<--------<Star Shine>-------->
Star Shine growled in irritation as the screams of pain form the human kept piercing his ears, he knew he should have sound proofed that thing. The device was one which he was especially proud of, he called it the Intelligence Transferrer, and he had made it by modifying the memory restoration spell and his magical energy focuser. The Tube itself was just to hold the 'patient' in place whilst it goes to work, although the gold it was made of was to keep the magical energy further focused and powered, the real work, was from the device that was attached to the arm above the tube. Using the focusing lenses which where able to better focus, aim and empower the magic for direction, a small orb above it containing the spell he was focusing, launching his modified memory restoration spell into the human.
The orb contain a modified version of the memory restoration spell, where, instead of memories, it inserted raw knowledge, in this case, a clear understanding of written and spoken equish, but this knowledge was worthless without the sufficient brainpower, so the key modification was a wipe of a non-important section of the brain and converting it into a processing function, as to what part of the humans limited brain it would wipe, he didn't know for certain, it wouldn't wipe anything he needed to survive, and wouldn't wipe his memories unless absolutely necessary, that could have major side effects.
Eventually the screams came to an abrupt halt as he assumed the pain had become too much for the human now, good, that should keep it asleep for a while. Shine headed back upstairs to the library, he'd need to make the last few arrangements before he cold relax, "it's almost over, this menial work is almost finished, soon I won't need to do anymore of this," were his thoughts before he turned into the library and stopped still. In the middle of the library there was a gigantic pile of books taller that some of his smaller bookcases, he watched with his jaw on the floor as the little golden lizard climbed up the tower with a book in it tail to place it on top before scurrying away, oh right, he'd asked for books on humans, he didn't think there'd be that many though.
Shaking his head roughly Shine spoke up to the little lizard, "STOP!" The lizard stoped midway up the book mountain, another book clutched in its tail. Shine closed his eyes and lowered his head slowly, "Those stupid constructs, never know when to stop," truth was they still amazed Star Shine at their complexity, and the fact that they had been built during the time immediately before Discord's reign only increased his amazement. He'd studied them intently and looked as close as he dared at the constructs spell weaving, he'd take them apart if it weren't for the fact that didn't know how to replicate them. There were only seven left in the entire tower, where, if the tales of this place are to be believed, there were once hundreds.
Star shook those thoughts away, no use dwelling on lost glories, time to focus on the present, opening his eyes he thought for a moment before lifting his head to look at the construct again, "Okay, first, give me the best book we have on training humans, and then put every other book back where it was." The construct gave no sign of recognition, it just scrambled into the pile of books, before emerging a few seconds later, with a new book wrapped in its tail. It plunked the book at Star Shines feet before scrambling off to undo its long work.
Shine smiled to himself as he levitated the book in his magic "another good thing about constructs, they never complain, just work." He trotted back to the testing room, skimming through the book as he went, when he got to the testing room he walked over to the tube, listening in for anything that signalled the humans awakening, nope, nothing, so he wandered back to a nearby bench and began reading, he may have smartened this human, but it was still a beast, a beast that needed to remain tamed.
<-----------<Jacob>----------->
I awoke to a pounding in my head, again, I'm starting to think this world just wants me to feel pain as often as it can manage. I groaned before attempting to sit up, only for my head to meet some unexpected resistance, hard metal resistance, a loud almost gong sound rung out as I winced with the new pain lancing up my head, before leaning back down again, to lay my back on, more metal? Then the previous event came back to me and I opened my eyes in a panic, my eyes displayed their displeasure at this act by filling my head with even more piercing pain, and blinding me. But as I lifted my arm to cover them I was again reminded of why I had opened them in the first place, this time not moving my head and keeping my eyes closed, I began to pound against the metal tube, panic rising in my head yet again as I began to shout wordlessly and started kicking at the tube as well, it didn't budge.
