I made a brief attempt to explore the dark area I was in, but soon abandoned it. The forehoof I’d used to protect my head felt broken and my head was still throbbing. So I just rested my head on the ground, trying to breathe shallowly because my ribs also ached. My eyes felt moist.
As I adjusted to the quiet I realized I could hear muffled sounds; something very loud was happening, either very far away, or behind several sets of walls. It was hard for me to feel emotion about it one way or the other, since I couldn’t even begin to guess what it was, but it was a reassurance that the world still existed, I guess.
I remembered what death was. I wondered if I would die. The thought was strangely comforting, and this feeling made me think there was something I was forgetting. Some dark shadow in the back of my head. Something core to my very being, or something that defined me. But I couldn’t put my hoof on it.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I’d be better off never knowing.
With a loud crash of metal, light flooded into my small closet in a large rectangle. Instinctively I opened my eyes, but the light made my head ache and I quickly shut them again. I’d had just enough time to see a silhouette of a pony. One even bigger than all of Russel’s cronies.
“Oh Celestia,” I said reflexively, before wondering what exactly that was supposed to mean.
“Hey, lads! A new pony!” shouted somepony with a booming, deep voice. Teeth dug into my shoulder and I shouted in surprise as they dragged me toward the light.
Three stallions stared down at me; unlike me, they wore no clothes at all, and all of them had scars.
One was gray with a red mane and a flank picture of a rusty sword and a flag; he seemed to be the leader. “And it’s another pretty colt. Look at the little lace and those sweet purple eyes.” His voice made it clear this wasn’t a compliment.
“I want to dig those eyes out with a spoon and keep them in a jar forever,” said a light blue stallion in a slithery voice; the picture on his flank was a sunburst pattern made of a dozen knives. He grabbed my chin and forced me to face him and I screamed and shut my eyes again; all of them laughed.
“Good, then I won’t have to look at them,” said a more jittery voice. “Sweet Celestia; they’re as violet as the B-witchers’.”
“Sh-sh, they’ll heeeeeeeear you,” a fourth voice said. “Witches be craaaaazy.” Then he abruptly dropped the creepy sing-song voice and broke into a wild cackle.
“Look at this jacket.” The hoof under my chin moved, and several hooves started petting my forelegs and sides. One of them touched my tender, broken foreleg and I yelped and opened my eyes again. Fortunately the pony who’d done that must have been the jittery one, because he yelped too and leapt backwards. I stared at him. Unlike the other horses, he had fluffy appendages at his sides. After staring at them long enough, I remembered they were wings. He could fly. Ponies could fly. My mind felt blown.
“St-stop looking at me!” the pony cried. “Those eeeeeyes!”
“Such a pretty colt must have a pretty name,” the large pony with the flag cutie mark said, turning me to face him. “Can you talk, pretty colt?”
“Y-yes,” I said. “But I don’t know my name.”
“Playing dumb only gets you in trouble, pretty colt.” The flag pony sneered.
“No, really.” I felt panicked. “I w-woke up in a forest and I can’t remember anything before the past few hours, really! I don’t know anything! Please don’t hurt me!”
Wild laughter attracted my attention; a shaggy-coated yellow pony with a spiky black mane stood a little away from the main group. He had a cutie mark of two dog-like animals whose names escaped me for now. He grinned at me, his eyes sparkling. “Well then, you’ll just have to stay Pretty Colt. How’s that sound?”
Something died a little inside of me. “No objections…” I muttered resignedly.
“Good,” the flag pony said. “I’m Baron Bandit and don’t you forget it. You’re going to be here a long time, Pretty Colt, so let’s start you off with the rules.” He barked at the jittery pegasus, “Fleetwing!”
“Yes sir!?” he squawked.
“Go drag Tree Trace over here or show Pretty Colt how to make buttons yourself,” Baron Bandit said. As Fleetwing sped off, Baron returned his attention to me. “Rule one, I’m top dog. I’m the boss; I call the shots. Rule two, no-”
And then a loud bell clanged from somewhere overhead. Baron Bandit’s face morphed briefly into one of terror. “Fleetwing! Forget that! Places!”
The four ponies scattered. Now that they weren’t blocking my field of view I could get a better glimpse of my surroundings.
The room we were in seemed like a natural cave of red and mud-grey stone with a few lanterns burning along the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The cave was split in half by a row of faintly glowing orange bars, so tightly packed that we couldn’t get to the other side. Both halves had the same work benches in the center, though our side only had four workbenches and the other half had dozens. Both sides also had a shelf filled with multicolored threads and a box of strange, tiny wooden disks. The half we were cut off from also had some mundane-looking things like a washing and drying machine, some flour sacks, and vegetables and herbs hanging from the roof to dry.
The other half had a staircase leading up out of sight. Our side sadly had nothing like that; instead a few small rooms extended off the main room and seemed to be small bedrooms. The small chamber I’d first fallen into was one of these.
