//------------------------------// // Ch. 1 A New Start // Story: A Heart of Stone // by TheWhiteFreak //------------------------------// Ch. 1 A New Start “Another day, another failed attempt out of this shit-hole.” I sighed as I wandered through the trash-filled streets of my hometown. I lived in the worst part of the city, the local government always called it a ‘low-income neighborhood’ but everyone who lived there knew what it really was; a slum. This was my daily life, walking by muggings, drug-dealers, prostitutes and homeless. When I was first forced to live in this area I used to look at these individuals with sadness at the life they lived, but after three years of living in the same conditions as them, they were nothing but white noise to me. I had tried for years to escape this reality, to get a good job, move into a decent neighborhood and start living the good life, but that is rather hard when you don’t even have a GED. Even though I never had a high school diploma, it didn’t mean that I was not intelligent, in fact I was very smart but when Murphy’s Law has a hard-on for you, nothing you try will ever get around it. The week of my senior finals in high school I got mugged and left for dead in a ditch only to wake up a week later in the hospital with someone telling me that I had failed high school. I was then kicked out of my parents’ house for being, and I quote ‘A good-for-nothing who doesn’t know when to avoid a dangerous area’. For years after that I took every opportunity to take the exam to get a GED yet every attempt was met with Murphy’s Law kicking me in the groin. Walking to the exam hall only to get hit by a tire from an accident over two miles away, getting barfed on by a random person and not being allowed inside for smelling nasty and for the finale, a little boy who stole my wallet and while chasing him getting hit by a car and broke my arm. After so many attempts, I just gave up and resigned myself to working in a shipyard as untrained labor; it was exhausting, demeaning, long hours and just plain unfair but it was the one place that good ol’ Murphy seemed to leave me alone. After another day of grueling work I staggered back to my rat-filled, urine-smelling and drafty apartment and after walking past what was probably the third dead body I’ve seen in the past month, I saw something that made me stop, a little girl under a cloak of some kind, giggling softly. I locked eyes with her piercing ice-blue eyes that entranced me, she beckoned me over with a hand and my body refused to listen to me and I followed her into the darkness of an alley. She stopped after a minute and looked up at me before beckoning me to kneel, which my body obeyed without question. Once I was eye-level with her I got a good look at her face, it was pale blue with what looked like little chunks of ice stuck to her face yet she didn’t seem to be cold at all. She only let out another giggle as she placed both of her hands on my cheeks, I also noticed that her hands were rough and abrasive as if they were covered in callouses and blisters. “You will be perfect.” Her voice wasn’t one that a small girl shouldn’t have, it sounded like a woman in her thirties. She leaned into me and kissed me on the lips and I felt the energy leave my body and the world grew dark as I passed out. My consciousness slowly returned as my mind began to start back up. The first thing I noticed was that my body felt unusual and alien, yet familiar at the same time. I slowly opened my eyes and I could only see darkness that hid everything from my sight, looking around I spotted a single speck of light off in the distance. I rose my body into the sitting position and became aware that there was something wrong with my body, my nerves felt deadened like I was drugged or something which must have been the case when I raised my hand and felt my leg and didn’t feel the softness of clothing or skin but a rigid and smooth material that felt almost like glass. I tried to look down to see what it was that I felt but since there was no light I may as well have tried to look at Alpha Centauri with the naked eye. I got to my feet and staggered and swayed as I struggled to stay upright and began walking towards the pinprick of light in the distance. As I walked to the light I brought my hand up and groped the darkness for some kind of hand-hold and was greeted with a rock wall. It was smooth and had no jagged edges, meaning that it was not made recently and was most likely machine-made. As I continued to walk my hand along the wall as I walked, the pinprick of light became bigger and bigger, I could see outside of the cave that I was in. I was overjoyed to see that there was a way out of the darkness and I started to run towards the opening and instantly tripped on something sticking out the ground and slammed into the ground and heard a cacophony of glass crashing onto the ground. I looked back at what I had tripped over expecting it to be a glass sculpture or something given by the noise that it made when I tripped over it. I couldn’t see anything through the oppressive darkness even with my close proximity to the cave opening. ‘First rule when you break something; don’t stick around to see who owned it or they will kick your ass’ I thought to myself, having previously experienced that type of exchange before. I quickly scrambled back to my feet and made my way out of the cave and into the open world. I squinted my eyes a little as they readjusted to the increased level of light, which wasn’t much since it was nighttime and it was snowing. I was surprised by the fact that even though it was snowing, I wasn’t cold at all. I looked down and brought my hands up to look at what I was wearing and was met with the sight of two hands that were covered in some type of armor with the color of grey stone and had fingers that were made of some type of clear crystal. I looked down in horror at the two appendages in front of me, they looked like human hands but the palms were much larger than they used to be and the fingers were short and stubby and the fingertips were sharp and looked like daggers. The hands began to shake as I slowly closed my fists and the strange hands in front of my mimicked the action, the fingers didnt even have any sort of joints yet they bent like human fingers, I was frozen in fear at the realization that these two hands in front of me were mine. I struggled to remove the strange armor, hoping that my human hands were underneath it but it would not budge and I even began to feel the sensation of touch through the armor. I was able to get the fingers underneath one of the plates and I pulled at it and the pain of trying to pull off my