“Sell you #23 and #24? Surely you jest, boy.”
Just being near him makes my teeth grind. If I just charged right at his chest, I could use a sharpening spell on my horn… It would be messy, but… I shook my head.
“Well, not… particularly. What did they cost you? Surely two fillies like them aren’t worth much considering your grand plans, right Viscount? What good is a pegasus that can barely fly, and a six-year-old going to do you when you go to build your castle?”
It has been little more than a month since the doctor had assigned them to me, and here I am, doing something stupid, asking to buy them from this cretin. I can’t stand the thought of her in his hooves. The very idea of it makes my blood boil. The doctor even made mention of my attack spells and my curses being more powerful than usual as of late.
“It seems as if giving you those fillies was good for your growth. Tell me, have you… experienced the taste of a mare? Or is it something else that drives you to become so powerful? You must be careful, Shadow. While classical magic is immune to it, our magic fluxuates with emotion…”
He treats them like they’re things too! He’s no better than the viscount! To all these righteous unicorns, they are property and nothing more! Sunny doesn’t deserve this. Neither does Moonlight. I would bet half of those ponies were born into this life just like we were. Some sick game the unicorns play with each other. Disgusting.
“Bah! What did they cost me he says! What a daft little fellow you are. Listen here, boy, That filly there is worth more than you could ever make! Eighty gold! That is what I bought her for! Do you have such coin? Some, street urchin like yourself, has likely never seen so much gold in his life!”
E-eighty gold!? It took me two years just to get the four and a half it cost me to buy my fare!
“And you want them both!? Ha! Ridiculous! A pegasus, unsullied, of age, with unicorn blood, is worth more now than she was before I bought her! And the filly? She has even more unique blood than her sister! No, eighty would not be nearly enough! Two hundred. Scrounge that together, and I’ll even throw in the zebra.”
My eye twitched. Not a name, not even a number. The cargo. Things. I swear here and now, this stallion will not set hoof in the new world. The new world is a place for freedom and green land. You have no place in it. The sharpening spell had already risen to the forefront of my mind, and I was prepared to put the magic into it when a wing draped over my back.
“Shadow, please. It’s okay. We knew better.”
The muscles in my foreleg tightened. Even if I killed him now, what would that do for me? The captain and the crew could surround and kill every slave without so much as batting an eye. The magic I know is only now getting to the level of something a normal unicorn my age would’ve learned two years ago. I’m not strong enough to protect them. I can’t free them as I am. I need more time. I still have time. I must wait. Remember the doctor’s words. Sunny and Moonlight are valuable to him. They’re worth a lot. Perhaps if I…
I shook my head. That isn’t fair. That certainly isn’t fair to Sunny. That would make me no better than him. She… she should have a choice. It should be her choice. The goddess says that ponies… should be free. Should treat each other as we would want to be treated. It’s this system that’s in place that must be destroyed. The new world… is a free land. And if it isn’t yet… I will make it so.
“Fine. I’ll get your gold.”
The viscount snorted. “Preposterous. And where will you do that on open waters as far as the eye can see?”
I lowered my snout. I caught the viscounts eyes, and stared him down until he flinched. Weakness. A disgusting creature like you must be exterminated. I will dangle the very thing you long for right in front of you just before I watch the life slide out of your breath. Just as the doctor says… all lives are equal in the eyes of magic. Yours will fuel my spells just as good as any other…
“Just you watch. I’ll even sweeten the deal. Two hundred and forty gold. Three times what you paid for them, right?”
He swallowed. “W-well, I suppose that would… that would satisfy…”
“Good. I’ll have it to you before we make land. Come along, Sunny.” I turned, and just like that, we left the viscount’s quarters. By the time we reached mine though, I collapsed and nearly fell on my face.
“Oh sweet goddess… That was too much.”
“Shadow! What did I tell you about overexerting yourself? Keeping a spell ready like that is hard for a regular unicorn, but you don’t even have the endurance of a normal one!”
“How could ya tell sis?” Moonlight asked. I had her stick to the ceiling during the meeting just in case the viscount tried to pull something. The captain said he wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him, and these days, I think my father’s words were backwards. It’s not the lesser ponies I shouldn’t trust, but the unicorns.
