Before

Gryff

CW: Abusive family situation

Gryff couldn't wait until he was old enough to move out of his parent's home. His siblings were coming home from the academy for the holidays and he was not looking forward to it. His parents were bad enough towards him when his siblings were away, it was limited to just being constantly compared to them, but when his older sister and brother were home all four of them talked about how bad he was compared to them but also made him do everything. His siblings also liked using him for target practice for all the spells that kept learning, the only decent thing was how he improved his own shield spells but they normally got pissed at him for using shield spells so he also had gotten a lot of practice at first aid. He knew it wasn't a good relationship at all but there was nothing he could do, not yet anyway. His siblings were some of the most powerful watchers, one who was being considered for the next generation of leaders, and compared to them he didn't have that much power, so everyone else didn't care.

"Little brother, did you miss us?" He heard his sister, Megaera, call out.

He reluctantly came down to where his siblings were standing with his parents, "Good to see you little bro," His older brother, Andrew, said coming over towards him, "Maybe we should have some fun outside like we used to,"

"I'm good," Gryff said, wanting to get out of the situation he was in, he didn't feel like dealing with his siblings.

"Gryff, you should spend time with Megaera and Andrew," his mother said.
His father continued, "They aren't here for long,"

"Come on little bro," Andrew said, pulling him by his hand out to the yard.

Gryff knew that he wouldn't have a choice so he went along with them, he barely blocked the fireball that came his way from Andrew's hand. He had to get ready for a few hours of fun.

- - - - - -

Gryff was currently hiding on one of the rooftops of the academy where he was a second-year student he was studying at. It was a rooftop with a small garden that everyone avoided, he didn't know why but he was glad for it. He didn't have any friends here, everyone either hated him or didn't want to be hated by the people who hated him. He preferred sitting by the plants, the flowers at least didn't try to make his life miserable in any way possible. Everyone loved his siblings, the teachers constantly talked about how spectacular students his older siblings were, and they didn't miss a chance to put him down either. He had tried having friends during his first year but after they all saw how the teachers hated him everyone started to hate him as well. The only good thing about the academy was that he didn't have to deal with his parents anymore, and his siblings whenever they came to visit. He had three and a half more years until he went to the army, and then he would fight for as little as possible, he did not want to keep fighting if his siblings became generals. After he was free he would avoid his family as best that he could.

- - - - - -

Things weren't any better for Gryff when he joined the actual army, it was worse. At least at school, he was able to escape onto the garden rooftop; here, the generals always needed to know where everyone was. He had done so many different chores over and over again, laundry; dishes; cooking, pretty much whatever needed to be done. Again no one wanted to go near him because of how hard whoever was in charge of them at the time was. In the past few years, he had tried his best to get as powerful as possible, hoping that at least then people wouldn't actually hate him. He had improved his flight skills; and how well he handled using a blade, though he didn't have anyone to fight with so he had to find different ways to improve his abilities and he had improved his magic to a point where if he had fought some of the teachers at his academy he could have taken some of them down. It made them hate him more, suddenly he was a show-off so it just landed him more duties, occasionally he would take the duties just to show off because he was proud of what he had done.