I backed up a step, staring straight ahead at the stone walls of our little featureless hovel in absolute shock. The words echoed in my head, but i couldn’t comprehend them for… seconds? Minutes? Hours? I’m not quite sure. But once my mind resumed proper function, all I could do was deny as my brain failed to process the information.
“What?” I exclaimed, unable to believe what I’d just heard. The wheels slowly turned in my head, trying as hard as I could to process this. That... that couldn’t be right, could it? “Me? The Promised One? I’m... I’m nothing special, Dad! I was only born a Mage! A human with unicorn powers that were sealed!” Shaking my head in disbelief over and over, I stumbled backwards. My voice took on a slightly panicked tone as I continued, awe and fear warring inside my head. If I was really who they said I was, that was a responsibility beyond me. A station too great for a follower like me. I was no leader! It couldn’t be me! It just couldn’t! “You told me that!” My eyes darted quickly from one parent to the other, not wanting it to be true, desperately trying to find some hint at this being a joke, or a game, or something that would require them to be making this up, but only to be met with absolute sincerity, no matter how hard I looked.
“We couldn’t tell you the truth yet,” Mom explained gently, stepping forward to envelop me in a loose, yet soothing embrace, even as my confusion deepened. I clung to her, as if the familiar touch might explain everything for me. “You weren’t ready for the responsibility. We didn’t want you growing up with this burden hanging over you every second. But, now that you know, I might as well explain further.”
She took a deep breath as if to prepare herself emotionally before beginning her explanation, speaking slowly to try to help me understand. “You’re what they’d call an ‘Incarnation’: the very embodiment of an idea or concept, often with unique abilities pertaining to that idea.” Her voice took on a very reverent tone as she continued the explanation. “Every Alicorn—as well as every other being with similarly-powerful unique abilities—is in their own way an Incarnation. Whether the concept be day, night, love, friendship, chaos, order… legacy… or anything else, they’re all Incarnations. They have fancy terms for their forms that set them apart from the rest of their kind, but as humans were often quite blunt and direct during the Age of Man, I feel that the term ‘Incarnation’ already fits perfectly.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but my mother held up a hoof to ask me to wait, so I held my piece as her tone changed from reverent to worried, gazing at me with tears in her eyes.
“I sealed the powers myself thanks to my unicorn magic, so the authorities never found out,” she whispered, visibly shaking with what I assumed was fear for my well-being as she started to hold me tighter.
Good thing too, as I think I was starting to shake as well as the impact of exactly what I was being told slowly sunk in.
“They would’ve killed you while you were still a baby if they knew what you really were. I still don’t think you’re ready for the responsibility, son. It’s too much for a young man like yourself!”
“Love, we can’t shelter him from his destiny forever,” Dad countered, erupting into a small coughing fit as soon as he finished.
“It’s not that, George,” Mom replied, squeezing me even tighter as the tears in her eyes started to flow freely. “He’s our son! Our flesh and blood! I love him too much! Don’t you love him, too? I can’t bear to think of our precious little boy in that kind of danger! He…” She choked for a second before resuming. “He might not even know how to use his abilities! What if it isn’t second nature to pony-born humans like it is to foals? What if he tries to fly, only to realize he doesn’t know how to work his wings, and he crashes to the ground in a bloody mess?”
My eyes widened. Way to make me feel confident about this, Mom.
“What if he tries to channel magic through his hands, and instead of it coming naturally, he messes up and one or both of them explode?”
“Explode?” I squeaked, my mother apparently not hearing me as she continued.
Her eyes went wide as apparently some other morbid thought occurred to her. “What if—”
“I do love him, too, Crystal,” my Dad whispered, cutting in as firmly as his weakened state would allow, “And I don’t want to see him hurt either. But he’s not our baby boy anymore. He’s a grown man. The choice is no longer ours to make. It’s his. Besides, he flew and used magic just fine for the two minutes before he was sealed. He’s not about to mess up when it was like second-nature right after birth.”
My mind was still reeling from so much information in so little time, but I managed to grasp enough of it to be able to discuss it with myself. I wasn’t cut out to lead, but surely, my human brethren would want me to do just that. What if I messed up? What if I led them into a trap? Why did it have to be me? I lacked confidence! I was a coward, a worrywart! Everything a good leader wasn’t.
