//------------------------------// // Falling into a Mare's Bed... Kinky. (Chapter One) // Story: On Black Wings Unfurled, A Half-Dragon's Roar to be Heard // by Coal //------------------------------// Chapter One Falling into a Mare's Bed... Kinky. Falling backwards through an endless void of white is a somewhat surreal feeling. It almost feels like you might just keep falling forever, not knowing if anything is getting any closer or farther away because there isn't anything to judge distance from. The only thing that lets you know that you're still falling is the tug pulling you forever downwards and the inability to find a grip on anything. I can't say exactly how long I was falling, again, nothing to judge it by. I began to fear that I might never leave this void, to forever fall through nothingness. So for all I know I took a millennium falling through that endless white void. Kind of unlikely, but so was the entire situation I found myself in. I'm finally able to pull my thoughts away from the mild feeling of irritation at Prometheus being able to manipulate me so easily, even if was only on something as small as a letter. I find my thoughts turning to the situation I was now in. A Titan was sending me to another world. I knew from what he told me that I would be leaving behind my home, very likely to never return. Never seeing another of my own kind again. I was to be a castaway in an alien world, and I knew that. And I was still unable to say no. The story of Prometheus giving fire to man comes to my mind again, I have to assume it actually happened considering the reason I'm falling through this endless void. Some would assume that because Prometheus gave fire to man, he did it to help them. Thinking about it, that probably wasn't the case. He never gave the ancient humans a choice in the matter, he thrust progress onto them. I have the sickening feeling that even had I said no, he still would have sent me... Wait a second, did something twinkle? Looking towards it, I could in fact see something that wasn't an endless void of white. It was a small bright light, and more of them were appearing. The void of white slowly being replaced with an expanse of black dotted with points of light, and one large circle of light as the centerpiece. I began to realize I was looking out into a night sky. I felt a rush of relief as I realized that I was finally leaving that void. You do remember what's under the sky right? Right, the ground. Fuck this is gonna hurt. I continue falling, now however with the whistling of wind going past me. I feel myself cringe as I imagined myself hitting the ground at who knows how fast and leaving quite the colorful mark on the ground. Man I'm morbid sometimes. Thankfully however that particular train of thought was interrupted as I hit something soft and plush. ... Since when is the ground soft? I have no more time to dwell on it however as I spring back off whatever it was I had hit. Whatever had cushioned my fall had the consistency of a bounce house and I flipped around, so now instead of falling backwards and imagining how much the ground was going to hurt. Now I could look at it. I also dimly noted that the folding chair had fallen with me, as it now came into my field of view... Awesome. I whip past white puffs of cloud as I continue my perfectly controlled and executed plummet. I begin to make out shapes on the ground below me, at first they were too vague to tell what they were but I as I got frighteningly closer I begin to realize they were buildings of some kind. A few even had thin trails of smoke coming out of their chimneys. I quickly realize I was falling directly towards some kind of small town. I had kind of been hoping there would be water under me, even if I know that falling at this speed it'd be the same as hitting concrete either way. It's a comfort thing, ya know? So with the realization that I would be in fact hitting very solid ground and it seemed to be rushing up to meet me I started to scream a very very manly scream. My voice definitely wasn't cracking or anything at all like that. "FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-" One house in particular seems to single me out as I begin to close the distance between it's roof and my face. I try to cover my face with my arms but I'm falling too quickly to get them there in time as the wind works against me, my screaming cut off as I slam into the roof of the wooden building with a sickening *Crrrrack* --- I quickly register a couple of things. 1. No longer falling (Which was cool) 2. Lots of pain (Which sucked) 3. I was laying on something soft (Which was confusing) 4. My clothes were basically shredded from falling through the roof. (Which was annoying) 5. I heard something screaming beside me. I manage to force my eyes open, feeling the sting of the smaller bits of debris from my elegant landing as I coughed and tried to clear the air by waving my hand. Distracted by the inability to breathe I forgot something... what was it? "AHHHHHHHHH!" Oh yeah, the screaming. That's probably important. I turn my head towards the sounds as I took in some details of the room I found myself. It seems to have wooden walls, a wooden floor, a broken ceiling (My bad), and a single door leading out of the room. There's furniture, a dresser and wardrobe, as well as a very