Phoenix

Sunfire reached down and gestured towards the flight harness she was wearing. "This was a gift from an old friend of mine, another griffin. She bought it from a trader a few decades ago, but she never used it and the design has since gone out of style. But you dragons, you wear these for functionality, with appearance just as an afterthought. For us griffins, the opposite is true. Our two species are so similar that we can even share garments, yet in other ways we are so different. So that got me thinking about dragons and the lifebond, and I started wondering. Maybe, maybe a dragon could do it too. I have shared memories with thousands of griffins, but never have I seen the world from a dragon's perspective. What can you teach me, I wonder?

"So I left the eyrie and flew all the way to drakken territory to find out. I searched for a dragon with neural magic, hoping that maybe you could somehow make that sacred link that has only ever been done between two griffins. I don't even know if it could work, or if this been a waste of time and effort." Sunfire raised her head to look at Alstrom, and for the first time the griffin and the dragon truly saw each other. "By my feathers, this is madness. I've only just met you, but here I am asking to do a lifebond. You could have all sorts of mental problems, and I wouldn't know until I let you into my head."

Both of them were quiet for a moment, and then Alstrom picked up his knife and resumed slicing up the vizriak. Sunfire watched him work for a few seconds, then she moved away slightly, having realized just how close she was sitting to the dragon. Here she was so very far from her home, roaming through the territory of a different civilization in some mad quest, trying to experiment with the most crucial, sacred moment of her life using magic which she had no experience with. Perhaps of the two of them, she was really the one who was more insane for having suddenly poured out so much information about her species and herself.

Alstrom spoke up after a few minutes of shared silence. "I take back what I said about griffins speaking too much and saying too little. You have said very much, and it is truly remarkable."

"So you believe me?" asked Sunfire.

"I think you couldn't make this much up if you tried," Alstrom said. "Everything you've said about griffins has been enlightening, so I shall share what I know about my own power. That's only fair."

"Tell me, then," said Sunfire.

The drake sat back on his haunches and used water poured from a bottle to wash his paws clean of the blood that stained them. Then he raised a paw and held it level before closing his eyes. "My inner affinity, my neural magic—I don't think it would work to link our minds. That's just not how it works." Suddenly a small bird fluttered down from the treetops and landed on his upraised paw. Alstrom opened his eyes again and turned to Sunfire, who was watching the little bird with awe. "My magic allows me to see and touch minds, but only those of animals. Sparrows, hawks, deer, boars, fish, spiders, ants; animals. I can see into their heads and read their thoughts, and they listen to me."

The bird perching on his paw suddenly broke out into song, chirping out a short, uplifting tune over and over. Sunfire realized that this wasn't the bird's usual mating call when Alstrom began to sing along in a quiet voice, harmonizing in tune with the chirping. It was a drakken folk song. "Whenever I try to fly, gravity pulls me straight down..." sang the drake.

"Ok, I'm impressed," admitted the griffin.

The small bird stopped singing and flew off quickly as Alstrom dropped his paw. "That's how I've always used my magic. I've always thought of it as a song. Every different animal has a...unique sound in their head—a special song that I can listen to and modulate. But that only works for lesser beings, and the more simplistic and unintelligent, the easier it gets. A spider sounds like a single note repeated over and over, but a bird or a deer is its own complicated little tune. Reading their minds is listening to the music of their heads, and controlling them is when I put my own music in. But if I try to use my magic on another dragon, the song in their head is like a cacophony of overlapping noise that is completely incomprehensible. I can't understand anything from other sapient creatures, let alone sending a message or somehow controlling them. My magic works on lesser beings only. Even a griffin has a mind too sophisticated for me to use my magic."

"Well..." Sunfire sighed. She felt very tired all of a sudden. Just a few months ago she had been healthy and fit, but now her life cycle was ending and her current body was starting to recycle itself. It was a process she was well familiar with. Muscles deteriorated and bones thinned as her body reclaimed nutrients and energy to bolster up her offspring's chances of survival. "But we won't know till we try, right? At least we can give it a shot. The lifebond is a unique form of magic like no other. In my death there forms a mental bridge which can connect two minds, but the question is if that bridge must be between two griffins, or if a dragon with cognitive magic can try to form a link as well. There's no harm in trying out this experiment." Then she paused as something he had said registered fully. "Wait, what do you mean by, 'even a griffin'?"