But then, something deep inside me whispered that they needed me. I was the best choice, because I was the only choice. I had to do it. It was my duty, because no one else could do it. And duty required sacrifice, even to the risk of death and worse. What could I do? Let my people suffer because I was too afraid to step up? Or do my duty and put myself on the line, even if it might risk myself and my parents as well, if it was ever found out what my mother had done? Which was the greater good? The lives of a few or the lives of many?
Fear of so many possible negative outcomes still plagued my mind, but I slowly came to a decision as I sat there, mulling it over in my head. With a note of ominous finality, I forced myself to nod before rising to my feet and saying, “Do it, Mom. I’m ready. This is still so much to take in, and I’m afraid of failure, but it needs to be done, right? If I can help my fellow humans, I want to do it.” It might risk my family in the crossfire, but on the other hand, it might mean finally finding the security we hadn’t had as long as we could remember. “If we can take over the facility, Dad won’t be in danger anymore. We could get him proper treatment.” I took a deep breath, calming myself as the fear rose in the back of my mind again, and looked into her eyes. “Please. I’m ready.”
“V-very well,” she whispered before stepping back and lighting up her horn with that brilliant azure glow, which in turn enveloped my entire form. I felt a faint tingling sensation, as if an invisible barrier was rubbing against my skin. “The babies cry out in pain when they get sealed, but I don’t know if undoing it will hurt, too, I just hope it doesn’t.”
It is hard to describe the touch of magic accurately, but I will try my best. It felt like something was humming inside my veins, my joints, my nerves, gentle at first, then intense, almost painfully so. I felt her power flow through me, rushing from my head, down my shoulders to focus on my back, right between my shoulderblades. Suddenly, I felt something shatter, followed immediately by searing, white-hot pain, as if something was clawing at the inside of my back and trying to escape, forcing me to all fours.
“Gaaah!” I couldn’t hold back the scream as I felt something growing out of my back, the feeling somewhere between bizarre and excruciating. For all the pain, it felt like... like a dislocated arm being popped back into place. Painful, but with the overwhelming sense of ‘this belongs here.’
“Jeffy!” Mom screamed, rushing to my side and holding me tight. “It’s okay, Mommy’s here! I’ll just stop the spell and—”
“No,” I managed through clenched teeth as the twin protrusions ripped through the back of my shirt before joining to my spinal cord. I gasped at the sudden sensation, but not from pain—no, this was just strange. I could feel another set of limbs now, not as just something sticking out of my back, but as a part of me. As if it’d always been there. In addition, another sensation came with it: one of… nature? Wind, rain, that kind of stuff. I’m not sure exactly how else to describe it, but I could feel the tingle of lightning, the cool touch of rain on my skin, the wind blowing through my hair. I felt it, and more importantly, I could understand it, despite having never encountered it before. “I have to do this. Don’t stop, Mom. Just hold me tight, and I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, son,” she whispered, tears in her eyes once more as she stroked my hair with a hoof. “I’m right here.”
I felt the same shattering sensation on my hands just before more pain shot through my fingers as each bone in my ten digits extended to one and a half times their original length, my palms expanding to accommodate the longer digits. It felt as if my bones and nerves were breaking and mending themselves, over and over. The pain increased further as I felt something akin to spiraling grooves carving into each bone, like a unicorn’s horn. No, not carving. The bone was being expelled. Like it was something foreign that had been wedged in to fill in the grooves.
My hands still felt like they were on fire, an extended sensation beyond myself flowing from my fingers to my brain.
Then I felt the rush of power move downward, surging like a battering ram to my feet, and I felt the shattering sensation once more, followed by excruciating pain in the soles of my feet. There was a moment of numbness, as if they had fallen asleep, then it vanished, and I could more than just feel the ground under my feet. I was aware of it, every crack in the stony floor, every little crevice and groove as if it were a part of me. Then all of my muscles flared up in pain, causing the greatest scream yet as my muscles felt far stronger and more potent, despite not gaining much bulk.
With three limbs unsealed, I felt the power within me surging towards my head with the force of a cannon upon rock inside my brain, and I felt... not just something inside me, but something outside myself. I couldn’t fully understand it, but it felt as if something far greater than myself, distant but still very much present, was bestowing some unique ability on me, though it vaguely felt as if I’d become more human than human, if that makes any sense.
