Dark)

Author's Note:

This chapter will get a bit dark and sad. As it will just be this chapter I'm not tagging the whole story with those tags.

"Well my story begins with my birth." Hearts Shadow started, sipping at his tea.

"The birth of a unicorn to two earth ponies was a bit of a shock. After some arguing and not a little bit of accusation, the doctor used a parental match-up spell to show that they both were really the parents. They managed to talk the doctor into keeping the birth a secret, though he did still fill out the paperwork to be stashed away in a corner of the records room. Even if my parents never fully filled it out, leaving the name field blank.

"Once they got home they decided to see if they could do something about my horn. They tried to both burn it off as well as coating it in acid utilizing some of the acids that can be found in any well stocked janitorial closet. Neither of those methods worked, but it did permanently scorch my horn. Luckily they were to squeamish to just try to cut and sand it off." He continued, politely ignoring the rather horrified look on Twilight's face and the carefully controlled looks that adorned the sisters.

"After that they had a small office quickly fixed up to be a bedroom with an attached bathroom. They handed me off to a nursemaid to raise me with the instructions that I never leave the room, be talked to in anyway, and my existence never be mentioned to anypony, not even themselves. They acted as if I died shortly after childbirth.

"As I grew the nursemaid showed up less and less due to being able to be more self-sufficient. When I was 6 she really only showed up to drop food and drink off and clear dishes. I even learned how to change the sheets on the bed for when she would drop the linen off. During my 7th year was the first time I ever left my room. The town was under attack, my parents had rallied every adult to the defense. They had sent the children to the mansion for safety and left the oldest of the kids in charge."

A very long time ago, between 1300 and 1400 years to be a bit precise.

A nameless colt was playing with his ball, throwing it around his room letting it bounce off various places before catching it. He hoped that the other one would be back soon, he was out of food and running low on drinking. He looked to the small room and thought about the trouble he got when he drank from the water in there, but decided against it. Other one would be back soon, no need to do that again.

He jumped up onto the sleeptime place to throw the ball from a higher spot.

A young unicorn filly wandered the empty mansion. She had already checked the kitchen for some more food for her even younger charges and wanted to see if she could find anything else when she came across a door that had sounds of occupancy coming from the other side. Testing the door found it to be unlocked, so she carefully opened it to see who was in the mansion.

The not-wall moved. That meant the other one was here with food. However as it opened up enough to see past, the pony he could see was not the other one but somepony new. He was excited.

"Halluuu?" The new other one made noises. Noises the old other one never made. The colt moved to where they could see him.

"Ooooh. Hooo arr yew?" It made more noises. They waited and the colt figured they wanted him to make noises next.

"Haggle-phblt" He gurgled.

The filly stared at the young colt. She was unsure if what he just said was supposed to be his name, or what. She decided on a slightly different approach.

Pointing at herself she said "Giving Heart." before point at him.

The colt looked confused to a second before putting his hoof against his chest and saying "Guh eev ung Hu e hard."

He looked at her with a look in his eyes that oozed achievement. She realized that maybe this colt hasn't learned how to talk properly. Looking around the room he was in she noticed a couple things. The first was that it looked exactly like a young colt spent all his time in it. The second was that there was a bathroom attached. The third was that there were no windows. The fourth was that the door could only be locked and unlocked from the outside.

Stepping out of the doorway, Giving Heart gestured to the young colt to follow her out of the room.

New other one wanted him out of the room. Going up to the not-wall and tentatively stepping through it he walked up to her side. Looking around at the new place filled him with excitement. She started walking down the long room, pausing after a couple steps to make sure he was going to follow.

They walked through more and more rooms, each one furthering his excitement until he passed the first window. He nosed the curtain to the side and looked up and was awestruck at just big a room was surrounding them.

A gentle tug at his tail brought him away from the window. Looking at it, he saw that his tail was in a pink aura and that the other one was a little bit away. The head thing that she had too was also covered in pink.

"Ssstuaaaa buhack furoom ffaa weenndooess." She said.

Looking at the window he said "Wendoos."

A small smile crossed her face as he did that. Turning back down the long room her long dark blue tail signaled to him to start following again. He trotted up to her side quickly looking at her yellow side as compared to his blue coat. Her tail and mane only had the one colour to it, unlike his red with yellow stripe. Also unlike him, her horn matched the rest of her coat. She also had a heart on her flank.

They eventually entered a big room with lots of things in it. She walked over to where some food was and began pulling some out and gave it to him. He quickly fed himself until he felt his stomach was full. After that she moved food up onto her back and holding more in her pink aura. He moved to stand under some of it as well so she could put some on his back.

Giving Heart looked at the young colt before placing some of the food onto his back. She then guided him down to the basement where the other kids were waiting. She smirked a little at the thought of how happy he will be meeting them.