plush bed that I found myself laying face down on. Inspecting the ceiling, part of me was disappointed that it wasn't in a humanoid silhouette but just a decent sized hole from something hitting it and causing large chunks to fall inward. My head finishing it's sweep I saw the source of the screaming. It's something that looked kind of like a horse, but the proportions are all off. It's head was too big, it's leg were a bit weirdly shaped, and it huge wide eyes. Although the wide eyed part was probably because something had just fallen through it's ceiling. Side note, the scream's feminine, so that's what I'm gonna go with. She seems to have used up all her breath in a scream of surprise so now her mouth was agape, backpedaling along the floor to put some distance between us. I can't really blame her, I'd probably be doing the same if I was in her position. She had deep red hair... or was it a mane? Her coat was a light grey and the eyes were dark like mine. So there I lay, stomach on the bed with my neck craning so I could look at this equine who stared back with surprise and confusion. There's only one thing I cam think to do in this situation. "Hey, how's it going"? ... Silence. Uncomfortable, awkward silence. "U-um hello?" She finally replies, the voice was most definitely feminine. I push myself up off the bed, and begin to get up. I notice that she was staring at my hand, my left hand to be exact, with more than a little bit of fear in her eyes. Why my hand? Is there something wrong... with... it. My thought trailed off as I followed her gaze to look at my hand and saw a black scaled claw. All the parts were there, four fingers and a thumb. It's just instead of skin and nails there was scale and claws. I think you hit your head harder than you thought. Lifting my hand-claw-thing up, and brought it to my face so I could get a better look at it. I experiment a bit with moving it and found it to work the same way my hand had before. I shot a quick glance to my other hand, and found that it was still the way it always had been thankfully. Then I remembered something that a certain Titan, wearing a certain Fedora, said to me, 'Best be on your way, right my ambitious little dragon?' 'My ambitious little dragon.' 'Dragon.' ... Well, that explains the claw I guess. Eventually, I peek through the cracks of my claws. I saw the horse... equine... thing. Staring at me in fear and I could swear she was shaking... Something from another world just fell through the ceiling and landed in her bed. Then it lifted a vicious looking claw in front of it's face as it looked at you. I'm surprised she wasn't screaming again. Then she started to take a deep breath. You jinxed it moron. I find myself having to cover my ears at the sheer volume of the terror filled scream as the red and grey... Fuck it, callin' it a pony. The red and grey pony made enough noise to wake the dead. And despite the noise from the scream itself I could make out the sounds of many inhabitants of the surrounding houses falling out of their beds in surprise. While the crash could have been thought of someone particularly heavy falling out of bed, and the last scream could be attributed to someone having a nightmare, or maybe seeing a rat. This scream let everyone know something was wrong. This time it was my turn to fall ignobly fall off the bed and clumsily try to get on my feet as the pony's scream continued. As I was stumbling around, trying to dislodge myself from the debris that surrounded the bed I futility tried to calm her down, "Hey-hey calm down, I'm not gonna do anything. See?" I said in the calmest voice I could muster up in this situation as I raised my hand and claw and tried to give a smile. This was met with mixed results, because at my words she seems to calm down, if only slightly, but when she saw me raise my claw again and flash my omnivorous teeth she redoubled her efforts at trying to wake the dead. It also probably didn't help that standing at six feet tall I towered over her siting form. Well, I should probably cut my losses. I move as quickly as I can to the door I noticed earlier, making sure to not trip over the pieces of debris on the floor. I was to make my way across the room and grab the door handle, I looked back to the Pony who was still screaming her head off as I turned the handle. Shes got a pretty good set of lungs on her if she can scream that lon- OW! My thoughts about her lung capacity distracted me from the fact this house was built for something that walked around on four legs and was only about three feet tall standing on all fours. So the door was only around five feet high, and my beautiful face once again felt itself slamming into something solid. "Son of a bitch that hurt!" I yelled clutching my face, feeling a warm and wet sensation coming from my nose as I guessed it was probably bleeding now. I do my best to ignore the pain coming from my poor face and ducked my head under the doorway. I look out into the hallway the door led to, and at the end I saw a stairway leading down, likely to the first floor. Unfortunately, between me and it was a bulkier version of the pony from the other room except instead of a red mane it's was grey going on white. It was bulkier and it appeared more masculine so I assumed this one was male. It's eyes go wide in a similar fashion to