Chapter 1: A Release From Dreams
“A single event can awaken within us a stranger, entirely unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born."
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Distant cries echoed into the desolate chamber, just loud enough to stir the creature. Jailer opened its haunting yellow eyes, and listened, recognizing the faint sounds. They were the cries of its creators, calling it to action. They told of corruption, poison, and taint. They called to Jailer for rescue, to fulfill its purpose.
This was not right. Not right at all. Its creators were not meant to feel pain. They were meant to help stop pain. Jailer could not, would not, let them fall to hatred and fear. Equestria needed them to be safe, Jailer needed them to be safe. After all…Jailers creators were The Elements of Harmony.
Jailer slowly started to move from the stone slab that it slept on. It moved to the edge and lowered itself to the floor. Its rusty iron colored hooves touched the ground for the first time in over a millennium.
The darkened chamber, within which it had slept for ages, was lit by small red and white crystals, which glowed dimly overhead, from within the rocky ceiling.
It’s old body resembled that of an alicorn. Most of it’s entire body was cover in old rusty armor and a helmet. At one time, long ago, Jailer’s armor would have shone brightly in the sunlight. However, Jailer had not been needed since the time that it had been created. It had been forced into a long slumber, waiting until its function was required once again. Through the passage of time, its once-pristine armor had worn away.
While its armor had aged, the rest of it remained intact. Its mane and tail were a dark shade of sandy yellow, with small black strips. Each strand of hair ended with a barb-like extremity. One swipe would be enough to leave deep horrible gashes…because that was what they were meant to do, if necessary.
Aside from the vicious hairs and ancient armor, a single detail sparkled lustrously from its flank, in stark contrast: A pair of unblemished silver shackles
With a light clink of metal plates sliding past each other, Jailer walked over to only door within the chamber, only to find it had caved in by large rocks.
Jailer frowned and let out a low growl. It was already starting to get angry, it wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of its mission. It was a simple one: Save it’s creators from harm, imprison and punish their captors and eliminate any evil that threatened the harmony of Equestria.
No beast, no pony, no pegasus, no unicorn, nor anything else would stand in Jailers way. Especially not ROCKS!
Jailers horn glowed an intense dark-yellow color and started to use its magic to start picking up rocks and tossing them over its shoulder. The rocks shot back with such force that they shattered to pieces as they hit the far side of the chamber. The impact of the rocks shook the room violently and several of the crystals embedded up above came loose and shattered on impact when they hit the stone floor.
Wanting to pick up the pace, it started to smash other rocks with its hooves as it slowly started to move forward into the fallen cavern.
As it moved slowly upward through the rubble, Jailer couldn’t help but reflect on why it was here in the first place.
Over thousand years ago Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, who had become Nightmare Moon, were locked in a battle that threatened to destroy all of Equestria. Sensing that worst may come to worst, the Elements of Harmony created Jailer in order to protect them and the land, and to stop Nightmare Moon before permanent damage was done. However, right before Jailer could be released, Celestia had summoned the power of the elements and banished her sister to within the moon.
Now, with the threat behind them, Jailer wasn’t needed. But the Elements of Harmony could never bring themselves to destroy their beautiful creation. Instead, they sent it into a deep slumber inside a subterranean chamber deep in The Everfree Forest, and would be called upon when the time was, right to save them and Equestria from fear, hatred, and evil.
And now, that time was here.
Jailer listened for the sound of the cries as closely as it could, as it forged a path to freedom. It could hear that Kindness was loudest, which meant that one was closest.
Jailer would find her, Kindness, and save her from her tormenter, along with all of the other elements. Its time to earn its existence had come. It would hunt for the corrupted ones and imprison and punish them, all the while saving its creators…its mothers. Jailer would even weed out any other evil ones it came across.
Its horn broke to the surface, there was flash of lightning, and the air that in the forest soon became cold and stale. The hunt had begun.
