Biting into some reality...

The griffons slowed down when they saw me running towards them, no doubt cautious and uncertain as to what I really was.

“Follow me!” I announced to the griffons, and if their leader sounded a small squawk of displeasure at me giving it orders, it nonetheless warily paced after me, flapping its wings and depressingly noting that it still couldn’t fly.

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I set Forge in a good location, and broke open my alchemy lab. I hadn’t expected to get to use my Exsanguination Tube so quickly, but hey, opportunity knocked...

I was placing down a couple ten-gallon jars as the griffons came loping up, and I turned to face them.

“Hey there. I’m Sama. Which crown are you all from?” The leader, exceeding twelve feet when his head rose proudly, let out a proud cry. “Stormcrest? Very good! Thank you for attacking this dragon and setting him up, very responsible of you! Of course, there’s more where it came from…”

The griffons shuffled uncomfortably as I trailed off. That definitely was not great news for them.

“Anyways, I’m about to cut this sucker up. Now, you’re probably hungry, and I’m sure you’re raring to have dragon, but you should be able to smell and sense that this thing is most definitely not something you should be eating. Like, if you do, you’re going to sprout a second head that looks like a vulture, and kill all your crown-mates.” The griffons astutely retreated a step, but looked a bit crestfallen, even as they glared at the weird pink second head of the dragon.

“No need to fear, Sama’s here. I’ll throw the meat on Forge there and purify what I can, render it safe.” I heard a cracking sound, glanced over to where Spewing Death had shattered into multiple shards of disintegrating metal.

Tremble was humming happily. “Total wuss,” she sniffed professionally. The griffons trilled when they heard her. “Oooo, pretty!” she said in return, hooking into my Whiskers, and despite themselves, or perhaps automatically, all the griffons preened.

“Ah!” That only made what injuries they had more obvious. I flipped open a wall of the Alchemy locker, displaying several rows of plain vials with a red cross symbol on them. “Okay, injured griffons, line up there.” I pointed to the cleared area where the dragon’s broken wing was sprawled out. “I’m going to get started on the meat, and do basic first aid while it cooks.” I proceeded to lift down the heavy cabinets from the ring atop Forge, and the bag of random stuff I had acquired in my travels and not sorted out elsewhere.

As I rotated Forge and the various trophies dangling from it came into view, the griffons warbled and looked at one another cautiously. After all, those were some damn impressive trophies and whatnot there.

They let out excited calls when they saw the white spike-tail of the manticore dread’s leader. I cocked my head as I lifted it down.

“What? Oh, yes, killed him and his dread. Over thataway about fifty leagues?” They followed my pointing arm and trilled affirmation. “Yeah, he’s toast. Burned down his nest, too. Surprised you didn’t see the smoke.”

They were snapping curses and insults upon him, meaning the manticores were obviously not on good terms with them, surprise, surprise.

I tapped Forge, and the vivic flames inside it lit up. Multipurpose Floating Disk uses, that was me. The griffons blinked and craned their heads forwards to look at the unwhite flames.

“This is vivic fire. Totally harmless to you and me.” I pushed Forge in their direction. “However, it feeds on and cleans up unclean energies.” They watched the mist from it boiling over and falling slowly on the ground. “Go ahead and touch it, recognize it. It’s a great way to clean up stuff like this dragon, and that dead guy over there.” All their heads turned to where the Warp Knight was disintegrating inside his spiky skinplate harness, and the plate was eroding around the edges, too.

The griffons ambled up slowly to touch the vivic fire cautiously, first poking it with their hooked beaks, then inhaling and snapping at it, waving their heads through it, and basically confirming that it did nothing to them.

“You about done there, Tremble?” I asked, watching that dire Sword flaking away to nothing.

“Couple more minutes!” she said pleasantly, giving its remains a scornful twitch.

I grinned, grabbed a couple of healing Potions from The Stash, and made my way over to my wing-top healing station. “You!” I pointed at a griffon with a lot of bloody slashes on him. I made a come-here motion. “Do not keep the healer waiting.”

Proudly, the griffon trotted over, displaying his wounds for all to see, badges of bravery and all that. “This is going to hurt. I’m warning you because if you snap at me, or claw at me, I’m going to snap at you, and claw at you.” I reached up, and to his immense surprise, hauled his hooked beak down to me. “Since you might die if I snap at you too hard, you might want to control yourself.”

