James Tune was sleeping on her side with her legs dangling over the edge of the lounge chair and a line of drool dripping down onto the tome that was acting as a surprisingly comfortable pillow. The author was also a constant victim of damaged text from over studying. As a result, one of the tome’s enchantments was a simple moisture repellant.
Tune’s tail and legs twitched every so often from formless dreams. The tranquility of it all was violently broken by rattling noises running throughout the walls and floor. The noise snapped James out her sleep and it took her a moment to realize she had heard such noises the past. With a wild grin she jumped off the chair and galloped into the kitchen. The long sink spigot vibrated violently until a gush of brown water burst forth for three seconds before becoming clear tap water. Without preamble she stuck her muzzle in the running water and drank her fill.
“Now that! Was refreshing.”
She walked over to the foyer to grab breakfast and plan her day. “After grub and brushing my teeth I can finally take a shower.” The chilly air had kept her from sweating, but the dusty house and constant attempts at spellwork still took its toll on her appearance, making her feel grungy. “Then I can get back-“ She paused as a thought struck her. “No. First I need to finish getting the hang of telekinesis. The shower can be my reward for that. I already know the theory behind it; I just need to actually make it happen.”
Among her meal of apples, oat cereal, and blackberries, James picked one berry as her test subject and demanded it fly off the plate and into her maw. Her horn started to glow along with the berry in an azure hue; unfortunately she only managed to make it roll back and forth on the plate. This continued for a minute before she relented and devoured an apple by lowering her face to the plate before returning to her attempts at kinesis with the tantalizing blackberry. Just the thought of the juicy fruit made her want to ignore the magic and pluck it off the plate with her tongue, but it was her will that demanded that magic be the means of making the succulent black morsel reach her mouth. Minutes rolled by as the cereal and applies all vanished from her plate, but the twenty blackberries remained defiant to the end. Sweat rolled off her brow as her temper rose at the berry that constantly rolled around the plate. It even did short hops into the air, but never more than an inch off the plate. “Stupid devil berry! I will have you!” She roared in frustration as she felt a crack originate from her carbuncle and shoot straight to her horn which responded by the glow pulsing brightly for a brief moment. The crack was accompanied by a jolt of pain that gave her a short-lived stabbing headache.
“Ye-ouch, that’s smarts.” Tune cried out in surprise and pain and winced while rubbing a hoof along the base of her horn. “I really have to stop doing that. It can’t be healthy.” She cracked an eye open see only nineteen berries on her plate. “Where’d that little monster go?”
As if on cue, a drop of liquid fell from the ceiling and back on her plate. James looked up and saw a small cloud of dust and the rest of the blackberry clinging to the dry wall ceiling. She harrumphed at the flattened fruit. “Serves you right.” She looked at the survivors. “Let that be a lesson to the lot of you.”
With the hornache fading she grabbed a new berry in her telekinetic grip and tried again, only to have it shoot off the plate like a bullet and pelt her right between the eyes. James flailed at the attack and would have fallen on the floor were it not for the chair’s armrests. It took her a moment to sit back on her belly while rubbing a fetlock on the juice soaked spot. “That’s just insubordination.”
Gritting her teeth, she was dead set on having her prize. “Once more from the top.” The third berry was encased in an azure hue and shakily arose from the pile until it was eye level with her. Easy does it. The ebony jewel inched closer at her command. Once it was close enough she reached forward and plucked it out of the air and started chewing it joyfully. The most delicious blackberry in existence. With her control improving by the minute, she quickly devoured the rest of her breakfast and cheered giddily when she was able to levitate the plate in a more or less steady fashion into the sink. She found a washcloth and tried to levitate both it and the plate to clean it, but her control faltered badly when trying to move both at once. “Well I can’t expect to run right after walking now can I?” She opted to hold the dish with her hooves and use her magic to scrub it.
With the dishes drying off on the counter, James’s gaze turned to the general direction of the master bathroom. The smell of her body odor wrinkled her nose. “Hygiene time.” After digging through the other supplies she bought from the supermarket James found what she was looking for. “Mane and Tail shampoo, how fitting.” Grabbing a bath sponge as well, she went for the shower with her bag floating behind her.
