//------------------------------// // Gatekeeper by lyra_lover777 // Story: Tainted Love: A Twysalis Prompt Tag Collab // by Foals Errand //------------------------------// by lyra_lover777 Twilight Sparkle shoveled the manure into a wheelbarrow, wiping sweat off of her brow. Her robes were torn, dirty, and made out of a flour sack. The itchy fabric was fraying and had ripped in several spots. A large gash ran down one leg, made by an angry bull. She heard a tinny bell ring, and she threw the shovel down, quickly hitching up to the manure-barrow and dragging it into its slot before galloping into the meal house. She was a slave. Pure and simple. The family that owned her were a bunch of snobby Plantationeers, trying to work their way into the upper class of the Commonwealth. Her slave master, a slave to the family himself, threw a bowl of thin gruel at her hooves, Twilight slurped it down quickly, licking her lips. She left her dish at the table and got up, heading to the dorms. Suddenly a blaring hot pain was felt against her flank. She yelped, turning around to see the slave master behind her, whip drawn. "DID I SAY YOU COULD GET UP?" he cried, whipping her again. "My-my apologies!" Twilight whimpered, bowing low to the slave master before taking her seat once again. She knew what her punishment would be. No breakfast. She groaned. No one would share with her anyways because they barely got enough food to keep themselves alive; if they started sharing, both would die of starvation. It was the perfect trick for the Plantationeers that were so cheap that they wouldn't even pay for water for their slaves to bathe in. All around her sat pegasi and earth ponies. But not a single unicorn. No, all the unicorns were either Plantationeers, Poliees, Testers or Testeds. That's why she was hiding here. She wasn't related to any Plantationeers, and she lacked the class to be a Poliee and the age to be a Tester. Which only left her to be a Tested. Which was bad. So that night, heading home, her Plantationeers owners watching from above, when a bratty foal stole her robes for herself, she was shown to all to indeed have a horn. She tried to escape, but soon she was shackled down in the back of a truck, being driven to a Lab. She prepared herself for death. She hoped against hope that the legends of what awaited her inside the pristine, disinfectant smelling corridors of the Labs were all fake, all lies, all made up... Especially the Gatekeeper. Supposedly they stuck you in an animated world where you had to fight to survive, and if you died there, you died in real life. Simple as that. The Gatekeeper was supposedly some cryptic black carapaced being that could shift shapes and beat the fabled alicorns that had ruled the world with an iron fist so long ago... The white building of the Lab appeared on the horizon. Twilight gulped, her throat dry. They parked and headed inside.