.
I am unsure who moved first, the griffin or me. Perhaps I pressed my hand deeper into its feathers, or maybe the griffin subtly turned toward me. What I do know is that the warmth beneath my palm changed from a steady, living heat, like a stone absorbing the sun and slowly releasing it at night, to something else altogether. It felt directed, intentional, as if the griffin's heat was intentionally flowing into my hand. The warmth travelled up my arm, passing through muscles, bones, and tendons that connect my hand, wrist, and forearm to my shoulder. It then settled behind my ribs into a space I hadn’t realized was empty until something filled it. This sensation was purely physical; I felt it as clearly as I felt the cold stone under my legs, my back wounds, or the stiffness of my swollen ankle. It was real, like a second heartbeat within my chest, slower and deeper than my own, synchronized with the animal beside me.
The griffin exhaled, and I felt its breath leave, warming my sternum. It pressed its beak against my collarbone with firm, warm pressure, fitting precisely into the hollow above my clavicle as if deliberate. An internal shift occurred within me. The warmth in my palms, the faint, unpredictable heat I’d carried since the garden, the sparks I’d dismissed, began to draw inward, concentrated. The scattered, formless energy that had once killed a wolf pup with uncontrolled force now coalesced into shape. I felt it settle into the bond like water flowing into a channel, moving along the connection between us and filling unseen spaces.
My senses became sharper instantly and unmistakably. Although the chamber's darkness remained, I could perceive its dimensions, the distance to each wall, the height of the ceiling, the positions of the three tunnel mouths, and the depths of the passages beyond. It wasn't sight but something else, a sensation that travelled through the bond, the stone, and the ancient carvings that covered every surface around me.
The wounds on my back still burned, but beneath that pain, a different warmth was stirring. It moved slowly and deeply, spreading from my spine. While it didn’t heal the cuts, the bleeding diminished, and the swelling around each wound softened noticeably, a change I could feel compared to the pain just moments before. I rested my forehead against the griffin's neck. The feathers were thick, warm, and carried a scent of flint, dust, and an ancient, deeper aroma of a creature that had dwelled in the mountain's depths long before the academy's existence.
“Okay,” I said, my voice rough, almost a whisper. "So that's finished." The griffin huffed, a puff of air ruffling my hair. The sound reflected the tired tolerance I was starting to recognize as the animal's main way of communicating. I was alive. It was alive. Something had happened between us that neither of us initiated and neither of us could undo. I closed my eyes. The bond rested in my chest. The griffin breathed nearby. Above us, through the stone circle, the darkness was beginning to lighten.