The shower itself was an experience unlike any other Tune had felt before. Not only did the cold running water feel strange with a full coat of fur, but the act of scrubbing herself without moving a physical muscle was both unsettling and exhilarating. Despite her utter desire to scrape every last speck of dirt off of her, the frigid water was started to cut to the bone and she cut the shower short. I need to figure out how to get the water heater turned on. In the meantime I should use all day to improve my kinesis.
True to her word, she went through the whole house with the broom to clean everything she had been unable to reach the first time. With her kinesis steadily improving and with the electricity coming back two hours after the water did, she was able to wash her chosen bed’s sheets and pillows. She took the rest of her food out of the warming coolers and into the refrigerator before walking to the car to finish dragging the rest of her supplies in the house starting from the trunk to the front.
She was scrounging around the dashboard and found her smartphone. “Oh no. I totally forgot to tell Qubert I made in safe.” She clicked the home button with a pen to find Smith left her a voice mail and three texts. “Battery’s at half, but now that the power’s on I can charge it.” She clicked the sleep button and placed it in a plastic bag and moved her search to the passenger side floor and found the nondescript purple bag. “Oh.” She said with a hesitant pause. “Right, I forgot about those.”
Not knowing where else to put them, she brought the bag of pleasure sticks to her room and plugged her phone and power cord into the wall. She was about to ignore the bag and leave it on the dresser but curiosity halted her steps at the door. Her eyes drifted towards the lavender container. I need to know what it feels like at least once. She told herself. For science. She walked over to the bag and blindly grabbed one of the dildos with her magic and stared at it with a mix of dread and curiosity. “I mean if I find out what works for me as I am now, then I can use that knowledge for when I’m a man again.”
The repeated self-assurance felt flat and weak. Who am I kidding? If I try to cast the alteration spell on myself the changes would disrupt the flow of magic to my horn and halt the spell halfway. What if I don’t snap back to being a unicorn but something in between? The spell could damage my magic and I might end up dying from magic starvation. If that’s what its called anyway. She forgot about the object in her magic and her eyes became unfocused as her troubled thoughts spiraled ever downwards. What if I’m the only pony on Earth? There would be no one who could cast the spell in my stead. Even if I’m not there’s no guarantee they could cast the spell correctly, or that I could for that matter.
The tan rod in her magic wavered as her focus was increasingly distracted away from the spell. The movement brought it back to her attention and she regarded it anew. James’s thoughts drifted to the reason she bought the flesh spike in the first place and that faint laughter she heard. She gave an angry growl as she looked at the length of silicone hanging in her magic. “You know what? I'm a mare. And until that changes I need to relieve some stress.” Who knows, maybe it’ll help me stop bashing my head against the figurative wall when I can’t get a new spell to work.
That relief ended up being much harder to reach than she thought it would. Her anger put her body out of the mood, but Tune was nothing if not further motivated to put it right back. Ten minutes of effort brought little in terms of results and she was no closer to her goal as when she first started. While anger managed to wrestle through her novice level spellwork, she gained no ground on this front and she felt sore after an additional fifteen minutes of teasing every fold and crevice. In the end, her mood soured completely and lost any pleasure derived from the activity. She never came anywhere close to climaxing.
“Oh to hell with it.” She slid the dildo out of her and threw it at the purple bag. She grumbled a long string of obscenities about the affair and stormed downstairs for lunch. Stupid rubber thing felt too damn thin anyway. “You know what? I need a walk. I’ve been in the house and in front of a book for too long, I need to just get out of the house.”
Her eyes came across the now empty backpack. “Hmm. Why just stop at a walk when I can make it a hike, I need the exercise to clear my head.” Tune took the backpack, phone, and the bungee cord. With some effort Tune readjusted the shoulder straps so that the pack could sit on her without them interfering with her gait.
As she gathered supplies for two days’ travel James grabbed her recharged phone and slid the built in keyboard out. After realizing a hoof was not feasibly for the tiny buttons anymore, she tried to multitask her kinesis to not only hold the phone in front of her, but to push the buttons as well. It would be a rather simple task for hands and fingers, but not so much for her budding command over magic.
“I can’t call Qubert with this voice so I’ll just text him instead.”
