Chapter 33: Griffin Hunt

The next day, Kristina and Darius set out to where she saw the griffin nest. It lived in a small cave near where Kristina met Darius. In her vision, Kristina was also able to confirm that it was female. Inside its nest, she was able to see it was guarding two eggs, explaining the griffin's increased ferocity and hunger.

Forcing the griffin to leave its nest had already bothered Kristina, before learning why she had made her nest. Now Kristina even more motivated to make sure the griffin was merely moved further away from the village, so the Chief wouldn't send someone to kill it. It'll be better for both sides if the griffin found a different place to live.

Darius and Kristina sat at the kitchen table. Amelia elected not to join their planning knowing that she'd only try and stop them, probably without any success, so she didn't even try.

"I have three plans," Darius posed, "They involve the griffins' natural predators, favorite food, or fire, but first I need to ask if griffins have any predators or favorite foods?"

"Predators… really? I think even you could surmise that there's nothing out there that willingly hunts a griffin. Plus, whatever would hunt a griffin would definitely cause a bigger problem, don't you think? For a favorite food, this one seems to like taurus meat. We could go get some from the market."

"Fair, plan A is a bust then, but plan B and C are still a go. Plan B will have us leave a trail for the griffin to follow, once its far enough away from the cave, we'll steal the eggs and move them to a place far enough from the village. The griffin will see her eggs gone and seek us out. We'll make sure to stay visible but far enough, so that she doesn't catch us. We'll keep going until we're, say, a dozen miles out. You know, in a nice new place that she'd want to stay in anyway, and just hope she doesn't come back."

"How do we know she'll actually follow us?" Kristina questioned, unsure of the reliability of this plan.

"We don't, so if that plan fails…" Kristina really hoped it wasn't the fire he mentioned before, but this was Darius she was thinking about. "Plan C is probably what you think it is."

"You're going to burn the forest."

"I'm going to burn a small part of the forest. Controlled flames and all that."

That plan was ridiculous, who knows the damage Darius could cause. "Are you crazy! A bunch of the people around here count their livelihood on the forest. Burning it may cause a problem bigger than the griffin."

All the reassurance Darius could offer her was a shrug, "Hey, I've done this kind of thing before… to mixed results, but you know what they say, failure is the greatest teacher. Plus, we still have plan B, that is unless you have a better plan."

"We could always… beat it up until it runs away." Darius didn't say anything just gave her a very disappointed stare. "Well, it worked last time!"

"We almost died last time, we got lucky."

"Fine! We'll go with plan B."