Prologue

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Raining, it had to be raining, rain so thick that I couldn't see 5 metres in any direction. I suppose I should be glad that I was in the car when it started, after all it was a long walk to the car from the university. Didn't help that is was 10 o'clock at night either, boy that lecture sure went on forever. Professor Wolfe may teach good history, but boy could he make it boring, and from me, that's saying something.

I love history, and I'm not half bad at it either, the stupid specifics like the date this happened or who was at this meeting aren't easy for me, but the bigger pictures like why this happened, what happened and that stuff come really easily too me, and when I heard that Professor would be looking at the 30 years war, I was ecstatic. That time period in general isn't looked at nearly enough in Australia, all we ever talk about is the world wars, the cold war, and a bit of ancient roman history which is interesting, but its been done to death. Yes I'm a history geek, live with it.

Anyway I was driving back home after that long lecture, very slowly, ironic considering the way my mum would always complain about how everyone in Perth would drive at snails paces when it got wet, she hates that. But I just got my full licence, and I'd seen enough of those presentations on how my group was where most crashes came from, well not me. But now I'm rambling again, I do that a lot, so driving home, I think I was about three quarters of the way home when my phone started ringing, luckily I have a hands free so I can talk in it whilst still driving.

"Hello?"
"Hey Jacob! what's going on?" I rolled my eyes, of course it would be Kyle, my little brother called me to announce every important event in his life, he wasn't the most humble person. "Nothing much, just heading back from another lecture, what happened this time?"
"Just got back my exam results for first semester, three A's, a B and a C, much better than whatever you got I'm sure." He also has a habit of being overtly competitive.
"Yeah yeah whatever, well I'm glad to hear your first year 12 exams went well."
"Of course they did, got anymore tips for next two semesters?"
"Gee I don't know, it was all two years ago, hard to remember that old stuff," I chuckled at my own joke, hey it was funny to me, "Just keep doing what your doing and you should be fine."
"Sweet, anyway you got mum's present yet? Remember its from all three of us."
"Of course I do, its at home, any other 'world changing' news?"
"Ha, nah that's it, anyway, see you next week."
"See you." I shook my head with a smile, he may be irritating, but he was still my brother, its like they say, 'Family, can't live with them, can't live without them,' in fact I wonder where that saying even came from anyway, probably a movie, yeah, that sounded about right.

Before my brain could go on another rambling streak, I arrived at my apartment block, I pressed the clicker as I drove the car into the garage, parked the car then got out. As I stretched my tired muscles, I threw a quick glance at my watch, huh, five to eleven, that drive took longer than I thought, probably explains why I'm feeling so tired all of a sudden. I reached back in to grab my books before slamming the door and locking the car behind me, and then trudged up the stairs to my apartment, not for the first time I was glad my apartment was on the second floor and not the fifth, the walk up to just there tired me out.

After locking the door behind me I lumbered into the bedroom, dropping my books on the kitchen desk before switching to my pyjamas, and flopping onto bed, I didn't even set my alarm clock before I went to sleep.

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The first cruel rays of sunlight struck my eyes, causing me to stir, "nnn, go away sun," I thought grumbling as I lifted my arm to shield myself, wait, why is my arm wet, in fact, why is my whole body wet, and cold, very cold. Before I could dwell on that any longer the sun, which had been just barely striking my arm, suddenly seemed to jump up as my face was subject to the full force of the sun. This, combined with the cold wetness of my whole body, and the sound of multiple birds tweeting, served to quite effectively wake me up.

I grunted/shrieked as I quickly sat up and opened my eyes, to be greeted by not my small apartment but wet dewy, trees? I blinked and rubbed my eyes and yep, still trees. I turned my head left right, and even looked behind me, still trees. Now I began hyperventilating, "shit," is what probably would have been appropriate at the time, and was what I tried to say, before my throat seemed to catch and all that came out was a low grunt, almost a growl really. Now before I was on the edge of fully panicking, now I was in total panic mode. "Fuck," was the only thought I could manage as I scrambled up and looked all around me again, trees, trees, and yep, still more trees.

"Aaaaah!" I tried to run forward but apparently I had woken up near a bunch of rocks, and so as I tried to run around screaming I instead slipped on the rock and fell back down. I grunted in pain as my back and head met the grassy floor, it seems I missed the rocks, and now I just lay there thoughts running wild through my head, "Stuck in the middle of a strange forest, this must be a dream, no wait, can't feel pain in dreams, definitely felt pain there, hallucination, unlikely, never had one before and I don't think I've done anything to warrant one. Whatever first things first, deep breaths." I closed my eyes and inhaled, before exhaling, inhale, exhale, freaking out, however tempting it may be wasn't going to help me, and considering the results so far, could probably be hazardous for my health.

As I lay there breathing in and out, trying to calm my thundering heart, I began to notice just how cold it was, and I mean freezing, like 12 degrees (I'm Australian, that's Freezing for me, OK!), and my Mr Grumpy Pyjamas were doing very little to prevent said cold. The fact that I had a high metabolism, (meaning I'm very skinny) didn't help either and soon my teeth were chattering despite the rays of sunlight. So as I lay there, freezing to death for, I don't know how long, probably five minutes, contemplating the strange situation I was in, I suddenly heard a rustling noise behind me.

I quickly sat up and whirled around, trying to say "who's there," but instead all that came out was a low grunt, making alarm bells ring at my constant failures at speaking, still it got the attention of whoever was behind the bushes as I saw a distinctly humanoid shape burst out from the bushes and run in the other way. I scrambled up and gave chase, making sure to avoid the rocks this time, and attempting to shout after them, but instead only got a loud shouting growling sound, almost a bark really, "that probably didn't help," I thought and decided to give serious thought as to what was happening to my voice later on, but right now, chasing took priority.

My quarry ran through the woods and as I chased them it became clear that I had woken up in a clearing, as the undergrowth was seriously thick, I had to slow down in order to avoid tripping over the numerous bushes and shrubs. Whoever I was chasing had no such problem and zipped through the undergrowth at startling speeds, and soon I lost them from sight completely. After running forward for a bit longer I eventually came to a stop at a nearby tree to catch my breath. "I need to work out some more," was all I could think as I stood there gasping for air, "now what?"

