Wish had a plan. The morning after the awkward dinner she had woken up from another nightmare. And it was then that she decided that things couldn’t keep proceeding like normal in Hoofica Castle. Today was the day she did something. Today was the day she went outside for the first time in months. Not even just on some balcony or in the courtyard, or standing by an open window. She was going out of the castle. It didn’t matter what her father would think or how worried everypony would be if she suddenly went missing. She had to do this. The monotony, the routine, the craziness, the upsetting truths, she just couldn’t quietly abide it all. However, the fear of voicing any of this to her father kept her from taking any direct action—as well as the fear of the Head Inquisitor who Wish knew was responsible in large part for her nightmares and anxiety. All she could do right now was help herself, just a little bit.
And her returned memories were going to aid her. This morning she had drunk a lot of water, way more than she usually had to drink of anything at breakfast. She made a big show of it to Dotty and her maid even commented on it. All because she needed an excuse that seemed natural.
There were places and things about the castle that she had remembered, things only forgotten thanks to the dark haze that obscured her memories of certain events and ponies. That darkness that signaled the moment things truly became an insane nightmare for her in this castle. She still wasn’t sure if that amnesia was due to a magical spell or something else, but she had at least gotten over most of it. So she knew how she could potentially get away from Dotty and maybe avoid other guards as she made her way out of the castle.
That opportunity came as the two of them walked to her classroom on the third floor of the castle. Taking the same route they always took. But instead of Wish just paying attention to the paintings and suits of armor until they got to the classroom, she was looking along the walls at other doors and hallways that went elsewhere into the castle. Until they got right up to one in particular.
“Um, Dotty?” Wish said, coming to a stop in the corridor.
“Hm? What is it, Wish?” Dotty asked with her usual cheerful smile on her face.
“I… um...” Wish put a fake blush on her face and pointed to a door on the interior side of the castle. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Ohhhh,” Dotty smirked and brought a hoof up to her mouth, giggling into it.. “You really drank too much water at breakfast. Hm, I don’t think your teacher and classmates will mind if you’re a minute late. Go right ahead, I’ll be waiting outside!”
“Thanks, Dotty,” Wish smiled at her and walked over to the lavatory door.
She did her best to not shake and make Dotty suspicious.
Opening up the door she walked inside and let it swing shut behind her. The lavatory was pretty standard, sinks on the right side and stalls on the left side. As expected for something primarily for visitors and servants there was nothing extravagant about it. If Wish’s memory served correct there were identical ones right below it on the first and second floors. It would’ve been easier for Wish’s plans if she could’ve gone in one of them but there was nothing she could do about that. What she was looking for here was a certain something up high on the far wall of the lavatory.
A window. A small window with a pop-out mechanism that opened up right into the central courtyard of Hoofica Castle. That was her ticket out of here and out from under the eyes of Dotty. She didn’t know what was under that window, if anything, but she had to at least see if she could use it to escape and get elsewhere in the castle. It was pretty high up on the wall, she wished she was a pegasus right now, but for once she was also a bit grateful for her small size. Any bigger and she never would’ve been able to fit through it.
She was certain she could still hop up on the sink and jump up to the small recess where the window was, pushing it out and then climbing through. Or at least taking a look to make sure she wasn’t going to fall down three stories to the ground and break her neck.
Wish looked behind her at the door leading back into the corridor. Dotty might get suspicious in just a minute or two if Wish didn’t come back out, she needed to act fast. And quietly as well unfortunately. If she slipped and fell, Dotty was sure to hear it. So Wish quickly but softly trotted her way over the floor, towards the end of the sink under the window. With annoyance, she realized she was going to have to jump to pull herself up on top of it.
She was no longer that grateful for her small size.
“Hup!” Wish grunted and jumped, grasping the top of the sink counter and pulling herself up while her legs wiggled about beneath her. Crawling on top of the counter she frowned and looked up at the window now only half as high over her head as it had been. She was only going to have one shot of jumping up to it and getting out of here.
Wish took a deep breath and steadied herself at the edge of the marble counter. She hunkered down and bent her legs, getting ready to spring up like a cat.
“I can do this,” she said and vaulted off the counter towards the window.
