A Prelude...

... of things to come.
Without further ado:

A smattering of seconds, or perhaps several minutes, later, a fluffy, ash-colored figure appeared, and a haze of pink covered me, and the rushing in my ears faded enough for words to come through.

“Careful! She might be concussed.”

I couldn’t help but giggle: Prince Nádarin actually sounded concerned. “Dunno ‘bout concussed,” I mumbled, reaching up reflexively to grasp Pinwheel’s foreleg with my own, “But I’m innamood f’some bacon.”

A look of utter horror came over her, and she yanked her helping hoof away, dropping me. “You leave my Rotundus alone, you wee barbarian! He didn’t mean to hurt you. He was just being rowdy, is all… and I’m sorry. Didn’t think he’d react like that.”

Compared to being introduced to the boar’s cranium at speed, falling back on my rump on the timber floor barely registered. I groaned and staggered to my hooves; my legs trembled, I stumbled sideways several steps, and spread my legs wide to wait for my inner ear to stop doing acrobatics. “Yeah, well…” I took a deep breath and the first of several steps toward my most immediate goal. “I’m… I’m… um… yeah.”

“Crystal, what’s four plus four?”

“Eight,” I muttered automatically, feeling vaguely insulted, though whether because of the question or because Nádarin had asked it, I couldn’t decide.

“Five plus nine?”

“Fourteen.” I frowned.

“Three times twelve?”

“Thirty-six.” I continued to frown. “Shuddup. Head hurts.”

“… well, if she is concussed, it’s probably minor.”

“Aye, but a minor concussion is still a concussion.” Pinwheel came closer to me and squinted at my face through the wide visor of my semi-armored hazard suit, which forced me to stop, step shakily to the side, and continue past her. “You aren’t secretly a very well-preserved ghoul, are you?” I snorted. She stared, nonplussed, and muttered, “Right. Probably shouldn’t have dropped the concussed filly.” She walked in front of me again and set a gentle hoof on my chest, causing me to come to a delayed stop, and making my head spin. “Do you hurt?” I grunted and pushed past her again. “Okay, fine, then. I’ve seen Tundy knock bigger ponies than you over, and they don’t usually get back up that quickly.” She decided to walk alongside me instead of heading me off again, and took one or two steps for my several uncertain ones across her sitting room. “Eh, hello? Miss Firecracker?”

“Fireflower,” I mumbled, and I sat down slowly near the heavenly, crackling fire in the stone hearth. After walking more than three kilometers through the snowy mountain valleys, nothing beat a fireplace. “Not firecracker.”

“Eh… okay, Fireflower. Oi! Mister River, right? You, eh… you sit over there. Here’s a blanket. I’ll put on some tea and cocoa and start on dinner. You’re welcome to share the fireplace, but just, y’know, stay on one side and leave the wee girlie alone.” Pinwheel appeared in my field of view once again, waving her cloven hoof slowly in front of my snout. I looked up at her fluffy mane and tourmaline crest as she set a grey blanket across my back and placed at my hooves a bottle of the odd, purple and white healing potion that had to have come from Bellenast. “You are one tough little cookie, you know that? Now, I don’t rightly know how you aren’t crying ailment and agony, girlie, but if you need it, here it is.”

“I suspect radiation has healed whatever wounds she may have suffered. She’s an alicorn; from what I have gathered, radiation is beneficial to them.”

“Aye, I’m aware of that much, and that would explain it, but just where in blazes did you find an alicorn to kidnap?”

Prince Nádarin gave a weary sigh that perfectly suited his thoughts on the matter. “In the company of Her Most Benevolent Royal Highness, Princess Blizziera, of Bellenast.”

“Right. Second question. Why?”

“Let us say simply that I’ve come to realize I was exceptionally foolish in my haste, and very much regret my decisions today.”

“Eh, yeah. Imagine that? Third question, is Little Miss Concussed, Kidnapped, and Confused there the daughter of said Royal Highness?”

“No… but she claims to be her daughter’s girlfriend.”

Hoofsteps approached me. Pinwheel reappeared in my helmet-obstructed view, her expression thoroughly nonplussed, and waggled a cloven hoof toward the other half of the sitting room. “That true, girlie?” I nodded. “Okay then. Grandpa, the way I see it, you have two possible destinies: Clapped in irons, or at the center of a smoking crater, so, eh… I suggest you sit tight and pray for the former to whatever deity strikes your fancy.”

That's an excerpt of Fallout: Equestria - To Bellenast, obviously. The following, however, is more substantial excerpt of something else, which, while inspired in a couple obvious ways by MLP, is an original work I intend to publish as a novel.