Hey Q, sorry about not responding earlier I was nearly bedridden for the past two days and I left my phone in the car. Thanks for getting the utilities back on so fast, I’m kind of surprised considering how far the manor is from anywhere else. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted for when the doc says I can come home. Thanks again for letting me stay at the house, talk to you later.
“There, that should keep him from worrying for a few more days.”
As she was about to leave, the tome caught her eye. “Well, I can walk and read at the same time.” Taking the book in her magic, she floated it over her head and put it on top of the backpack as it was far too big to fit in the sack with all the other supplies too. “I need some way to secure it.”
Her face scrunched for a few seconds until it lit up with an idea. “I saw some Christmas ribbon in one of the wardrobes that should work.” After much trial and error, James decided to have the tome sit directly on her back and have the pack sit on top of that with the ribbon keeping the book and pack together.
“There, now I can go towards the second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.” Tune cantered out to the front porch and looked up at the sky with a frown. “Not exactly a lot of stars outside in midday.” She brought her phone out and pulled up the compass app. “I’ll just go east then.” After marking the manor on the GPS so she wouldn’t get lost, she started trekking along her chosen path.
Keeping her pace at a steady canter, James slid through the shoulder tall grass with a spring in her step. “This is what I needed. Some exercise and open spaces.”
Seeing there were not any visible obstacles along the flat grasslands James enjoyed the clean air the wind in her mane. “Its so peaceful out here.” An hour passed of nothing but flat grasslands and James felt much of her tension over the last few days unwind. It was around that time when she felt comfortable enough that she could keep going without having to see where she was going. Sliding the ribbon off and into a pouch, she grabbed the book in her magic and levitated it front of her face to read the chapter review to unlock the next one. As she opened the correct page she saw a faint pink mote of light pass from the page to her eyes.
“Gah. What was that?” She stopped walking to rub her eyes with a fetlock. The discomfort fled and blinked her eyes to read the page.
The review is a little more difficult than the last, but is by no means a real challenge unless you’re leaving it to the foal to accomplish on their own. Simply levitate the book with this page open and the next chapter is yours.
“Oh.” She let out a slightly embarrassed laugh and resumed walking. “Well that was easy.”
She read the introduction and the first dozen pages with intense interest. “Seems this chapter’s all about strengthening the limits of each tribe’s magic.
She skipped the other tribes’ sections as irrelevant. While a unicorn can improve their magic through constant spellcasting, there are other methods that would not require constant attention. Before I can expand on that element further in the next chapter, I must cover a method I am particularly fond of: the crystallization of magic and the employment of matrixes and runes. The act of crystalizing your magic is a very simple yet draining process. This is not the same thing as the most common preconception of object conjuration. Take for example when a unicorn summons a door. In most cases, nonunicorns will simply see it as the caster materializing a door into existence with magic. This is simply not the case as the door isn’t really made of wood and paint. Instead it is a combination of force fields in the shape of a door with some illusion magic creating the color and texture. The reason the spell takes the shape of a door is because the caster simply wanted to create a door(typically from memory) and the caster’s brain automatically molded the spell to take the desired shape. I will expound on that later.
As for the crystals, this is one of the few items that are actually created permanently by magic as it is quite literally solidified mana. While any unicorn can create mana crystals, there is little application for unrefined crystals in daily life except for one important detail. The mana crystal you create can be used to refill your (and only your) reserves when ether is unavailable. It is with that in mind that I strongly suggest every unicorn to possess a personal crystal for just that purpose, and to reiterate this I have made the formation of a five ounce crystal as part of the key for the next chapter.
Creation of a basic mana crystal is very simple as the following lessons will demonstrate.
As the hours passed James lost herself both in the book and in the world. The more she read about the power coursing through her veins, the more engrossed in its mastery she became. She did not stop studying nor did she halt her steady canter for food as she kept moving while blindly fumbling in her pack to fish an apple or banana out. It never crossed her mind that she was doing all of it via telekinesis as it became increasingly second nature to her just as using hands had been to her as a human.
By the time the sun was starting to dip below the horizon James felt she had enough of an understanding to fabricate her first mana crystal and closed the spell book. With her face no longer obstructed by the tome, the orange painted sky caught her off-guard and she came to a halt. “Have I really been walking this whole time?”