Then I heard something up ahead, some splashing, and some more rustling. "could be wild animals, but can probably wait them out, besides I need water," I stumbled through the forest before bursting through a particularly large shrub to see that I had come to the edge of a lake, and it had people near it! Nude people apparently, yes, there were about seven people there of mixed genders, including two children, who were splashing at the edge of the lake whilst the adults watched on from the shore, and none of them were wearing any clothes.

Upon my loud arrival though, all the adults turned around to look at me, giving me a nice eyeful of their privates. I hastily diverted my eyes upward, feeling quite certain I would be remembering that for some time, and looked at their faces as they stared at me. "Well this is awkward," was all my brain could think of before running blank, I considered trying to say hello to break to tension before remembering that I couldn't talk, so I just settled for waving sheepishly. It seemed to work though as one of the men pointed at me and began grunting, this was followed by the two other men and then the two women as they all began grunting at me while continuing to point at me. "OK, before, this was awkward, now its just weird," as I took a slow step back, figures I would run into a bunch of crazies first thing after waking up.

At my step back one of the men, took a step forward and began to grunt more aggressively, and now I began panicking again, "OK, crazy and angry, well time to leave," just as I went to turn around though the man was hit with a little zap of shiny blue light before falling over, seemingly unconscious. I just stood there dumfounded before I felt a sharp tingly feeling on my back, I then began to feel drowsy and fell over. I wish I could say that my last thoughts were some summary of my day today or even some quirky remark at my luck or how stupid and crazy this all had been, but really, my last thought as I slipped into unconscious was simply "what?"

Chapter 1

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I woke up half expecting to be back in be warm bed, and that everything that had happened so far had been some freaky dream, upon opening my eyes I was greeted with a very dark room, and a metal mesh style roof. I sat up slowly with closed eyes and rubbing my pounding head, it felt like someone had punched me out, before opening my eyes again to see metal bars. A feeling of dread settled in my stomach as I again twisted my head left and right and even looked behind me, yup metal bars, I was in a cage, if this whole thing had been a dream, now it had turned into a nightmare.

Again I began hyperventilating as I crawled up to the cage bars, the roof being far too low for me to stand, and grabbed them in my hands, yep, cold steel, cold and unyielding. I checked every last bar, and all the same, cold hard steel, I was in a cage of cold steel, I once again went into full panic mode, and began rattling what I assumed to be the door. I tried to shout out but all that came out was an animalistic shriek, still, I kept shrieking.

Because of my the shrieking I didn't hear the footfalls of my captors as they came near, nor did I hear their shouting as they tried to get me to stop shrieking. However I did feel the results of when they got tired of this, as I was shaking the bars, screaming like a madman, suddenly I felt like I had been holding an electric fence. I screamed in pain and fell back from the bars clutching my chest as it filled with pain that came hand in hand with an electric shock, then I heard some footfalls as it seemed whoever had zapped me was approaching my cage, with a few friends. Then I heard a voice "Well look who's finally awake," I groaned as I sat up to get a good look at my captors.

I have to say of all the crazy images my brain had come up with as to had locked me up here, from some animal patrol, to mutant aliens, none of them came anywhere near close to the reality. They were horses, midget technicolour horses, three of them at the moment, the middle one with a cruel sneer on its face, which seemed rather disturbing on such an otherwise adorably cute thing. They had huge eyes, taking up about a third of their faces, and somewhat stylized manes and tails, although they didn't seem to have any mane in the middle of their bodies. Overall they also seemed a lot more stocky than normal horses, and rounder, the middle and left ones more so than the right one. Their colours from left to right were pale red with pink mane, a dark blue with purple mane, and brown with a deep red mane, all things considered, they looked like something you would put in a little girls show.

The middle one leaned inwards, "Now you be quiet and stop yapping unless you want another zap," at that I crawled to the back of my cage wanting to put as much distance between me and the psychotic electrocuting pony as possible. "Good boy," she said, and I knew it was a she from the voice, as she leaned back and turned to the red one, "If any of them get noisy again, just use the prod on the bars, that'll quiet them." The other two then turned right and walked away while the red one walked a bit off to the left, presumably to stand guard, while I was left alone with my thoughts.

"OK, so I've been kidnapped by tiny horses, all things considered it could be worse, at least I know they aren't going to eat me, these horses aren't carnivores, right?" As I sat there contemplating the possibility of carnivorous horses something the blue one said suddenly struck me, "Wait, any of them?" For the first time since waking up I looked around and saw numerous other cages alongside mine, and along the other side of the room, and nearly all of them were filled with other humans, all of them stark naked. At this I looked down at myself and, yep, they took my pyjamas. So to summarise, I'm locked in a cage, naked, surrounded by other cages filled with other humans, also naked, and locked in those cages by tine talking ponies, could this possibly get any worse, with the exception of dying.

So after contemplating just how screwed I am, I decided to take a look at the other humans in their cages. I looked to the cage left of me to find another human, also locked in a cage, staring vacantly in the distance, I looked to the cage to the right and OK, human female in there, not looking that way. So I turned back to the cage to the left and decided to try and get his attention. Since my voice still seemed to be mysteriously missing, I was left to grunt at his direction, it took a few try's but eventually I got him to look at me, and I almost wish I didn't, that guy was hideous, seriously, I don't take myself as a handsome guy, but god, he was ugly. But most unsettling were his eyes, they were blank, empty, no sign of any intelligence whatsoever, creepy as hell. He stared at me for a few moments before going back to blankly staring at something.

Deciding that the humans were getting me nowhere, seriously, they all looked quite similar and I did not want to look at those kind of eyes again, I decided to just settle for staring at the cage bars instead, it was then that I finally noticed the rocking movement. I looked around and saw the whole room was gently rocking just a little bit, before I listened as closely as possible and heard it, a chugging, much like a train, wait train, that would explain the shape of this room. OK, so I'm on a train, going somewhere, stuck in a cage with a bunch of other humans, well, lets see where this goes shall we.

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A few hours later, I wasn't counting, it was meal time, the brown pony walked up to each of the cages, with a bunch of bowls floating around him, you know, I'm starting to wonder if I should start keeping count of the amount of times this world can fuck with me. The bowls were all covered in a glowing light brown aurora, while there also appeared to be another aurora coming from a horn on his head, yup so its a unicorn now is it?

