chapter 1
two month's later...
'Well this suck's big hairy potato sack...' were my toughs while watching cold iron bars before me. After a couple of month's of slithering around forests, despite my best effort's, I ended up attracting some attention. Sometime after the 'goatee-pony', some farmers saw me from afar, then week after that some patrol of soldier's tried to do something with poor quality spears. I mostly managed to spook them away, pulling some intimidation moves, like rising up threateningly, roaring and one time setting my sword's on fire. The last one was total surprise.
Turns put I could imbue my swords with elements, namely fire, ice and lighting... Neat! And little after that trial-and-error discovery, was followed by learning that I could cast fire magic. Almost fried small forest area with fire-balls and some stream's of flames while initially panicking... During which I noticed that I didn't burn at all, and the heat from fire actually felt pleasant like. So I guess I was immune to fire, or something similar. It would also explain the slight discomfort I got when wielding my blades imbued with ice. I wonder do I also hibernate?
Back to the iron bars before me. I was in a HUGE cage at the moment, in some kind of carnival fair, called "Equestria's beasts" , with some other feral animals in cages, mostly the feline variety. The reason I was here as a attraction was because of me sleeping in a quite open cave at the edge of the forest about a week ago. So someone, or rather somepony found me sleeping and decided to capture me at my weakest moment to make money.
Suffice to say I was preeetty pissed about it. But I still decided to keep my swords hidden in their pocket-dimension and see what happens. What did happen, was that the creature caretaker-pony seemingly tried to drug me like some of the more violent animals, by putting something in their food. Did not seem to work on me, but I decided to play along and pretended to be more temperate from potential sedatives in food. Which consisted mostly some sort of gruel like mush. Good thing I seemed able to fast a long while, like ordinary snakes.
"I told ringmaster Whipper we should have gotten rid of the animals! Now the Royal couple are here with a bunch of soldiers!" I heard nearby pony yelling worriedly to another close to my cage. I was just leaning on my coiled snake tail, looking at them while trying to look lazy.
"Really? I heard they even have the princesses with them." other pony answered, sounding intrigued. And that little info also got my interest; would the princesses be young adults or maybe still fillies? If this carnival's name is anything to go by, this is indeed Equestria.
Soon there was some commotion nearby, and next I see the ringmaster Whipper, a beige earth pony wearing simple brown full-body vest with a whip hanging from it, and two adult alicorns. First is tall, muscular golden yellow stallion, with darker yellow mane, brown eyes and wearing quite elaborate golden crown. The second one was equally tall, slender white mare, with red mane, bright blue eyes. Instead of crown, she was wearing simple laurels.
Next to stallion was walking young, seemingly pre-teen I think, pink maned alicorn filly with purple eyes. And on adult mares back, on a modified saddlebag carrier, was snoozing blue baby alicorn filly, with lighter blue mane. It was pretty obvious who the little one where, but I was still waiting confirmation.
"As you can see, your highnesses, the creatures are quite healthy and fed. Even this weird abomination of a snake." ringmaster talked to the alicorns, waving his hooves in my direction, like some kind of salesma-... -pony. All I did was look at the alicorn family with little head tilt, somewhat interested.
"It indeed looks like some magical freak born of some messed up spell or alchemy. Amazing it even lives." golden stallion stated, voice almost oozing superiority-complex. I was already starting to hate him, conveying it with slight glare at him.
"Solaris, dear. I think thou should not say such things. It seemed this being understood your tone. And its not exactly good impression for Celestia, or little Luna" mare said to Solaris, clearly being the sensible one of the two, revealing fillies names in the progress. Little Celly seemed to eye me curiously, but there seemed to be more than tiny drop condescending attitude. Guess she is not yet the loving pony she would become.
"Beg your pardon, Queen Faust, but I'm little bit on your husbands side on this." ringmaster Whipper interrupted, and then started to go on and on about how dangerous I was and plenty of other racist, or maybe more speciest, comments so offensive it soon made my blood boil over... Making me slowly rise in upper position, looking furious with a snarl.
Next thing I and ponies knew, was me summoning all of my six blades and slicing the cages bars and wooden roof to oblivion with oddly syncronized slashes, crushing rest of the whole cage-cart away with swing of my tail.