She wasn't disappointed. The colt started dancing in place upon seeing the other foals. She levitated the food off his back as he ran up to meet them.

As she placed the food where most of the foals wouldn't be able to easily get to, she hear them interacting with the new arrival.

"Why's your horn black?" She heard one of the fillies say a bit loudly.

"Huh oorn." He said, tapping his horn with his hoof.

"Yes, your horn, what happened to it."

"Hoornn?" This time his hoof was pointing to the head of one of the earth ponies.

"No horn." The earth colt replied.

"Wings!" Stated the sole pegasus filly in the group.

"Wha-eengs. Wings."

Giving Heart looked on as the introduction quickly devolved into a mixture of playing and teaching as they started helping him learn how to talk. As he bounded around learning things she noticed that he bore several resemblances to the Earl and his wife. In her mind 2 and 2 very obviously made 4. The only problem she saw was that everypony thought that they didn't have children. If they had kept him hidden that would explain the misconception of the town, but couldn't see why they would've hid him.

Her younger sister was trying to show him how to use his magic. Not having seen him use his magic yet made her think that might be why. That was quickly dismissed as he was able to wrap a yellow aura around his horn as he channeled magic, but wasn't able to do anything with it. Well at least whatever had badly scorched his horn did damage the magic pathways that ran through it.

A week later.

The nameless colt was getting along well with the other foals. Although when he was playing and learning from them, he was helping Giving Heart out.

She was concerned, it had been a long time since she had heard anything from any of the adults. They were starting to get low on the food she had brought down with her when she had found the colt so she decided to try to see if she could get more.

The colt had followed her, which was nice as they could carry a little bit more, plus he had even started to figure out how to control his magic enough to levitate a little bit of weight.

Passing by a window let her hear some noises outside. Looking out of it carefully she saw people moving throughout the town. All she could tell was that they weren't townsfolk. She quickly lead the colt back down to the basement and set about helping all the foals to hide.

It didn't take long before they heard the barricaded front door get knocked open. Giving Heart did was she could to keep the foals calm as the house was being searched.

Several miniature eternities which added up to about a half-hour later, they heard hooves coming down the stairs to the basement. Staying hidden as best she could she watched as an armoured pony walked into the room. His horn lit up and she could feel magic sweep past her as he scanned the room.

"Okay. I know there are a bunch of ponies hiding in here. I take it you are the children of the townsfolk. I would like to let you know we are merely here to scout the town. Whoever conquered the town did so several days ago and moved on. If you all would come out from hiding we can make sure you are well taken care of." The soldier said with an authoritarian voice.

After a couple minutes of debating with herself, Giving Heart stepped out where the pony could see her.

"Good. Now get the rest of the hiding foals out here and we can head upstairs for some food."

A short time later had all the foals upstairs eating fresh cooked food. The soldiers laid out a plan to fully scout the area for the next couple of days using the mansion as a base. Then they would take the children out to find them new homes.

Another interesting thing occurred was that the soldiers decided to name the colt. Due to him not leaving her side they named him Hearts Shadow.

It didn't take too long for the soldiers to finish scouting the town and load up their wagons. They rounded up all the foals into one and set off.

Two weeks later.

Giving Heart was starting to get concerned again. This time it was over the intentions of the soldiers. She knew geography well enough to know they should've been able to reach some large town by now, but it seemed more like they were specifically avoiding any town. Deciding to keep a watch out for now to see if her fears have any foundation.

It wasn't long before she found out the truth, but not by her own means. Shadow had been up one night, watching the night sky and wandering around the camp. His dark coat let him sneak around without really meaning to so sometimes the soldiers wouldn't notice him sitting somewhere before they started talking.

Usually the conversations weren't much but tonight was different. They were talking about the foals and their destination. His grasp of the language had gotten better but they used many words he hadn't heard before. As such he was curious about what they were talking about so he went to find Giving Heart.

"Heart, what does slavery mean?" He said quietly once he found her.

"Where did you hear that? It means for one pony to own another, like a pony might own a ball." She replied, he suspicions rising rapidly.

"A couple of the soldiers were talking about how they were going to put us into it once we reach the destination."

"I see. Shadow, why don't you try to get some sleep. I've got some things to do." She said as she got up and left the tent.

"Hold up. Are you saying equestrian soldiers were trying to sell foals into slavery!?" Twilight exclaimed.

"Not exactly. I never said they were equestrian soldiers. They were soldiers for hire." Hearts Shadow stated.

"Why would mercenaries be scouting the town then?"

"My dear student, sometimes a ruler can't send the army proper to investigate something. The time in which this story is taking place was just before a rather nasty war. Tensions were high and if the army had marched right into that area it would have ignited the war much sooner. The mercenaries allowed the rulers to find out what had happened without risking starting the war themselves." Celestia said, her horn alight with her golden aura as she operated an ongoing spell.