Her small body sailed through the air as her outstretched hooves reached for the window and the small amount of space to hold onto in front of it. Wish grunted as she hit the window’s spot and almost slid down the wall before digging her back hooves into it and holding on to the tiny ledge with her front hooves.
“M-Made it...” she muttered and pulled her upper body up further, reaching her left hoof forward and popping out the window. It lifted up on a pair of hinges and she was able to stick her head out and take a look around.
The large interior courtyard with its gardens, ponds, trees, and pathways sprawled out below her. It was actually a pretty sight even with the dark sky and the fresh air also felt really good, Wish sucked in a breath of it and allowed the breeze to blow against her face. Unfortunately there was nothing directly below her for her to safely jump down to, and no way for her to safely scale the wall. But there was a balcony poking out into the courtyard just slightly to the left. Wish could try jumping to it and making her way down from there. It overlooked a few trees she could possibly jump into.
“Okay, let’s do it,” Wish nodded to herself and pulled her way further through the window. “This is definitely not a dumb idea.” She said as she carefully perched on the window’s ledge and got ready to jump.
She bit her lip and she could feel her heart pounding in her chest, it was a more exhilarating jump to make than the one up to the window. Still, she wasn’t giving up on getting out of here. Wish gathered her nerves and decided she need to do it right now before common sense caught up to here. No time for second thoughts—Wish jumped to the balcony.
Her little body sailed through the air and right over the railing of the balcony. The brief moment of joy at knowing she had made it turned immediately to pain as she landed on the hard stone floor of the balcony and rolled across it before smacking into the banister at the other end.
“Oof!” The wind was knocked out of her a little bit and she shakily rose to her hooves while groaning. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow...”
She looked down and saw her knees were scraped and hissed in pain. It had been a long time since she had taken a tumble like that. Not since back home when playing around out by the forest. Looked like she was just going to have to get over it though, not like she could ask anypony for a band-aid. There was still a lot more to do as well and she might have to take another tumble or make some more reckless jumps. With how much she had been coddled and kept from doing anything like this over the past few months the pain was even a little bit refreshing. A happy reminder of the fun she used to have.
Since she had now safely made it to the balcony it was about time she should look around too. There was a door on it leading back into the castle but Wish didn’t want to use it for a couple of reasons. It could be locked in the first place, she wanted to put some more distance between herself and Dotty and not just be in the same area of the castle, and she wanted to get down to the courtyard so for the first time in a while she could feel dirt beneath her hooves. Those trees that the balcony overlooked were going to be her path to take to accomplish that.
Wish hopped up onto the balcony’s railing and looked down at the nearest. Leafy and full of strong branches. Just what she needed.
It was definitely dumb to just jump into it and try to grab a tree branch and then climb her way down it that way… but she couldn’t really think of a better idea right now.
Acting before her fear caught up with her once again, Wish leaped off of the balcony and into the tree.
Whump!
Whack!
Thump!
Thwack!
Plop!
Wish bounced and fell off numerous tree branches as she fell through the leafy canopy of the tree until she landed right on her stomach over a thick branch. It stopped her fall and she laid like a towel out to dry over it, groaning in pain and discomfort. “Owww...”
She hung there limply for a little while longer, catching her breath and waiting for the branch to stop shaking. Wish then looked down and saw she was still ten feet above the ground with only a few more branches to go and then the bushes beneath her. She sighed and let herself fall off the branch slightly until she was only hanging onto it with her hooves, then began to swing back and forth to build up momentum before throwing herself to a branch below and in front of her. Wish caught it with a grin, she was used to climbing trees. Sometimes it helped growing up in the countryside.
Of course now there was only one thing left to do. The trunk of the tree didn’t have anymore branches going down it soooo…
“Here we go,” Wish gulped and let go of the branch, falling the remaining distance down into the bushes.
The green bushes were hardly a cushion and the hard ground greeted her flank painfully. But she was still down. Wish crawled out of the bush she was in, brushing away leaves and twigs and getting herself out of the tangled vines, and briefly stood by the roots of the tree she had just “climbed” down. Her body was scraped and dirty with her mane and tail looking like a complete mess. And she just couldn’t be happier about any of it.
Wish smiled and walked out from underneath the tree, taking a look up at the towers encircling the courtyard and the dark sky above them. Outside. Walking around on dirt and through grass. Boy it sure felt good. She was still technically inside the castle, but it was already a big improvement. There were a lot of ways in and out of this courtyard as well, she could get to pretty much any part of the castle’s first floor from here easily.