At least, I couldn’t understand it at first. In an instant, the awareness became voices. Not tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions, but trillions. Thousands of dead languages speaking all at once, a discordant babble of words that would normally have been utterly incomprehensible to me, but I understood them all. It was as if I was a child again, where words have yet to be tied to the concepts they represent, except I innately understood the meaning behind them even if the words themselves were esoteric bundles of syllables and phonemes.
With the voices came memories. Not mine, but theirs. Then I knew: these were all the humans deceased. All the way back to the first man to ever live. But among so many voices, so many memories, I couldn’t hear myself. I felt myself starting to get lost among my deceased brethren, all crying for vengeance, justice for the loss of their once grand position. I threw back my head and howled in agony, desperate to not lose myself to the legions of departed. In my mind, I tried to scream at them to be silent, but I couldn’t know which voice was mine.
Mom was right. I wasn’t ready. And now, she was going to lose me to the very powers she’d intended for me.
Just as I was about to lose myself to the endless masses of the lost, I felt my mother hug me tighter, whispering, “You can do it, Jeffy. Mommy’s right here. We believe in you.”
With her words, I managed to tear myself out of the furious masses, find myself, and with a final shriek of agony, I crumpled into my mother’s embrace, panting heavily from the excruciating pain of the transformation.
“It worked,” Dad breathed in amazement. “It actually worked! Our son, the Promised One! Icarus wings, Mage hands, and Druid strength and connection! A human with powers like an Alicorn! Crystal! Our Jeffrey is an Incarnation!”
Slowly getting to my feet, I watched as my mother pulled a collapsable full-height mirror out of her saddlebag for me to look at myself in. Massive, majestic white feathered wings sprouted from my back. My fingers were longer than before, and I could sense the magical connection through them. My muscles had bulked slightly, though I felt a lot stronger than even my new appearance let on, and I could feel a connection to the very Earth through the soles of my feet.
Additionally, my cobalt hair was orderly for the first time, the strands appearing to have merged into some kind of animate magic. It didn’t shift much, but it did appear to move ever so slightly, even with no air currents to move it.
Looking down at my feet, I took note of the shackles that still bound my feet, and the manacles that restricted my hands. Focusing on my hands, my eyes widened in shock as they took on a green glow that matched my eyes. Focusing further, I envisioned the metal links snapping open, freeing me at last.
The power engulfed the metal bindings, and with a lot more force than I intended, they snapped open, flinging their segments in random directions, striking the walls before falling to the ground.
“Uh…” I was stunned at the sheer level of power I suddenly had. That was a lot more than I expected. I would likely have to work on exercising more control in the future. Rubbing my bare wrists and ankles in amazement, it finally dawned on me: I was free! A slave no longer!
Trying once more, this time with a little more precision (but not by much), I focused on my father’s own bindings, snapping them open as well, but bending them way out of shape. Yep. I didn’t know my own strength, that was for sure. What if I accidentally harmed one of my own? The thought terrified me. I couldn’t ever live with myself if I made that kind of mistake.
“Now, our son! Go! Your people need you!” My mother said, tears in her eyes. “Restore your people’s birthright! Just promise me that anypony who supports you won’t feel Man’s rage.”
“Of course Mom,” I replied warmly. “When we retake our rightful place as the stewards of the world, anypony who supports us, or even is sympathetic to us, will be adopted into the human family and treated as equals. I’ll make sure of it.”
Setting my jaw with determination, I added, “Now, my people need me. Farewell for now, Mom and Dad.”
“Jeffy?” Mom said, trotting up to me before putting a hoof on my arm to gently turn me around.
“What is it, Mom?” I inquired, unsure of what she wanted.
“You may be ready in mind, son, but not in skill,” She told me gently. “We have to get you some training, first. I have some friends who should be able to train you before you fight to free your brethren. The night is still young. Please, son. Let us help you to help your kind.”
After mulling it over for a moment, I nodded. She had a point. Even if I managed to cast and fly just fine as a newborn, that didn’t mean I’d still be able to after years without it. I still didn’t really know any spells. Sure, I destroyed those chains just fine, but that doesn’t really mean I’d be able to use any real spells or weather powers when the going gets rough.
“Okay Mom,” I agreed. “Take me there.”
“Make us proud, son,” my father whispered as my mother nodded in satisfaction.
“I intend to,” I assured them before Mom lit up her horn, the azure glow enveloping both of us, taking me away from the caverns I’d been forced to live in for eighteen years.
It was almost time to break the yoke of bondage my people had been forced to bear for eons at long last.