Anyway he came over to each cage, opened a slot before shoving a bowl into said cage, then the human would begin scarfing down on whatever it was in the bowl. When it came to me he shoved it in, and seeing the other humans reactions to the bowls, I can't really say what I was expecting, but green gruel certainly wasn't it. Despite this though, my stomach was quick to remind me that I hadn't eaten since I got here, so I reluctantly began gobbling up the gruel. It was disgusting, but to give it a little credit, it did fill my stomach. So after that degrading meal I sat and waited as the brown pony came back and collected all the plates, but after doing that the blue one came back with the brown one and another midget horse, this one a silvery white male from the looks of it, and they both stopped by my cage to study me, it seemed.

After a bit of this, the blue one spoke up, "so Sight, how much do you think this ones worth?" At this point I noticed that the blue one had a horn as well, so that made two unicorns, but from what I could see the silver one, called 'Sight' apparently, didn't answer immediately, just seemed to study me some more, a bit like someone would study which like the way someone would study two pairs of shorts before deciding which one to buy, unless they were like me and just grabbed the first one they saw. "Well he definitely looks stronger than the others, a bit scrawny given his height, but then again he is taller than most other humans I've seen, could probably sell well to one of the richer ponies in Canterlot." The Blue pony seemed to contemplate this, while thought about what 'Sight' had said, what a strange sentence. For one while I was no longer a little short guy I most certainty wasn't all that tall either, and as for strength, god I have to say I'm not some little scrawny weakling, but I'm definitely not strong, and what kind of a name is 'Canterlot' anyway.

They stood there for a little while, the blue one with a very thoughtful expression on its face, at least I think it was a thoughtful expression, who knows, maybe their expressions mean different things, but those big eyes and moving ears make for quite the expressive faces. Then The blue unicorn, God I have to find out its name sometime soon, asked another question. "How about intelligence?" Sight seemed surprised at this, before he began to contemplate for a bit,
"Well, I'd have to run a test on him, but from what I can see, he is smarter than most humans, you can tell he's studying us right now." Oh, so they weren't completely ignoring my face, that's good, or is it bad I wonder? The red one, who I could now see had wings, again, sure, why not? Chimed in here "and it only took one shock to get him to learn the rules." Blue seemed to like this answer as a small smile spread across her face, "Smart enough for that special order?" Sight looked at me again, I wish he'd have a face other than studying and lecturing. "Probably, again I'd have to run a test to make sure but I think it would work." Blue brightened up at this, with a smile I definitely did not like. "Perfect, run those little tests then, this should fetch us a whole load of bits." With this blue turned around and trotted off while the Pegasus went back to her post, and brown picked up a very nasty looking prod with his glowing telekinesis thingy. "Alright be a good little human and you wont get another shock," oh, so that's the shock prod OK, well behaved human it is.

The cage door was then pulled open by more of the brown glowing magic, sure, I'll call it magic, nothing else seems to fit, before I was covered in said glowing magic thingy and pulled right out of my cage. Despite myself I attempted to struggle against it as I was lifted right out of the cage, but struggling prove useless and only seemed to amuse the unicorn as he began shaking me slightly in the air, and that was most definitely deliberately. We went into another train carriage getting me a brief glimpse of the country side, which we were moving by at an alarmingly fast rate, and I was plonked down in the middle of a mostly empty room with a few boxes along the sides. Browny walked back a bit still holding the shock prod in his magic, which seemed a bit of overkill to me since he could pretty much just pick me up and throw me around whenever he wanted to, whatever, I was just glad I wasn't being held in his magic stuff anymore.

Sight then walked over to me a small box and a clipboard, before setting the clipboard down and opening the box, pulling out a medium sized tube too small for my hand, but only a little bit, two bags, a jug of water and what looked like a nut of some kind, all somehow managing it with hooves. Then he half filled the tube with water, before placing the nut in it, the nut ending up floating on top of the water, he then emptied the two bags revealing some smooth stones and, some plastic looking little balls, before dropping one of both in the tube, I feel I need to point out he was doing this slowly so as not to 'confuse me' I would guess.

Anyway by this point I already new what this test was, I'd seen in in documentaries, so I wasn't surprised when the stone sank to the bottom and the little piece of plastic floated on top. Perhaps I should point out where I'd seen this test, it was used on little children who just started walking, and orangutan's, they were doing monkey testing on me. Sight then pushed it all towards me before backing off a bit, now I knew the answer, and I didn't need that documentary to tell me, you just drop in all the stones and eventually the nut will float up into grabbing distance, but something told me that showing just how smart I was would be a bad idea. So I decided to play it a bit dumb, my ego wouldn't let me deliberately fail this, so I slowly crawled forward and attempted to grab the nut first, then I picked up one of both and dropped them in, then dropped one of both one at a time, then took the stones and dropped them in one by one until the nut floated up to easy grabbing distance.

All the while Sight was quietly watching while writing down some notes on the clipboard, how he did that with his mouth, I have no clue. After getting the nut I bit into it, finding it was one of those shelled nuts, fortunately the shell was weak and cracked in my mouth, then I studied the now revealed nut for a moment, before shrugging and chomping it up in one bite, not bad, could use a bit of salt. Then I noticed Sight was still taking notes on me, probably reading my small expressions, damm, I need to be more careful around him.

After this Crowny took me back to the cage, where I just lay there for a while before I had to do my business, and no, they didn't provide a bucket, I had to do it in the corner, although looking around I saw that none of the other humans bothered with this though, they just did it wherever. So I was almost glad when they sprayed us all with a blast of icy water, I say almost because I was nearly asleep at that point, and that icy water kept me up for another hour. But eventually I did manage to get to sleep, so ending my first day on this hellish train ride.