Did she attempt to go straight for the front gates? Or would it be better to try and sneak around some more and look for a different way out of the castle? Dotty and everypony else would surely be looking for her soon but they probably didn’t know what she was doing or where she was going. Either way she was still going to have to be really careful about sneaking through the castle. She couldn’t let a single pony see her. Much as she would’ve liked to spend more time in this courtyard she was probably going to have to leave it soon.
Wish sighed. “I’m at least going to go smell some flowers first though.”
The young filly walked over to a nearby patch of dandelions, growing by a dirt path. Above her the dark sky roiled about unceasingly.
Dotty knocked on the lavatory door a few times. “Wish? You’re taking a while, is everything alright in there?” She waited a second and when she heard no answer she opened the door up and walked in. “Wish?”
The filly was nowhere in sight, not by the sinks, and every stall was unoccupied. Dotty felt a breeze blow past her and looked up to see the open window. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open in shock.
“Oh… I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
Wish walked up the steps towards a gateway leading out of the courtyard and back into the castle. It actually had a portcullis right overhead that could be lowered if need be, but Wish doubted that thing had ever been lowered once in centuries. She had to be very careful where she walked, Dotty had to have alerted the rest of the castle by now. Her hooves were quiet over the stone floor and she never just walked out right into a new hallway, she always took a careful peek first. And she kept her ears open. Guards would be easy to hear thanks to their armor, Inquisitors less so.
The memories she had back made things a little easier for her too. Wish wasn’t an expert on the castle or its layout, but now she could recall parts of it and how to get from one major place to another better. She had left the courtyard and was now wandering through the west wing of the castle, where most of the servants called home and a large amount of extra rooms existed. It would normally be the busiest part of the castle with the most ponies in it.
Which is why she was here.
If Wish had snuck out, why would she go to the place she’d most likely end up getting caught? They’d never suspect it.
A confident smirk came to her face as she stealthily walked through the first floor hallways of the west wing. Up above her somewhere was her classroom. She wondered what her classmates and Star Eyes were thinking right about now? Maybe they hadn’t even been alerted at all and they were still waiting for her? Or more likely, class had simply been canceled for the day.
There were a lot of places she could visit here in the west wing like kitchens, guest rooms, the guards’ barracks, but in the end she was still going to be making her way to the front gate of the castle. Wish could remember it in her memories—the massive pair of doors that rose high up in the great entrance hall of the castle. If the guards were all scrambling around for her then perhaps they weren’t guarding it anymore either. Secretly getting to it though was still going to take some time.
Wish took a small break in an alcove by an old suit of armor and used the time to catch her breath. I wonder what dad is thinking right now…
It made her feel a little bad, and worried, but she wasn’t turning back just yet. Besides, all she really wanted was a little freedom and a change of scenery. She’d be back later. And then of course she could explore the dungeon too, which might get her in more trouble but… oh well. It had to be done or she’d go mad in this castle.
Wish poked her head out of the alcove and saw that it was all clear down the hallway for now. She slowly and quietly made her way down it, the guards probably didn’t have any idea where she had gotten off to. Dotty probably didn’t even know if she had actually gone all the way down to the courtyard or not.
“A disguise would be really useful right now,” Wish muttered to herself as she secretly went down the hallway. “I should’ve worn one when I went down to the dungeon too...”
Easier said than done though, what could she even disguise herself with that she could find in her size?
She turned another corner to arrive at a three-way intersection of hallways and heard the thunderous rattling of armored ponies coming towards her. Wish sucked in a breath and turned back around the corner, crouching down low and pressing herself right up against the dark wall. Moments later two guards came running by with haggard and worried looks on their faces, they ran right past the hallway Wish was hiding in without bothering to look down in her direction.
Wish waited for the sound of their running to disappear before she stood up and wiped some sweat from her brow. “Whew… that was a close one.”
She was not grateful for being small enough to easily hide out of sight like that. It was true though that because of her height she was basically out of view of any guards unless they actually bothered to look down. She probably didn’t even need to duck down there to not be seen. And the poor lighting and dark walls worked well for her right now too.
