A Growing Shadow

by KorenCZ11

Sunny and Moonlight

“Shadow, you know that magic… and well, most of these words, are spelled with a ‘c’ don’t you?” the doctor asked as he read over my entries. It’s been about a week since I wrote the first one, and I hate to look at it. I can’t even correct the mistakes because I pressed too hard with my quill. Thick, bold letters that would make a normal pony look insane. The entries improve with time, but spelling concepts still confuse me. What kind of letter is ‘C’ anyways? It steals the sound of ‘K’ when it feels like it, it steals the sound of ‘S’ when it feels like it, and sometimes, it does both in the same word! Infuriating.

I sighed. “I do, sir.”

He flipped through the pages again, marked a few things down beside certain words he circled, then gave the book back to me. I focused my thoughts at my horn, saw the circle fill with letters, and with a little tingle to my forehead, it lit. My magic reached out for the book, and once it was completely draped around it, the doctor let it go. Slowly, carefully, deliberately, I brought it to my hoof. I let go, and finally, I could breathe.

He shook his head. “Shadow, you must learn to breathe and cast at the same time. Using your magic should be as natural as taking a piss. Let it flow through you, do what it must once it’s outside of you, and peter out when you run out.”

I blinked. “That… is an analogy.”

“It is! I see you’ve made it through the A’s in the dictionary I gave you, hmm?”

“I have.”

“Very good. You have a bright mind, Shadow, a very bright mind. Spell craft seems to come naturally to you. Though you are inexperienced, you’ve picked up most of the basic spells in merely a week. With practice, a time may come where you can perform very complex spells effortlessly. Now then…”

The white coated unicorn that was the doctor stood and stretched. “It has been two weeks since we last checked them, and we must make sure that no disease spreads on this ship. Come, Shadow.”

My teeth found the inside of my cheek. Them. Cargo. I hate it.

“Shadow?” It was less the name he’d given me than the tone in which he called it that pulled me out of my head. The doctor I’ve come to know is very cold, but excitable. He is a stallion that would pick apart, even a unicorn, just for the fun of it. Yet, in that moment, it almost sounded like… concern.

“Sorry, coming sir.”

---

In the hold is where they were kept. Twenty official crew members, including the Captain and the doctor, eight passengers, including myself and the viscount, and… forty cargo, including the two fillies. The ship was under capacity by a large margin, and the crew was understaffed. Nearly all the cargo belonged to the viscount, and so he loaned them to the captain to serve as make-shift crew members to perform various tasks that required little skill. They were mostly used as labor, sometimes as cooks.

The viscount has made mention of his grand fortunes back in the old world, and he plans to use his cargo to build himself a castle in the new world. They say that there’s a mountain in the new world that breaks the sky. There isn’t another mountain in the old world anywhere near as tall as this one is, and the viscount said he wanted to buy it. Apparently, somepony beat him to it though. They mentioned the name of the buyer and it made my skin crawl. Even after all this time, after all this effort, I still might not be able to escape him.

Of the cargo, most were earth ponies, about a third were pegasai, and there were a few more ‘exotic’ creatures among them. A striped earth pony from a faraway land that speaks little and less of the language that I’ve only just begun to learn to read. A griffoness that serves the viscount personally. It is rare to find her with the rest of the cargo and not in the viscount’s quarters. She sings in a strange tongue. The viscount always mentions how he likes her tongue.

He reminds me of my father.

We began like we did the first time, starting with the stallions, and moving through them one by one. Like animals, we check their vitals, make them perform a physical task to show they’re still in useable condition, and once the doctor runs his disease check and clears them, they’re sent on their way, either back to the hold, or back to work.

As my magic has improved much and more in the past two weeks, I was given charge of a quarter of the ponies myself. It was… uncomfortable to be touching… them the way I needed to. But, after the first few, I was used to it. Check the stallions here, check them there, have them lift a few barrels, run the scan spell, move on to the next one.

