The day was out now, but Stelimus hadn't managed to fall asleep at all. The guards remained in place, unflinching, and observed his every movement. It was like he was having night terrors again. That would be a possibility considering his newly formed brain, although, if he were still capable of such complex thoughts then his brain was certainly more developed than he gave it credit for. The doors to Stelimus' room swung open strong enough to smash the guards' into the walls, but they both caught the doors without much effort and created a thundering echo through the wide emptiness.
"Guards! I wish to see my sibling on my own. Leave!" a female voice bellowed.
The deer pounded their chests once with each foreleg and walked in double-file out of the room.
"Who the hell is that, Amanda Waller?" Stelimus thought.
The sounds of hooves clonking on the ground became louder and louder. A figure stepped in front of the fawn and looked down at him. He didn't know how he could tell, but this reindeer was clearly a female. Her features seemed more...accentuated and slim in comparison to the guards Stelimus had witnessed earlier. Her eyes were a burning and very sharp shade of electric purple. The fur on her head had been combed over to look like a flower petal dangling over her face, which seemed quite angry. Her fur was mainly white and she had the same frost shape on her face as her mother and father, but, for some reason, there were several spots on her fur that looked like they had been dragged through mud. Her nose bridge was quite narrow when reaching the muzzle, and, while thinner than the guards,she was still quite muscular and in shape. If anything, she looked like a barbarian from the Roman times.
"So you're the new addition to this family, huh? Do you even KNOW whose family you have been born into?"
"Oh great. Another self-righteous prick. Must be a Tudor. 'Oy'm Princess Harriot Goluck of Edinborough, ruler of the counties of etcetera etcetera and so forth, the two hundredth and twenty-second. If my sibling Wigwam died now I would be the ninety-eighth to inherit the throne'!"
"You're the son of the God-King of all Reindeer! You're the one who is supposed to save us all..." Her angry voice became muffled when she turned away and started to tremble.
Stelimus just looked at her with a face of ambivalence. "Oh boy! Character development! I've read enough books to know that you have none. Wait...Do I remember the books I've read? It's starting to come back to me." The doe's tearing started to slow down and Stelimus got an idea followed by a grin. "Wait...Let's get ready."
"I am his first, but he casts me aside for..."
"Here it comes." Stelimus hid under the blankets with eagerness and shook his stubby tail in response to his readiness. He had only one chance at this.
"Mother Dearest--"
"Granny Smith over here."
"Told me to bring you to her so that she might nurture you and teach you the basics of our language." The doe walked away and checked the toes of her left foreleg.
"Considering you're already speaking english that's gonna be difficult."
"But...she won't have to if you meet with some...complications," she turned and faced her sibling with an evil glare.
"Complications. Why yes. My health insurance doesn't want to reimburse my body changing surgery, but I don't see why you would bring that up."
The doe's eyes lit up with blue spirit flames and her hooves started to expel vast amounts of frost into the air. Stelimus reared his hind legs carefully and readied them like a spring being forced down and held in place. His 'springs' were ready to burst out and into the eye of the one holding them down. His 'sister' threw her body forward and smashed down onto the crib with her hooves. The frost that she built into them almost immediately grew over the wood of the shattered crib and froze it into place. Unfortunately for the doe, the tiny fawn jumped out mere microseconds before she crushed his bed and hopped on her muzzle. He didn't land gracefully like a beautiful swan, however. Stelimus plopped painfully onto the ground then stumbled to get back up and gallop away as fast as his stubby little legs could.
"He can already run?" she thought aloud.
"From newborn to fugitive in just a day. Don't fail me now, lincoln log legs!"
The tiny thing went through the open doors and into the hallways. Never had Gregary been so enamored by a home before. He hadn't seen this because his newborn instincts made him suckle on the bottle he was given several hours prior to his arrival in his room. It was quite convenient for him, to say the least. The entirety of the floors were covered in a fluffy carpet of red velvet. The walls were all covered in wallpaper with a pale-vanilla background and grape vines, and chandeliers or sconce could be seen every few feet. They were usually made from malachite and draped in a strange, white cloth that could only be considered akin to tiny ring armor. As with any royal home, armor from ages past were placed on mannequins that hugged the walls and were accompanied by paintings of various subjects. Several trophies could also be seen, such as the skull of some strange, one-eyed beast impaled upon a pike. The smell of cinnamon and ginger wafted through the air and punched Stelimus' nostrils with the force of a truck.
He could not enjoy the smell as his big sister came galloping after him. One thing, however, was painfully obvious: She was much faster than him. He was more agile due to his tiny body and managed to cut a curve to the right of a hallways corner and dive under a tall table he had spotted right after. His sister tried to grab him but ended up sliding and hitting the wall thanks to physics. She wouldn't give up, however, and pursued with even more determination than she had before. Stelimus arrived at a crossroads in the hall and, judging by his sister's speed, he was going to be caught once he reached the middle. Time appeared to slow down to the fawn when he started to reach the crossroad. Slowly he turned his head and closer did the hoof engulfed in blue flame approach. There was barely a microsecond of time that passed before Stelimus' sister went flying off to the side after a black blur impacted her. The fawn stopped in place and watched her simply fly off into the hallway like a jet and impact against some giant vases and frighten the few servants that were cleaning up.
