I woke up in some kind of prison cell. How did that happen? I thought. Dark bars went down vertically all around me, except for what appeared to be the back wall. The whole prison was unnecessarily dark, with only a few torches on some of the walls in front of me. Looking to my right I saw another an empty cell or two. Looking right, I saw the same.

So I propped myself up against the solid wall and waited. It was pretty fun, counting the individual stones that made up the dungeon. This was definitely a dungeon. What else would it be?

After a while, something finally happened. At first it was just noise. The sweet sound of jingling keys and the sound of large hooves clopping on the floor in a strangely off rhythm. Then I saw a shadow moving in the torchlight. My distance gauge was probably way off, but by the look of the torch and the shadow moving in it, in accordance with the sound reaching my ears, the thing was definitely fourteen meters tall, bipedal, and about seventy-two meters away (give or take a few).

The thing got closer. Its shadow was probably really warped, but it looked kind of like some deformed human. Oh and really, really buff.

Trepidation crept up on me as it got even closer. This thing was actually really big. Maybe it was the devil, here to take me to hell.

Well, the devil couldn't make it any worse than Ponyland, so I was all in for it.

The big guy stopped in front of my cell and looked down at me. It had blue eyes, intense ones that seemed to glow when you looked right at them. The torchlight behind him gave me his form. Massive upper body and absurdly beefy arms. Horns came up from his head in a menacing misdemeanor. His lower form looked a bit pitiful, but strong nonetheless. Finally, a short tail seemed to wave around behind him. It was probably 5 meters tall.

I would probably appreciate it if this guy was on my side. Somehow, I doubted it.

Maybe it was waiting for me to talk. I don't know why, but that seemed like my best shot.

"I speak first," came its overly loud voice. If death was a dragon and could talk, it would have this guy's voice. Then it hesitated for a moment, confused. "You will bow to me."

"So I will." And I did just that, more splendidly then most gentlemen can manage.

He glared at me, for it was most certainly a 'he' (or at least, I hoped so). "So you are the human."

Well, if we were going to talk like that, then... "Oh come now, who is but the form of the function of what, and what you are is no one to be trifled with, but I am asking precisely who you are."

"I know not what you are speaking of, but cease it. I am the leader of the Doom Brigade, and we will see that Equestria falls beneath our hooves."

"After that, I will go on to conquer the rest of Equus and destroy all who oppose me."

"Oh, well, turns out that I actually don't oppose you. In fact, I'll help you get what you want if you release me."

He seemed stupefied at the notion. Apparently it had never occurred to him that some people would be more than willing to fight along with him, rather than die in prison.

"Good. I was going to make you do such a thing anyway, but your compliance only makes it easier."

Now, I didn't know this then, but it turns out that whenever anyone says the word "compliance," your life gets marginally worse.

Mr. Doom reached out with his ring of keys and opened my cell door. Then he reached in and pulled me out. His hand almost fit around my entire body.

He set me down next to him with a plop. I didn't even try to get up. Apparently he didn't know I was injured, because he knelt down next to me on the hard floor. "What is disturbing you?"

Without a word I pointed to my right leg, which was splayed out awkwardly. He slowly put one of his hands on it, the armored plates on it started glowing azure, and immediately rushing blue energy consumed both my leg and his hand. I felt my leg instantly straighten and then heal. Some of the magic jumped up to my broken finger and fixed that, too.

It was incredibly jarring, but my body felt much warmer then before, and my appendages were all normal again. I glanced at him. "Thanks, man."

He just glared at me with those silly eyes. Then he looked directly at my forehead.

He lifted a single one of his massive fingers and poked my forehead with it. The feeling of it did not go away immediately, so I tried edging away, but I felt locked in place.

Doom was looking down at the floor, whispering under his breath with his eyes closed. He then shot his head up and his eyes flashed brightly. Then I felt a searing pain in my head, like a 400 degree brain freeze.

When my head cleared, he said, "I now have the power to instantly obliterate you from any distance and by my sheer will. If my spymaster tells me you have been doing anything at all I deem unloyal, you will do no such things any longer. Or anything else."