They weren’t very talkative, though I suspect few of them had anything nice to say to me, one of the overlords. How they would laugh if they knew… Finally down to my last two patients, the fillies presented themselves to me.

“Hi! Are you doing the thingy today?” the older one asked. She was… very close. Unlike the others, she didn’t smell of sweat and sea salt like the dank of the hold, but she smelled… like flowers. It made me feel strange.

“I-I am. Please remain still.”

“Okie-dokie!” the energetic young mare exclaimed. She simply radiated positivity. I can’t understand why. I was always miserable when I was in her position. With the pegasai, the first thing I was to inspect was her wings. I pulled out the first one, checked that none of her feathers were damaged and… oh… that smell hit me full in the snout. So sweet, she was. It made my mouth water.

“Shadow!”

The doctor’s call pulled me out of whatever was going on. “Sir?”

He rolled his eyes and pushed me away. “Release the filly, I will do this exam.”

I did as I was told and moved away. “Oh… of course, sir.” The doctor began her examination and at a certain point, I turned away. Something strange was happening to me, and I didn’t know what it was. This happened when he did this last time as well. Every time he inspects a mare, I…

“Shadow? Hey!” The doctor clapped in my face.

“Sir!” Again with the reaction.

He was standing over me and leaned his eye close to mine. “Dilated pupils, increased temperature, salivation. Tell me Shadow, do you know why you’re experiencing those three things right now?”

I thought on that. Am I? I couldn’t very well check my pupils, but I could feel the other two well enough. “I… I don’t know sir. There was a scent…”

The doctor rolled his eyes. “And that explains much and more. Shadow, you are a scholar now. You will devote yourself to the study and practice of magic from henceforth. These feelings of yours will only complicate things and make that study more difficult for you. This won’t do, this won’t do at all…”

He locked eyes with me, and held that gaze for what felt like forever. The cold, piercing look he’d first set on me. Even now, it filled me with a sense of dread. Then, he turned it on those poor fillies. The older one cowered, and the younger one cowered beneath her.

“What does the Viscount call you?” the doctor asked.

“I-I’m #23 sir, b-but some ponies call me Sunny…” the pegasus answered.

“That is a rather high designation. How long have you served the Viscount?”

“Four years, sir.”

He looked her up and down, much like he did me, then ran his magic over her. She squirmed and made little noises as the doctor’s magic threaded her like a sewing needle. Again, it made me feel strange, but even more so than before. He dropped her, much like he did me, then went to inspecting the little one. She protested, even screamed and cried, but the doctor cared not. Satisfied, he turned toward me.

“I can see this will become an obstacle for you. One of two things will happen: either this will become a source of strife for you… or, it will give you power. I wonder… perhaps it may improve your growth to… act on new desires. Yes, I think this may very well be good for you, actually. A change of plans is in order!” He turned and picked up the little filly.

“What is your designation, sweetling?”

The little blue earth pony stuck her tongue out at him. In a shock to likely all of us, he bit it. She went to scream, but in an instant, she found her muzzle held tight by gold magic. “Sweetling, I asked you a question. Would you be so kind as to answer it?”

Whatever feeling had captured me before, ice had replaced it and gripped my heart. Tears in her eyes, the little earth pony nodded. “#24, s-sir. P-ponies call me Moonlight…”

The doctor smiled a smile that would make food rot from exposure. “Wonderful. I will clear it with your master, but henceforth, both you and Sunny will accompany Shadow at all times. Is that understood?”

“What!?” The words found their way out of my lips before I could stop them.

The doctor turned on me like a snake. “Ah-ah-ah, Shadow. What did I tell you about questioning me?”

I bit my lip and backed away from him as much as I could. “I-I apologize! I didn’t mean it!”

Still holding the filly, he stepped closer to me. “No, no, no, my dear Shadow. What came from your mouth was what you most earnestly feel. Exclamations like that are something you can use against your enemies! They can reveal so much in so little. A single word like that can tell you how confused and alarmed the last thing they heard has made them. From there, you can then press further, drawing more emotions out of them like piercing a wine skin and watching it all. Flow. Out.