She had worked up a mild sweat and her breathing was slightly higher than normal but she was otherwise fine. Scoping her surroundings, she suddenly realized she was in open farmland and had no tall grass to hide in. In addition she saw a highway perpendicular to herself and it was less than a hundred feet out with a couple of signs on her side of the road. Her first reaction was to scan for any people and place the book back under her pack. When the ribbon was tight again she crouched on the short grass and pulled her phone out.
“Holy…I’m almost forty miles from the house. And Q sent a reply some time ago.” Better text him back saying my voice is really sore so he’ll limit communication to texting.
Putting the phone away after the text went out, James was about to head back to the manor when her gaze turned to the small town to the south. “Its getting late, but since I’m already near a town. I should hunt down some more supplies. Better to have too much than to run out of something critical.”
Her bladder demanded attention, but a quick look around only saw empty fields and a few farm building to the north. “Er, well. If anything I’m just helping fertilize the land.”
As soon as business was concluded, Tune went south along a parallel path of the highway but kept her distance to give her time to turn her head away from any passing motorists so she would look like a normal horse. Well, as normal as having a blue mane and tail can be.
It was dark when she arrived in town and James kept to the shadows as much as possible as her phone pointed her towards a neighborhood near the northwest corner of town. From there she kept an eye out for any houses that had well-manicured gardens or greenhouses. Her searching proved less fruitful than she thought it should have been as she finished her sweep of the area. “Has no one around here a single care for something a little bigger than house plants?”
She leaned against a chain link fence and drank from a bottle of water. Its still strange to not physically hold it. Still beats using hooves to do it.
Discarding the odd feeling aside, she crept down several more streets until she finally caught side of a greenhouse. The lights in the home were lit, but the greenhouse was dark. As much as I hate stealing, I didn’t bring any money with me. Not that anyone would take money from a talking pony without calling the Men in Black.
There was only one door into the conservatory and it was facing the large plane windows of the TV room. The family of four was visible from the angle, watching a home movie of the son’s little league baseball game. Tune watched them for several minutes with a growing seed of envy. She had not felt loneliness since becoming a unicorn, and the scene showed everything she could never have. Whatever. She huffed dismissively while trying to force the unwelcome thoughts out of her mind. To distract herself she magiced the door open and crept inside. I don’t need anyone. She stayed in a low crouch as she scanned the small structure. “I can’t see a thing, and I can’t use a light spell where the people will spot it.”
Tune was not after the plants, but for any small gardening tools or seed packets. The search proved highly difficult thanks to the dim ambient light and she was unable to locate anything in her hunt. “I didn’t really think this through did I? I’ll just have to wait for the family to go to sleep.” Fortune saw fit to grace her and she did not have to wait long as one of the children ran in with an armful of jackets and the family got ready to leave the house.
James poked her head out of the door and watched the family drove off in a minivan. James waited until she couldn’t hear the engine anymore and lit her horn to search the greenhouse properly. She found what she expected: Shelves, potted plants, and a sprinkler system. What she did not find were the items she wanted. “Well if they’re not here, then they must be in the garage. Dimming her light, she trotted over to the darkened home. The backdoor had a single plane of glass in the center with pseudo dividers on the surface. She peered through and saw the deadbolt latch and clicked it over with her magic. “If anything I’d make a good thief.” She mused to herself ruefully.
With a little horn light, she illuminated the dark house. “I don’t smell any pets in the house so I should be good.” James wasted no time in heading to the garage. It took three minutes to find a hand spade among a pile of other equipment that was too large to carry back. Placing the spade in a pouch, her searching eyes fell upon a red tool chest. “Dad used to put more things than just tools in the green one he used to have.”
Searching from top to bottom, Tune found three dozen seed packets on the fourth draw from the top. “Turnips, squash, marigolds? That last one is a flower right?” Can I eat flowers? She brought up the phone and searched the internet for the answer. “Huh, so I can. If I’m close enough to normal horses in that manner anyway.”
Stuffing as many seed packets as she could, Tune thought it best to vacate the premises. Sneaking out the back, she locked the door behind her and heard a loud tire screeches and rumbling engines from down the road.