The proud golden eyes met mine, and I ate his pride. His crest noticeably sank. My total lack of fear of him, and the eyeball he sent at the dragon, clearly conveyed that while he wasn’t afraid to fight me if needed, he wasn’t stupid enough to start something… especially since I was trying to fix him up!

I started going over his injuries, using my Vajra in place of tools. This was just a temporary job, meant to maximize the amount of work the Potions did, increasing the effective capacity of the magic, i.e., a Heal skill check. I pinched wounds together, twisted and fused his own hair and feathers together in lieu of stitches, got ragged edges to join and blood to clot and cement them tight, made sure they were washed clean of any contaminants, and smoothed out lines or flaws. I knitted blood vessels together, anchored muscles, eased bones that were out of place, and generally crawled all over him.

His fur was actually very fine feathers, remarkably soft to the touch, but almost metallic in hardness. Hacking through it would be like getting through a coat of mail… which hadn’t stopped the dragon, of course.

The griffons were all very interested in this, especially when I combed out broken feathers in his crest and got him all back to snuff. They’d gathered in most of a circle, cocking their heads as they closely followed what I was doing, watching me clean up his fur and the stains falling off him.

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I finished and stood up on his shoulders, looking down at his head.

“This last section has two parts. This won’t get you back to full health, but it will line up everything nicely for you to heal properly, understand?” He chirruped once. “Good.” I held up a vial. “Lesser Fast Healing Potion. It will basically seal all the rips in your flesh. However, it tastes like troll.” The golden eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Also, it itches like nobody’s business. So, you are going to have to NOT throw up when I pour this down your throat, and then NOT scratch yourself while you get yourself back together. If you start itching yourself, I am going to knock you on the head until you stop.”

I reached out and yanked his beak up effortlessly with one hand, surprising him again, and held up the Potion vial. I let go his bottom beak and ordered, “Open wide!”

Reluctantly, he opened his beak, and I totally fearlessly put my arm halfway down his throat as I dumped the Potion in there. I pulled my hand out, dropped the vial, and slammed his beak shut.

We all saw him tremble as the stuff hit his stomach, but I had his head locked and simply wasn’t going to let him spew it out.

He began to shudder, and to shake, his injuries seemed to hiss quietly as steam rose from them. His left rear leg began to rise, and I jerked my head sideways and glared right down into his golden eye, keeping his beak sealed with one hand as I raised my fist.

He twitched, he whimpered, he shivered full body length like six times, wiggling slightly, his wings twitching repeatedly and trying his awful damn best not to move as I held his eyes and head firm.

A minute of quiet agony later, his flesh stopped crawling and itching on the inside, and I slowly let him go. He quickly shook himself all over, like he was trying to shake bugs or water off.

“See here?” His long neck craned around to what had been a two-foot-long gash in his hide, now just a red welt as I parted his feathery fur for him to look at it. “It’s back together, but it’s not strong, and can rip again if you are too active. So, be careful. You should be back to full strength in two days, everything else being equal.

“You all done there, Trem?”

There was a very soft sound, like the dying gasp of a Cursed Sword or something. “Sure am!” She floated up, burning vivic, and the griffons edged back from her cautiously. “What’s up?”

“Vivic purification on this griffon here.” I patted my patient’s head. “Hey, back up to the edge of the wing over there, as if you were about to drop some dung. I don’t trust that dragon, so we’re going to see if any corruption got into you. Oh, and it’ll get the taste of troll out.”

A bit disgruntled, the griffon nevertheless paced over to a section of mashed bushes. Tremble followed, humming softly.

“Okay, take Tremble gently in your beak, close to your mouth.” Carefully, the griffon reached out as Tremble shrank down to dagger-size, and gripped her with a soft crunch. “Okay, five BIG breaths. If you feel you suddenly need to shit or piss, do it. Inhale, BIG breath!”

The griffon inhaled like a massive bellows, great chest swelling, and kind of chirped as all the vivic flame from Tremble went right down his throat. His big golden eyes got even bigger.

“That’ll clear the ol’ nose, won’t it? Again!”

He exhaled in a rush, and this time his wings came up as he inhaled again. Feathers stood up all over him. Again, and he reared up despite himself, his eyes getting a bit glossy. One more time and-

“EECH!”

