Dusk

by DuskbeforeDawn

Chapter 1

A Slight Bit of Bad Luck

He kept his head low, his face masked by the thick squares of paper held in his hooves. Not that he needed much help, the smokey nature of the tavern created a dense miasma. Slight Luck took a small glance over his cards, his eyes tight and shifty. The grizzled old Pegasus across from him was missing an eye. Next to him, was a purple earth pony with a beard that had been smiling the whole time. Looking up, he noticed that for one instance all the other players were simultaneously looking down at their cards, not at him. He allowed himself a tiny smirk, braking the stoic poise of apathy that was his poker face. He quickly cast the scramble luck spell under his hat. He looked closely at the five of spades in his hoof, slowly the five spades crawled closer together and merged into an ace of diamonds. Quickly however, the diamond stretched out into a queen of clubs, a similar metamorphosis occurred for each card, they cycled through fifty two various options before they changed into four aces and a king of hearts. He mentally grinned at the tall stack of glistening bits before him.

“Sha-BAM!” he yelled slamming his cards down onto the table. The other two looked stunned for a moment. “Lovely game, gentlecolts.” He said, wrapping his hooves around the pile. He could see his grinning face slowly growing bigger in the reflection in each gold glistening bit.
“Wait!” said the purple pony rising from his seat and slamming his hooves on the table. “I have the same cards!” He threw down his evidence and glowered at Slight Luck.

“Well,” Slight began gently sliding coins into his saddlebag. “Clearly there is a cheater in our midsts!” They each glanced at other for a moment before the purple earth pony leaned across the table and flipped Slight’s hat off. “No!” Slight Luck attempted to grab his hat out of the air with his hooves, but he had to resort to magic. His horn emitted a lime green haze as it pulled the hat down over his head. Slight Luck looked up before turning to his opponents. They looked at him with that familiar look of shock and fear that he had seen all his life. “Well, sure! Make fun of the guy with the birth defect!”

The two across from him took a moment to process this, and by the time they realized what had happened, Slight Luck had flipped the table, for no other reason than spite, and bolted for the door.

He was halfway through the smoky bar when a haggish old wench of a pegasus yelled “UNICORN!” Every patron of the bar turned and looked at him with the same look of disbelief. They followed suit and each in turn screamed “UNICORN!”.

“Well…” Slight looked around. Two royal guards had entered the tavern and were charging towards him, if he could get through them, there was a chance he could still escape. Slight Luck forced a large magical surge to his horn, the crowd backed away in fear. “Let’s see how you handle this!” His magic dissipated and he sprinted towards the slightly unnerved guards. Luckily, a slightly unnerved guard was all he needed; he slipped through the gap with the greatest of ease. “I will see you gents later!” he yelled over his shoulder, racing as fast as his legs could take him for the door.

He was turning back around when his face collided with something solid. It was a massive and stoic something. Apparently, there had been another guard outside. Slight sighed. “Our military is so efficient.”

He tried to maneuver past the guard, who was much larger than he was. “Hold there, unicorn.” The guard said with a deep voice. “You know you are not supposed to be out of your uniform.”

“Of course I know that! I was robbed! Forced into new clothes!” He tried to waddle past the guard. “Very counter-intuitive robber!” He slid around the guard and bolted away.

He galloped over the dirt roads of Las Pegasus, he was on the side of town best equipped to finding specific public houses of undesirable repute, though in Slight Luck’s case the term, ‘undesirable’ was insanely relative.

He dashed down the road only turning around to count the guards chasing him, Oh goody, he thought to himself Seven, my favorite number. Slight Luck turned and noticed a cart that was being pushed by an earth pony, oh what good fortune a purveyor of vegetables. Truly, it was every great rapscallion’s dream to distract his pursuers with the fresh produce of mother earth. He leapt over the cart before turning and bucking the cart over. He took only the briefest of moments to appreciate the rarity of this occurrence before he resumed his glorious escape.

“My cabbages!” the owner of the cart shouted behind him. Ahead, the two guards at the gate were bracing themselves.

“There’s a crazy unicorn chasing me! I’m getting out of here!” Slight yelled as he got closer.

Then, there was an explosion between him and the guards, and when the dust cleared, there was a uniformed unicorn staring him down. Slight skidded to a stop, staring up fearfully at the unicorn.

“MY LONG LOST BROTHER!” he yelled, sweating. “Phallicorn!”

The unicorn struck him across the face with his hoof, dislodging the hat again.

“This is why mom liked me best.” He said quietly, grabbing his hat with his teeth and tossing it back on, not managing to pull it over his horn as the rest of the guards surrounded him. There was nowhere else to run. He sighed.

A glow of magic shrouded his horn. He looked around again, closed his eyes, and activated the teleportation spell, and vanished in a mystical ‘poof’.

The unicorn guard growled and activated a spell of his own, within moments, he had vanished as well.

The remaining guards looked between themselves, and returned to their routes, except for the two whom had been on duty at the gate itself.

The younger of the two turned to his superior. “Aren’t we going after him?” he asked. “The runner, I mean.”

After a brief chuckle, the older Unicorn replied. “That there was Western Commander Crimson Wind. Doesn’t matter how far the unregistered can run, he always catches his mark.”

Comments

[Joey8225]

The dialogue is really the driving force behind the story in its current state; the rest could use a bit of work, try using some more descriptive language: Show don't tell (you can find many places on the interwebs about that).

The plot itself has caught my interest, but it's still a bit too early to comment much on the story. I'll be following this.

Oh, one more thing. How often can it be expected that this will update?

[DuskbeforeDawn]

well this is a group effort, we are writing as we post. Alas I expect another one hopefully next friday