"It was highly unlikely that the three races council was aware that they had hired slavers. I learned later that the report they had sent in about the town had neglected to mention the finding of almost a dozen young fillies and colts. It's also as if they didn't get their comeuppance, which I am getting to next in my story."

A few hours after Giving Heart had left the tent, Hearts Shadow sneaked out. Trying to find her lead him to a grouping of the soldiers near the edge of the camp.

"Too bad we had to start her training early. She shouldn't be able to move right now, so go prep the cages. Looks like we might have to use the more standard methods of transporting our merchandise." Said one of the more sinister sounding ponies.

As several of them left, Shadow could see the form of Giving Heart laying on the ground. He snuck up closer before being able to see the bruises, blood, and that one of her legs bent wrong.

The next thing Hearts Shadow could properly remember, all the soldiers were dead. Most of their bodies made a rather gruesome sight. He also had a cutie mark. A vertical line with a bowl shaped one that was perpendicular to it and was bisected by it at the halfway point. There were also a pair of dots underneath the bowl, one on each side of the vertical line. His own sense of it said that it was a glyph that meant "Dark."

Going up to Giving Heart's side he could tell she was having trouble breathing. She looked up at him and tried to say something, only to have blood pour out of her mouth. He laid his head against her neck and cried until he could no longer hear her heartbeat.

The other kids found him like this, Giving Heart's sister joined him. After the sun had climbed up into the sky a ways, and their stomachs demanding food, Shadow rounded up the kids to get some food. One of them found a map, which they tried to use to figure out where to go.

Shadow took down one of the tents to wrap Giving Heart's body. Another tent was used to hold as much of the food as they could. They also saw that the soldiers had looted the town, with a couple kids claiming something that had been taken from their own houses.

When the sun had passed it's noon-position they headed towards where they thought would've been the mostly likely town.

When they eventually reached a town, Shadow got the town to give Giving Heart a proper burial. He then helped the other kids to an orphanage.

"After that I went off to study my own magic. I wasn't sure if the power I drew upon was something dangerous or if I could control it. Eventually I started being called a Warlock. I kept in contact with a couple of the other, specifically Giving Heart's sister. Then one day I figured out a means to make myself immortal. I met with a couple other powerful warlocks who wanted to see who was the most powerful. After a couple days of watching them fight, I got all 4 of us to sit down for some food. We talked and decided that fighting each other isn't really a good way to determine who's better.

"We became the Warlocks of the High Order. The rules we laid out were there to keep warlock from trying to do things like conquer or destroy all of Equestria. Mess with time travel, though one of the others did make a couple good spells for viewing the past. Of course the ruling that for someone to become a Warlock of the High Order required the unanimous decision by all living High Order Warlocks was my idea.

"At that point a normal lifetime had passed, I would hand out near impossible tasks to warlock applying to the High Order and had been keeping track of Giving Heart's sister and her descendants. Then the whole blight incident happened. I fought the Sisters of the Sun and Moon for 4 days straight before they blasted me into the wall and imprisoned me.

"Luckily and unfortunately I was immortal or I would've suffocated once the air in the room went bad, or dehydrated from lack of water. Was really bored for a long time until somepony cast a time spell. I'm guessing they went back in time, made a change that affected major events and created alternate timelines. Somepony else chased them to undo it. I felt the temporal entropy caused by the change or changes as they fought.

"I had enough power in me to tie a spell into the magical matrix that was imprisoning me to link it to that entropic energy. Made it so that the prison would collapse once the timeline was set right. After that you pretty much know what I've been doing." Heart Shadow finished.

"You really care for Giving Heart didn't you?" Asked Luna.

"In the few weeks I knew her, she cared more for me than both the nursemaid and my parents combined."

The glow around Celestia's horn subsided as she placed her teacup down on the table. "The lineage spell checks out. You are the Heir to the Earldom of Bridle Valley. Instead of you ancestral lands, I will agree to a land grant of equivalent size. Luckily you're from so long ago. I wouldn't cast this spell on any pony alive today, to great a generational difference." She said, with just a hint of sadness to her voice.

"You said you tracked the descendants of Giving Heart's sister? Are any alive today?" Twilight said, with a small voice.

"Several, technically. Though of the two most direct, one runs a lovely little bakery where she bakes the most delectable doughnuts. The other is a fashionista extraordinaire."

"Wait, you mean Rarity?"

"Yes. Though I wasn't aware of that fact when she helped me pick out a new coat." Heart's Shadow stated with a small laugh in his voice.

422 views

Previous Chapters Next

The Warlock - JediWyrm

Stats

FIMFiction

Follow & Support Us