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This train ride went on for, I don't know, a few more weeks, long enough for me to grow a beard, and throughout this train ride the same pattern as the first day tended to happen, get fed, take tests, do shit, get wet, so on. But some days the train would stop and the ponies would unload some humans while loading some new ones on. The new humans would often bang against their cages even after their first shock and it often only be by the third or forth zap that they'd finally shut up. I also happened to bear witness to some particularly nasty events such as branding an neutering. The branding involved taking an often struggling human, they seemed to somehow know what was going to happen to them, tie them down, and take a very hot piece of shaped metal, then burning it into the humans skin, twice, those shrieks were nightmarish. As four neutering, I really don't wanna go over that, although I will say that it was done with a pair of what looked like garden shears, oh, and they always did it in the centre of the carriage, which happened to be nearly right in front of me, that was nice.

The tests, meanwhile, gradually got harder and harder, sometimes accompanied by vocal commands, usually involving some kind of puzzle to get to some snack, the nut wasn't very tasty, but it was food, and they only fed us twice a day with that gruel. I was more careful, now though, I kept my expressions to mostly blank, like the other humans, who seemed limited to blank face, angry face, and scared face. And for the tests that required me to seriously think for a bit, I managed to swallow my pride and fail them on purpose, every time Sight would sit there taking notes, sometimes I would see him talking the Blue, and those conversations would almost always involve them gesturing at me somewhat.

So with that the trip pretty much went in a kind of routine, with a few exceptions such as the occasional new pony would take an inspection us humans, picking a few out to take home. There was one instance where a griffin wandered the train a bit picking its humans out, and all the feral humans, as I had taken to calling them, cowered at the back of their cages in fear, though I can hardly blame them, between the obviously predatory features and the way it hungrily licked its lips as it watched the cages, I assumed this thing ate humans, hell I cowered at the back of my cage, how did I know it was a griffon, well it was half eagle, half lion, and I played Warcraft 3. Sometimes these guests would point at me, only for Blue to shake her head every time, much mine and the guests disappointment, except for that time with the griffin, I was glad she said no to that thing.

Eventually though, it seemed that Blue made her decision, they had just washed us all out when blue and the whole gang met up in front of my cage, when Blue started talking, "OK, so Silver Sight's ran his tests, and this human should fit the bill for Mr Star Shine's order, its smart, its strong and its docile and so now, its sold, agreed?" The other ponies murmured amongst themselves for a while, but they all nodded in the end, good, this meant I was getting off this train. Blue then put on her more scary smile, sending alarm bells ringing in my head. "OK, good, Sandstorm, get the brand," the Brown one, who shall now be known as Sandstorm walked off to get the... wait, did she just say brand? FUCK!

I began crawling too the back to the cage wanting to get as much distance between me and those ponies as possible, Blue seemed to enjoy this as she chuckled rather evilly if I do say so myself, and began making mock clicking noises with her tongue, "come here boy, I wont hurt you, much." Needless to say this did not improve my mood as I began scrambling even more desperately, Blue just laughed at this before opening the cage with her freaky blue magic, and then grabbing me in said magic. I tried to hold on to the bars, I tried really hard, but I was eventually pulled off to my despair and ever rising panic, I began clawing at the cage bars, but still nothing. I was pulled out to the centre of the carriage by what must definitely say was a psychotic blue unicorn, before roped began to bind me to the small metal loops in the middle of the room, I struggled as hard as I could, but that only seemed to make blue laugh even more as I was tied to the floor. Sandstorm came back holding a long metal pole with a five pointed star with little lines coming out from it on the end in his magic, oh, and that star and lines, were all red hot.

I was in screaming already casting longing glances at my cage, never before had that cage seemed so good, then something hard was shoved in my mouth, something hard, but chewy. As Sandstorm came to a stop and brought the brand to my thigh the only logical thought I could think was bite hard as I braced myself. You know, whenever I read about this sort of thing in books, I always imagined it be a bit like the time I accidentally burned my thumb on the metal of the frying pan, well, I can safely say its much worse. I could feel my skin sizzling for a moment, before it was replaced with just agonising burning pain. I managed to not scream, biting down on, whatever it was in my mouth as hard as I could, but God, that was painful. As I lay there breathing hard, and congratulating myself on my willpower that allowed me to not scream, (ironic, considering the fact that I had been screaming before they branded me) when Blue said something that made my heart stop, "Now the other side." I once again tried to struggle as sandstorm heated the brand up once again, and again I found my struggles were useless and so far succeeding only in rubbing my wrists and ankles raw, and then the brand came down again. I bit down hard again, but this time, I screamed, the sizzling sound reaching my ears, pain was all I could think of, pain, pain and more pain...

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I woke up to a throbbing sensation in my thighs, I groaned and sat up, or at least tried to, before a fierce lance of pain struck both my legs and I grunted in pain as I fell back down. After breathing for a bit longer I sat up just using my arms and looked at my legs, oh right, that. Well the branding worked, I now had two dark brown marks on my thighs, both five pointed stars with about ten lines shooting off from it. I groaned to myself, at least they didn't neuter me, I don't want to know how that would have felt like. "Well, at least it doesn't hurt when I'm not moving them, if I just sit like this I should be fine," sadly I had woken up just in time for the bath, so even as I finished that thought, I was blasted with ice cold water, sending spikes of pain from my new markings, I instinctively placed my hands over the marks, but that just resulted in more pain, so I screamed again.

"Awww, did somepony get the ouchies?" I turned my gaze up from my scarred legs to see, yup, Blue again, I so badly wanted to tell her to fuck off, but as my voice wasn't working, I settled for growling at her. "Ha ha, it looks like you still have something left in you, good, we'll be there tomorrow, hopefully your legs will be better by then." I just glowered at her, imagining her skin nailed to a wall, her insides splayed out, she just sneered back at me. "I just wanted to give this to you personally, I know you've been through a lot lately, so I thought I might cheer you up." I looked down to see another bowl of gruel floating in her magic grasp, I almost didn't take it, but I was starving, so I settled for a moments hesitation before snatching the bowl and scarfing down its contents. Blue just smiled at this, "well well, aren't you a hungry animal, no 'thank you' either," then she fake harrumphed and walked away, that creepy smile on her face, but what she said got to me, I looked down at myself, covered in green gruel, naked, cold, filthy, I certainly looked like an animal, had she reduced me to one?

So with that thought in my head, I cradled up to sleep, repeating to myself "I'm Human, I'm human, I'm not an animal, I'm Human," but as I looked around myself at the other cages, filled with huddling up feral animals, I started to wonder to myself, was there really a difference?