I clambered over the root over which I had tripped and took aim at the figure darting toward the rocks on the east side of the ravine. I fired. He fell and cried out, and I loaded round shot as I approached him. Men shouted from the south, but they were a hundred yards away yet.

The young man groaned and tried to rise with his falchion, but I stepped on his shoulder. “Aagh, you—motherless—”

“Oh, leave my mother out of this.” I cocked my pistol and pressed it to his forehead. “First shot was cork. This one isn’t.” He stopped struggling. “Now, listen to me, and listen carefully, boy.”

“Don’t call me—”

I ground my heel into his shoulder. He snarled, but found silence an ample reply. “You just tried to kill me. I’ll call you whatever I damned well please, and that’s boy, because it’s what you are. Now, you caught me off guard, and you kept up with me, but I doubt your fellows can manage it, bumbling about with that lantern.” I leaned down to speak softy. “So, do me a favor, young sir, and you sit on one of those rocks, and when your friends catch up, tell them you lost my trail and took a breather. And, just a bit of advice, hang up that sword and go back to Corvand, and back to whatever you were doing before you threw in with that lot.”

I stood upright and de-cocked my pistol. “Sound like a good plan to you?”

He laughed. “You’re an idiot.” Like lightning, he thrust his free hand out and stabbed clean through my right calf with a dirk he had pulled from somewhere on his pant leg.

It was not my proudest moment. The slew of curses I spewed as I staggered away and fell on my rear was quite impressive, I’ll have you know.

Then, he was on his nimble feet and standing over me, a heeled boot on my gun arm. “A polite idiot, but still an idiot.”

Perhaps he was right. I tried to show courtesy, and was rewarded with a blade in the leg. Which, unfortunately, the young man yanked swiftly free. My entire leg jolted reflexively, and the pain only worsened. Rather than scream again, as he bent over to grab my pistol, I tucked in the wounded leg and kicked up at his groin. He fell off me and stumbled away, cursing and clutching himself, but had the clarity to aim the pistol true. He pulled the trigger once, seeming to have forgotten that I had de-cocked the hammer.

A heavy set of thuds shook the ground as the man fumbled with the hammer in the dark, still cursing, and then the clatter of a horse galloping on stone heralded my end.

Except, instead of a rider coming to run me through where I sat, bleeding, it was an immense shape, black as pitch in the gloom, that galloped past me, spun gracefully on its front feet, and kicked the young man in the chest.

I’ve seen a few horses kick foolish bystanders. A glancing blow might shatter an arm or send you to the ground, and a panicked hoof to the head made either a corpse or a short-lived vegetable.

This animal launched him at the ravine wall as a cannon launches grapeshot: Loudly and messily. Bones shattered at the moment of impact, and a grisly, pulpy sort of crunch followed when he hit the rocks.

The beast pranced in place a moment and shifted around to turn its great head, and on that coat of pitch stood yellow-green eyes, reflective, like a cat’s eyes under the light.

The light flickered. The lantern drew nearer.

The beast looked south, let out a snort of breath, then bent its head down to bite onto my pack and swing me up and onto its back. The beast turned, gave one look back at the ruined body of the young man, and broke into a canter, leaving the ravine.

Then a woman spoke, with a voice deep and rich and resonant, like a cello in Corvand’s finest orchestras.

“Bind your leg. You’re leaving a trail, and bleeding on me.”

Lovely voice, sour notes; yet she had a point.

Gritting my teeth, I sat up, side-saddle, sans saddle, and rolled my pant leg to start. For the immediate moment, I paid attention to wrapping my calf and bleeding as little as possible. The heady haste of conflict faded from my racing heart and gave way to a throbbing ache in my leg. The blade had been narrow and keen, and the man had withdrawn it cleanly, else the wound would be much worse. As it was, my pant leg and boot were stained heavily. “So sorry to sully you, Miss…”

The beast—though perhaps I ought not refer to her as such—was silent for a time, and set a remarkable pace through the tangled deep of Meirgrod Forest, weaving through and around the pernicious roots and brambles with the swiftness and grace of a lynx; an exceptionally agile, nigh-invisible-in-darkness lynx in the shape of an enormous horse.

I tied off the bandage and cleared my throat, feeling faint. “I, ah… my name’s Martin. Thanks for helping me, Miss…?”

“Keep your voice down,” murmured the creature. “Those friends of yours aren’t the only vermin around here.”

