Sacanas

by Lets Do This

Prologue

A roaring blizzard. Frigid winds and cutting sleet, shrouding the world in premature night.

Out of the gloom, a tall, dark-cloaked figure struggled. The electric-blue glare from within its hood fought to illumine a scant few yards of drift-covered forest ahead, even as the unicorn herself fought to contain a temper that verged on explosion.

This is justice?

She stabbed her forehooves into the numbing drifts, feeling for the buried dirt path that wound amid the frost-crusted trees.

I diagnose their mud-grubbing hoof infections, their feather-brained attention disorders. Attempt to educate their half-breed brats...

A rear hoof struck a hidden stump, a forehoof caught on her cloak. Snarling, she narrowly avoided pitching full length into the snow.

One sheep. They lose one sheep. One pitifully weak runt. Wouldn't survive the winter, useless waste of resources. Probably wandered off, got itself mauled by a manticore. Yet they have the gall to blame it on me. "Oh, it's that witch-mare living in the forest. She put the 'fluence on our Moxie, made her forget the little mite. It couldn't possibly be our own willful stupidity, now could it?"

She snorted crossly. And wound up near-blinding herself in the illumined steam of her own breath. She halted briefly, silencing her horn and shivering, allowing her eyesight to recover before moving on once more.

And they need only accuse me and that's enough? Their so-called magistrate can fine me, without even a scrap of evidence, not a word allowed in my defense? "We must set a firm example, maintain order and harmony within our little community..."

Her teeth ground.

Oh, yes. We know what this is really about, don't we? The looks on their smug little faces. They've longed for a chance like this, an opportunity to put me in my place. To show me that my knowledge, my experience, my wisdom are unwelcome here.

She wanted to laugh, bitterly as the wind itself.

As if I'd want anything to do with their little daub-and-spittle shanty town now! I come to trade for food, post the occasional letter. The last thing I want is to have anything more to do with such useless, addle-headed... crossbred... freaks!

She pressed on through the whirling darkness, her rage competing with the storm itself for sheer ferocity.

Yet gradually, grudgingly, her temper subsided with the ever-increasing distance from the village. All she wanted, right at that moment, was home. A roaring mage-fire in the fireplace. Her daughter snuggled next to her on the hearth, reading from her lessons and testing her own nascent horn-power. And every now and then, looking up... and smiling. A precious reminder that there was still something beautiful, something worthy, in a land chilled and blasted, frozen and near-blighted by the criminal incompetence...

Of them...

... of those ponies.

The unicorn abruptly came to a halt. She peered into the darkness ahead, in rising confusion and worry.

There should have been a light by now.

She'd reached the stone border wall, barely a half-dozen lengths from the door of the thick-walled cottage. Yet there was nothing ahead in the dark. No light, no movement. Just darkness and slicing cold winds.

Advancing steadily, watchfully, she came across hoofprints, many hoofprints. They criss-crossed the yard in every direction. Yet that in itself was no great worry. The louder, drunker villagers sometimes came all the way out here to hurl feckless insults at the cottage, to work themselves up into a lather of self-righteous indignation. And then finally tire of it, and totter off back home.

She was prepared for that. Nothing could get in through the stout stone walls, the protective wards she'd placed over its windows and on the chimney, the fire-proofing spell on the thatched roof itself. She came to the door, found it still sealed with her locking spell. Even if they'd had an army, they couldn't have gotten inside.

Then her hoof touched the frost-encrusted oak door, the frigid rime on the stone all around it. And she knew...

They hadn't needed to.

Windigo-baiting.

She'd heard of it, been warned of it in letters from other mages. Even so, she hadn't believed it. It was foolish in the extreme, almost suicidally dangerous. Yet since it was now known that windigos were attracted to dispute and conflict, and the negative emotions that went with them...

You simply gathered enough allies around some target. You pretended to argue, to fight, projecting sufficient animosity into the air so that one of the few remaining windigos, weak and emaciated, would have to come and investigate. And then, out of simple hunger, attack.

And if you were quick enough, or lucky enough, or both, you got out of the way before its frigid, soul-consuming influence got you as well.

She negated the lock spell. Hauled at the door until it wrenched free in a burst of ice shards. Shoved it open just far enough, so she could squeeze through, into the shadows beyond.

Ice.

Everything within was ice, encrusted and encased. Chill frost glinted and flashed everywhere in the electric-blue light from her horn. Her books, her research equipment, the scrolls on the worktable containing her latest spellcrafting efforts. All of it, frozen solid.

And, on the carpet before the stone-dead hearth, a small mound of ice, entombing a single small, amber-coated, rose-maned filly. Frozen solid, her eyes cast helplessly upwards, as if she simply could not comprehend the doom that had been brought down on her by the raging mob outside.

Eyes overflowing, the unicorn hesitantly reached out a hoof. She wanted merely to touch her darling, just one last time...

Something, perhaps a draft from the open door, a shift of the floorboards, even the miniscule warmth cast by the sole living thing left in the room, made the ice encasing her daughter...

Pop.

The chill night outside was rent by a piercing shriek, clearly audible even over the blizzard winds. Endless, hopeless, anguished, it raged on, unrelenting and unrestrained, a descent into madness beyond hope of redemption. Finally, mercifully, it faded to silence... like the last guttering of a candle flame before it died forever, leaving only fumes and ash.

Afterwards, something moved about within the snow-encrusted hut. It thawed out and gathered warm clothing, plus a few other necessities. Then it shoved its way out through the door, and plunged off into the night, seeking shelter, any shelter from the still raging blizzard.

Anywhere... that wasn't here.

It was a pony, but no longer saw itself as one. It was a unicorn. That was what mattered.

It was all that mattered.

It felt no loss, for it had nothing left to lose.

It had no further use for pity, or mercy, and above all else... tolerance.

All it had was a name, a single name. A dark and vicious invective hurled against anything and everything in the Three Kingdoms that was not unicorn:

Sacanas...

Comments

[Spellflame]

The Heart shatters

[Eroraf86]

YIKES. Talk about trauma. That's a heck of a cold open.

[Ri2]

How did she NOT go back and burn that village to the ground?!

[Heavyhauler75622]

And. Here. We. Go...