The opposite helped her as well—the white suits of the Inquisitors would be really easy for her to see if they were wandering the dark castle and looking for her. Wish liked her chestnut color and her rosy red mane, but if she was black right now she would’ve been practically invisible, camouflaged. She still had quite a bit of space to travel through in the castle and every corner and turn was just one more opportunity for her to be suddenly face to face with guards and Inquisitors. And then her little trip would be over.
If there were any guards standing guard at certain intersections and halls in the castle she may also have to backtrack and go a different way as she made her way to the front gate. Wish hoped nopony was smart enough to actually stay in the same location. Running around wildly looking for her would be way better for her right now.
Her scraped knees still ached a little bit though and it got worse the longer she went on. She might’ve actually hurt herself a bit when she jumped onto the balcony. With how dirty and disheveled she was, a stop at the lavatory to wash herself off and clean up her scrapes sounded nice, but she didn’t want to risk going into a room and getting boxed in. She also didn’t know the location of every single lavatory, sink, or cistern in Hoofica Castle. She mainly just knew about the one she had jumped out of because of how many times she had passed by it on the way to class. It was good though that she had had enough to eat and drink this morning to keep up her energy, this was way more activity than she was used to. It was making her quite excited and her quick pulse was telling her she was burning through a lot of that energy even as she moved about slowly and carefully.
Calm down. I need to calm down. Wish told herself.
Wish poked her head down another hallway and sighed in relief as it appeared empty. There were a number of doors lining it that led to random rooms Wish didn’t really know anything about, and she couldn’t really waste her time opening them up and learning. She tried to walk along the shadows near the corners of the hallway, still keeping low and as out of sight as possible, just in case. A maid or Inquisitor or some other servant could suddenly round the corner ahead or come out of one of these doors and she wouldn’t hear that coming like with the armored guards.
As soon as she passed by one of the rooms-
-the door was thrown open and Wish fought back a squeak as the door flipped on its hinges directly towards her. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for it to crush her against the wall when… nothing happened.
Frightfully, she opened up one eye a sliver and saw that the door had come to a stop just an inch before sandwiching her between it and the hard stone well. Her hooves covered her mouth as she did her best to keep still and not even let out a whimper.
“Well she’s not in any of these rooms either,” a stallion on the other side of the door said.
“This is insane, she has to still be somewhere in the castle,” a mare said.
“We have to keep looking, we can’t let the Head Inquisitor down,” a second stallion said.
A heavy snort came from the first stallion. “That’s the last thing I plan on doing.”
“We should split up the next time we reach any stairs or an intersection,” the mare said. “Cover as much ground as possible. We’ve just gotta keep our eyes peeled for anything.”
“Right. Leave no stone unturned and all that,” the first stallion said.
“Yes, let’s go,” the mare said.
Wish heard the shuffling of hooves as the three ponies quickly walked down the hallway in the direction Wish had just come from. The door slowly crept back close until it shut completely and Wish looked to see three white-suited Inquisitors walking together. Her eyes were wide and she stayed still as a statue.
“How could Dotted Easel be so stupid?” She heard the second stallion growl in annoyance.
Wish stayed silent and still until they had disappeared from both sight and sound. Then she sucked in a deep breath of air and collapsed to the cold floor.
“That was a close one...” she whispered to herself.
When she tried to stand back up she found her legs were like jelly, she wobbled and shook before falling to her knees and panting as sweat gathered at her brow. It was nerves. It was only psychological, she just needed to get over it and get moving again. She knew that this kind of thing would happen and there might be close calls. Just stop being afraid. Stop being afraid and get moving again. You had made it past guards and Inquisitors now, you just heard they had no idea where you were. Get up and get out of this castle.
The young filly nodded to herself a few times and pushed herself back to her hooves. She was trembling, and scared, but she could walk.
With courage, she made it down the rest of the door-laden hallway and came out into a circular chamber that had a few more branching corridors going off from it. One looked like it went towards the central courtyard and another went to a spiral staircase that went up to the next floor of the castle. Straight ahead looked like it would take her towards the “front” of the castle where the gate was, so that’s where she was going.
There wasn’t any “north wing” or anything like that to Hoofica Castle. There was just a single large entrance made in the northern side of the central part of the castle. Directly outside it, if she recalled correctly, was a large open grounds and another defensive exterior wall built around it, with a gatehouse for that that led directly into the capitol city. She didn’t know what the situation at that gatehouse would be but truly Wish didn’t care. Getting out to the castle grounds would constitute a win in her book. Getting farther than that was a dream.