"Well, I suppose that's a good way to ensure loyalty. What exactly are you having me do that none of your dudes can?"

"You will be finding the seven shards of the Seeker. The Seeker is a weapon which I will use to destroy all who would oppose me."

"No. I do however know that it is the tool I will use to bring down Celestia and the rest of her welp. After Equestria has fallen, then the rest of the world will crumble to my will."

"I was, uh, making it up. I mean, it's gotta seek something right? You know, if it's called the Seeker?"

"I care not what it seeks. I care only about my possession and capitalization of it."

"...Great. When do I start?" for I was indeed getting tired of keeping up the charade of not being completely and utterly terrified of this fellow and his likely upstart power.

"You start once we have finished this conversation of ours. You will be going with the help of someone you have not yet met. He will guide you from shard to shard and will help me put them together again once you are finished."

"Wait, we're undergrou—" and...... suddenly I was blinking in sunlight. I felt and just barely saw little sparks of blue lightning crackling up and down my body.

My clothes were really messed up. I'd definitely have to find a way to fix them/get more of them soon.

I looked around. I was standing in a little desert. I knew it was little because there was grass in view in all directions around me. Based on the position of the sun, I knew that it was to the North that I saw a distant line of trees. To the East, West, and South, the land kind of just dipped away. Shrugging, I got up and started heading South. I was starting to feel mighty thirsty, probably because I hadn't had anything to drink for an obscene amount of time. Where land went away, water had more of a right to exist.

Unless, in this world, water preferred high places. Probably not, though, because gravity seemed to persist in the same way it normally would. Well, unless magic was involved.

I had just reached the grass, when I felt something... warp next to me. I looked over and— wow.

There was a pony next to me. This guy had a pale blue coat, like the color of wind if you gave wind a color. His mane was white, though he didn't look particularly old. But the thing that made him stand out was his mask. He had this whitish mask that looked as if it were made of bone that had brown carvings etched into it, swirly distinguishing patters that probably meant something or another. It raised up above his ears in the back like little wings. The picture on his flank was that of surprisingly normal looking eye, half-closed in thought. He was frail looking and unlike other male ponies I had seen. This one lacked the strength and body-build of a lot of them.

I was pretty sure (91%) that this was the guy who was supposed to be my guide. He looked all... prophety.

It took me a moment, but I recovered fast enough to say, "What's the difference."

He didn't even seem fazed, as if he had been asked this question many times. "A prophet sees the future. A seer sees the present. And the past sees the rest."

"I don't know! Make jokes, speak casually, don't speak like a ten-year old trying to impress his friends at a slumber party! Stuff like that!"

"What's your name anyway, oh great seer of things that are happening right now?"

"Oh. Most pony names are longer than that, and seem to have two different defining words. Is there something you're not telling me? Because if we really are traveling for a long time, you're going to have to tell me everything and you're gonna have to lose that mask, because I like looking people in the eyes, and that mask is just creepy. How do you see out of it anyway?"

He seemed dumbfounded. He then placed his hooves slowly on the mask and pulled it off. As soon as it was off his head entirely, it vanished from existence.

I immediately saw why he probably wore that mask in the first place. His teal eyes were quite obviously blind.

"I can call it back whenever I want. It helps me focus, but I don't need it. As for my name, it's Stormy Whisper. I see things around me by focusing on such things. I also don't see color, though I know it exists."

It took me a while to process this. This guy certainly must have some sort of contract going with someone to be able to do all this random crap.

"Well okay Whisper, where is the first shard of the Seeker? You seem like a guy who outta know."

"I do not yet know precisely, but it currently is in that direction." He pointed his hoof more or less South. "It will reveal itself to me better when we are closer, I believe."

"Do we have to find them in a certain order? Because that would be rather annoying."

"Yes, we do have to find them in order. They will not reveal themselves if we do otherwise. I may be able to sense them, if we happen to be fairly close perhaps, but in order to obtain them, we need to do it in the right order."

"Finding some water would be good. Those ruffians barely fed and watered me, so getting both would be good, though water would be more necessary."