A jet of white flame came out his ass, he barely got his tail out of the way as burning dung was vented from him explosively. He hopped to one side, steaming white piss spraying all around below him.

“ONE MORE TIME!”

He almost whimpered as he inhaled, and I drew Tremble away and clamped his jaws shut.

That huge breath seemed to vent out his nethers, and he whimpered and wiggled and almost fell down as he staggered.

I let go his beak, and he stumbled a couple steps to the side and sprawled down, panting.

“You feel that inside you?” I asked down at him grimly. He tilted his head back up to me, and nodded unwillingly. “That was Taint, corruption coming off the dragon.” I lifted my eyes to the alertly watching griffons all around. “If you have been bit or clawed by it, you probably have some of it inside you, too.” They all shuffled nervously. “Was any member of this crown bitten? I don’t see any bites on you. If they were, you’re going to need to get them to me quickly, or you might end up killing them yourself.”

The leader spoke up in sharp trills and cries. “Two? Go get them and bring them here. If you can’t bring them here, come back and get me, and I’ll go to them. The rest of you,” I pointed at the flames on Forge, “one by one, big breaths, and your mate here can tell you that it is going to be VERY uncomfortable. Get that shit out of you!”

In more ways than one.

The crown’s leader shrieked tyrannically, and one other lightly wounded griffon went with him, bounding for the edge of the no-fly zone, while the others lined up obediently by Forge, putting their heads right into the flame and raising their tails.

It would have been funny, if it wasn’t so necessary and damn painful.

As for Tremble and I, we started on the butchering. The vivic flame on the Blade meant we had nothing to fear, and yeah, its hide was steel-hard, but that meant nothing to a +VIII edge.

Dragonhide made great armor. Dragon skulls could be auto-invested Baneskulls. The claws were a power comp for magic Weapons. The bones were power comps for magic Armor and Shields. The blood was great for tons of magic Inks and Potions, almost a universal comp. The meat, well, normally it was awesome the same way the blood was, but this Tainted shit needed to be purified.

To magical beasts, dragon flesh was a great delicacy that could be used to purify their Bloodlines and get them to the next level. They definitely didn’t want to miss out on a meal like this!

When they were done venting their bowels, I dropped hundreds of pounds of meat on Forge, and the unwhite flames began to hiss over the meat, forming heavy mists which poured off the edges and into the ground, staining it white as they did so.

It wasn’t a small dragon, so there were at least a couple tons of flesh to mess with. Stomach, liver, fundamentallums, hearts, lungs, gall bladder, and other minor organs all had uses in magical items or alchemy, and could be sold or worked with. They went carefully into jars as the Exsanguinating Cord pulled all the remaining blood out of the carcass, filling up two ten-gallon jars and making me very happy. That stuff was like liquid gold.

And being a mutated thing, it had more than one of a couple of those organs. Thank you, Hags, for having such stuff around for me…

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The crown’s lord came back in time to scarf up fifty pounds of dragon meat as a snack, and then actually let me ride him back to the two members of the crown who couldn’t make it there.

One had a broken wing, the other one had actually been bitten badly by the dragon, and was totally unable to move, lucky to be alive after the dragon was forced to let her go during the fight. I ended up giving her two Potions and the full body treatment, while the other one just required me setting the broken wing, normally a death sentence for a griffon who couldn’t find magical healing, and then letting the Potion finish up the tough work.

He still had to spend a day off his wing, which he didn’t particularly like, but he wasn’t in any danger, clawing his way up to a higher location and just lazily flapping it as he looked around. He still got to snarf down a hundred pounds of dragon meat, so he was anything but unhappy.

By and large, the griffons gorged themselves on the purified dragon meat, earning back the energy they’d burned off with great satisfaction.

I ate some, too. Why not? It wasn’t bad sliced up and Tremble-fried. And while I was at it, I had me a talk with the griffons, who were frankly rather eager to chat with someone so dangerous who could actually talk to and understand them, and didn’t want to make buffalo wings out of them. Healing ‘em, feeding ‘em, killing the dragon for them… yep, lots of positive Diplomacy/Animal Empathy modifiers there.

Still had lots of dragon meat left, toting it around on Forge’s ten-ton limit, stacked up and purified. There were plenty of things I could do with it, and bribes weren’t out of the question…