“What is that all about?” Careful to avoid getting too close to the streetlight, James walked between the house and the lining shrubberies to look in the direction of the noise. Roaring down the street was a black sedan with a pickup truck and a SUV chasing after it. Wailing police sirens were not far behind but no patrol cars were currently visible.
Tune ducked low in the bushes and waited for the vehicles to drive by when she heard several distinct pops. Bloody hell, that’s gunfire.
Two passengers from the sedan climbed out of the back windows and gave return fire with automatic pistols. The truck’s shooter took a hit in the chest and fell to the pavement while the driver was hit in the arm, but managed to stay on the road. The SUV floored the gas and surprised both the sedan driver and James by unexpected high acceleration. The two ton wreaking ball smashed the car on the right bumper and spun both vehicles out as desperate shots from the car hit the SUV driver once in the shoulder and twice in the chest.
The SUV swerved and was t-boned by the pickup who was not able to twist out of the way in time killing both drivers. The sedan had been hit at the wrong time and was thrown out of control and collided with the streetlight in front of James. Bad, this is really really bad.
The two gunmen from the car rolled for several yards in different directions. The first’s head smashed against the curb and did not rise while the second was thrown into a poorly trimmed thorn bush. There were a few seconds of eerie silence broken only by the sound of hissing water and cooling metal. Tune stood in dazed awe not yet fully grasping that a gunfight actually happened in front of her. She did not stay in this state long however as heavy banging coming from the sedan’s front passenger door made her hide deeper in the bushes. She was torn between fear telling her to flee and morbid curiosity wanting to see what else would happen.
The banging car door increasingly edged her to err on the side of caution, yet before she could start to leave the occupant changed tactics and smashed the window. A brown pegasus with a steel mane crawled out of the window and flopped painfully on the glass covered concrete.
James’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the dazed pony. There are more like me?
Tune wanted to reach to him but one of the gunmen halted her by shouting at the stallion. “Don’t you fucking move horse!”
The stallion had only just gotten to his hooves when the gunman from the rose bush had his weapon trained on the pony’s head. “My name is Conrad asshole!”
The gunman had a bad limp on his right leg and was bleeding from a dozen small cuts and gashes, but his arm was rock steady and had murder in his eyes. With his free arm he grabbed a phone out of a pants pocket and hit the speed dial. “I got the package at thirty five Cornella Street. I’ll need a pickup two streets north.” He closed it to address the stallion. “You’re a talking barn animal. The only name you have is paycheck.”
Conrad glared at him and looked as if he was about to sprint when a bullet ricocheted off the ground and grazed his leg. “You kill me you get nothing!”
“And if you run off I get zilch, so I got nothing to lose.”
Conrad gritted his teeth in a low crouch and waited for the gunman to get close enough to attack, but the man was smart enough to keep his distance. “Now get moving over there.” He waved the gun in the direction of Tune’s hiding spot. “And if I see you so much as look at me wrong I’ll cave your skull.”
The pegasus stood his ground and returned a defiant glare. “No.”
The police sirens were louder and the first patrol car rounded a corner less than two miles away and headed straight for the crash site. The gunman fired a warning shot that grazed Conrad’s ear. “That wasn’t a request. I said move!”
Before the gunman could call Conrad’s bluff, his gun was enveloped by an azure aura and tried to force itself out of his hand. “The hell is going on.” He grunted as the firearm kept jerking in different directions every two seconds until it finally freed itself from his grasp. He turned and shouted at the stallion thinking he was the culprit. “You’re dead ho-“
Conrad took advantage of the disarming and bucked him squarely in the groin and followed it up with a second stronger buck to the jaw when the man doubled over. The gunman’s head snapped back and he landed on his back and did not move again.
James whistled and waved her hooves at him. “Hey! Over here!”
The pegasus did a double take on seeing another pony. His ears swiveled to the encroaching police cruiser and had few options, so he chose her. Conrad galloped over to Tune’s location. “Was that you back there with the gun?”
“Yeah, come on we gotta go before the cops see us.” She started running towards the backyard with Conrad following closely. “I can’t believe it. I thought I was the only pony in the world.”
