Deer Me: Black Snow

by The Psychopath

Visits

Stelimus arrived in front of the large, rounded, wooden gates leading to the caravans. His 'father' was waiting for him along with an assortment of armored bodyguards and what looked like one of Grimliss' undead servants. The carriage storage had no roof, similar to a stable, save for the area where the carriages were kept. When one of the guards caught sight of him, they alerted Anglacite who seemed to be preoccupied with his own thoughts.

"Ah! Stelimus. I am glad you have come." The king approached his son and patted him on the head. "Your antlers are growing nicely."

Stelimus wiped his father's foreleg off of him. "Is it about my hunting trip in the tundra?"

"Hm? Oh. No. It's about what I want you to do next week."

"Hm. I was fairly certain he would at least have SOME concern for the well-being of his son or to at least know if I killed something. Talk about hard to please. Oh?"

"Yes. Your uncle has informed me that he thinks it would be wise to send you to your aunt's and his territories to learn about new sources of essence and to become a better ruler for your people."

Stelimus cocked an eyebrow. "Why the hell is so insistent on that? I thought he was immortal. That's cool...I guess. Not really certain about going to my aunt's, though. Isn't my sister still there?"

"Yes." Anglacite's expression became stoic and sharp.

"Looks like I hit a nerve. So damn sensitive. What is he, a soap opera fan? Why has she been there for several years? I thought she would be back by now."

"That's not you to decide."

"But--"

The god-king replied very calmly. "I decide what to do with my own ilk. I don't want to enter another verbal fight with you. Just..." Anglacite clutched his head with a hoof and waved his son off. "Prepare for your trip to the swamp lands of the south."

Stelimus shrugged. "Okay...What do I want?"

Anglacite shook his head. "I don't know. I have never left the tundra. I loathe leaving my people and going into pony-song lands. You know this!" He said matter-of-factly.

"Fine. I'll go see Manimin afterwards. I'm going to go see mom, now." Stelimus whispered under his breath. "She doesn't seem to do much."

His departure was not met with any sort of dismissal or even communications of even kind, but, by now, that sort of behavior from Anglacite was to be expected. Only an idiot would continue to dwell on an unreachable aspect when they know full well that it will never happen. So, Stelimus entered the palace to find his mother, but the first thing he was met with was a heart attack by Radivus.

"Hey, Prince Stelimus. Glad you came back!"

"...Hi." Tenyom was as apathetic as ever.

"Why did you do that?!"

Radivus was about to answer but stopped himself and pondered the question. "I don't know."

Radivus was still smaller than the average stag despite being as old as Stelimus, and Tenyom was still a behemoth of a doe. In fact, she could barely fit through a door. She looked like she was the average height and girth of a moose back on Earth, and, luckily, she was Stelimus' friend.

"Aside from that trauma, do you know where my mother is?"

"Yes. She's with the...you know, you know where."

Stelimus rolled his eyes. "It's just science. It shouldn't be hidden like this. Alright. I'll go see her."

Stelimus hadn't moved yet that a deer dropped from the ceiling with a knife in its mouth and planning to stab Stelimus. "You tarnish the name of our god-king! Di-Oomf!"

Tenyom caught the deer with her hoof and held him there for two seconds until she decided to smash him into the tiled floors of the palace, breaking the ground in the process.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" Stelimus shouted.

"Assassins. Been annoying us around the palace," Tenyom blandly answered.

"Yeah. They're really all over the place. Just the other day I ended up having to shoot two through the head with my crossbow," Radivus proudly stated.

Stelimus narrowed his eyes. "Riiiiight. Could you escort me to...'I know where'?"

"Sure thing. Come, sister. We escort the prince of the deer to his desired destination." Radivus extended a foreleg forward and started to march. It was very reminiscent of another marching style Gregary knew from documentaries.

Of course, the trip wasn't met without its inconveniences. Every now and then a would-be assassin would come out of somewhere, rambling about their thoughts -nobody cared- and be promptly squashed by Tenyom. The worst part is that she seemed to do it like she was walking. It didn't inhibit her daily routine at all.

"So...You guys never did tell me why you wanted to become my bodyguards," Stelimus said.

"Oh. It was ALWAYS my dream to become a royal guard," Radivus cheered.

"But he was too small for that and they kicked him out," Tenyom interjected.

Radivus' ears drooped and his happy gait became a regular one. "You don't have to be direct about it," he whined.

Stelimus turned to Tenyom. "And you?"

"I wouldn't do what the trainers told me to do."

"Why not? So far you've listened to what I've asked of you."

Radivus chuckled loudly. "Nononononononononononono. You don't understand. The thing is, they wanted her to use weapons, wear armor, and learn special fighting techniques."

"And why didn't she do any of that?"

"I wore armor," Tenyom defended.

"Yeah, and that's all you did." Radivus chuckled. "She actually never bothered with any of the techniques. In fact, every time one of the instructors tried to scold her, she would grab the stick and use it as a way to slam them against the walls. When they would use spears, she would grab the wooden pole before the metal reached her and break the weapon."

"Then slam her opponent into the wall?"

"She was always a good sculptor."

"So, you managed to slip through the cracks of the system by having them accept you into the royal guard as you were my 'friends' at the school with the ghost horse?"

"Yes. Tenyom and I had to improve the areas we excelled in to get through the bodyguard judgement."

"So that's what I signed so long ago." Stelimus placed a hoof on his chin pensively. "I did always wonder how you two suddenly popped up as bodyguards for me out of the blue."

The three ended up in a newly built garden hidden between the walls of the palace. It was very small, surrounded by four white walls, only had one bench, but was filled to the brim with flowers from other countries and climates. Winter Fields was to thank for this little marvel. Her work on botany pleased the queen in particular. Stelimus' mother had an obsession with colors, as the young stag noticed over the years. She was, ironically, akin to his original mother, but more deer-y.