Alstrom grinned broadly. "Oh, I was insulting the intelligence of griffins, obviously."

Sunfire squawked indignantly, all her feathers standing up on end. "Oh! Oh! You...!" She had took a deep breath and resorted to a stronger form of language. "Fuuuuck you, dragon! Arrogant prick! Haughty asshole! You think your species is so much better than mine?"

"Yes, I do," said the arrogant prick, looking very amused at how annoyed Sunfire was.

The griffin huffed in annoyance. "Hmff! Well it isn't!" she retorted.

"But it is. You said it yourself just a few minutes ago—none but the drakken have access to arcane-class magical affinities. Healing, teleportation, puppeteering, and of course, cognitive magic—my magic," Alstrom said, sounding unbearably smug.

What he had said was factually true—drakken mastery of magic was unrivalled amongst all known civilizations, and this was the exact reason why Sunfire had chosen to attempt her experiment with a dragon instead of another one of the sapient species. Nevertheless, she refused to accept that this made dragons fundamentally superior to her own people. "Magic isn't everything!" she grumbled.

"Perhaps not. There is also technology, architecture, and industry—all of which the drakken are vastly superior at compared to your lesser civilization. We have a flying city, whereas you make decorative furniture and live in caves. Enough said."

This was also true. Griffins liked to live carefree, comfortably happy lives, and many enjoyed being artisans, poets, or philosophers. In comparison, the drakken applied themselves to practical problems with more...dedication.

"Smug scale-face! Just because you dragons have a flying city you think you are so great? You aren't! There's culture and history and diplomacy and...and, uh..." Sunfire tried her best to take Alstrom down a peg or two. It didn't work.

"Culture?" Alstrom opened his wings and mimed swinging them forwards and back in rhythmic patterns. "I can play the wing-harp. Can you?"

"Yes, I can!" exclaimed Sunfire, although her victorious tone was hampered when she had to clarify her statement. "Well, uh, I could. A few lives ago. A half-dozen. But I could play then! I was great at it! A master!"

"If you say so."

The griffin fumed for a few seconds, trying to come up with a defence for her civilization. Finally she settled on saying, "The gryphon knows secrets that no one else, not even the drakken, know about!"

"Really? Such as?"

Sunfire was left nearly speechless. "I...I...but...they're secrets! If I told them to you, then they wouldn't be secrets!"

"Right."

Sunfire was left completely speechless. "..."

Alstrom tossed his knife in the air and spun around to catch it with the dextrous tip of his tail. He was showing off—unlike dragons, griffins could not use their tails to manipulate objects and they relied entirely on their paws to handle tools. "If you are feeling offended, feel free to leave my territory and fly away. Fly, fly away, you sunny little birdcat."

"Fuck you, scale-face! Fuck, fuck, fuck you." Sunfire hissed at the dragon, and then she shook her head and hissed again. "Psst. And fuck me too, because I think I'm beginning to like you."

"The feeling is mutual."

The griffin paused, this last remark having taken her by surprise. "My ears must be failing. Did I hear you wrongly? Was that actually a compliment? From you?"

Alstrom nodded. "It was. You are very welcome. Did I just make your day?"

"Dragon, if your ego grew any bigger it would blot out the sun."

"If you wish to insult me you are going to have to try harder than that."

"Alright!" Sunfire paused to try and think up her best possible insult, but she wasn't very good with wordplay. "You, uh, you...you suck. Scale...butt..."

Alstrom said nothing. The look on his face said enough.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" grumbled Sunfire. "Fuck it! Fuck this! I can't take this anymore—I'd rather drop dead right now than stare at your smug face for another second." The griffin reached down and pulled the release catches on her flight harness to tug off all the gear and let it fall to the ground. "Time to die. Lifebond—yes or no, Alstrom? Do you want to live forever?"

