//------------------------------// // Canterlot Castle // Story: Sugar Hoof the Wizard Colt // by Furenstein //------------------------------// The beautiful marble walls and floors of Princess Celestia's Castle greeted me with a kindness that the ponies inside did not. I did not deserve such kindness from the castle either, I did not truly understand the significance of what I had done to the tree, but I knew that the world was worse off. The guards forced a ring on my horn that made it impossible to use, I didn't tell them about how life magic is from the heart and not the horn, I didn't plan on using my magic anyway. With such a vast influx of life magic, and harmony magic, which I'd never even heard used before inside of me, who knows how much damage I could do. I was put into a dark room made of stone with Shining Armor, a white-furred unicorn stallion with a blue mane. Anti-magic enchantments had been placed on the walls and ceiling to prevent my escape. They were not strong enough to stop me though, even here, hours after I stole the tree's magic, I grew stronger. I lowered my head in both guilt and thought. The harmony magic has settled, it's my life magic that expands, is the harmony magic forcing my life magic to grow? "Your name is Shining Armor, right?" I asked to see if what the harmony magic told me about him was true. "You held my little sister captive." He growled in response. "Yes ... against my orders, the treants attacked the town." The treants were meant to stall, not attack. "Twily said you wanted one thousand emeralds for their return, why?" He wrote something down on some parchment. "I didn't," I started, "I figured the Princess would think about it for a moment before laughing, then free them with her magic." "Those creatures you created, what magic did you use?" "Theurgy and Shadowmancy, life magic and shadow magic respectively." "How did someone as young as you come across shadow magic, let alone become competent enough to create thinking lifeforms?" "I'm an eighty-nine-year-old wizard who's spent most of his life practicing life magic." I said as he put the quill down onto the table a bit too forcefully. "If you aren't going to answer the questions truthfully, maybe we're better off with you in Tartarus." He warned. I apologized and lied to him, "I found some books in the desert about them." "You're a two-year-old colt who can walk, talk, and learn magic that even some alicorns can't figure out, and you somehow managed to absorb the magic in the tree of harmony." He glared at me. "You like corndogs?" I asked, using my hoof to hold up my head. His eyes gave him away, he did in fact like corndogs. "We're here to talk about you, not me." He said. "The harmony tells me things. That's how I knew your name." He looked at me with a mix of anger and caution as he wrote down what I said. "Where in the desert did you find these books?" "The agent worked as intended, Lord Birch." Overseer Elm said, watching from one of the new observation chambers surrounding the planet's inner core. Birch watched as the master's magic overtook the fire magic in the inner core, turning it from a molten yellow into an emerald green. A small ocean of burning magic, once it has taken the entire planet's core, no force on the planet would be able to stop him. "How long until the entire planet's core becomes his?" Birch asked. "It would take years for his magic to take the center of it." Birch asked, "Could we make more of the agent and use it to speed up the process?" "Adding more of the agent wouldn't increase the speed, it's more likely to slow down the spread actually." "A few years ..." He held his face in his wooden hand, "Someone should've gone with him. At least a handful." "The master is a powerful and wise wizard, and even now, his power grows by the second with every inch of the planet's core that is converted." Elm replies, attempting to comfort Birch. "Even now, his powers grow, my sister." Princess Luna said, "Were the elements truly so powerful?" "The elements have intertwined with another form of magic inside of him. The harmony remains the same, it's this second magic that grows." Princess Luna looked down, not sure what they could do if he were to try to escape. "We can't defeat him, can we?" "Without the elements, I doubt anyone could defeat him." Princess Celestia looked sullen in return. "What will we do, sister?" "He feels guilty for what he did, as he rightly should. He's already agreed to defend Equestria with the harmony magic to repay his debt to Equestria, so he'll be held in my room." "I thought I saw some of your furnishings being carried out of there. Why not just stick him in the dungeons?" Luna asked. "He has magic similar to the everfree forest, he needs to be kept as far away from the ground until we can build better relations." Celestia explained. Luna nodded her head before processing that last part, "Build better relations? He's a criminal, not a noble." "He's a young and powerful colt, from what those two mares in Appleloosa told me, he escaped from slavery and his parents are out of the picture. He's likely spent his life alone and scared." She drank some tea to wet her throat before continuing, "The best way to make sure he doesn't try to escape is by giving him something to stick around for, safety and friends." "Ah, your student and her friends, of course." Luna said, before Celestia shook her head. "Not yet, they must remain separate for the foreseeable future. We must get him into a better way of thinking first." "Who then, surely you don't intend for either of us too?" "Gilded Spear would be perfect." Celestia said with a small grin. "Who, sister?" Luna asked, looking up quizzically. "Gilded Spear is one of the new recruits for the royal guard, he isn't very strong or fast, but he's eager to please." "You want an untrained recruit to watch over the potentially most dangerous criminal in Equestria's history?" Luna asked, believing that her sister had finally lost her mind. "Of course not, I want Gilded Spear to befriend Sugar Hoof under the guise of being his warden." I was carried up to the tallest tower in the castle where a wonderfully designed room sat vacant and empty for me. The walls were a freshly painted lavender color, and it was still wet in some places. The marble floors had clearly been polished recently. "I thought I was being taken to my cell." I said to the guards, still pulling my chains along. "This is your cell." One of them replied, as they unlocked my restraints. "Uh ... I don't ..." I tried to say, before they began talking again. "If you try to escape, we will find you, and lock you away in a place that makes this tower seem like a luxury resort." With no other word, they turned around and left. I looked around my 'cell', It had a balcony of all things, who holds a prisoner in a room with a balcony? The clopping of my hooves on the marble floor was the only sound I could hear, not even the wind outside dared to make a noise. "A tall round room in the tallest tower of the Princess's Castle, four windows, two doors." I said to myself, "What game are they playing? I could break out of here easily, even before my magic began to grow. Maybe that was it though, maybe they knew I wasn't going to try to escape. "Even then, they could've at least kept the restraints on me."