the one from the other room as it's gaze meets mine. It had to bend it's neck to look up at my face and the combination of blood seeping through my fingers on top of the fact I probably didn't look too happy after slamming my face into a wall made him stumble back in fear. Perfect. Taking advantage of the creature's backpedaling, I manage to rush past it towards the stairs without him causing me much trouble, in fact he moved out of my way. Probably thought I was going to attack him or something. Mwahahaha, run in terror little creatures. Brain, now is not the time. I feel kind of bad falling through their roof and proceeding to scare the living hell out of them, but I didn't have time to waste. From what I saw when I was falling this was a town. Towns usually didn't take too well when big scary things fall from the sky with blood dripping from their face, they tended to jab big scary creatures with pointy things. ... It's kind of depressing thinking of myself as some kind of "Big scary creature." Making my way to the bottom of the stairs, and I hear muffled voices coming from behind me but I ignore them as I looked around for an exit out of this building. It hadn't looked all that big when I was falling so a door shouldn't be too hard to find. I looked around and found that I was in some kind of living room, and a doorway led into what looked like a kitchen if the stove I could see was any indication. Looking in the other direction I found another door. I make my way over to it, my still normal hand covering my bleeding nose. Trying to turn the handle with my new (And very shiny) claw I found it was locked. A moment of panic filled me as I tried to turn it again with a bit more force and I heard the crack of wood giving away and found myself holding the metal doorknob in my claw as it had a section of the door attached while the rest, no longer the having lock holding it in place, slowly swung open. ... Did I just break the door? I stand dumbfounded as I look at the brass doorknob in my claw. It took me a moment to fully register that I had actually broken off the lock from the door. It takes the sound of movement upstairs, as well as movement outside, to finally spur me back into action. Pushing the door open with my shoulder as I drop the doorknob and made my way into the street. It wasn't anything particularly fancy, just a well worn dirt path. What really caught my attention however was the sound of hooves hitting the ground, and as I turned my head to look at the source of the sound I found myself staring down several ponies like the ones I had found upstairs. The only difference, these had armor and spears. Pointy, pointy spears. Fuck. Hey bud, I know you're still enjoying having a cool new claw but you should probably get it in gear. 'Cause last I checked spears still hurt quite a bit. I hate it when my brain is right, it makes it a lot harder to say he's full of shit. The half-dozen or so ponies were quickly closing in on me, spears leveled and their iron armor glinting in the pale moonlight. It might have been a sight to see if I wasn't preoccupied with the fact they intended to see if they had sharpened their spears well by goring me. Looking off to the side I noticed a small wooden wagon and crates piled up on one side of the road. Now, to these three foot tall or so ponies, the crates wouldn't be a viable way to get onto the roof. However, for a certain six foot tall biped they would provide a very helpful boost. I take off at a run towards the crates, which unfortunately, brought me closer to the charging Spearme- er... Spearponies. It's a little unnerving to see those spears getting closer and closer to me as I basically ran towards them. They paused momentarily in their charge as I took long strides in their direction which thankfully allowed me to make it to the wagon before they got too close with their spears. I took long strides up the crates climbing high enough so that I could propel myself high enough to land with both feet on the building's roof. I heard the Spearponies... that still feels awkward to say... skid to a stop on the road below me as I began to run along the rooftops. That's right equines, what do have to say about that? Can't climb too well can you? I continue my run across the roofs feeling confident in my safety for the moment as I was fairly certain the four legged equines wouldn't be able to get up onto the roofs to jab at me with their pointy pointy spears. Now that I was away from I found myself thinking about how they could possibly manage to keep up a gallop while clutching a spear in their fore hoof. For that matter, how did they even manage to hold a grip on them in the first place? Last I checked hooves weren't ideal for holding something. "Stop right there creature!" I heard someone call out from behind me, drawing me out of my train of thought. The fact that someone had said something to me wasn't what caught my attention my attention, more so it sounded as though it came from above me. Looking over my shoulder and towards the sky and sure enough I spot another of the armored ponies. The main difference I noted was the fact this one had wings. Now that's just cheating. Now I had to worry about ones on the ground as well as ones in the air. That's just peachy. I know I don't really have too much time to dwell on it, so