Then the lid suddenly swung open, with my legs and arms flailing about in the air, I quickly scrambled out opening my finally clearing eyes as I threw my head about in panic, suddenly I felt a painful, yet chillingly familiar feeling of pain in my head. I flopped down on the hard ground again, screaming wordlessly in pain as I clutched my burning head. When it finally came to a stop I opened my eyes again, much more slowly to see Star Shine standing there, holding the amulet threateningly in his magic, "calm down and stop moving, or else you get another taste of that skullburn spell." "Skullburn," I filed that away for later as I threw my most hateful gaze possible at the unicorn, and it actually seemed to work for a bit, his ears twitched ever so slightly, before he regained his composure, "Now I know you can understand me, so follow me, or else you know what will happen."
Grudgingly I stood up slowly, glaring at him the whole time, but not attacking, he turned his back to me and headed to the exit, three strides, three strides and I would be right on top of him, but, no, it would be so simple for him to use that skullburn spell, too risky. So we climbed up those stairs into the entrance room, before he whirled around, with a great deal of speed, to face me. "Now, you are no doubt curious as to what has happened, so listen up. I have implanted within your mind the ability to understand what I am saying, and the ability to understand written words. I have here a list of your tasks around this tower, and another list of the rules you WILL follow the letter."
Sure enough he gave me two scrolls, pretty long scrolls as it turned out once I had opened them, the jobs scroll landed at my feet and rolled on for about half a metre. "Now got to work," and with an overtly dramatic turn around he trotted back to where we had come from, [why he didn't just give me these lists there and shooed me away, I have no idea. I decided to take a look at the scrolls, best find out why he had subject me to that painful and terrifying experience. The list was filled with some of the sorts of tasks you would hire a butler for, answering doors, receiving orders, ordering the usuals, though thankfully cleaning wasn't among my duties. So apparently he had made this extremely special order, performed a presumably expensive and definitely painful experiment on me, so I could be his butler?
Still I had very little to do and no real way of harming him so after throwing a quick glance up to make sure he was gone I decided I'd check this place out, and at the very least find a weapon. My first stop was the door he had spent the most time in, this was the second door on the left hand side of the lower floor, from the entrance, I walked over slowly before opening the door as quietly as I could, and saw a most confusing sight. It was a library, not unusual for big family inherited homes, as I assumed this was, in the middle of the room there was a small table, not unusual for a library, on the table there was a pile of books, also not unusual for a library, what was unusual was the little golden gecko trundling along with a large book in its tail. Just wow.
The Golden Gecko climbed up one of the numerous gigantic bookcases lining the wall, before plonking it in an empty slot, and then scurrying back to grab another book and repeat the process. I stood there for about five minutes before it finally stopped and just stood at attention on the table, facing me, with an unblinking stare, creepy. I just stood there for a few more minutes, before slowly backing away from the tiny metal moving lizard. Closing to door behind me, I decided to put this strange experience behind me, and explore the rest of the tower.
The other rooms revealed a large kitchen, noted for later, a storage room, and what looked like a servants quarters, although there was so much dust in the place I could be easily mistaken. I hope he doesn't plan on dumping me in there. I didn't go down those stairs again, too creepy, so I decided to explore the upstairs. The side doors for the balcony seemed to lead to a stairway and a bathroom, while the middle one lead to a massive hall, with actual balconies leading outside, a set of tables and chairs, a huge dance floor, and more balconies overlooking the place. Jeez and this was just the first two floors.
After exploring this place for a while, finding a small passage leading to the kitchen, a few more doors leading to the outside, some stairs to lead to the overlooking balconies, I'm sure they have some other name, because that's getting repetitive, and some hidden passageways, probably for servants. I went up the stair way afterwards, which turned out to be quite a long trip, there were studies, bedrooms, smaller 'guest rooms,' in the studies I found a few more golden statues, and while they didn't move at all, I got the feeling they could, given what I'd seen in the library. At the very top there was an observatory, along with ore balconies providing an overlooking view of the whole place, which I immediately took advantage off to survey the surrounding terrain.
The Tower was in the middle of a large forest, well, not really the middle I could see the forest went much deeper away from the city, which I could just make out, I could also see the ocean, and a few roads in that direction, but otherwise it was mostly forest. Looking directly down I saw that the courtyard which surrounded the tower was mostly free of trees, the odd few here and there being the exceptions, there was also only one gate, the one we came in from, there might have been a few secret doors but I doubt it. Escape wise it looks like it'd relatively easy to lose any pursuers, with it being a forest and all, downsides being I don't know how to survive in a forest.