“Friends,” I muttered. “Right.” I lifted my good leg and spun to sit astride her back, and my head kept right on spinning. I set one hand on the creature’s back.

“Pull my hair or kick my ribs and I’ll throw you off.”

I yanked my hand up, content to fold my arms, instead. “Message received.” It wasn’t as though I truly needed a handhold: A dressage champion of the most exquisite pedigree couldn’t match the gait of my mysterious savior. “If I may know your name, Miss…”

She tossed her head, and I briefly suffered the baleful glare of a yellow-green eye in the dark. “No.”

Aristocrats and farmers, thieves and merchants, and occasionally those of richer station, and now forest creatures that spoke, but didn’t want to introduce themselves.

One meets all kinds of interesting persons as a package courier.

2

The Beast of Meirgrod

It was the simultaneous chill of autumn air and the warmth of sunshine that woke me, and the persistent ache in my leg that gave me true awareness. The opening in the earth wasn’t deep, but it was a shield against the wind.

I sat up where I lay against my pack and immediately stuck my hands under my arms. My pant leg and boot were stained with dried blood, and on the ground near me were my pistol, a set of smith’s tongs, a burnt-out campfire, a cutting of what looked like willow bark, and a wrapped stick of charcoal, which I suspected was from my pack. At the very back of the cave was a stack of dry, half-rotted logs of varying size and origin, all ideal for a long-burning fire.

Scratched, or rather, written in elegant script on the cave floor, was a message: ‘Back by midmorning. Wait.’

“No hands,” I muttered, “And she’s better than half the scribes in Galfrein…” I pulled my pack around into view to find that every clasp was fastened and every pocket buttoned shut. “How in blazes…?”

I quickly gave up puzzling out how she had managed to open the pack, never mind hold a charcoal pencil, and set about re-lighting the fire. After I had warmed water to clean both sides of my wounded leg and boiled the rest for tea and the bandages, I hobbled to the cave mouth and had a breakfast of slightly stale bread while I looked out at the expanse of Meirgrod from high in the foothills.

Never once had I been to this part of the forest, but I knew about where I was, at least: Many leagues west from where I normally would have been by this point in my journey between Fermut and Corvand. The cave boasted a terrific view of the eastern sky, the red treetops, and the roots of Casigain Mountain, behind me.

It would take me five days or perhaps a week to reach Corvand or Fermut over such a distance with a bad leg, and on good terrain. From where I stood on the west end of the foothills, a week could become a fortnight or more. Not only would I be hindered, but my delivery would be severely overdue.

Being at the foot of Casigain on the cusp of winter, however, presented a wholly different problem. While my savior seemed a considerate individual, the other denizens of the forest were not.

As I came to that realization, she approached from off to the south of the cave mouth. Graceful and quick though she may have been on the soft forest floor, nothing could hide the noise produced by a heavy, hoofed animal stepping across stone.

A solid black coat gleamed under the morning sun, and long legs carried her surely as she leapt onto the stone shelf jutting from the cave. Though certainly a taller horse I had never seen, rather than having the bulk of a draught animal, she was slender and somewhat longer in body than a typical riding horse or destrier. A wild, wavy mane of solid black hair fell the length of my arms from her crown to her withers, and a leonine, whip-like tail ended in a fan-like tuft of equally dark hair. Broad, cloven hooves tapped on the stone, and a yellow-green eye stared askance at me, its pupil a horizontal ellipse.

She held the handle of a large knife where a horse might champ at a bit, and a curved, tapering horn the hue and texture of lodestone and length of a sword rose up from her head, bent slightly to one side about two-thirds up its length.

Floating in the air next to her at shoulder height was a battered pail filled with straight branches and several ragged, leather belts.

She spat out the knife, and it hung in the air near her snout alongside the pail instead of falling, as if held aloft by a marionette’s string.

“How’s your leg?”

Struck from my bafflement and stupor by the simple question, I answered. “A bit stiff, sore. Can’t put much weight on it. Some willow tea helped a little; thanks for that.” I shifted on my good foot. “I suppose the knife missed an artery. Otherwise, I’d probably be dead, or feverish and soon-to-be dead.” I prodded the side of my calf gingerly; the wound had bled freely, and much, but was otherwise less severe than it could have been. Letting out a short laugh, I said, “Been a long time since I’ve been stabbed; I’d have preferred not to have the experience a second time.”

“Oh? When was the first time?”

“About six years ago,” I said. “It wasn’t fun, let me tell you.” I pointed at the floating knife. “Am I hallucinating?”

