Prologue
Time was once an important fixture in Zack's life. It was a precious commodity that he usually lacked. His work had always took so much of it and he had always struggled to find enough spare time for his family and friends. But here in this dismal cell it had little meaning and he now had an overabundance of time that made the hours and days blur together. No sun or moon to tell him the time of day with the only source of light, a lantern with moving specks, barely visible through the iron bars of his cell and was insufficient to the task, both as a light source and as a way to measure time. His only clue to the passage of time was the routine of his captors.
Not for the first time he wish he still wore his watch, but it, as well as the rest of his belongings, were taken from him upon his imprisonment. At least they left him with his clothes, a pair of jeans and a once white t-shirt. The clothes provided him with some warmth and at least some resemblance of normalcy.
He only saw them when they fed him or when they came to torture him. Neither being on a consistent or regular basis. At times it felt like days between feedings, while other times merely hours. But one thing was sure, the sessions of pain were definitely more frequent than the food.
The feeding times were unpleasant as his captors simply threw the food, a thick brown paste, on the stone floor leaving him to scoop it up with his hands to eat. The paste was unpleasant to say the least and the dirt and grime of his cell's floor made it worse. It reminded him of the wet dog food that he once ate as a dare during his childhood. For the first week or so he was 'fed', he refused to eat the mush, but eventually hunger drove him to the unpleasant task.
As bad as the feeding times were, it was far worse when they came to inflict pain. It was the only times he clearly saw his captors. The first time he had seen them he thought he was hallucinating. They appeared to be small horse-like creatures, but instead of the usual colours associated with horses, these creatures seemed to have the entire colour spectrum represented and not one had the same colour scheme as another. But colour was not the only differences between these creatures and the horses he was familiar with, some of them had horns like unicorns of myth. These unicorns were the ones he learned to fear the most as they were the ones that always brought him the most pain.
The sessions were always the same. A few of the creatures would gather around the door of his cell. Angrily glaring at him they would make stern demands in some alien tongue and he would try to decipher what they wanted, but it was hopeless as he could not understand a word they said. After every failure to respond one of the unicorns horns would begin to glow and that's when the pain would begin. Invisible blows would rain down upon him and no attempt to shield his body with his arms could prevent a blow from making contact. The sessions would last for maybe an hour before the ponies would grow tired of toying with him and leave him curled in a ball.
Time was all Zack had now. Time to suffer, time to recover, time to sleep and time to start all over again.
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Day Court was in session and Princess Celestia was distracted. Not that anypony present could tell. Almost two millennia of experience hid that fact well. But for those that knew how to look the signs of her distraction were plain to see. The way her tail and mane flowed slightly slower than usual and the slight tilt of her head were signs that her mind was elsewhere.
Two weeks ago her guards had captured a strange creature on the outskirts of the Hayseed Swamp near Dodge Junction. The guards were responding to reports of a monster attacking the residents of Dodge Junction and quickly made their way to the scene. What they found was frightening and terrible. A bipedal creature never before seen in Equestria or even on Equis for that matter. It had killed three dozen of her beloved ponies before a dozen unicorns managed to subdue the bloodthirsty creature. The creature was currently locked in the dungeons just a few floors beneath her.
The pain and anguish of the loss of her ponies desperately tugged at her very core. She wanted nothing more than to destroy the foul creature in the depths of her castle. But first she needed answers. She needed to know where it came from and how did it get here. She needed to know if there was more of them. She needed to know before anymore of her precious ponies got hurt.
Even now dozens of the most gifted minds in all of Equestria were studying the monster trying to find the answers she desperately needed. Still she could not help to think that she should be there overseeing the quest for answers. That maybe she could find the answers that so far eluded her. For the first week of the creatures imprisonment she did just that, putting the Day Court on hiatus and pushing many of her duties onto her sister.
After a week without results Princess Luna stepped in and forced her to realize that she couldn't shirk her everyday responsibilities anymore, that her subjects needed to see her unshaken and strong to combat their fears. So it was with heavy heart that she resumed her normal duties, leaving the search for answers to those beneath her.
"... and for those reasons it is in the best interest of Equestria that section 7 subsection 10 of the tax law should be revoked" concluded a silver haired, light blue unicorn that had been talking for the past twenty minutes.
Princess Celestia sighed to herself as she brought her attention back to the matter at hand. This was going to be another long day and time was not on her side.