We were looking at a peninsula jutting out into a massive ocean. A gentle hill went all the way down from where we were to a city. Yes, an actual city, not some random town. It looked like a port city and was probably some sort of trade capital.

It took us an hour to get down the hillside. When we arrived at the bottom, the town kind of just started a little ways off.

"Okay. Great. Do you know any places here that would give us free water without us having to buy anything?"

We walked into town, and the first tavern we saw, we waltzed right in like we owned the place.

Everyone who was inside didn't seem to pay us any attention, probably because there were only two, and they were both snoring on their table.

"Right... you and yur friend look pretty banged up. You need some water or... something...?"

His confusion probably had something to do with the puppy dog eyes I was giving him.

Stormy and I sat down. The bar stools were weirdly high for me, probably because they were made for ponies. I towered over the bar.

He didn't take long, and came back with two shot glasses with water in them. Then he seemed to remember it was water we were getting and went back to exchange the tiny cups with much bigger glasses.

When he got them to us, we drunk our fill. That water was the best water I had tasted in my life. Literally.

"Tough place to be... say maybe you could use a short break? There probably not gonna be many people here for a while still. I can give you two a bed if you'll help me out with a little problem I have."

We glanced at each other. Rest actually did seem fantastic, but we could probably just sleep on the ground outside if we wanted that.

"Well, my wife lost her necklace a few days ago. It was an expensive one she got from... uh, a fair. I was hoping you might be able to find it."

Stormy lifted his head and instantly pointed a hoof at a spot on the line where one of the walls and the floor met. "There. It's lodged just under that board."

The barkeep looked surprised for a moment, but quickly recovered and walked over to the spot. He looked around for something to pry up the board, so I just walked over to him and bent the board up a little.

Sure enough, a pretty little gold necklace with a tiny compass rose in the middle was sitting under it. "Sweet Celestia..." the barkeep muttered before scooping it out. "Well, the rooms are in the back. Feel free to use the shower and any of the rooms until around 6 o' clock." He pointed a hoof in the right direction.

After a few minutes and a short shower. I was in one of the beds. It was kind of small, and kind of musty, but it was a bed. The hospital bed was better, but I was bruised and injured. The wagon was cramped and shifty, and I was still a little injured. Oh yeah, and sleeping in the middle of a burning orphanage? Yeah, I was definitely going to do that again.

This was definitely the best sleep I was going to have gotten since I had arrived here.

~/\^/\~
Rules of my Descention
.I.

I will be like any other mortal, except that I cannot die.
~\/v\/~

I was awakened by the tapping of Stormy's hoof on my shoulder. I sat up in bed and stretched.

I hopped out of the bed and walked after him. I could hear one of the most infamous sounds throughout all time and space echoing from the front room: a woman's yelling.

We made our way back into the main room of the tavern to find a disheveled crowd watching the barkeep and the owner of the raucous voice fighting with words. The woman was an orange pegasus, with a silly looking hat on her head. Her mane was shades of gray to black, and her special tattoo was that of a compass rose.

"Well, you came in here with it, so you should've expected someone to steal it!"

I glanced at Whisper. He glanced back with a look of warning in his blind eyes. Then he pointed his hoof at a worn paper that must have fallen out of the pegasus's pocket. It had drifted right by my feet.

I snatched it up and looked at it. It was a map of the surrounding area, or so it seemed. It had the peninsula we were on, and the city taking up most of that. But beyond the city, out in the ocean, was a little island with an X scribbled over it.

Whisper whispered, "That is almost certainly where the shard is." He pointed at the X.

"Well, if it's not, it might be buried treasure, or something! I say we go for it, either way."

By this point the scuffle between the hot-headed pegasus and the ruffled barkeep was over. The pegasus was also proudly wearing the pendant we had found earlier. In fact, the compass rose on the pendant seemed to directly match the one on her flank. Odd...

And wait, she just realized that her map was missing. I glanced at Whisper. He quietly said, "Let's book it."

So we carefully edged ourselves away from the crowd and booked it. How I was not noticed by the crowd was a mystery to me. Then I realized a lot of them were probably mildly drunk.