As I was musing this I suddenly felt a very familiar tugging sensation on my neck, "not again." I spun around expecting to see Star Shine up here but he was nowhere to be seen, yet instead of pulling me into the floor it dragged me to the stairs before forcing me down the stairs. I hurried along as fast as I could, not wanting to fall down this extremely long stairwell, I rushed past the many empty floors, in fact, empty seemed to be the general feel of this place, wonder which bedroom is his?
After about two minutes of this mad scrambling whilst avoiding tripping on this incredibly long stairwell, I finally could pull out of the doorway, barely, and ran down to the lower floor where Star Shine was standing there, looking rather agitated from what I could see, what with the annoying tapping of his hoof on the floor. "Finally, where were you?" I just stood there for a moment before he continued "Doesn't matter, now listen here, you will be staying in that room there," pointing at the dusty probably servants quarters, "and more pressingly, the food stocks are low and I don't have enough round topaz's the mailmare will be here tomorrow morning so get to work." And then he turned around without another word, leaving me very confused.
How much food does he mean? 'Mailmare?' I'm really going to stay in that abandoned room? And most importantly, what in the hell is a round topaz? Still, I figured it would be best if I played along for now, at least look like I'm working, so I decided to check out the food first, I was hungry enough anyway. A search of the kitchen revealed a door at the back leading to a pantry/freezer place, sorta, like half the room was ice cold, while the other half was about room temperature. The place was, in keeping with the theme of this place, very empty, only little bits of food here and there, still I had pretty much no idea what I could order, so I just stuck to flour, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, no meat, wasn't sure how my 'master' would react to that.
Course I stretched the whole task along, less work for me then, and more time to plan, there was a very large selection of knives here, so the whole order took me about one hour, what, I stretched it out, and I couldn't find a pen or paper for about half an hour. After writing this up and making sure I knew exactly were the knives were I began searching for the mailbox, or wherever I was supposed to put thing, after about twenty minutes of searching it had gotten dark outside and I found the mailbox attached to the inside od the gate. So I decided to take advantage of the dark and the fact that I was 'searching for the mailbox' to search the wall, it turned out that as I had guessed previously, there were no secret doors leading outside, but there were a few doors leading to outdoor workshops and closets, with tools, benches and best of all, ladders.
I then found myself being dragged back inside about five minutes after dropping the mail off, courtesy of the collar, again, where Shine was once again waiting in the hallway next to my door with a small box in his magic. He magically shoved me inside my 'room' before throwing the box in after me, shouting "here's your dinner, now stay here." I had figured that I would be going to 'bed' before him so had already resolved to carry out my escape later tonight, so I opened to box to find out what my dinner was, surprisingly it was adequate, it wasn't the gruel from the train, it was a large slice of bread with water and, meat of some kind, so apparently he new I ate meat, I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised. I wolfed it down before sitting by the door and waiting.
<-------------------------------->
About two or three hours after he had shut me in here, I finally heard him go back up stairs to presumably his bedroom, I waited for about two more hours after that before I finally got moving, first test, see if this door was open. I reached my hand up to the door handle, which was the round type and made me wonder why they had round handles with their lack of hands, and ever so slowly turned it, then slowly pushed on it, the door opened extremely smoothly, much to my relief, "This guy's fucking arrogant to be leaving my door open," after that step two, I slowly walked along the very dark entrance room, which surprisingly had no windows, so I had to feel my way along one I'd reached the other wall.
Eventually I found a door and eased it open to look inside and find, two fucking glowing red eyes straight out of a fucking horror film, I just barely managed to avoid screaming as I fell on my back and began crawling away from the faraway glowing red eyes. After backing all the way to the other wall, at which point I huddled up and began shacking as I could till see those fucking red eyes even from this distance. Eventually I calmed myself down enough to notice that the eyes hadn't moved, they were little more than little red dots, so after burying my self preservation and my memories of those oh so few horror movies I had grown the spine to see I slowly stood up and walked back over to the eyes.