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Sweetie Belle awoke with a start and looked around her. She sighed in relief when she saw she was safely in her bedroom. The young unicorn filly breathed slowly and calmly, and wiped a few grimy tears from her eyes. It wasn’t helping that she was covered with a cold sweat. It was just a bad dream. Thankfully that’s all it was a bad dream, not a nightmare.
To her, the difference between a bad dream and a nightmare was a bad dream had scary stuff in them, but in nightmares, her friends were the scary stuff.
Sweetie Belle pulled the covers off of her and slowly got out of bed, only to be greeted with a low rumble of thunder coming from outside. It was about to rain, she thought.
She needed some water badly and she wanted to clean her face. She left her room and quietly walked down the hallway towards the bathroom. As she quietly made her way down the dark hallway, she passed by her big sisters room. There was a soft red glow coming from the other side of it.
She had no doubt that her sister was enjoying herself with a new playmate tonight.
Letting her curiosity get the best of her she peeked through the keyhole.
The only thing that Sweetie Belle could make out was her big sister, Rarity, had her back to the door and was standing high on her back legs with her arms tied to ropes that came from the ceiling. Sweetie saw another Unicorn standing in front of her sister with a whip. She looked closer to see that it was Cherry Pie, her neighbor from a few doors down. She had a pained look on her face.
“Can we stop now?” Sweetie heard her say.
“Just a little more!” her big sister hiss with dark pleasure. Sweetie Belle turned away, she had heard enough.
She kept walking, even more quietly now. Sweetie Belle opened the door to the bathroom, and turned on the lights while trotting over to the sink. She turned on the faucet and splashed some cool water on her face.
“What’s wrong with me…and everypony else?” she asked with a sigh.
Things had not been right for the past few weeks. For starters, she began to see her friends less and less, and when they were around they were…different.
Scootaloo, her Pegasus filly friend, had left Ponyville and had gone off to live with Rainbow Dash and work in Cloudsdale’s Rainbow Factory. When she did visit, it was only when Rainbow Dash came to find any young pegasi in Ponyville who were ready for the Flying Test. The way that Rainbow Dash looked at the young fillies changed between from being filled with disgust to bone chilling smiles. Scootaloo just smiled they way she always did…but Sweetie Belle sensed that there was something behind that smile of hers something horrible. And somehow she could “see” it.
As for Apple Bloom, her earth pony friend, she left Sweet Apple Acres to live with Pinkie Pie at Sugarcube Corner. She seemed to be very happy living with her and smiled all of the time. When she asked why she left the farm, her friend’s smile quickly disappeared and was replaced with a frown mixed between sadness and pure hatred. Sweetie could see that she was unhappy she could…”see” it.
It wasn’t just Sweetie Belle’s friends that were acting strange, many of her other friends had changed in the last few months, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Fluttershy, and even her dear sister had changed. And she seemed to be changing too. She seemed to be seeing things that left her dumbfounded. When she looked at ponies some of them…glowed!
What was happening to her? Her friends acting out of place and her seeing ponies glowing. Was she slipping into insanity? And the nightmares she had been having didn’t help her either. Finding her Cutie Mark was the least of her worries now. Sweetie Belle decided that she would figure it out later in the morning.
Quiet as a ghost, Sweetie made her way back to her room. She spared a moment to give her big sister’s door a glance and wonder when things went so crazy.
When she closed the door to her room there was a flash of lightning and an echoing peal of thunder. She walked over to her window and looked out to see it had started raining.
Rain…calmed Sweetie Belle. It was like a melancholy melody to her, it freed her mind of the burden of thought. For just a moment, she could find some tranquility in those falling droplets of water that ran down the glass of her bedroom window.
Eventually, her mind inevitably strayed from the numbing calm of the simple melody. Much like the rain that poured in its unending stream, the memory of her dream, her bad dream, resurfaced.
She then remembered her dream.
What was it about? What did it mean?
She couldn’t help the sense of foreboding that accompanied the memory. This dream was not like the others. It was more like…a vision. But, of what? She wonder.
There was another flash of lighting.
Although she didn’t want to think about it or even admit it, she had to.
She just felt it, with certainty; beyond the falling rain, something was coming