Looking at the entrance to the hall he was in, Stelimus noticed that he was saved by an abnormally large reindeer with black fur and wearing similar armor to the guards in his room, except this one's armor had neon-blue icicles encrusted into the armor. This reindeer also did not wear a helmet and had placed round pieces of metal at the end of his antlers for some reason.
"How...how dare you?!" the doe roared after getting up. She was wobbling around like a drunkard.
"Not only did you leave your post, Yolumay, but you did so to try and assassinate your sibling?"
"What's with these stupid names they have?" Gregary thought.
"This does not concern you, pleb!"
The reindeer's angry posture became one of calm and serenity. "Pleb?" he said. His antlers shone for just a second, tossing the doe at his hooves which he used to stand on her. "You will speak to your commanding officer with respect and dignity. Your father put you under my charge, which means-" he leaned down near her ear. "-that I own you. This also means that you must do everything that I tell you to do, like cleaning the entire barracks with your TONGUE or PEELING the turnips and carrots BY THE THOUSANDS!"
His voice was so loud that it quite literally caused the frost covered windows to vibrate and break free of their icy casing. Yolumay struggled as best she could from beneath the stag's massive hooves, but she was incapable of freeing herself. The worst part is that he wasn't even trying to keep her down and just looked across the distance with a disconcerted gaze and a mouth puckered to the side.
"You can't...do this...to me..."
"But I am, and there's no way for you to stop me."
"I--"
"It is your father who sent you into his own army and your mother approved. You have no one to turn to." He got off of her and lifted her up with a single hoof. "NOW GO TO THE BARRACKS AND START PEELING WHILE YOU CLEAN IT WITH YOUR TONGUE!" he bellowed.
Stelimus' sister glared at the reindeer but galloped off at the speed of light anyways.
Nodding, the stag turned his attention towards the little prince he had just saved. His eyes were hazelnut brown and his pupils were lavender shaded and changed in shading based on the angle this reindeer's eyes.
"Oh great. First I get a sister who wants to kill me for some obscure reason, like much things in royalty, and then I notice that all of these deer have weird eyes."
"So you are the new prince?" the reindeer wondered. "Do not worry about my eyes. These are just contact lenses. Many soldiers in my rank wear them as a sign of distinction. I am Command Sergeant Major Manimin Orimus. Your mother wanted to bring you to her and asked your sister at first but soon regretted her decision considering how blood thirsty she can be at times...Why am I saying all of this to a young fawn. You don't even understand what I'm saying."
"Keep telling yourself that. Share with me your darkest secrets."
Manimin analyzed Stelimus from every angle then picked him up by the tail.
"Bad touch! BAD TOUCH!" Gregary thought while trying to waddle free.
"I see. You'll prove to be a fierce warrior. Don't worry. When you become five years old, I shall teach you about frost magic and spirit fire. For now, your mother wishes to educate you in our history and language...which I still find strange as you don't understand whatever it is I'm saying."
"So where are you going to take me? A school? I'll beat them all out of the water in math. At least that's a positive aspect about going to back to school after being reborn...with most of your memories. I wonder what history these reindeer have. Might as well make the most of this until I wake up."
Manimin put Stelimus onto the ground and bid him to follow, which the tiny fawn did.
"How surprising that he's already capable of galloping. He's naught but a few days old. How curious," the sergeant thought.
They arrived back at the birthing room which had recently been cleaned and had a fresh patch of hayplaced next to the left wall of the entrance. Several colorful, stuffed animals were scattered about the room to make it a bit more likable while foam pads had been placed all around the patch of hay. They were similar to the jigsaw puzzle pads back in Gregary's real world. On the hay sat Gregary's 'mother' who held a book in her hooves. The sergeant bowed and backed out the room, closing the doors behind him.
"Come here, Stelimus," the queen coaxed and tapped the hay with a hoof.
Gregary shrugged internally and laid down next to her on the rather itchy hay. While trying to put his legs under him like a cat, he a felt a leg wrap around him and pull him closer to a large body of fur.
"You're so cute. I could just hug you all day," the doe cooed.
Gregary looked around in embarrassment, but his attention was drawn to a book placed right in front of him. He could actually read what was on it. Everything appeared to be in english for him, or maybe that was just the Reindeer language that was extremely similar to it. The title was 'History of the Northern Reindeer: For fawns'.
"I'm also going to teach you a little about the pony-song and their kind."
She looked to the side with no real emotion but a had a sheen of disgust in her eyes. As a normal fawn, Stelimus would not have been able to detect that sheen, but he had enough experience to be able to see that hidden aspect.
"Oh boy! Racial slandering! Please, mother. Teach me to be an uneducated tundra bumpkin who judges without reason! It's the only thing keeping alive my will to live!"