Chapter 2

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This time I was woken up, again, by an icy blast of water, and again, pain lanced up from my new markings because of it. So as I yelped myself awake, feeling both the icy cold and the burning pain, I was reminded again of the events yesterday. I gently ran my hand over my leg, wincing as I felt the markings, it didn't hurt so much anymore though, at the very least it was now bearable.

I heard some more clopping of hooves as I looked up to see Blue opening my cage before she grabbed me in her magic. "Time to go, no funny business now, you hear me?" Now if it weren't for the shock prod she held in her magic, I would have been tempted to try something, probably ending with me pinned by magic again, but God, did I want to gut her. However the added incentive of said shock prod left me to growling at her as she carried me out to the end of the carriage before plonking me down if from of what looked like a door.

There Sandstorm sat watch with another shock prod while Blue and the Pegasus rounded up more humans from different cages then plonking them down with me, they did this for a while longer till there were about fourteen humans total all sitting down with me. Then they took out a long chain with a bunch of steel collars attached before clasping the collars on all us humans. Some of the humans, myself included, struggled a bit as they put the collars on, but in the end it was pointless, but I suppose I already knew that.

Anyway after the collars were all attached, the doors to the outside were opened rather suddenly, temporary blinding me, and probably some other humans as we all baked away from the blinding light. Sandstorm was having none of that though, snarling out, "get moving," to us before using the shock prod on one of the feral humans. Now the problem here is that steel is a great conductor for electricity, and as we were all connected by steel chains and collars, all of us felt the shock. I clutched my chest as the electric current went through me, fortunately I was near the front and I think the shock was near the back, or maybe I'd just gotten more used to it, whatever the reason, it didn't hurt nearly as much as the first time, so I recovered quickly.

Not quick enough for Blue though, she tugged on the front of the chain, dragging me and a few other humans forwards so that we fell flat on our faces. "Hurry UP!" We scrambled back onto our feet as we were then led forwards off the train carriage, and I finally saw the outside properly for the first time in weeks. We had stopped at a proper train station, would you believe it, and in comparison to the dark train carriage, this place was almost painfully colourful. The station was a mix of creamy whites, and greyish greens, and even a bunch of Great big clocks, and the architecture reminded me of those old train stations in New York, the ones in the movies, I think, never been there myself, as for the ponies, well the ponies, where do I begin, there were so many. They were in just about every colour you could imagine, blue, red, yellow, white, pink, everything, and most of them seemed to be wearing some sort of clothes, although it seemed very mix-match, some had full jackets and tuxedoes, some wore just collars or scarfs, there were hats too, and some of the ponies even carried cameras.

Many of the ponies stopped to look at us as we were shepherded out of the train towards the exit, but most of them ignored us, and, looking around I saw that there were humans here too, carrying bags or even just following the ponies on leashes. In fact, every single human in the station that wasn't in our little chain gang was on a leash being dragged around by on stuck up pony or another. I could only really steal glances at them as we were pushed out into the daylight, the city itself, was strange. It looked a bit like one of those old cities you see in films and documentaries, the ones set in the 1930's-40's, a mix of glass and concrete, with lots of fancy arching buildings all around the place, all in the same style, If it weren't for all the ponies I could have sworn I had been transported into 1930's New York. As we turned off and began walking along the path towards what looked like a lake, I was struck by even more similarities, the roads were filled with carriages that seemed to share a style with those really old cars, only pulled by other ponies, wonder how much the got paid for that, and there were hot dog stands, selling carrots instead of sausages, that was just weird, pizza stores, again, no meat, and loads of fancy looking hotels.

Most ponies gave our group a wide berth, but otherwise ignored us, some would point and murmur to each other, but otherwise we were left alone as we walked down the street towards the harbours of this city. The ponies who were herding us would only occasionally shove us forwards and would sometimes walk up to each other have short talks, but the walk pretty much was made in silence. So as we continued down I was able to think about my current situation for a bit, the brands on my legs still stung, but otherwise they seemed to stop hurting, so that was a plus, and from all that had happened it looked like I was getting sold here, but I just had to wonder, to who?

<--------<Star Shine>-------->

Star Shine huffed as he pushed his way towards the Manehatten docks, past the massive crowds of pedestrians, thoughts running wild in his head. Just yesterday he had received a message from Midnight, that his special human delivery, the one he had ordered EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO! Was finally ready, but she wouldn't deliver it to his home, nooo, instead, he had to walk all the way to Manehatten harbour to pick up his late delivery, when he could be doing his research instead! But if this worked, he would never have to waste time in this sort of errand again, so despite himself he had left his isolated tower and come all the way to Manehatten, but now the city seemed intent on reminding him why he didn't stay in cities in the first place.

The traffic was a nightmare, ponies were walking all over the place and on the roads there seemed to pass one coach every second! Right now he was waiting at the side of the road for a break in traffic big enough for him to cross, and judging by the crowd, or lack thereof, he had just missed one such gap. Tapping his hoof impatiently, he had to wait for a full minute to cross the road, grumbling as he went by. Star Shine liked to consider himself a pony who was always on time, never late, never dawdling, but it seemed like today he would be just that, LATE! Star Shine continued to grumble to himself as he walked along, on the bright side he only needed to be there before they left, which, unless he somehow managed to spend two hours walking down five blocks, he should manage, still, Star Shine, late, it put him in a sour mood.

<-----------<Jacob>----------->

You have got to be kidding me, seriously, just when I thought nothing else could surprise me, this comes up, and its not a scary surprise, its just stupid. We have reached the harbour and for a while now I had lost interest in the water, aside from a few ferries it was just empty water, but then I saw it. In the middle of this great big spot of water there was a small island, and on that island, the dumbest thing I had ever seen, it was the statue of Liberty, but with a pony instead of a human, granted he wouldn't expect a statue of a human in this world, but why was there even a statue of liberty here? What was it for? I seriously doubt I'd ever get some answers, but, god, it was frustrating seeing that, frustrating and stupid.

