You know, there are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, where people are made of smoke and cities are made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea's getting cold.
I basically unraveled the universe and told it to recreate itself from scratch. The chance of me recognizing anything in this new world is microscopic, and yet it’s only when I recognize four familiar figures emerging from the tree line that it dawns on me what I have done.
Four unicorns emerge from the tree line in gold plated armor carrying spears in visible magic fields, but they’re different from the unicorns my former mistress craved.
The four mythical creatures are sporting coats of various colors from black, white, blue, and yellow. Every unicorn also has extremely large, expressive, eyes with a hard glint behind them. The four also have very bulky legs compared to the unicorns I previously encountered that used long and skinny legs…
‘I know what they are, but they seem… wrong…’ I think silently. It takes me two seconds to process what I am seeing as the group trots towards me, and in the third I realize my mistake when my still shaking legs buckle under me and reacquaint my left side with the ground.
I suppress a grunt of surprise and blink my eyes a few times as the mud underneath me deforms and sticks to my fur. Pulling my head up I refocus on the group of unicorns and find that they have surrounded me and are pointing their spears at me.
“You are currently trespassing on the land of King Bullion, King of the Unicorns, what say you in your defense?” the yellow unicorn stallion with green eyes pointing a spear in my face asks me in a deep gruff voice, shocking me even further.
In all the time that I have existed, I have never encountered a unicorn with sapience. I can feel my ears fold against my skull as I stare with wide eyes and shrunken pupils at the unicorn that spoke. My tongue feels like it is tied in a knot and my lips are glued shut. Unable to get my mind out of the shocked state I continue to stare at the unicorn silently until the black one with silver eyes snorts by my front legs.
“The mare’s a pegacorn private, I doubt anything she says will matter seeing as she’s already a criminal.” My head whips around to look at the new speaker, “Just start moving her to the dungeons, no need to bother King Bullion with this half breed cloud farmer.”
‘...Wait, what?’ I think as something cold and hard clamps down around my neck from behind. ‘Wait, what?!?’
I feel myself being lifted by magic and taken towards the tree line. My new wings pop out in protest, but my captives don’t seem to care as my limbs seem to hit every tree we pass.
‘What in Tartarus are you doing?!?’ I mentally scream.
…
The dungeons are deplorable, with no light other than the torches the guards are using. The air is damp and it is obvious that no one cleans the cells, considering how much feces litters the floor and walls.
My mind is finally out of the mental loop it was stuck in, but now I’m curious. Nothing is hurt from being dragged through the forest, despite my captors’ best attempts, and I find myself wondering just how durable am I aside from my oversensitive horn. Lifting my head, I shift my hooves under me and gradually stand up on shaking legs. With how quiet the dungeons are, my hoofsteps seem thunderous alongside the guards’ patrolling. Taking several shaky steps to the right I hold out my left hoof and hear the clank of metal when the arm strikes something coming up.
The light from the torches returns and I see my hoof resting against the metal bars and a white unicorn guard is looking at me from the other side with a scowl on his face.
“Look, pidgeon,” the guard growls, waving the torch in front of me. “I don’t know what cloud you fell out of, but in here we have rules.” The unicorn punctuates this by touching the fire to my hoof. I stare at the torch pressed against my fur and find it somewhat warm, but definitely not hot. The stallion seems to take offense to this, judging from the telekinetic shove he uses a moment later. “You don’t talk, and you don’t mess around with the bars or the walls. If you do, we’ll have to punish you like the scum you are. Do I make myself clear?” The stallion finishes by leaning against the bars and leering at me through them.
I stare at the stallion with wide eyes long enough that he finally just snorts and goes back to patrolling the path.
I trace my left arm with my right hoof and find that while the fur around where the torch was held is slightly singed, there isn’t any other damage I can feel.
‘...So it’s useless trying to talk to defend myself, I can’t talk to the unicorns keeping me here… Am I just not allowed to talk?’ I frown before making a decision, ‘Fine, I won’t talk. It’s not like I’ll have anything important to say anyways, right?’
Taking a deep breath, I push myself up again and focus on keeping my balance in the small dark cell. Turning to the left, I slowly start walking, only for my right arm to come in contact with the wall with a muffled thud after my third step. Carefully turning around I walk back to the other wall and bump my left arm against the opposite wall after four steps.
‘Alright, four steps… I can work with this.’ Turning around once more, I continue my exercise.
I don’t know how long I’ve been doing my makeshift exercise, with no natural light the only time table is when one of the guards brings a torch close enough that I can see it. My legs have improved as I can’t feel them shake anymore when I stand, and I’ve gone from walking in straight lines to walking in a circle, and learning how to move my too large wings when my legs get tired. Unfortunately my magic still doesn’t want to cooperate with me.
I’m not the only one down here, I heard one of the guards giving a similar speech to someone further down to the left. It apparently wasn’t the first time they somehow managed to anger the guard as the stallion did something to the inmate that made him scream for a long time.
Down here, the guard can do whatever they want…
I freeze when the door to the dungeon screeches open. The doors have opened two times since I’ve been here, and both times the guards have dragged someone out, once by telekinesis and the other equine with a chain around her neck. Sitting down, I wait as the light from the torches grows brighter and blink in surprise when three guards stop in front of my cell, two of them holding chains and the third holding a bucket.
“Back against the wall, half breed,” the green unicorn to the left orders. I give the guard a half lidded stare before complying. They might be able to do anything down here and get away with it, but after the time I’ve spent in here I couldn’t care less about what is going to happen. They open my cell and levitate the chains towards me, clamping them down around my neck and leading me out of the shit stained cell. The third guard levitates the bucket over my head and tips it, dumping water all over me, and proceeds to attack me with various brushes.
The guard is very through, and only when he is done does he let go of my wings, which I promptly shake out.
Guards one, two, and three are still dry when I finish, and they lead me to the door I came in through like a damn dog.