I just kept on running. The more I ran on these roofs the more I began to realize that this town really wasn't all that small at all, it had just appeared that way because I had first started to see it from so damn high up. I had to adopt a strategy of changing my elevation so that I wasn't ever able to be pinned down by the flying ones or the ones on the ground for too long. I ended up having one too many close calls as I barely managed to avoid the thrusting spears which made my already battered clothes all that much more worse for the wear. I had really liked this shirt too. Off in the distance I could see what looked like a wall, which filled me with hope that I was finally reaching the edge of this damn town. For once tonight it looked like my luck was actually starting to get just a little bit better as the buildings were built so close to the edge of the inner side of the wall that I would probably only need to make a hop skip and a jump to find myself out of this place and away from these equines and their spears. Just when I was jumping the gap to get to the last building between me and the wall, as if to contradict my earlier thought that my luck was starting to turn for the better, I felt a rush of cold air as something akin to a large spray of icicles shot past me. The feeling of it made me stumble in my step as I was caught off guard by it and ended up tumbling my way down the roof. I was barely able to catch the lip of the roof with my right hand as I dangled over the edge of the roof, my body swaying as I looked in the direction I had felt the blast of cold air come from. Standing on the wall looking down at me I saw another one of the ponies in armor, this one looked like it had some some kind of horn surrounded in a pale blue light coming out of it's forehead. It began to lower it's head slightly to aim it's horn towards me and the glowing surrounding it intensified as I pieced together just where the blast of cold air come from. I know that I could never get out of the way of it's next shot, as I hold myself up with just one hand. If I dropped down I wouldn't be able to get back up onto the roof and be able to make my way over the wall, and if I didn't drop down I would get blasted and end up falling to the ground anyway. Damned if you do damned if you don't huh? Pretty much. I was frozen with indecision as the pony did whatever it did with it's horn and before I could convince myself to let go of the roof and fall down to the waiting one son the ground it sent another show of icicles at me. I held my clawed left hand up in a futile gesture to block some of the deadly volley as the icicles flew at me. The icicles seemed to be almost drawn to my outstretched claw and as they collided with it they seemed to almost be drawn into it, the cold wisps of air coiling around my arm. My eyes grew wide, as did the eyes of the pony who had originally fired the deadly volley, as the deadly shards of ice disappeared into my claw. Holy shit this has to be the biggest sugar rush I've ever felt. I feel energy spreading throughout my body, and I feel like I could lift a mountain, put in back down, and then jump over it. Although right now I just settled for pulling myself back up onto the roof and running across it to the wall. I felt a grin spread across my face as I jumped up onto the wooden wall and the pony who had been shooting what we both had thought were deadly projectiles backed away in fear as my shadow fell over him. I leap from the battlements of the wall as I finally escape this town. I feel the cool night breeze invigorate me as I leap out into the open air, the adrenaline and energy filled grin still on my face as I looked out at the twenty foot some drop bellow me. That wasn't a problem though, I wasn't afraid of heights anymore. Because I have wings. --- The Captain of the Guard sat there as he watched the black winged figure glide out into the night away from the city. He had put almost the entire guard for the city out to catch whatever it had been. It had just fallen from the sky and crashed into one of the buildings in the city and then sent them all on a merry chase. The Guardponies of Ironhoof have always been wary of dangerous creatures in the area, and the fact one had managed to get into the middle of the city was very unnerving, and the city was quickly thrown into a mild uproar. It was surprising that something on two legs had been able to move as quickly as it had, and even with the Pegasi in the air around it they still hadn't been able to pin it down. Even when they had gotten close to strike at it the creature had always managed to move out of the way just in time, the spears only serving to tear into it's tattered clothing. What had surprised the Unicorn Captain even more was when the creature has been dangling by it's unclawed fore hoof it had raised it's black claw towards his ice storm spell and just... took it. The grin that came onto the creature's face had nearly been enough to make the captain question his attempts to kill whatever it was with magic. When a black mist came from it's back and left two black draconic wings pushing their way through the tattered clothing on it's torso he definitely regretted it. When it finally had jumped out of the city and glided it's way into the night he didn't even order anypony to follow it.