"I'm not ready to die. I'd rather stay in this body than trade it for immortality," said the drake.

"You won't die because you're not a griffin. At most you get copied over...I think. Best case scenario, you do something which no dragon had ever done before. Worst case scenario, nothing happens. So why not?"

"I still don't think this will work, but it couldn't hurt to try," Alstrom decided.

"That's the spirit! Let's go!" Sunfire closed her eyes and took a deep breath—one of her last, as she prepared to initiate the final process of death and rebirth. She reached deep within her and let her magic flow. Unlike normal spells, she needed no paw gestures or special incantations; all she had to do was stop subconsciously resisting and her innate magic would begin to burn her away.

Of course, Alstrom would have no idea what to expect. "What should I do? How do we link minds?" he asked.

Sunfire could already feel her magic beginning to take effect. Her whole body felt like it was tingling, but her thoughts came crisp and fast. "Use your neural magic and try to read my mind. Just keep trying."

The magic was burning hot through her body, even if on the surface it looked like nothing was changing. Sunfire kept her eyes closed, but she heard Alstrom reply. "Nothing. It's the same as usual. Loud and noisy when I try to read your mind. It's like talking to the crashing ocean."

"How about now?"

"Still nothing. I'm still trying, but there just...noise."

"How about now?" Sunfire asked again.

"No. This isn't working. The whole idea was ridiculous to start with. I'm sorry, but I told you that my magic doesn't—"

Sunfire suddenly snapped her eyes open and looked straight at Alstrom. No, she looked straight into him, sending a burst of magic right at his mind like a lance meant to pierce armour. In a fraction of a second their consciousness became interlinked. "How about now," she repeated, except that her beak didn't move. "I hope you can hear me, dragon, because I can certainly hear you."

---

ALSTROM/DRAGON

Alstrom was taken speechless. Out of nowhere, everything seemed to fall into place and the incoherent noise representing Sunfire's consciousness turned into the clearest, cleanest, sound. He could hear Sunfire's mind just as he heard his own thoughts; not as a disembodied voice, but like a stream of ideas, feelings, and even exactly what she was experiencing of the world around her. His paw twitched, and the knife tumbled to the ground. Alstrom looked down to his chest, and for a moment he saw brown feathers instead of blue scales. It was astonishing.

"Astonishing? No, it the lifebond, or the beginning stages of one, at least. Are you impressed yet?"

The dragon didn't know what to say. "What happens—" he began to ask, but somehow Sunfire saw his question before he had vocalized it.

"I could tell you, but you will see soon enough. Keep linking your mind with mine." Sunfire's thoughts ran through his head so much faster than speech possibly could, but Alstrom understood every single syllable completely. He couldn't possibly mishear.

Alstrom could feel his magic running rich in a continuous flow towards Sunfire, but he let the power flow out of him instead of trying to restrain it. In step, both the dragon and the griffin walked towards each other. Instead of speaking, Alstrom threw his thoughts as Sunfire had thrown hers. "What happens now?"

"I know how a lifebond should function between two, or three, or even more griffins, but I do not know if the same will happen for us. Perhaps there is a limit, perhaps not," Sunfire said.

For Alstrom, the experience was like nothing else he had felt before. Never had his magic ever shown him anything so complex—the mind of another being who was just as sapient as he was. Despite what she had said earlier, Sunfire's mind felt vast and ancient, with strange echoing harmonics running underneath her higher thought processes. It was like he had entered an immense library, but without any reference or guide for what he was looking for. Alstrom found himself floating over a vast sea of information in which memories and concepts were all intertwined and twisted like cresting waves, linked to specific ideas, thoughts, or even in a manner that seemed almost random. Curious, he picked one of the waves at random and sent his mental probe there...

---

"...uld you like sugar with that?" asked the waiter.

"Yes please," Alstrom replied. He took the offered bowl and began adding heaped spoonfuls of sugar into his drink. Once he had added so much sugar than even the hot tea had become saturated, he raised the cup to his beak and started sipping.

Wait, I don't have a beak. The view seemed to zoom out and take on a hazy quality. This isn't my memory, this is Sunfire's. Alstrom glanced down, expecting to see feathers of brown instead of blue scales, but instead he saw feathers that were an ashen grey...