Wish quietly walked along the walls again to reach her destination, she moved from shadows between torches to shadows between torches, alcove to alcove, staying down and out of sight as much as she could. She would be relatively close to the front gate now. After journeying through the courtyard and the west wing of the castle she was almost there.
What she would do after getting out of the castle was irrelevant. She already knew she probably couldn’t make it out of the grounds. She just wanted to go as far as she could.
The pounding of metal clad hooves on the stone floor alerted Wish to the fact that another guard or group of guards was coming through. She shut her mouth and zipped underneath an ornamental suit of armor that stood next to a large painting on the wall. Like a statue underneath the armor’s belly, Wish stood there and watched as half a dozen guards came down the hallway. They were looking straight ahead and at the back of their group was another Inquisitor, his face set in a tight frown. Wish’s eyes were the only part of her that moved as she followed them until they were out of sight. As soon as they were a safe distance away she exhaled and stepped out from underneath the armor.
Okay, this is going pretty well now. Wish thought.
She probably shouldn’t say things like that or karma was going to bite her, but Wish kept walking for now.
When she came to another intersection she actually wasn’t entirely sure which way to go and she spent some time walking around in a circle trying to figure it out. Had she gotten turned around? Was there not actually a good way from where she was to getting out of the castle? Wish ground her teeth together as she tried to come to a decision. If only she knew the castle better instead of her just vaguely going in the right direction.
In the end, Wish stood in the middle of the branching corridors and decided there was only one way to do this: she lifted a hoof and pointed forward before closing her eyes and spinning around.
When she came to a dizzy stop she opened her eyes and walked down the closest hallway she was pointing towards.
“Just as good a way of doing this as any...” Wish muttered.
Her decision hadn’t come soon enough either. Almost the moment she had started walking down this new hallway, the sounds of running ponies came from behind her. Wish’s eyes widened as she looked around, but there wasn’t anywhere for her to hide in here. If some ponies suddenly turned the corner and came in here they’d see her for sure. The end of the hallway stretched far ahead—all Wish could do now was run for it.
“Great,” she said and took off sprinting.
Luckily thanks to her light weight and lack of shoes or boots she didn’t really make any noise on the stone floor even as she galloped over it. Not compared to the other ponies that would be running around in here at least. She was still smart and kept her ears open to listen for any guards that might be ahead, but even if they were there she couldn’t really stop right now. She had to just hope for the best. If she turned a corner and guards or Inquisitors were there it was just going to become a different kind of chase. Now she couldn’t waste any time deciding which way to go either, she had to just run and hope she was going the right way.
Maybe it was luck but as she sprinted down the hallways she didn’t see hide nor hair of any other ponies. It filled her with excitement and the belief that she really could make it. She wasn’t sure how long she had been running now after giving up stealth but she had certainly gone quite a ways. The twists and turns of the castle were becoming less frequent and shortly she found herself in a much wider and better lit hallway than normal.
Wish could see the end ahead, the hallway opened up into a much larger and even better lit room.
That was it. The grand entrance to Hoofica Castle was practically right in front of her.
Wish picked up her speed and practically came shooting out of her hallway and into the huge atrium of Hoofica Castle, looking towards the doors to the outside. The ceiling of this room was incredibly high as it took up pretty much all three stories that made up the central part of the castle. Torches on the walls and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling provided plenty of light and illuminated grand marble statues and long tapestries that decorated the entrance to the castle. The large double doors themselves were made of massive pieces of wood taken from the large redwood trees one could find in Hoofica. Bands of black steel bound them together while large circular knockers near the bottom were placed for ponies to either pull them open or closed. There were slots for where other beams of wood could be placed horizontally on the door to barricade it shut, but there weren’t any placed there now.
It was right there. It might as well have already been open for her.
A great smile stretched across Wish’s face as she walked across the floor. “Finally.”
“Wish.”
Her hoof stopped mid-step. The smile disappeared from her face and Wish slowly turned around to see her father standing there with a blank, unreadable, expression on his face. It was like the entire world had stopped and gone quiet. He blinked. Wish blinked back. The door remained shut behind her.