"A griffin, kinda?" I said not entirely sure if the thing in my arms qualified as such any more.
Urag's expression sharpened "First it's called Gryphon. Clarity is important. Second what do you mean "kinda"? Is it or is it not a gryphon?" he asked seriously.
"I don't know okay? I found the egg in a cage of dragon bones with a long term mutation ritual circle at work. It had obviously been going for a long long time from the amount of dust so I thought the egg was dead. When it hatched the thing that came out was a mix of gryphon and dragon so I don't know what to classify the thing as." I explained helplessly.
"Troublesome." Urag muttered before getting up and vanishing into the sea of books.
He is gone for a few minutes before he returns holding three pieces of parchment and two tomes. The parchments look old, like REALLY old. The tomes are also not new either but are in much better condition. He carefully lays out the parchments and tomes on the desk.
"These scraps of parchment date back to the early second era so keep your hands away from them. They are the only records we have of actual dragon behavior so they may or may not be of any use in this matter. The tomes are from the order of Welkynars on Gryphon husbandry and raising. Stolen of course, the order would never willingly share such knowledge." he explained as he carefully looked over the parchments.
"I'll look at the tomes while you look at the parchments." I said carefully flipping open the first tome after getting a grunt of agreement from him.
The language within was flowery and filled with poetic nonsense but I quickly picked out the important bits. First to raise a gryphon without it turning hostile or escaping when able you needed to bond with it via a magical ritual thankfully included in the book. -
Second was that there were two kinds of gryphons, high borns and vulture. High born gryphons were carnivores and had no preferred source of meat beyond it being something they hunted themselves. Vulture gryphons on the other hand don't hunt their own food typically but steal the kills of other things that do. Thankfully the care routine for both varieties are the same at the youngling stage and only differs when reaching adolescence and adulthood.-
At this stage though they needed whatever meat they were being fed to be high in fat and reduced to a paste or at least fine mince. Also DON'T mix meats together apparently, it messes with their stomachs at this stage. There were a bunch of other tips and tricks to raising a gryphon in the tomes such as needing gloves because their beaks were razor sharp even as newborns and can take fingers without them. Additionally you need a small collection of bones because the things chew on them to sharpen their beaks as they grow.-
"Well according to this any meat will do so long as it's minced or pasted. What about with dragons?" I asked after finishing my side of this.
"Seems you are in luck. Dragons don't need to eat apparently but when they do it's usually some form of meat as well." he said gruffly as he went to take the tomes but I stopped him.
"I need a moment to copy the ritual of bonding in that tome." I explained.
He grunted but waited for me to copy it before taking all the tomes and parchments back. I thanked him for the help again and left some more candy before hurrying back to my room. The book was quite clear that the ritual needed to be done within a day of the hatching or the bond might not take fully. I had all the things needed for the ritual already as it wasn't anything crazy or even rare. It was just mage chalk to draw the ritual circle, the egg shell, a few drops of my blood and an empty soul gem of as high a quality as possible.-
The hatchling is placed at the center of the circle and the egg shell is crushed and mixed with my blood before being fed to it. My magicka is then pushed into the circle and it cycles between the soul gem, the hatchling and back to me. The reason you want to use as high a quality soul gem as possible for this is because the lower the quality the longer this process takes. When the ritual is done the person and gryphon are more or less two parts of a whole. It's the same principle as a true mages familiar.-
It took me about an hour to fully draw out the circle in my room and mix the egg shell and my blood together into a paste. Unwrapping the hatchling that was NOT okay with it and nipped me as a result I set the thing in the center of the circle. It's eyes were still closed. But it was quite clear that this was going to change quickly as already the stuff sealing them shut was drying and cracking as it strained to open it's eyes. I almost reluctantly took out my only grand soul gem that I planned to fill eventually and set it down in the circle. -
I quickly fed the voracious hatchling the paste that it swallowed greedily and then chirped for more afterwards. Finally I began to feed my magicka to the circle and let the ritual take it's course. It felt strange. Like a second heartbeat pulsing in my chest. The ritual didn't last long thanks to the quality of the gem I used but by the end I felt dreadful. There was a deep straining pain in my soul that throbbed and burned. I used my [soul sight] spell to look at my soul to try and figure out why this was and was left speechless.-
My soul was crowded.
There was no better way to describe it. Between my sword that took up close to half of it and the words of power in another quarter there was not much untouched already. Now in the final quarter a phantom image of the hatchling sat leaving a mere smidgen untouched. Even then that quarter was bleeding into the quarter with the words of power causing the edges between them to crack and heal constantly as a balance was sought.-
'It has to be the dragon mutations. They must be resonating with the words of power in my soul!' I thought in shock.
Whatever the case however I knew one thing for certain, this was all my soul could have bound to it permanently. I could learn more words but nothing else could be added to my soul. Additionally this pain was absolutely dreadful because while it wasn't agonizing it was constant and annoying.