The two bodyguards blocked the only entrance to the garden while Stelimus looked around the floor for the trigger. He found it in a disguised as a group of snowdrop flowers. Thus, the flowers were kicked gently, and a passageway slid open to the flower's right, allowing Stelimus to sneak in unabated and press the switch in the spiral staircase to hide its entrance. The staircase, as with many 'hidden' things, was gray and had a polished appearance of cement and rounded a central pillar. They were illuminated by round containers, built into the wall, filled with a moving blue ball. It was most likely a spirit. The air was stale and rather nauseating the further down Stelimus went. He was starting to wonder of it smelled this bad the last few times he went in the secret passageway, but a loud noise coupled with the stairs shaking pulled him out of his thoughts.

The stag rushed down the stairs to the entrance which was characterized by two doors with small, glass windows at their top. He didn't bother waiting for the magic seals to be undone by the security hidden on the other side and faded through the door using essence, becoming a spirit himself for a temporary moment.

"Anybody here?" Stelimus shouted.

He was blinded by the smoke and had a hard time breathing, but he was freed of that when the smoke suddenly lifted towards the ceiling and was funneled out of the chamber, revealing the soot-covered furniture and science deer. Stelimus' mother was the first to appear.

"What are you doing here, Stelimus? It's dangerous!"

Stelimus shrugged off the worry. "Oh please. This is rudimentary science you're experimenting with. I can help you, even."

"I don't need your help, and you certainly don't know what we're working on."

The clearing smoke revealed a bit more of Stelimus' mother. She, like many other deer around, was wearing a white coat that covered her whole body like a large rain coat used for horses. The entrance of the lab wasn't as sophisticated and 'sterilized' as one would expect. The laboratory was just one big room with cabinets built into the walls to contain samples and ingredients while the center housed tables to hold and contain various scientific equipment for measuring, diluting, and so forth. Behind Stelimus' mother sat what looked like an archaic battery complete with aluminum body and wires sticking out the top.

"Congrats. You discovered electricity." Stelimus slow clapped. "Mmmm. That's right. Nice and condescending."

The doe facehoofed. "Why did you come down here?"

"I was just curious, is all. Why are you always down here, anyways? You're the queen! Shouldn't you be doing, like, other things? Concerning the country?"

"No. A queen of this country rarely has the opportunity to do anything worthwhile, so many of my predecessors went into things that helped the agriculture. I chose a more scientific route."

"So they all felt useless in the presence of 'dad'. So, your excuse in doing this is to justify your existence to...'dad'?" Stelimus almost vomited.

"N-no, I--"

"You don't need to justify anything. Just do this if you like it. NEVER force yourself in performing actions that you despize or you'll grow bitter and angry."

Stelimus walked up and hugged his mother. She was getting angrier as he continued to talk, but her anger immediately gave way to confusion and thoughts when he hugged her. She hesitantly placed her right foreleg over him, unsure of what to do. Stelimus was always rambunctious and abnormally knowledgeable about things that they had just recently discovered or were trying to research, among other things, but he was right on many points.

"I'm going to go, now. I just wanted to see how you were doing." As Stelimus passed by one of the deer getting up after falling down from the explosion, Stelimus spoke to them. "Silver is the most conductive of metals and tarnishes quickly, but try covering the wires with something non-conductive and not letting it touch the water."

Author's Note:

Since blog posts are worthless, I'll take advantage of the author notes on this chapter to promote my account on another website where I'll post my novels (that I want to get published in the future), the link being all here. It works like here in terms of commentary, I think. I don't know. Just found it, and no. I can't find a fitting , temporary cover image.

No. This doesn't mean I'll stop writing here. That NEVER means I'll stop writing here.

Comments

[The Psychopath]

6926208 Improve your improving. IMPROVEMENT!

[Cookie_Girl]

There's another site called figment. Works pretty good but takes some getting used to after being fimfiction exclusive.

[The Psychopath]

6926266

You do, however, hereby grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content, your name, and your screen name on the Website and elsewhere in any media now known or hereafter devised, along with the right to excerpt, analyze, and index your Content

They can go get impaled by a telephone pole.

[Cookie_Girl]

6926289 ....Explain that in English.

[The Psychopath]

6926296 In the previous sentence, they say you retain ownership of your work. However, immediately afterwards, they're basically saying that they own the story you publish. Not only are they lying, but they're doing that directly to my face.

[Cookie_Girl]

6926303 Fuck. Is it too much to ask for a place to just write a story without any legal bull crap? Fanfiction.net sucks. Fimfiction is pony exclusive. And now this.

[Sigmacipher]

6926296 It means you had over the ownership rights of your works free of charge...

[Seeking Dusk]

Anglacite is such a homebody XD At least he's not trying to push that part of his personality unto Stelimus.

[The Psychopath]

6926319 Wattpad is the only place where you retain full ownership of your stories and the site offers copyright protection to reinforce this. And yes. You can post fanfiction there as well.

6926387 Homebody?

[Seeking Dusk]

6926477 Well, sorta. Quite rooted in his established region and not wanting to leave it. His brother even called him out on it.

[The Psychopath]

6926610 But it's because teh perny soong is er'ry where.

[HIEfan]

A son giving his mother the talk of doing whatever she want's to do, love it.

[The Psychopath]

6927889 Don't forget to walk the walk.

[Tide Hunter]

His 'father' was waiting for him along with an assortment of armored bodyguards and what looked like on of Grimliss' undead servants.

one

[Black--Soul]

At this point someone has to suspect foul playin his knowlege...