Anyway ignoring that strange statue, it seemed like we had finally arrived at our destination, we were in a small market area, but this small market seemed to sell only humans. There were ponies on stands shouting "look at this human!"
"Isn't this human strong?"
"How much for this one of a kind northern human?" You know, usual marketing. We moved over to one such stand, where we were shoved into a large cage at the back which was clearly built to hold more humans than this, in which our collars were removed and the cage locked behind us. As the ponies started setting up their own stand we were left to our own devices, the feral humans seemed to mill around a bit, not really knowing what to do, some tugged on the bars a bit while others just sat down. Me, I just sat down in the far corner, wanting to put as much distance between me and them as possible.

Now that I wasn't preoccupied with pain or shock, and now that I could see these humans properly, I began to understand a bit more about what they had said about me. These feral humans were much smaller than most people I'd ever seen, in fact I stood almost a full head taller than some of them, and if that were anything to base it by, then sure, I'd probably might be a bit stronger than some of them. But what struck me as odd was just how overwhelmingly dumb they seemed, they had pretty large skulls for their bodies, which should really make them just a little bit dumber than a regular human, but eh, what do I know, I quit human biology after multiple failures.

Eventually Blue seemed happy with her set up and, after scanning the crowd for a bit she gave the go ahead to Sandstorm. Sandstorm opened up the cage and grabbed the closest human in his magic, sticking a single collar and chain on it before dragging it out to the stand, waving the shock prod menacingly at the other humans. Then Blue went about the same kind of thing all the other speakers had been doing, eventually a small crowd of ponies had gathered and after Blue finally shut up, she asked for bidders and multiple hooves shot up. The whole thing reminded me of an auction, with ponies one-upping the prices of their fellow ponies one at a time until one pony's claim went uncontested, she walked up to sandstorm, passing him a bag of bits before she then happily took the human by its chain and trotted off. Sandstorm then took another human out in the same fashion and the whole thing started again.

I just sat there as the humans were sold off one by one, watching and listening. From what I could tell their currency was based on small gold coins called bits, and they threw the occasional gem in there, although they didn't seem to be worth that much here, and there were just so many gems. And I noticed that nearly all of these ponies appeared to be normal, with no horn or wings, I would hazard a guess and say that unicorns and Pegasus were the more rare types of ponies. Also I missed this on the way here, but when I looked up I saw the sky had large numbers of pegasi flying around, not as many as these normal ponies, but still, more than I had seen of any unicorns. so yeah, in terms of numbers the rarest ponies were unicorns, then pegasi, the normal ponies.

Just as my mind was reaching that conclusion I heard a shout from the crowd, which is saying something considering how loud this place was. "MIDNIGHT!" Blue looked up at this, although I couldn't tell if she was responding to the shout or just annoyed at the interruption, and as I followed her gaze I saw a Silver coated, grey maned unicorn with a rather grouchy face shoving its way through the crowd, earning it numerous glares from the other ponies. "Midnight! Get down here right now, I need to talk to you." Blue smiled at this, so I'll just assume her name is Midnight, and isn't that a strange name, I mean, who names their child after a time of day, what's next, a pony named Twilight? "Sure thing Star Shine, just meet me by the cage, oh and take your time would you, I won't have you disturbing my customers." The unicorn, Star Shine, seemed to grumble at this but he did slow down and walk slowly towards the cage while Midnight turned around and after a quick word with Silver Sight, headed down to meet him while Sight took over the auctioning.

As they headed over hear I got up and shuffled slowly over to the cage entrance, eventually I was close enough to listen in on the conversation. "...teen months Midnight, eighteen! I'd actually thought you'd forgotten about this order a long time ago, what was with the hold up?" Well Mr Shine seemed angry, and that order, that's a long time to wait for something.
"Relax Shine, I just couldn't find a human to fit the bill for what you wanted until now, none of them where smart enough." Shine just grumbled at this for a moment before he shot a suspicious glare at Midnight, "if that's the case then how do I know that this human really is smart enough?" Midnight just groaned at this.
"Look, Silver Sight ran the tests, this is one of the smartest humans ever seen according to him, and I can get you the test results if you're really that paranoid." Shine just continued to glare.
"You do that." Midnight let out a huff of exasperation before whirling around and walking up to sight who had just sold the ninth human when she reached him.

Meanwhile Shine looked at the cage, searching before his eyes fell on me, or, more specifically, my new markings. Then it clicked for me, so this was the guy I was supposed to be sold to, huh. As we just stared at each other for a bit, Silver Sight came up to Shine with his clipboard he had used when testing me before having a hushed discussion while once again, Midnight took over Auctioning. As they were discussing my test scores I saw that this Star Shine had a marking on his flank, in fact, it was the same marking I now had on my legs, a five pointed star with those lines coming out from it that you use in drawings to show light is coming from something, only his had colour, a much darker silver than his coat, with an outline too. Then another thought struck me, if this is the guy I've been branded for, then he was definitely the one who ordered it, so he's the reason for my brand new scars, all of a sudden, I'm starting to hate this guy.

Anyway after a bit of conversation Shine seemed satisfied and gave a nod to Sight, who walked back up to Midnight where the two once again switched places, Midnight came back, where Shine pulled out two bags of coin from, somewhere, I'm not quite sure where, and Midnight took it with a cheerful smile. Then she turned to me and pulled a collar and chain from, somewhere, before her smile became that creepy sinister one again, it made my insides shudder. The cage was opened and I again, found myself with a brand new collar and leash, wonderful.

She then passed the chain leash on to Shine who was quick to turn around and walk off, dragging me with him as we headed into the big city of ponies, the crowd parting to allow him to pass. I threw a glance backwards to see Midnight waving me off, before I shuddered, yup, I'm glad I'm not seeing her again, I almost fell over though as my glance had slowed me down and Shine gave my leash a hard tug. I scrambled back up to follow him, rubbing what little of my neck that wasn't under iron, before picking up my pace, lets see what this guy waited eighteen months for then, and hope he doesn't have any particularly painful plans for me, I threw a glance down at my brands, well, not any more painful plans.

Chapter 3

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Its time like this that I really miss shoes, and pants, and clothing in general, seriously would it have killed this gut to stop and give me something to cover up, I was cold and way to many mare were taking to staring at my crotch for my liking, and as for the shoes business, well walking halfway across a city and then all the way back in bare feet is very painful for said feet. It became even more painful when we stopped walking on the paved roads of the city and instead trundled along on a gravel road/path, my feet were well and truly bleeding at this point and I swear I had some bits of gravel stuck in my feet. But I kept walking since every time I tried to stop or slow down Mr Star Shine would juts keep pulling, so it was either this or get dragged on my face along this seemingly endless gravel road, so I kept walking, although my legs were tired enough that it seemed I might very well just fall over anyway.