Whisper and I ran through the now-darkened streets of the city in the direction of the tip of the penisula, the moon lighting our paths. We stopped after some time, saying goodbye to the beautiful comfort of the starry sky for a while.

We ducked into a little alley and rested behind some random boxes, hoping to avoid any unwanted activity with other ponies around.

Stormy rested against one of the boxes with his hooves behind his head. Yeah, the ponies here had crazy joints and weight dispersion compared to real horses.

"My power is in knowledge, nothing else. Against those who would want to use me, I am powerless. They learned of me. They came for me. Somehow, their leader knew of you and made me tell him of your whereabouts. He seemed quite intent on having you gather the shards."

"Yes. It is on that island, though some ways underground. I am not sure how we will get to it quite yet."

"Hmm. That's a weird development. Say, we could really use some help right about now."

"Well, you can probably just call me Time, I guess. And uh, now that I think about it, no, I don't have any friends in this world. I've made enemies with everyone I've met, besides maybe you. Everyone I've met here has been kind of mean to me, again, besides you. Well, there is this guy named Starstone, but he kind of just roped me into helping him a little... Why do you ask?"

"I do know what both of those words mean, but they have no resonance together for me."

"Basically, you kind of have no sense of right or wrong. For you nothing is right and nothing is wrong."

I was not really concerned. "Well, I have only existed in this world for sometime more than forty-eight hours. If I did have a 'moral compass,' then it would have had to have been programmed into me, or I would've had to retain it from whatever I was/did before."

"I don't know! All I remember is... is everything, but I have no memory to accompany it. It's just... knowledge I have no reason to know. I currently lack reason to do anything I do. The prospect of dying does not resonate fear within me. I just have a slight curiosity as to what will happen if I die. That, in itself, frightens me."

"Well that was incredibly confusing," Stormy commented. "We should probably move on soon."

"Oh. He has a spymaster who gathers information from informants everywhere. We've actually probably been seen by lots of informants working for completely different people already. They'll have quite some interesting news to report."

"No, that's not it. He told me that he had a spymaster, too. The problem with that is that he's trusting us with the pieces of one of the most powerful weapons in the history of this world. A spymaster could not obtain information about us from a distance so far in any short amount of time. In the time which Doom receives information about us, and the time which we actually did whatever he learns about, we could easily cause massive chaos and overthrow his whole plot if we did it right. No, he most likely has some way to spy on us using that fancy magic of his. My guess is that when he used his magic to establish that death link, he also linked our eyes to some viewing port or something."

"Well, I don't really follow your train of thought very well, but that could quite possibly be true, and we should consider it in everything we do. He also probably didn't like that we just figured it out if indeed he is watching right now somehow."

I ruffled his mane and said, "Oh, you're too fun." Then I thought for a second. "By the way, I really like calling you Stormy..."

We managed to take some food from someone's house when we were almost to the edge. Just some bread and grapes, but it was good and filling.

We finally came to the outskirts of the city at the crack of dawn. The city was built just up to the tip of the peninsula, where some water from perhaps sewage formed a small stream all the way down to the very tip. Little plants dotted up here and there, and it was like a large garden.

Stormy and I walked to the edge and I sat with my feet dangling off. He just sat on the grass.

Then sun was rising to our left, just above the crests of the waves beneath us and casting its light out on the nearest clouds. It was pretty. I could just make out the tiny island in the distance. I had no idea how we were going to get there.

"Here." He pointed his hoof toward the west-side of the tip and got up. We walked over to where he was pointing, and did indeed find stairs carved out of the rock and leading down the cliffside.

We made haste down the steps. It took us around seven minutes to get down, I think.

And there was our boat. It was one of those classic rowboats, so I knew who was doing the rowing.

About halfway across the boat-leg part of the journey, Stormy got tired of rowing. The sun was now high in the sky, approaching noon.

"Because this is a pony made rowboat. The oars and the seating would make it impossible for me to row properly, if at all." This was, of course, completely untrue. I just didn't feel like rowing.

"When I was a foal, I was extremely sickly, and almost died only a few days after I was born. But something came into me, and healed me. My eyes were already dead, but the power gave me the sight I now have. And more."