own skin greeted me. I stopped trying to remove the armor and continued to look further down at the rest of my body and was just as horrified at the sight of what was once my body had been replaced by a massive suit of dark blue and grey armor with glowing blue lines in between the individual plates and segments. I screamed out in horror and was met by the sound of my new voice, it sounded like claws on a chalkboard that hurt the ears and sent a chill up the spine. I felt back onto my butt in shock as I placed my head in my hands and was horrified once more by the lack of feeling of my facial features. I started groping at my face, trying to feel what had happened to my face and was met with what felt like a full face helmet covering my head. I tried to remove the helmet and was once again met with the sensation of trying to pull my skin off and the non-moving helmet; I turned my head to the side and saw that my shoulders were covered in similar looking armor as well as crystal spires that were sticking out all along my shoulders. As I continued to grope my face,I could feel an opening in the helmet where my eyes were and as I slowly probed it I saw that my crystal fingers were right over my eyes. ‘What is going on!? What the hell happened to me!? Why can’t I take off this armor? What about my voice!? What happened to my voice!?’ A million other questions ran through my mind as I tried to discover how any of this was possible as i sat in the snow when a massive roar from behind me drew my attention. I slowly turned around expecting to see a bear but instead was greeted by a huge beast of a man that was covered from head to toe with white fur. ‘What the-? A Yeti!? There is no way that is real!’ I turned my body and attempted to rise to my feet but instead heard a single thump and in an instant saw that the yeti was in front of me with his fist pulled back for a punch. “Wait!” was all I could get out as the fist met with my face and sent me flying back and bouncing down the hill through the snow. Even though I had just been punched in the face and sent flying at least ten feet back I should have had a broken face or been in an excruciating amount of pain but instead I simply felt dull pressure where the yeti had struck me. As I slid down the hill, I tried to orient myself as I bounced on the ground and sounded like a chandelier with each bounce, I splayed out my fingers and dug them into the ground which made a rough scraping sound as I began to slow. I then felt the ground leave my back and my left hand catch on a rock as I realized that I was hand off the edge of a cliff by one hand. I quickly snapped my head down and saw that I was on the edge of a massive cliff, even the clouds that were below me looked like they were miles away. I tried to use my free hand to grab the cliff and pull myself up but I couldn’t coordinate my arm and could only hang there, that was at least until I heard the snort of the yeti creature again. I looked up and saw it looking down on me as it took a foot and placed it on my hand. “No!” I cried out as he shoved my hand off of the rock and I began falling. “FUCK YOU MURPHY!” was the only thing I could think of to be my last words as I fell. I think he heard me as I fell for what felt like hours, hitting every rock as I went and even with my apparently dulled sense of pain; I was having trouble staying awake. As the world grew dark again I could see a lake below me but couldn’t do anything as the world faded to black again. ** “You hear that?” “Yea, sounded like something crashed into that lake we just passed, and hit hard too.” “You think we should go look?” “Yea let’s go, make sure the others lockdown the cages, don’t want those things going anywhere.” The pony leading the train of carriages said to the second. The first pony was a brown unicorn stallion with a short-cut black mane and tail and dark brown eyes and was wearing leather armor that covered most of his body. The second pony was a tan pegasus stallion with a dull orange mane and tail, blue eyes and an identical set of leather armor with holes cut in the sides to allow him to use his wings. He also carried a spear that was attached to his back with a strap as he ordered the other six ponies around. Once the cages were locked down, they both quickly galloped through the trees to the lake that their caravan had passed only a few minutes ago. They cleared the trees and came upon the clearing and the lake that it held; they could both see that something had hit the water very hard as all of the nearby trees were dripping with water. “What do you think did this?” the pegasus asked the unicorn. “Dunno, fly up and see if you can see it in the lake.” The unicorn ordered the pegasus. The pegasus quickly took off into the air and over the lake to try and spot whatever had hit the lake. He stopped instantly when he saw a glint of light in the bottom of the lake indicating that there was something shiny down there. “Hey! There is something shiny on the bottom!” he called out to the pony on the shore. “Well don’t just look at it, go down there and get it!” he barked back to the pegasus. “Cool your hooves, I’m going!” he responded with a huff as he dove at the water and tucked his wings in as he hit the water. A minute later the pegasus emerged and struggled with his cargo to the shore, as he reached the shore the unicorn looked at what he had dredged up and was amazed at what he had found. It was a statue of some kind of bipedal suit of armor made of stone and crystal that stood almost seven hooves tall. “We hit the jackpot with this. What kind of creature do you think it was made for? It's too tall for any diamond dog and the legs are all wrong.” “I don’t know and I don’t care, we are taking it with us, let’s take it back to the carts.” “But we don’t have any more room for loot after we raided that town yesterday” The pegasus explained. “Well then we can throw it in the cage with those changelings we came across.” “Righto” he quickly answered as the two of them hefted the creature onto their backs and walked back to the slave caravan. When they returned to the caravan, they were instantly greeted by the other members of the group who all wonder what the newest prize was. “Shut it! Doesn’t matter what it is! We are taking it with us and the Boss can tell us what to do with it.” He shouted and the group all returned to their posts. The pegasus quickly opened the cage where two changelings were held and threw the armor in before locking the cage again. “Have fun with your new friend bugs!” he laughed as he returned to the front carriage. The two changelings quietly chirped to each other as they looked at the creature that lay before them. **