Needless to say, everypony were shocked, completed with open mouths. This was followed by good amount of fair workers starting to run around screaming their heads off. Royal family took several steps back, with Faust concentrating in covering their foals and Solaris with horn beginning to glow reddish light.
The ringmaster quite surprisingly got more cahones, with him drawing his whip out, beginning to swing it at me, only getting few growling hiss out of me.
"Back! Get back you malformed scaly freak of a beast!!" Whipper yelled, swinging his whip near my face, barely missing my eye. And that what made me finally snap, which I showed with a loud roar and a stab at that clearly speciest pony. There was an satisfying sound of metal piercing flesh, when on of my sword's nailed the f*cker to the ground through his stomach, almost to the hilt.
Amazingly I managed to pull my sword out without further damaging ringmaster pony, and then turned to leave this place. Preferably far from here...
If it just where that easy to leave. After barely slithering about hundred feet away, a red energy bolt whizzed past my head. A quick glance revealed that Solaris had started to fire at me, while taking flight.
"YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT, MONSTER!!" he bellowed at me, while charging another bolt. Needless to say, I was getting the heck out of there. And it was not as easy as you might think; you try slither away fast, with about two ton tail, from angry flying, and potentially speciest, alicorn stallion chasing you.
Maybe around five minutes of escaping later, he was still chasing me with a killing intent, shooting beams at my direction, many of them missing and scarring surrounding land with burning lines and few burned marks on my tail. Most definitely this one was not for the 'love and tolerate'-thing. And whole being fired at and being repeatedly slandered and threatened was seriously getting me more and more angry, bringing with it this weird burning feeling...
Finally that burning boiled over, instinctively making me turn around, unsummon one of my blades away, pointing the freed up hand at the golden alicorn and made 'closed-fist' motion... Making air in front of him violently explode in white and blue flames, so bright that even I had to squint little bit. And it also spread some more flames into surrounding area.
While getting my eyes clearer, I heard something dropping on the ground. And soon realized it was that alicorn, Solaris I think, looking quite dead; with multiple severe looking burns, neck in odd angle and eyes dull.
"FATHER!!!"
Scream cut trough my hearing, drawing my attention from stallions corpse into a young pink maned alicorn, rushing towards said corpse, eyes heavy with tears. I couldn't help but feel little sad about seeing young one seeing their parent die, no matter how rotten said parent potentially was.
Then she looked at me, eyes still teary. I answered to it with sympathetic head tilt to the side. And little Tia seemed scared, sad and angry, all at the same time. Interesting sight to say the least. Knowing I wasn't able to communicate properly to anypony, I turned, with heavy hearth, to leave. And received a little golden magic bolt whizzing past me. It even managed to cut a small lock of my hair off.
This time I just decided to ignore the little shooting attempt and just kept slithering away from clearly vengefully sad filly. There was few more golden bolts, which where too weak to do any serious damage.
'I just know this will come to bite me in the tail someday. But you can always hope it doesn't... Even if it's only fool's hope' I thought to myself, while managing to get away from ponies, hopefully even further from their land's...
Later amongst ponies...
After the serpent beast was gone, everypony gathered to mourn loss of their king, who's corpse was already moved into temporary coffin for transport. There where also number of injuries being treated, result from king 'loose-cannon' firing; few minor burns from fires his magic made. Only one more seriously injured was the ringmaster Whipper, who was still in lot of pain but would miraculously live.
Then there was the remaining royal family's pain. Queen Faust understandably mourned her husband who, despite his speciest ticks, was a good stallion once. She still had no idea what caused him to change.
Next to her stood Celestia, eyes slightly red from crying for her dead father. And little Luna was still snoozing on their mothers back, clearly being heavy sleeper.
"Don't blame your father, OR the serpent for their actions Celestia. He had a habit of doing snap decisions, more often than you think. And the serpent most likely desired to be free and was in agitated state. And clearly we did not know what it was capable of. To kill a magically powerful being such as alicorn requires lot of power, whether it be by physical or magical means..." Faust tried comforting her daughter, holding wing over her shoulder. Young sun-princess-to-be barely acknowledged it.
'One day father... One day I will find that serpent creature and avenge thee...' young Celestia promised to herself, while holding a lock of marilith hair...