“Remember my words, Shadow. You may find them useful one day.” He dropped the filly in my lap, and then straightened himself. In an instant, the air had changed. “Do what you will with them. As far as I’m concerned, they’re simply more pieces in my grand experiment that is you. Complete your journal entry as usual, and make sure to denote their anatomy. Understanding what makes the lower species unique, these two in particular, will further your development.”

---

November 20^th, The Year of Our Goddess, 607.

Today, I finally managed to finish my sketch of Sunny’s body. There seems to be magic that flows through her wings, but unlike a unicorn, the magic that flows through her is very weak and only in select places. Though, what I find so odd about her is that it seems almost as if she would be capable of performing magic were she to have some kind of outlet for it, but because she doesn’t, there’s a sort of ‘dead zone’ within her body.

Magic vessels, the ‘veins of magic’ that flow through all species, are found most predominantly in ponies. Though they look similar, zebras, or at least the one zebra the Viscount owns, has even fewer vessels than the average earth pony. Sunny’s vessels are strange though, even for a pegasus, because it almost looks like her framework is that of a unicorn’s.

Now that the doctor has explained how fornika phornika foals are made, I understand a bit more clearly what I was feeling last week. But why he gave me Sunny and Moonlight instead of any of the older pegasai or earth pony mares makes more sense to me now than him just wanting me to, and I quote, ‘get it out of my system.’ Both of them have unicorn framework in their magic vessels. Given a horn, either of them would be capable mages.

As he’s explained to me, hybrids have a tendency to carry over traits of both species they originate from, but usually suffer from degradation of those traits that make them weaker overall. My case is unusual because I have uniquely large and free flowing magic vessels, much like the vessels that are found in an earth pony’s hooves, but through my whole body. It’s what makes magic come so easy to me, and what makes the doctor so interested in me. Or so I think, anyways. I still don’t quite understand why

Moonlight seems to be my counterpart though, and she can often do odd, magically charged things with her hooves. She has particularly active vessels in her hooves that coincide with her unicorn framework to make her something of a rare breed. I’ve found her running up the sides of the ship walls before. She’s particularly ‘sticky’ when she wants to be.

Though Sunny doesn’t particularly like to talk about it, I once ordered her to tell me about her and Moonlight’s relationship. As the story goes, they share the same mother, whom was a daughter of a noble. She was a lush and a lecher, and she had a fondness for stallions. As Sunny recalls it, she would often take her slaves servants to her quarters to use them while her husband was away. The first time it happened, Sunny’s father was executed for violating his mistress. The second time, however, it was her turn.

Since then, Sunny has taken care of Moonlight. She’s barely old enough to perform most tasks, so Sunny has been sold with Moonlight both times she’s changed hooves. The viscount bought her when he was served her cooking while visiting the noble she was serving at the time. He called it, ‘an angelic delight’ and was shocked to learn that a pegasus had done it.

Every day I am more thankful that the goddess saw it fit to free me. Seeing them makes me wish I were stronger, back then. If I knew then what I know now, I could’ve killed father and escaped with mother. But… the viscount makes me doubt. The new world is a free place, isn’t it? Escapees can survive there. Ponies can live without the fear of being captured and traded like… like cargo. Can’t they? I wonder if she’s still alive

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

More hints of Shadow's history, along with two fillies who need no introduction. Hopefully the New World will offer some more upward mobility.

Still, the doctor's blend of aloofness, excitement, and unpredictability is familiar as well. The colors are off, but that's hardly an issue for him if he'll become who I suspect he will...

[KorenCZ11]

9992649
Funfact: the doctor's design is based on Hisoka from Hunter X Hunter (2011). The English dub of said series by funimation is effectively where I got his voice from (or at least the speech pattern), and it's hard for me to read some of the doctor's lines without learning that bungee gum contains the properties of both rubber and gum, you see.

It's very prominent in they way I imagine him saying, "And what is your designation, sweetling?"