“Well, his eyes get all… sharp when he does stuff like that. Remember when the doctor was having him shoot light off the deck?” Sunny asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, it happened then, and even more when the doctor was teaching him curses the week after. You always look so scary when you do things like that Shadow…”
Ugh, she looked at me with those eyes! Those, big, sad, violet eyes! It makes my heart hurt. I just want to hold her. How could anypony ever have seen her as a thing? An object? A tool? She could be the goddess herself!
“Shadow? Are you crying?” Moonlight asked.
I reached out with my magic and brought both fillies to me and wrapped them in my hooves. “No, no… I just… I’m so happy you’re here.”
We held there like the for a while. Then, Sunny freed herself. “Well, I suppose I’m happy you’re happy, Shadow. But what I don’t understand is how you’re going to buy us.” Her pale cheeks started to turn pink and she moved her eyes away from me. “And um… you… you mean it, right? You… you really want us?”
I swallowed. I would die for you. “Of course! It’s not like I was… entirely talking from my plot.”
Sunny sighed and let her head droop. “Right. Do you have a plan at all, or was that just you puffing out your chest just like the viscount does when the doctor is near? It’s not very manly if there’s no weight behind it, ya know.”
I stroked Moonlight’s mane, and she responded by nuzzling my chest. No pony will lay hooves on these two. Not so long as I live. But… what in the world am I going to do? I’ve only got two gold. Even if I stole every coin on the ship, that would hardly amount to two hundred forty. Magic is what made me confident, so magic is what’s going to have to solve this for me. Think. What have you learned?
The beam spell feels like it would be most useful here. It relies heavily on the creation aspect of magic. Unlike most spells I’ve learned so far, I create little mirrors that force light to reflect all on one spot and bounce around a number of times to increase intensity until finally, I let go to have it blast off in a direction.
The doctor said that there are some unicorns that can do this repeatedly in seconds and with multiple starting points. Making the mirrors is easy enough, but forcing the light to tunnel continuously is what makes it difficult. If I could just… copy…
Copy? Copy; a thing made to be similar or identical to another. Is it possible? I wonder…
December 27th, The Year of Our Goddess, 607.
When I finally do kill the viscount, it will be slow, painful, and as agonizing as I can make it. He said to me, “I wanted to make it easier for you, so I’ve lowered the value of the goods you wanted. Surely that isn’t a problem, is it?”
She came to me the next morning, sobbing and blubbering like some poor wounded animal. I was tempted to go take care of it right then and there, but now I know better. There’s a game being played here, and I’m being tested.
The doctor has often made mention that my anger seems to increase the power of my spells. If I were to make a guess, I would say, ‘lowering Sunny’s value’ was his idea. The viscount and the doctor. A spineless creature like the viscount wouldn’t have the temerity to do something like that on his own, certainly not without the right encouragement. But to get back at somepony who slighted him? He could even part with some of his precious gold for that…
No, this is all part of the grand experiment. He wants me to become his successor. A project for him to watch flourish. His mistake was teaching me to think like him. Because just like him, I’ll be as cold and ruthless as I need be to achieve my goals. At any cost, at all costs, we will be free of this system, and he will burn with it.
Recently, I started to do some study on my own while the doctor is performing his duties for the ship. As my idea for the beam spell progressed, I managed to figure out something of a crude version of it that can copy objects. By merging the scan, the copy property of the mirrors, and the creation property of the beam spell, it seems if I can visualize it well enough, I can turn something else into a ‘copy’ of whatever object I wish, so long as it’s of similar size. It only lasts a few hours, but that should be more than enough time to create the despair I want in the viscount’s eyes.
Slow and painful. Like spilling a wine skin… the doctor, however, is another matter entirely. I’ve completed a scan of the viscount, the Shadow spell the doctor taught me being particularly useful, and as it turns out, he’s far less powerful than he’d like anypony to believe. The doctor on the other hoof… I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what I was looking at. It was almost… like there was nothing inside. Perhaps that is yet another test? He must sense my animus. He’s always been very perceptive, and if Sunny notices that my eyes change when I use magic, then surely he does too?
Yes, that will be the true test… I’ve come to the conclusion that I no longer wish to allow the doctor to read my journal. The shadow spell has a number of properties to its masking abilities, but how to deconstruct it once it’s in place is something I’m not entirely sure about yet. The first entry I wrote was the day I met Sunny. Those seven numbers, and both of their numbers will be the key. If ever I forget, I’ll tell both of them to remember the number. 11-06-607-23-24. I will reach the new world. If it is not the place I’ve dreamed of when we get there… then I’ll simply have to make it that way.