She looked at the knife, then back at me. “Hypovolemia doesn’t typically cause hallucinations, but the mushrooms around here certainly will. Did you go out and eat any while I was gone?”

“Ah… hypo-what?”

“Hypovolemia. Blood loss.”

This creature might have been more educated than I was. “No mushrooms, no. Just came to less than an hour ago. Ah…” Dumbstruck though I nearly was, I said, “I am very grateful that you saved my life, and brought me far away from those thieves, but… you do know there are trolls in this part of the forest, don’t you? And other beasts, according to rumor… though I suppose one of those might be you.”

“They don’t bother me,” said she, and the knife, which I recognized as my own, floated through the air and flipped around to point its handle at me at arm’s length. “And I don’t bother them. Can’t say yea or nay to the rumors.”

Mesmerized, I waved my hand around the floating blade, then carefully grasped the handle from beneath; for a moment, there was resistance, then its weight pressed into my palm. “They don’t bother you.” I boggled at the creature before me and the ordinary, innocuous knife. “Why don’t they bother you? The trolls, that is.”

“They’re like bears,” said she, walking past me and into the cave. She set the pail of sticks by my pack. “If you run, they chase you down. If you stand your ground, then you must be more dangerous than them. They can be cunning, but they’re habitual scavengers, keep away from anything that bites back. Out-weighing them doesn’t hurt.” Her horn didn’t quite scrape the ceiling, but I came to appreciate her sheer size; she had to be seven feet at the back, or very nearly. The tongs that had lain on the cave floor rose upon invisible strings, and they grasped several branches to add to the fire. The creature lay down near the blaze, and the tongs snapped twice, producing a sharp clank. She curled her lips in an odd sort of grin that revealed a set of pointed canines at the edges of her mouth, and said, “And I bite.”

Being at least a ton of muscle and having hard toes couldn’t hurt, either. I stared in wonder and sudden understanding as she set the tongs back on the ground. “Magnetism!”

She gave a derisive snort and twirled the tongs midair. “What, not magic? Sorcery? Witchcraft?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “There haven’t been any wizards in Galfrein for at least three thousand years, or the rest of Ageres, for that matter.” I held up the knife. “Steel blade, steel tongs, steel handle on the bucket. Ergo, magnetism.” I shrugged. “At least, I don’t see what else it could be.” Gesturing to the bare rock above, I said, “You certainly don’t have a stage prepared, so if it is ‘magic,’ then it’s the real kind, not a clever show.”

“Magic or magnetism, or a mix of both? I don’t know how I do it, myself.” She used the floating tongs to seize a log from the back of the cave and add it to the small fire. “The strength of a magnet’s pull on a piece of iron grows exponentially weaker as it moves away… and that doesn’t happen when I move the tongs farther away from myself, or any other tool. It requires greater focus, but the effort and work accomplished on whatever I move are identical; although, it’s true I can’t do it with anything but iron, or an alloy thereof. I’ve read every treatise and bookabout magnetism I can find, across three different kingdoms, and not one of them can explain how I can do what I do.”

“Three kingdoms?” Instead of trying for more than a few seconds to remember what ‘exponentially’ meant, I decided to test my luck. “You must be quite the traveler, Miss…”

The creature turned her great head to point one eye directly at me, and she stared for several seconds, seeming deep in thought. “Martin, is it?”

“That’s right.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Gell.”

“Gell.” I smiled. “What changed your mind?”

“It’s nice to meet someone who’s content to talk, instead of trying to capture me, take me as a prized steed… or brandish a weapon at me.”

I began to tuck my knife into its sheath on the side of my pack and said softly, “Brandishing rarely accomplishes any good.” I paused, glancing up from the knife at Gell. “You caught that knife. The one I tossed over the ledge, when those men accosted me. I thought I didn’t hear it land.”

Gell lifted one foreleg and peered at her cloven hoof as a rich woman might examine her fingernails. “I might have been eavesdropping.”

“Then you followed after me… it was you I heard. I thought one of them had a horse, but it was you.” Gell watched as I spoke, silent. Her ears flicked at me. “And you threw the knife at the tree, to warn me. Just before the lad fired… certainly, no man could put a blade that deep in a tree. You saved my life twice. Why?”

“Because you’re a fool.”

I folded my arms, laughing. “Why am I a fool?”

“If you know how to make a lycopodium flash bomb, then you certainly know how to make a regular bomb.” She snapped her tail forward and looked out to the forest as faint thunder rumbled. “And cork bullets? Really? Even when one of them chased you down and attacked you a second time, you spared the man, to your detriment. That makes you a fool. A kind fool, but a fool, nonetheless.”