---

Then suddenly his perspective imploded completely, and Alstrom found himself standing back in his campsite. The griffin, Sunfire, was watching him with her head tilted. "No need to rush. You can't hope to access memory at random and find anything useful. I'm surprised you even managed to find something that could be coherently decoded."

"That was... I was... I saw you, but you had...you were grey, not brown..." Alstrom shook his head and took a few steps back. Suddenly he felt incredibly vulnerable—if he could see Sunfire's memories, then surely she could see his. Instinctually he tried to pull back his magic, and the echoing song of the griffin's thoughts dulled to a quiet whispering tune.

"Take it easy, Alstrom. Don't panic," Sunfire told him, speaking aloud. "You're still in control of your own mind, you just need to get used to the lifebond. The bridge runs both ways and you can control it."

Despite her reassurances, Alstrom was finding it hard to remain calm. Sunfire was in his head! He wanted to close himself off and wall up his mind, but then immediately he realized that since the griffin could see his thoughts, she could anticipate this move and find a way around his defences. Everything he could think about was all exposed and visible. How could he outthink someone who had millennia of practice? The only way out was physical. He could fly away as fast as possible, or charge her and use his claws to do something...barbaric. Yet once again Alstrom realized that Sunfire would already know what he was thinking and she would attack him first and...

"You really are panicking. Maybe this was a bad idea." Sunfire sat back on her haunches and yawned leisurely. "Perhaps the barrier to performing a lifebond is not just magical, but mental. I guess dragons just don't have the fortitude to do what every griffin does."

She probably hadn't meant this to be an insult, but Alstrom felt a sting to his pride at the idea of backing away. Once again he worried that Sunfire was reading his mind and manipulating him somehow, but then he dismissed the thought and tried to refocus his magic. His panic faded away as he thought through what he knew—Sunfire wasn't reading his mind or stealing his thoughts, she was only seeing as much as he chose to send. It wasn't just about listening to the song echoing through her head, but also about controlling the song he was singing back to her. Slowly he opened up the link again, except now he was carefully observing to ensure that everything was in balance.

"Ah, there we go. For a moment I thought I would have to die alone," Sunfire said, switching back to throwing her thoughts instead of speaking aloud. "Keep your magic under control. If you broadcast every slightest emotion you will tire yourself out quickly, before we even have a chance to unpack the real memories."

"Sorry. About. That. It was. Unsettling," Alstrom replied, but his projected thoughts were initially slow and jarring as he carefully metered out the information. It wasn't easy, but with a bit of concentration he could control the mental link so he knew how much of his mind Sunfire could read, instead of just openly broadcasting every single thought. "You could have told me what to expect. It takes some getting used to."

"But I couldn't because I too do not know what to expect. We are in uncharted waters here, running an interspecies mental link. Every single griffin has done this countless times before, but you are different. Your magic is so similar, yet not quite the same." Sunfire slowly got to her feet, and when Alstrom did not object, she walked closer until she was standing beside the dragon again.

"So what now?" Alstrom asked.

"Exchange of information. Traditionally each partner in the lifebond would take turns requesting information and receiving it. We would show off the most memorable moments of our lives past and present, sharing that which we consider most important to pass on to another."

"Memorable...how?" asked Alstrom. He tried to reflect on his most treasured memories, but it was hard to decide which was the most important of his thoughts. How could he even begin to rank them?

"It falls to you to decide, really. I have so many memories from my fellow kin," Sunfire explained. "It could be a beautiful sight you enjoyed while flying to the far reaches and exploring new territory. It could be a newfound understanding of some concept—be it philosophy, abstract mathematics, or a practical development in some way. It could even be a moment of personal development, or an interaction with another which you want to be remembered for some reason. I once had a griffin who sent a memory of being offended and annoyed after a human trader reneged on a deal; she was so angry that she gave me her memory so I could be angry too." Alstrom heard an echo of amusement run through the mental link. "I could even show it to you, but no, I think grudges should be forgotten."

"I...I still do not know what you consider memorable."