Since Shine had 'acquired' me he had set a brisk pace through the city and then just kept walking, he didn't talk to me although he did talk to himself a lot, although it was in such a low voice that I could hardly hear him over the noise in the city, and at the moment I was too focused on the pain in my feet to even try and listen. I did get bits and pieces earlier though, and they worried me, a lot of his talk was rambling about the outrage of this city, how demeaning this was, how much he needed to get back to hi research, some of the typical elitist crap, but he often spoke about experiments too, experiments he had done, the results of this experiment, and, most worryingly, the experiments he was going to do. I sincerely hoped he wouldn't try any experiments on me but knowing my luck so far in this world, it was probably going to happen.

So we had been walking for, I dunno, a few hours now? When Star Shine finally turned off the gravely path to a much less used road covered in leaves and weeds poking up as well as the numerous cursed rocks. Curious and wanting to look at something other than my own bleeding feet I turned my gaze up to look straight ahead, and then a bit further up when all I saw were trees. Then I saw it, poking through the tree tops was what looked like the top of a large dull grey tower, with a very large, silver, five pointed star symbol on it, if this wasn't his home then I was a dancing walrus, odd choice of words, I know.

As we continued along the path the tower top was hidden in the trees again but when I looked down again I saw a large gate, with the same star symbol adorned on it, Tice as tall as me and almost the same length as a train carriage. As we neared the gate I took a look at the surroundings, the gate was attached to a reasonably slightly higher wall, coloured the same silvery grey as the tower, but covered in so much moss and vines that you could hardly see the original colour under all the green. Through the gate I could see a long, paved path, thank God, with greenery running alongside it and a handful of trees interspacing the grass.

At the end of the path was what I assumed to be the bottom of the tower, although I couldn't see the whole base due to the wall, it was the same colour as the top and had lots of Statues along it and carvings, most of them being the same 5 point Star, although some of them had a comet trail following them. The doors to the tower were extremely large, reminding me more of a gate than a door, and it too had those five pointed stars all over it, overkill much?

When we got near the gate they slowly opened by themselves as Shine strode confidently into the courtyard of his 'home,' the inside of the courtyard was pretty much what I imagined it to be, mostly grass with some bushes and an odd few trees. The Towers overall shape was an incredibly thick base, I'd estimate it to be around 40 metres, that tinned out as it rose up till about a third of the way up it reached its thinnest point at around half the width of the base, it then rose up at that same width before widening out a bit at the very top, speaking of which it was HUGE! This thing had to be around 150m tall! How much space did this guy need? All in all the whole place reminded me a lot of Isenguard, you know, before Sauroman turned it into an orc breeding pit, and of course dark silver instead of black.

Another thing to note was how empty the place was, at least the courtyard, I couldn't see any other humans or ponies at all, I was thinking a place this big would at least have a gardener, or maybe garden maintains itself magically, who knows? When we got inside we finally stopped and I just flopped on the cold hard ground. As I lay there with my aching legs and feet crying out in relief Star Shine seemed to be talking to himself for a bit about something as he attached my chain to the wall and walked off, musing to himself, not even glancing at me.

After a while of enjoying the sweet relief I took a moment to look around, the entrance of this tower certainly didn't disappoint from the outside, it was massive, all marble white and in a mostly square shape, it had two pairs of stairs leading up to a higher balcony ledge thing, the stairs with lush red carpets on them, around the room were lavishly decorated oaken door, two doors on each side on the bottom floor and three at the end of the 'balcony,' and one more below the 'balcony.' The walls were decorated in artwork and portraits of ponies who were, presumably previous owner of this tower, there were no windows in this room but there was plenty of light from numerous glowing orbs hanging from the walls, and a massive chandelier made of presumably glass.

I got up to look around before burning pain in my feet reminded me that I got more than aching legs from my long walk, so I slowly sat my back up against the wall before turning my leg so I could see the bottom of my foot, I've always been a very flexible person. The sight alone caused me to wince, my foot was covered in scratched and deep cuts, many of the cuts had small pebbles in them too, holding the cuts open too the cruel world. I didn't know much about health, but I did know that leaving those pebbles in my foot was just asking for an infection, and with what little I had seen from my new master, what with him pretty much causing this wound, I figured I'd have to pull them out myself. Now understand I wasn't thinking very clearly at the time, because if I was I wouldn't have gone straight to trying with my fingers.

<--------<Star Shine>-------->

Star Shine continued to mutter to himself as he entered the library of the Star tower, such unimaginative names his ancestors had come up with, and trotted over to a small statue sitting on a little table in the middle of the vast library. The statue was made of gold with small gems dotting its frame, mostly on the joints, the shape of the statue was that of a large lizard, but with more hand like front paws. Star Shine stopped in front of the table and turned his gaze up to the statue, "bring me every book on humans we have." The Statue did nothing for a moment before scurrying off towards one of the identical towering bookcases that lined the walls of the library. Shine watched the golden lizard grab seemingly random books from the shelves before bringing them back to the table and then scurrying off to grab some more. Shine realised that perhaps he had been a bit too broad and was about to rectify his command when a cry of pain from the entrance hall interrupted him.

Star Shine rushed back to the entrance hall to find the human holding its foot with one had while using the other had to seemingly dig into it foot, screaming in pain as it did so. He quickly grabbed the humans foot in his magic "STOP IT YOU IDIOT! Can't leave you alone for two second before you go about injuring yourself." Still holding the foot in his magic and ignoring the humans glare Shine inspected the humans foot, it was covered in cuts and scrapes and many of those cuts had bits of gravel in them, Shine thought about for a moment before facehooving, "of course human feet are weaker than hooves, now I'll have clean this up before it get infected." Shine glared at the human for a second before saying, very slowly "stay here and don't do anything," then he turned around and headed for the kitchen.