When I reached the door I decided in an amazing feet of stupidity and/or bravery to keep going, walking forwards as slowly as possible I closed the distance between me and the glowing red eyes, noticing at this point that they were at a lower level than mine, they came up to about my waist really. Then as I got closer I noticed a golden 'aurora' around the red glow, "no," I took much faster steps at this, close enough to make out the shape the eyes were attached too, it was the golden gecko, fucking really? Anyway, I still left the room as quickly and quietly as possible, closing the door behind me, even though I knew what it actually was, that little gecko was still creepy as hell.
I moved along the other way, to find the kitchen at last, with thankfully no creepy lights, although the open dark window was creepy enough, and grabbed my weapon, a large kitchen knife, excuse me if I didn't know its actual name, all I can say is that it was one of those regular but large knifes, not a butchers knife, and not a bread knife. I then headed upstairs, now you may wonder why I insisted on killing this pony, and I will say anyway that it wasn't entirely revenge (but that was a major part of it), I still had this stupid collar on, and I didn't know the range of the magic collar, I certainly didn't want to test it out, so simple solution, kill the stupid pony, take the medallion, and the magic collar is just a collar, now comfortable, but not head splittingly painful.
It took many tense hours of opening each door one by one, peeking in and then quietly moving on, and real creepy, the emptiness of the place and the huge lack of windows, made for another setting straight out of a horror film, but at the moment, freedom trumped fear. Eventually, well after I lost count of how many doors I had opened, I came up to another freaking identical door, and slowly opened it to find, a small shape inside the bed, excellent, a rather malicious grin came across my face, and so I failed to be suspicious of the incredible convenience of this whole 'escape' so far that what came next in hindsight shouldn't have really been a surprise. I placed my foot inside the doorway, slowly testing the ground and wincing at the slight creaking sound it made, before bringing the rest of me inside, then my head exploded.
Okay, not literally, but rather the same splitting pain I had felt when he had 'punished' me, and immediately fell screaming to the ground, remarkably, dropping and missing the knife in my pain-fuelled spasms. So I lay there screaming on the floor, clutching my head while it was filled with burning, splitting pain, but I still had enough sense of mind to recognise that it had started when I entered the room and the best solution was to get out of the room. So, till clutching my head, I scrambled backwards with my legs, scraping my back and arse against the floor, which as it would later turn out was wooden so that resulted in splinters, which I didn't notice at the time due to the pain in my head.
Eventually I made it out, where the pain did stop, but my head was still in ringing agony, and I was now noticing the splinters that had slipped through my rags into my back, but eventually I could notice other things, like the pony shaped figure standing in front of me. My vision cleared to allow me to see Star Shine, standing there with a shit eating grin on an overwhelmingly smug face, the kind the villain makes in those movies when he has the hero at his mercy, they dangerous kind. "Naughty, naughty, and here I'd thought I'd made you smarter, not smart enough I suppose." I growled at this and attempted to leap at him, I say attempted because by the time I had shifted my stance into a slightly pounce worthy stance/crouch, my head was filled with that same pain again, leaving my clutching my head again.
"Now now, lets be civilised about this, and perhaps we should discuss some of the rules and formally introduce the repercussions," he strode forwards and lowered his head to be mere inched from mine, but still kept some pain pressure on my head keeping me from doing anything other than clutch it in the vain hope that that will solve the problem. "First of all, don't try to kill me, or escape, it will result in nothing more than this repeat experience, and nothing you being dragged back to your room, secondly, if you leave the tower grounds, or any certain area that I decide upon, you will experience the same Skullsplitter spell until you return to wherever you had been." His voice was the kind you use on a child you've caught stealing some other kids snacks, condescending, over-exaggerated, slow, "now lets get you back to bed shall we?"
With that he picked my up with his magic and walked me all the way down the stairs again, bumping me against the walls 'accidentally', and constantly talking about him being a 'nice master' and that I shouldn't attack 'master' like his abused pet had attempted to attack him and so he beat it with a club, which was pretty much what had happened. When we got to the bottom floor he threw me back in the servants quarters before placing two something's on the wall just outside the door, "now you stay here, we have a busy day tomorrow." With that he slammed the door and headed off leaving me alone and in pain, that toss had not helped the bruising I had received on the way down, leaving me to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep.