Chapter II
Chapter II
Twilight grumbled incoherently as the infernal wake-up tone sounded through her bunk. The tone was an annoyingly loud, high-pitched screech that would repeat itself every couple of seconds to her immense displeasure. Reluctantly, she threw the blanket off of her head and groggily looked around in confusion.
It was strange. Even though she was still tired from just waking up, her mind felt... clear. Almost like these were the first coherent thoughts she had experienced in a long time. She also noticed that her mind was taking in a lot more detail about her surroundings now. Why is that, though? she thought.
Grumbling slightly to herself, she reached up with her hoof and rubbed the back of her neck. Honestly, it felt like she had slept on a rock last night...
Her hoof froze when it came into contact with the hard metal surface of the collar that she was wearing. What is this? she thought as she felt the collar. As far as she could remember she had always worn it, but only now did she question what it was.
Wait... that isn't right, she thought to herself. She distinctly remembered that there had been a time when she had not worn it.
Something definitely isn't right here... she thought as she examined the room around her with interest. It was familiar, yet strangely alien at the same time. She knew that she had spent months, maybe even years inside this room, but she had never really examined it in any particular detail before.
The room was roughly the same size as the main reading room in her library back home. However, where her library had an open and airy feel to it, this room felt cramped due to the six bunk beds spaced evenly through the square living space. Currently, all the bunk beds were empty, their former occupants already on their way out of the room to the mess hall.
Panicking slightly, though unsure why, she leaped out of bed and hurried to follow the others. She easily caught up with them before they had even gotten five feet away from the door of the bunk, nearly bumping into the hominid at the back of the line. As she fell into step, something nagged at her consciousness. Something that she recently remembered... something important...
She had a library.
She had a library! With books! Of course! How could she forget the Golden Oaks library! It was where she and Spike had made their home after the Nightmare Moon incident! She and her friends had defeated... her... with the elements...
The feeling of joy she had felt at remembering so much of her life had quickly turned into abject terror. If she had friends, family and a home, then why was she here? Why was she wearing these strange clothes? Why was she wearing a metal collar like some kind of dog? Why were there so many strange creatures around that were similarly dressed?
And what was that?
That last thought was directed at the caretaker who was watching as his charges filed past. Luckily for her, it was preoccupied with watching the rest of the orange suited creatures, completely failing to notice the horrified stare of the small purple unicorn further down the line. It was a hideous creature, standing roughly six feet tall, its face covered in tentacles where a mouth should have been. Above the mass of tentacles, she saw two beady black eyes which swept up and down the line, carefully looking for anything out of the ordinary. Its green, rubbery, bald flesh had a slimy sheen to it which made Twilight slightly sick as she watched it. It had two forelimbs, which faintly reminded her of a Minotaur's arms, with the exception that instead of fingers, the creature had short, curling tentacles in their place. It was wearing an immaculately clean, white lab coat, with equally white pants on its legs, and a set of shiny white boots on its feet. At its hip was a small, white, L-shaped rod holstered in a white sheath.
For some bizarre reason that rod made her apprehensive, though she wasn't sure why.
As she examined the creature, it dawned on her that the caretaker was looking for signs of intelligence from any of its charges. She wasn't really sure how she had come to that conclusion but, by the way it looked at each of the other creature's faces, she was sure that she was correct. She also came to the conclusion that she needed to play dumb if she was to keep herself safe—at least for the time being.
Quickly, she arranged her face in what she hoped was an unthinking expression—just in time too, because at that exact moment the creature decided to look directly at her.
The moments that followed were especially tense for Twilight, as she was sure the creature had seen the spark of understanding in her eyes. However, she desperately kept her face expressionless, just concentrating on putting one hoof in front of the other as those beady black eyes bored into her.
Inside, she started to panic, however. Any moment now, the caretaker was going to notice that something was different about her. It was going to stop her, pull out that odd shaped rod, do something to her...
Step by agonizing step she moved past the guard and into the mess hall—then breathed a sigh of relief. Not only had the guard failed to notice her, but it also seemed as if there weren't any in here to see through her facade.
Now that she was out of any immediate danger, she decided to get a better look at her surroundings—and at the others that were also being held prisoner.
Prisoner... honestly, it was the only word that fit her situation. All of the ward mates—no, all of the prisoners—were wearing uniform orange jumpsuits with symbols on the back, as well as those weird collars with the flashing green lights. Each prisoner (besides her) was also bipedal in nature. However, that was where the similarities between all of them ended.
They were all different. In fact, there were no two prisoners that were alike in any respect. One had a distinct lion-like appearance, while another looked like a large, upright frog, while yet another looked like it was some sort of bizarre insect. Some looked dangerous, while others looked quite frail. All of them, however, had blank, unknowing expressions on their faces.
The room they were in was large, larger than the dance hall at Canterlot. Spaced evenly throughout the room were several rows of rectangular metal tables with metal benches on either side, while at one end of the room there were four small machines that whirred and clicked as they dispensed that disgusting slop from yesterday. The walls, ceiling, and floors of this room were all made of metal, with the floor covered in some form of weird grating that hurt her hooves. All along the walls she could see long luminescent strips which gave light to the rest of the room.
She thought that she should be scared to be in a room with so many weird creatures, and in any other circumstances she would have been. But right now, they were all in the same boat that she was; they were all prisoners of those strange, squid-like guards. Each probably had friends and family that missed them dearly. Each had a life before this living nightmare. How could she be scared of these people knowing that?
Her mind raced furiously as she followed the line to the dispensers. Clearly whatever had prevented her from remembering was also being used on these strange creatures, and by chance or fate, she had somehow broken free. If she was to get home, she was going to need some help.
Which meant that she was going to need to free them from whatever magic that was keeping them all spellbound like this. Did those collars have something to do with it? Maybe—
Wait, magic? What was magic? It seemed importan—
Then she remembered. She could use magic! That was why her horn was so important to her!
Clearly whatever was keeping her fellow prisoners in an obedient stupor was still having an effect on her memory. Things were fragmented, but if she concentrated, she could remember details.
She frowned as she took her tray of food from the dispenser. She could have sworn that something like this had happened before, something that had caused her and her friends to forget who they really were. Yet even then, she had found a way to reverse that damage...
...Real friends don't care about what your cover is...
Some sort of spell, some magic she had used to allow them to become the Elements of Harmony once again, so they could defeat...defeat...
...friendship is a wondrous and powerful thing...
As she sat down at her usual table, Twilight's horn flared to life for a brief instant. Suddenly, the fog that had been clouding her mind was burned away, like dew was burned away by Celestia's Sun.
...Defeat Discord! Of course! The memory spell!
Twilight Sparkle, personal protégé of Princess Celestia, bearer of the Element of Magic and Librarian of the Golden Oaks Ponyville Public Library would have danced and sung for joy!
...had she not been in such a dangerous place at the time.
Okay, I've got my memory back, she thought to herself as she picked at the glop in front of her. What's my next move?
She looked up at the creature in front of her, taking note that the weird, hairless hominid was both familiar, and alien at the same time. The creature continued to chew its food with an impassive expression on its face, not even noticing her far more attentive stare. Well, I'm going to need friends if I'm going to make it out alive, she thought to herself.
Cautiously, she reached out with her magic and started to scan the creature in front of her for anything foreign. However, not knowing anything about the biology of the creature in front of her, she wasn't really sure what she was looking for.
She was somewhat surprised to find that the hominid in front of her had very little inherent magic inside it. Sure it had magic, but it was as if it had never used it before. As for foreign magic, she found absolutely nothing.
There has to be something that's causing this! she thought to herself. It occurred to her that she could use the memory spell, but without removing the thing that was causing the memory loss in the first place, she would just be back to square one again.
Feeling a bit frustrated, she turned her scanning spell on herself. Maybe there is some of whatever it was still inside me, she thought to herself.
While she didn't find any foreign magic, she did find a weird chemical compound in her system. This particular compound was new to her, but she was familiar enough with chemistry to be able to guess what it was supposed to do.
It seemed like it was some sort of drug that clouded the mind, but how had it gotten into her system in the first place? And why was it still inside of her? A drug like this would have been metabolized within four to five hours of administration, and according to her memory, none of the guards had ever injected her with anything...
Was it the food? A quick scan told her no, it wasn't the food. Maybe the drug delivery system was in her clothing...
Quickly, she turned the magical scan upon her clothing and methodically searched through the orange fabric. No... not the clothing... what about the collar though? It can't be there just for show...
In truth, she had already suspected the collars that they all wore. She just wanted to eliminate all possible variables before tackling that irritating thing.
Inhaling deeply, she directed her scan on the collar. Inside, she found a device of such a degree of complexity that she wasn't really sure where to begin. It seemed to run on electricity, however, so it wasn't entirely beyond her comprehension.
There were signals being passed back and forth between the green light and some sort of compartment filled with that mind fogging compound. The compartment itself was connected to a needle, which in turn had pierced her hide and was pumping the compound into her.
Or, at least, that was what it was supposed to do. The device had been broken somehow, and the needle was only pumping a tiny fraction of the drug into her system. Enough to slightly cloud her mind, but not enough to make her forget.
She was about to turn off the device when she stopped herself. By sheer chance this device had broken, allowing her to escape. This device also didn't appear to have any way to replicate the drug. Clearly, this device needed to be serviced regularly, or it would stop working. This was obviously the purpose of the green light, to let her captors know if the drug delivery system stopped working, or if the device had malfunctioned in some way. Due to the nature of the break, the device thought that it was still operating at full efficiency, even though it wasn't.
Well, it wouldn't take a very complicated enchantment to make sure it stayed that way, now would it? she thought to herself. Probably a modified version of the 'come to life' spell would do here.
In truth though, the enchantment to do just that would have been moderately complex, and far beyond the skill of the average unicorn. However, Twilight Sparkle wasn't 'any average unicorn'. As Celestia's personal student, moderately complex spells were well within her abilities to craft and cast, so it didn't take her too long before she was able to fool the device, making it think that it was constantly running at top efficiency. Even after she had deactivated the rest of the device, the light continued to blink green.
A bit relieved at how well that turned out, she was about to do the same for the hominid in front of her when a guard walked into the room, blowing a loud, piercing note on a small, silver whistle.
At first, Twilight thought that she had been discovered, only to remember a second later what that whistle meant.
It meant that it was time for them all to head to the yard.
Twilight gulped. This wasn't going to be easy, but for now she had to play along. At least, long enough for her to free the others.
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Hey there, I promised I would look at your story, and having a page with no comments is just wrong.
So far, it’s captivating.
Good use of paragraphs, not to many repeating words or overly long descriptions...
I did not catch any obvious mistakes, so either you did a lot of editing, or you’re just that good.
Just about the only small plot hole I could see was Twilight working magic without any Overseer/ Mind Flayer noticing. Maybe mention that she took the feat “metamagic: dull casting”?
What is this word doing here?
Pretty good story so far, though!
When comparing two things, you use "than", not "then".
Very, very interesting so far.
3481015 SPY!!!
At its hip was a small, white, L-shaped rod holstered in a white sheath.
Unless Equestria uses an english alphabet, does this actually work? I would have thought she'd describe it as something akin to 'a 90 degree angle'
Story's just as good as I remember it being!
3323937
Just wanted to say that I spent several minutes scrolling up and down watching your avatar wiggle and wave. That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Humanoid, and an extra space after this sentence.
Sorry, but... how does Twilight know what a lion looks like?
7739013
Actually, Hominid would likely be the correct word here. Hominid is used to refer to great apes. And it wouldn't make sense that Twilight know what a humanoid is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominidae
8073937
Thanks for the link. This was already resolved though.
7739024
Incase you’re still wondering, my guess is manticore
9497332
This.