The pair used the cover of darkness to pass to the next eight streets before Tune had to stop for a breather. Conrad pointed them towards a tool shed and they ducked inside so she could catch her breath. “Sorry. I never was much of a runner.” She panted while leaning on the wall.
The pegasus watched out the door for any sign of pursuit. “What you said back there. You say we’re ponies?”
“Huh? Oh yeah. We are. I’m a unicorn and you’re-“
“A pegasus yes. So I’ve gathered.” He said flatly.
“So what’s your name?” She bit her lip, but it was too late to stop the question from being heard.
“Conrad.” He glanced at her when she said nothing further for several moments and she felt like she dodged a bullet. However he interpreted the lull in conversation as an expectation to elaborate. “Just Conrad. I lost my family name when I became this.” He could see the sympathetic look in her eye and knew she felt similar loss. “What about yours?”
Her breathing was still heightened, but she was able to speak without impairment. Her first thought was to lie and say she was had always been female. That’d be simpler right? She looked at him with a mix of emotions she couldn’t label. But what if I lie now and he ever finds out? I think I’d be easier to be upfront about it. “To be perfectly honest. Its James Tune.” She said breaking the long silence. “I’ve been thinking about changing it to Alexia though.”
Conrad was caught off-guard. “You were a man?”
She nodded. “Were, being the key word.”
“I see,” he replied at length. “Sorry for your loss.”
Someone has to be. She stood up with a determined visage decorating her face. “Pining for the past and wishing for a future that probably won’t be possible isn’t going to do me any favors.” She levitated her phone out and brought up the GPS. Glad I keep it off most of the time, the battery’d be dead by now otherwise. “Once we get out of town we need to head east, I have a safe house out that way. That is. If you want to come with me.” She tried to keep her voice passive.
Conrad watched her magic with amazement behind a stoic veil. I can’t keep running, and there’s no way I can blend in human society anymore. Sticking with her is my best bet. Not to mention she seems to know about what we are. “After you.”
The two ponies melted into the shadows of the smallish town. Conrad told her the thugs from before were not the only ones looking for him. His caution prevented Tune from venturing forth into ambushes he spotted when she thought the coast was clear on more than one occasion. It took an extra two hours before they cleared the city limits and back in the vast green fields of Kansas.
With two hours of farmland behind them, Conrad felt confident that they had lost his pursuers and visibly relaxed. Ordinarily he would have considered the unicorn at his side a threat, given that she assisted him without due cause. The fact that she was a pony as well made him more inclined to believe she did it out of nepotism. She had a mild light spell on her horn guiding the way and only rarely looked back as if checking to make sure he was still there. “So what you said earlier. About your name.”
“Oh. That,” she said after a few moments. She drew herself up into a serious, if slightly despondent tone. “I always liked Alexia, the name I mean. If I ever had a daughter I would have named her that. But, well…I fit that name now more than I do James. So I’m going to take it as my own.” She had slowed down enough so they would be side by side and kept stealing glanced at him to gauge his reaction.
“I see.” He said while mostly avoiding eye contact for several moments before speaking. “I doubt many could stay sane if they were in your position Miss Tune.” He watched her out the corner of his eye and noticed she did not flinch at the feminine term of address. “So tell me. If whatever force changed our species, did it change you’re sexuality as well?”
She gave him a sour expression. “That’s a rather rude way to ask for a lay. But if you must know. The way I see it, is I was a straight man so I’m in all likelihood a straight mare. I just haven’t had any other ponies around to verify my theory.” And I think you’re a polluted sample.
“It was not my intent to insult you. If this force changed our bodies, then I wanted to know if it was altering our personalities as well. Becoming a pegasus in body is one thing, but I want to know if I will lose my sense of self along with it.”
Her hard expression softened, knowing she shared such concerns. “As forcibly as it did our bodies? I doubt it extends to more than rewriting our muscle memory and probably our ability to cope.” Not that I have any proof. She looked up at the stars as she remembered the past. “My mother liked to think of herself as a guru of philosophy. A lot of what she said was rather silly, but one of the things that stood out at me was that we will never grow if we stagnate. The human condition always changes and we must change with it or drown in the current.” She looked directly at him with steel in her eyes, which prompted him to meet her gaze. “I think that is the main reason I can come to terms with being a mare. I choose to breathe rather than drown by clinging onto something I no longer possess.”