“He was hardly a man,” I muttered. “More like a boy pretending to be a man… and if I’m to be a fool, I’d rather be a kind fool than a cruel one.”

“He was grown enough to shoot you over a pocketful of coins and a bruised ego… or would you rather I have kicked you, instead?”

I looked into those yellow-green eyes, each nearly the size of my fist. For a sobering moment, I considered how grievously I would have to offend the creature before she might come to regret her intervention.

“I don’t begrudge you for saving my life, Gell… just wish it hadn’t cost someone else theirs.” I set my pot of water near the fire to make another cup of willow bark tea; the dull ache in my leg was pervasive. “What were you doing in that part of the wood, anyway?”

“I saw those men waiting. Hiding. Thought I’d stick around and see why they picked such an unlikely spot to rob someone. Hardly anyone takes that old path; you’re the only person I’ve seen follow it more than once, as long as I’ve been here. They probably tailed you from Fermut, then went ahead at night to set up their ambush.” The immense mare—for I judged that to be the most suitable term for the creature—sighed and laid down her head atop her forelegs, much the way a dog would, in a display of flexibility that would leave any horse in quite a bit of discomfort. “Probably, anyway,” said Gell, staring out at the red and gold forest.

“I suppose it would benefit me to vary my route.”

“If you come through here often. I never visit the same place twice in a week; that’s how I stay hidden, avoid hunters.” She lifted the pail of sticks off the ground with her strange ability and rattled it. “Make yourself a splint. Once the rain passes, I’ll take you to the edge of Meirgrod, though it might take until midday tomorrow. From there, you’re on your own. I’m not going past the tree line.”

“Thank you, Gell,” I said, though my words were half-drowned by another rumble of thunder I looked out at the treetops as a shadow began to cover the forest, heralding the coming rain. “I’m grateful.” Chuckling, I said, “Injury and mad dashes from ruffians notwithstanding, I won’t be able to say this was a boring trip. I’ve never seen anything—well, anyone like you.”

“I know. Dreadful, isn’t it?”

Well, there it is. I hope, if you read this far, that you liked what you saw. It isn't much, yet. The entire book, not counting a lengthy document of world-building, character details and outline, is about 14.5k words so far, across the first three chapters, the last of which is all but complete. On its surface, the story is inspired in part by such works as Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn,* inasmuch as my book contains a solitary unicorn (though her race does not go by that name in this world) on a journey to find the rest of her kind.

This is what I've worked on the last few months while I took a break from To Bellenast; although, I have been working on both in parallel the last couple weeks, and I've had an outline of Chapter 12 of To Bellenast pretty much done for a while now. I haven't abandoned it; it was simply shifted down on my list of priorities.

If you've read To Bellenast (If you're reading this blog, I certainly hope you have; otherwise, what in the blackest depths of Tartatrus are you following me for?), you might have drawn some parallels between Gell, the mysterious "unicorn," and Blitz, the radiation-fueled alicorn of Bellenastian origin. Blitz is unusually large even for an alicorn; she's the size of a proper horse, really, at 163 cm at the withers (I see ponies as being pony-sized, though with significant variance, obviously. Eagle is 120-ish cm, Night Cloud is 140-ish, whereas Crystal is about 75.). Gell, meanwhile, is "about seven feet" at the withers. This is quite large for a horse, true, but for her species, it isn't actually that unusual, at least for those from some groups. Other than both Blitz and Gell being on the extreme end of the size scale for their respective species/races, the most significant thing they share is that Gell will be, at her core, a result of my asking myself the question, "What kind of person would Blitz have become if she had not had Ivy as a role model?" Their personalities share some core facets, but their histories are very different.
I'm certainly not the only person on this site to recycle characters into original fiction, but I hope I can say they aren't just clones. There are a few other characters in the novel whose traits are inspired by characters from To Bellenast, but I'm not ready to divulge them just yet.

Anyway, if you've read this far, thanks for paying attention to my rambling. I hope what I've written has held, and gained, your interest.

Also, To Bellenast is at 666 unique views. Quick, someone link it to a friend! :D

*Which, no, I haven't read, and yes, I know that makes me an uncultured swine. In my defense, I own a copy of it, but I'm holding off on reading it until after I've written a fair portion of my own book, because while thematically, my story is very different, I don't want to steal any ideas by chance. Statistically speaking, I'll wind up using at least some of the ideas present in that book, but I'd prefer it be purely by chance, rather than osmosis.