The four other ponies took their seats at the workbenches and started wrapping thread around the tiny disks. Once they’d done so I noticed a fifth pony with them. He was mint green with a chocolate brown and white mane; the picture on his flank was a strange diagram. There were two circles, one blue and one pink, on the top; a fork of lines connected those two dots to two more pairs of dots; these two pairs were connected by two more forks to four total pairs of colored dots. But that wasn’t the most interesting part about him. The most interesting part was that he had a horn on his forehead.
This must be Tree Trace, I thought. I took one step towards him when my attention was interrupted by pounding hoofbeats, coming from the stairs.
“Oh Celestia, they’re here,” the pegasus squeaked.
All the other ponies looked on edge. Even the Baron seemed to be making a noticeable effort to stay calm.
Oh great, I thought. A gang of even more muscular ponies is coming!?
From the multitude of hoofbeats it sounded like there were more ponies than I’d ever met before in my very short memory. At least the bars would keep them from attacking us…
Then a filly stepped into view down the stairs, a piece of rope in her mouth. She looked a few years younger than the mare in Russel’s camp, but this filly was much more slender and pretty. She was tan with a black star on her forehead, with a midnight blue mane and piercing violet eyes. She wore a simple black dress with a stiff lace collar. Her cutie mark was a five pointed star.
As she entered the room, she pulled the rope, and a train of foals and fillies also trotted in, holding the rope in their mouths to keep in line. None were nearly as old as the filly leading them, except one stallion near the middle of the rope who looked to be about the same age. Many of these children had nothing on their flanks; all were wearing solemn black garb. Holding the tail end of the rope was a filly identical to the one in front, right down to the stars on her forehead and flank. The two or three dozen children wound all around the desks like a single snake.
I glanced at the staircase to see if anypony else was coming down, then looked over my shoulder at the other adults. They all were bent over their desks, quietly weaving string around the tiny wooden disks, avoiding eye contact. Where was the thing that they were scared of?
Then the children started singing:
“A young gentlestallion in two coats of red
“Built a magic machine that made buttons from bread
“So he stole from the baker and stole from the mill
“He had mountains of buttons but wanted more still,
“Till he’d made enough buttons for this starving town
“To button themselves in their funeral shrouds!”
They danced over the rope they’d dropped in a pile near the desks, with the older twin fillies clapping and leading the smaller children in a nonsense chorus of ‘Hey-diddle-heys.’ The twins were the only ponies smiling, but their violet eyes looked glassy and dead.
I looked back and forth between the strange children and the adults. I had no frame of reference, but I had a dreadful feeling that this was not normal child behavior, and I was wondering how best to ask for a clue.
The song ended and the foals sat neatly at their own workbenches. The twins remained standing.
“Who wants Hyote today?” one twin asked.
A few foals raised their hooves.
“Flower Crown; you shared your milk yesterday. You deserve a doll today.” One of the twins walked over to a small chest and fetched out a small plush pony. It was yellow with a spiky black mane. The violet-eyed girl tossed the doll to one of the fillies. “Now, who wants Fleetwing?”
I stared. Wasn’t that the name of one of the prisoners?
“Wagon Wheel.” One of the twins tossed a pony doll with wings and the same colors as Fleetwing to one of the colts. “Give that feather duster what he deserves.”
Fleetwing whimpered audibly behind me. I stared back and forth between them.
This was triggering no memory at all.
The twins passed out two more dolls, matching Baron Bandit and the creepy pony who’d wanted to cut my eyes out. Then they took out a doll with a small crystal horn on its forehead.
“Who’s the quickest with a needle today?” one twin asked.
The oldest colt and a few other colts stood up, wielding tiny pointed bits of metal.
At his workbench, Tree Trace stopped his work and bent his head, gritted his teeth, and braced his hooves against the table.
“Knock him out,” one twin said, holding out the mint-green doll.
The colts lined up. A small colt with a bandana around his head drove his needle into the chest of the doll, switching rapidly between the back and front.
Tree Trace gasped sharply, jerking back and forth, sometimes arching his back.
The next colt took his turn, stabbing one leg completely through and wiggling the needle.
Tree Trace pulled his leg close to his side and cried out. Tears were in his eyes, though he was clearly fighting them.
“St-stop it!” I shouted, running over to the bars. “Stop it, you’re hurting him! What is wrong with all of you!?”
Every child stared at me. While each expression was first one of surprise, many soon shifted to something cruel.
And suddenly it registered with me.
Tree Trace was less masculine than the others, he was the only one wearing (formerly) nice clothes, he was the only one with a horn, and though it was hard to divine an accent from a few shouts, his voice sounded different from any other voice I’d heard that day. In fact, it sounded a lot like my accent.
Tree Trace was being targeted because he was different.
Different in the same way as me.