“Hey, are you awake?”
The voice was far away and flat, as if she was hearing it through water.
“Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
She stood up slowly, her legs and back aching. In her blurred vision, she could barely make out a grey-coated pony before her. Above its head, a dull, dark glow caught her eye. She lifted a hoof, her ankle crying out in pain, and began to take a step towards it.
“No! Stop! Don’t move!”
Her hoof struck the floor noiselessly.
“Stay where you are. The rest of the floor is cloud. If you move from that spot, you’ll fall.”
As her eyes focused, she could see the edges of a rough stone slab under her. They extended only a hoof’s reach from under her on any side, after which they gave way to a sea of cloud. The grey pony stood only a few paces away on a similar stone slab. Stone doesn’t just float; they must have been pillars, extending all the way to the ground.
Unicorn, actually; that’s what the glow was. There seemed to be a harness over his horn. She followed his stray glance sideways, where she saw a pair of pegasi, clad in cow-hide barding and spear-harnesses, flanking a cloud door. The doorway stood two ponies high, above which the celling domed inward, ending in a small, circular opening far above the two prisoners. The blue light radiating from the skylight signaled mid-morning, and the grey light radiating from the guards signaled that the metal horn-harness on the unicorn was woefully ineffective.
“What’s wrong with them? What are you doing?” she asked.
“They’re unconscious. And, knowing the pegasus military, they’ll both be too afraid to ever mention that they ‘fell asleep’ on duty.”
That was a relief. Possibly.
“I’m Starswirl,” the unicorn said, “and your name is?”
“Mute,” she replied.
“That’s your full name?”
“I don’t care for my full name.”
The two stood silently for a moment.
“I know this will sound strange,” Starswirl sighed, “but could I read your memories, just for a moment, just to get some information about this place?”
“I wasn’t even conscious when they brought me in here.”
“But you must have seen some of the place before that. Anything will help. They brought me all the way up here in a sack.”
“No.”
“I won’t pry, I just need to see where we are, what some of the outside looks like. When I get us out of here, I need to know as much as possible,” he smirked, “you might say I’m spying.”
“For the unicorn army?”
“I didn’t mean to get in this deep, but now that I’m here, I might as well bring back some useful information.”
Mute took a small step back. “Fine,” she muttered after a few seconds, “but no snooping around.”
“I’ll be discreet,” Starswirl assured her, as a layer of overglow appeared over his horn, and Mute’s vision melted into a recollection of the previous day.
-----
The view was low to the ground, as if her head was hung, and her steps short and irregular, as if walking with two wounded legs, and two chained. Her vision was filled by the vegetation around her and the forest-green coat of the pony ahead of her. Nothing was said nor heard through a haze of hunger and exhaustion as she marched in a column of earth ponies, breaking through the edge of a forest and into the sunlight falling on the plains. Before her, about the edges of a huge shadow, hundreds of earth ponies, clearly there against their will, worked the fields under the watchful eyes of armed pegasus supervisors. Her heart dropped in her chest as she followed the shadow upward to a city of clouds, almost directly above.
The next hours were a blur. At some point they trudged into a holding pen, herded inside by their pegasus captors, and left for the night. She did not sleep; her wounds were too painful for her to find comfort on the hard ground. The next morning, she was unchained and shoved onto a lift, where she watched the ground fall away below her as she failed to find the strength to yell the name of her foal, or her mate. Two pegasi pulled her off of the platform, across a courtyard of cloud, towards a giant hall of pillars. To its right was a large dome. In all other directions, what looked like open-walled apartments covered the uneven cloudscape surrounding the square.
The rest of the morning was again a blur, but she remembered a violet pegasus with a yellow mane, fully clad in battle attire, personally serving her food, wrapping her wounds, and reprimanding one of her guards for her roughness. Immediately afterward, as she was being pulled towards a large dome, she passed out from exhaustion.
-----
“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Starswirl said humbly, the overglow dissipating from his horn, “I realize that must have been hard to see again.”
Mute fell on her rump and hung her head.
“The information will help, though.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek. “You said you can get us out of here?”
“Yes, I just need to…”
Starswirl looked away quickly as the door began to screech open. Immediately, the glow disappeared from around the guards, and his horn, as he returned them to consciousness, and he curled up on the stone slab, pretending to be asleep.
From the dark hallway beyond stepped a violet pegasus in military garb, her mane fed through the crown of the helmet to produce a yellow crest atop. She waved off her guards at the doorway, and proceeded forward, seemingly only followed by her shadow.
Mute could see that Starswirl was watching through a half-opened eye, and like her, he seemed tense.
The pegasus stopped halfway into the chamber, her shadow still rippling against the cloud floor behind her. As if they had rehearsed the act, two of the pegasus’ escorts lifted off in unison, and landed flanking Mute. They each grabbed one of her forelegs, and carried her towards the pegasus commander, who was already exiting the room, her shadow stretching before her.
The doors slammed shut behind them.