He mulled over her words carefully. “You have admirable strength. Pray you never lose it.”
Alexia was eager to move the topic of conversation away from herself. “What’s your story?”
Conrad seriously considered lying, but in the face of Alexia’s admissions of herself he felt obligated to return the favor. “I was the heir to a minor crime family based in San Francisco.”
“Am I going to have to worry about a knife my in throat while I sleep?” She asked half-jokingly with a noticeable thread of genuine concern.
“Nay. That is not my life anymore and I was never very fond of it to begin with.”
“So those men back there?”
“Were two different syndicates, the ones who bought me and the ones who stole me from the first. My bastard of a father had no use of a horse for a son. He was going to execute me until my wings started growing. That’s when he realized I was turning into a pegasus and knew I would make for a good profit on the black market once my changes were complete.” He spat on the ground away from her. “And he did.”
Tune cringed at the disgust in his voice. “Sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not.” She gave him a bemused expression. “Becoming a hor- pony along with my father’s greed took everything away from me. In its place I gained something I thought I would only have in death: freedom. You may not be aware of this Alexia, but for a country that trumpets that ideal across the world, there are many here who never experience it.
Tune didn’t know if she should take his story as truth or not, but something made her want to believe. “My life can’t really compare to that.”
“My grandfather once told me: Never measure a man by his past, but by the strength of his character. You are what you make of yourself.”
“Sounds like he’s a wise man.”
“Yes.” He added proudly as he hid a thread of sorrow. “He was.”
It was nearly dawn when they caught sight of the manor. Alexia was dead on her hooves, and she wanted to sleep in that freshly laundered bed so badly it kept her moving throughout the night. She was about to step foot on the driveway when Conrad put a restraining hoof to her chest. “Wait.”
Tune felt anger at being denied her well-deserved bed rest, but even her tired eyes could see the concern etched on the stallion’s face. “What?”
His ears perked towards the house. “Does someone else live here with you?”
She scanned the large parking area for Qubert’s car or one of the expected delivery trucks and found nothing. “No, just me.”
He pointed at the open front door. He doubted Alexia was absentminded enough to leave it open and her surprised expression confirmed it. “Then it seems you have an unwelcome guest.”
Much of Alexia’s fatigue was replaced by fear. “Its not the ones who were after you are they?”
“Doubtful.” Conrad motioned for silence and tread along the driveway while remaining in the grass until the pair reached the front porch. He turned his head to whisper to her. “Is there an entrance we can use that won’t make noise with our hooves?”
“No, every door leads out to a wooden deck or a cobblestone walkway. Even if we get inside almost everything is hard floors.”
“How does all the noise from walking not drive you mad?”
Tune huffed quietly. “I actually like the sound thank you. You might as well get used to it.” She tapped him on his right foreleg's hoof.
Conrad dropped the topic in favor of resolving the situation. “Do you know any combat magic?”
“Only telekinesis. I doubt anyone would want to kill us on sight so I can try to disarm them that way while you kick’em around.”
He nodded in agreement. “Just like before. I’ll go first to draw any attention away from you so you can do just that.”
The pair moved as quietly as eight hooves on wood could allow into the foyer. The manor was completely dark save for the very faint light of the waxing moon. As soon as they stopped, Alexia’s ears perked up to the sound of snoring. She wordlessly led her companion upstairs to Qubert’s old room and found a lump sleeping on the bed. As they got closer they heard a whiny interspaced between the snoring.
Both unicorn and pegasus gave each other a wary look and she brought up a dim light on her horn. Lying in the center of the dust ridden bed was a grass green earth pony mare with a pink mane. She was on her back with her legs splayed out in a less than dignified manner. The light revealed a mass of electronics that had not been there when Alexia left the previous morning and a note on printed paper was taped to the Earth pony’s flank.
Conrad kept watch to make sure she didn’t spring awake while Tune levitated the note to read it.
Hey I’m Loki, tried to wait for you to get back but if you’re reading this then I obviously fell sleep. You wouldn’t mind waking me before throwing me out the house would you? Thanks X0X0
She showed the note to Conrad while speaking with an incredulous tone. “Is she for real?”