"Is there something else you wanted to know? Because you keep asking me questions at different times. Get them all out at once!"

"But you did say that you knew of their existence. So, from everything you've heard or felt or sensed, or whatever, what is your favorite color?"

"Well, colors are important. A lot of times, color of things such as eyes, armor, weapons, magic, even hair can mean a whole lot about that person."

Yeah, my mind is gone. Now I'm making up things about colors. Maybe I'll start talking about how different flowers are important.

We arrived at the island mid-afternoon. It was a small island, little more than a beach, some grass in the middle, and a few bushes.

We pulled up the boat far enough from the water so that the tide wouldn't capture it and then walked to the middle of the island.

Whisper put his hooves above his head and brought down his mask onto his face. When it was in place he stood perfectly still, before saying, "It is approximately seventy meters beneath us. It seems to be in the heart of some sort of giant subterranean structure. An entrance is just a meter or two below us. We'll have to dig it out."

So it turns out that ponies suck at digging, and I wasn't too good either. After some arguing, he finally let me use his mask as a scoop.

It took a while, and my hands were really hurting and full of dirt, but I managed to uncover some sort of rotting wood, which I easily broke through. After clearing the hole enough for Stormy and I to fit, we slithered in.

We were now sufficiently filthy. From the light coming in through the hole, I could see we were in a stone corridor with little carvings all over the walls. However, there was no way we could light the way to be able see. We should've really brought a torch or something. Not a flashlight. A flashlight would make it creepy.

"Hey Stormy. How are we going to get through here witho— hey! Where are you going!?"

"Dude, it's, like, really dark down here. How are we supposed to— ohhh." Stormy didn't need light to see. "Okay, dude. I can't see down here, cause it's really dark. How about I hold on to you and you tell me where to go?"

We started traversing the structure. Whisper seemed fairly confident he could navigate us to the shard. We also encountered a fair number of traps which Whisper did a good job of finding and outsmarting.

Ha! The blind guiding the seeing. But in this case, it was the seeing leading the blind.

We had gone through an absurd number of hallways and down an absurd number of staircases, and up some too, that I was fairly certain Stormy had only an idea of where to go.

But, as I walked on the stone floor, he whispered to me. "We are basically in the antechamber now. This last run of stairs and we will arrive in the main chamber where the shard is located."

Sure enough, we came to a flight of stairs leading down. It was relatively short and we ducked through a archway to the right.

It was a massive chamber, like an underground cathedral. The eight walls were riddled with carvings in some dead language and skulls, bones, and weapons dotted them. The floor was layered, with a massive, slightly raised circle in the middle. The floor and the ceiling were filled with the same carvings as the walls. And a massive sword hung from the ceiling directly in the middle, its gargantuan hilt hanging by a tiny cord and its tip reaching halfway to the ground. The blade was infatuated and its shape looked devastating, but also extremely hard to wield, if it were sized for a normal person. The whole place smelled of ruin.

But the most eye-catching thing was the glowing green light attached to the far wall. It was a burning, sickly green that bathed the chamber in its glow, leaving most of it in shadows. It was not in the center of the wall, but a little to left, which was strange.

I let go of Stormy's mask and walked out into the chamber. I reached the center and looked up at the tip of the blade, now hanging directly above me. What was the point of such an ornament?

Stormy caught up with me. "The carvings on the floor are all talking about survival and how it important it is."

We continued on to the far side. There was an inscription directly in the middle, and Stormy read it.

We walked over to the spot where it was embedded in the rocks. It almost blinded me, that's how bright it was up close. That, and my eyes had recently had nothing to look at for a while.

Whisper put his hoof on the shard. "This is the earth shard. It's power is in fear."

"You know, I'm really liking that name. I'm glad it's the one I chose. What do you think?"

I just put my hand on it. It was warm, and it almost felt... alive. Then it started getting hotter and hotter. "Huh?"

The entire wall burst open. The shard itself moved with it and suddenly we found ourselves facing a massive dragon, its burning gaze on us.

~/\^/\~

Thief of Redemption

by One Tin Soldier

Chapter 2- A Fool's Errand