"Stupid humans being so fragile and stupid." Shine fished through the emergency medical supply box fishing out a bottle of disinfectant before returning to the entrance hall, "again, really?" The human was once again picking at its foot with its fingers before Shine yanked it away again a bit more forcefully than before, "now hold still." He held the foot up to get a good view at it ignoring the yelp of surprise from the human as it was dragged forwards, then magically grasped every single pebble in his magic and yanking the out of the humans foot. The human screeched out in pain but Star Shine didn't wait, quickly pouring the disinfectant on a piece of cotton he began dabbing it all over the humans foot eliciting more hisses of pain from the human. To finish it off Shine cast a quick and basic healing spell which caused the skin to grow over an seal all the cuts, it wouldn't remove the injury or pain but it would stop any infections, he then performed the same procedure on the humans other foot, again ignoring the humans cries of pain before dropping that foot as well.

"There, now be quiet and stop making and idiot of yourself," although he new it fell on deaf ears, the human might have gotten some of that sentence but the majority was out of its understanding. He stepped back to look at the human, before his face contorted in disgust, this creature was ugly, no wonder those Manehattinites dressed their humans up, if this was what was underneath all that clothing, he wouldn't have this thing walking around his house like that, fortunately Shine had just the thing. "Wait, here," not waiting to see if that thing even could acknowledge the command, Star Shine headed to the storage room.

There really wasn't much else to this storage room aside from storage, it was little more than a bunch of shelves lining the walls with multiple boxes and odd shapes over them. Shine made his way to the end of the storage room, which took a considerable amount of time, before pulling out one of the many nearly identical boxes, blowing the large layer of dust off the top before opening to make sure it was the right one, after nodding to himself in approval Shine headed back with the box in his magical grasp.

<-----------<Jacob>----------->

"Stupid fucking unicorn with fucking stupid magic," after Mr Shine had very painfully healed my foot and told me to stay put like a person would do to a dog, I had decided to test my newly repaired feet to pass the time, and despite looking healed when I tried to stand up it only felt slightly better, like someone had just covered my cuts in bandages, which meant it still hurt like a bitch. Still, at least I shouldn't get an infection, I'm not sure what level of medical expertise they have but with the way my new master had treated me so far, I wouldn't be surprised if he just amputated my limb if it got infected.

Eventually Star Shine came back holding a large cardboard box with his magic before dropping it rather loudly right in front of me, he opened the box before taking out some CLOTHES! Yes finally, even though they looked more like rags they were still clothes and that was a fucking relief to finally have something to cover up in, the clothes/rags were a dull brown in colour and there were two of them, a kind of sleeveless shirt and a pair of shorts, also the shirt had a silver star on the front and back of it. He also pulled out a silver collar with a bunch of blue gems attached to it, and that was it, bit of a big box for just some rags and a collar.

Then I felt myself being lifted up by his magic as he detached my collar and shoved my clothes/rags on, before clipping the new collar on, he put me down on my feet where I quickly dropped to my arse thanks to the pain in my feet. Sitting down I fingered the collar a bit noting a disturbing lack of a clasp despite seeing it get opened up, when Star Shine pulled something else out of the box, a little necklace with a similar blue gem on it to the ones on my collar, which he slipped around his neck.

Shine began what looked like tinkering with the necklace using his magic, holding up where he could see it and staring at it for a second, I briefly contemplated using this moment to try and attack him but quickly shoved it out of my mind, he was too far away for me to close without him noticing it and he could still very easily just grapple me with his magic. Of course me not attacking him didn't stop him from hurting me anyway, the gem on the necklace glowed red for a bit before I felt a burning pain in my head, and I curled up in pain against the wall clutching my head when just as quickly as it came, the pain just vanished. "Good, that works, now, get up and follow me or else that little burst will be the least of your worries."

I scrambled up at this command choosing to ignore the pain from me feet in favour of having no pain in my head, and stood to attention facing him, while I noticed that the gem on his necklace had gone back to blue again. Shine seemed surprised at my response before shaking his head slightly and then nodding more strongly, then his gem glowed yellow and he turned around to the door underneath the balcony.

I was quick to follow him as we passed through into a long hallway with more portrait's lining the walls, seriously how many of these paintings were even made? So we continued along this hallway all the way to the end where there was another door which led into a square shaped deep room with stairs along the wall leading into a near impenetrable darkness, ok that just screamed bad news. But this didn't phase Shine as he walked down the stairs with me stuck up at the top, for a moment that is.

As soon as Shine got about five metres away I felt a strong, irresistible tugging sensation around my neck dragging me forward into the dark. I desperately grabbed at the railing as I was dragged down but to no avail, so I was forced to just keep moving my legs to avoid falling face forwards down a stairway, which is an experience I wasn't very interested in trying out. I looked down and felt around my neck to try and get a clue as to what this irresistible force was coming from, but my hands just felt the collar with nothing attached and all I could see was a yellow glow, wait what?

As I wondered what other surprises this magic collar would have for me we eventually came to a stop after spiralling downwards two full turns we came to a large metal door. It had some writing on it but I couldn't make it out in the dark but that didn't bother Star Shine so either ponies had super night vision, which I wouldn't discount with those abnormally large eyes, or, and more likely, he had come to this room with a reasonable amount of regularity, not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. So he shoved open the door which swung open without a sound, further supporting the regularity argument, and led into a completely dark room with no light coming from it whatsoever, again this didn't phase Star Shine as he trotted in and dragged his ever more reluctant human with him.

With the tiny amount of light from the stairway I could make out a dull grey floor and, wait, why is it getting darker. The door slammed shut behind us as I spun around and nearly wet myself, before a slight silver glow came from behind me, I spun around again just in time to be blinded, again.

So after rubbing the light out of my eyes for the second time today, a recurring pattern I was beginning to notice, I threw a glance around the room and my jaw dropped, the walls, floor and ceiling were all the same dull grey but that was just about the only dull thing about this room. First off, it was massive, much bigger than the entrance hall and I couldn't see the whole thing for all the random items in the way, and lets talk about those random things shall we, there were metal shelves lined with weird gizmos and random junk, and everywhere else there where wither large weird gizmos or the strange dummies, they looked a lot like those training dummies from video games, except they were mostly pony and griffon shaped, although I did see a few humans and strange bull/human dummies too, also most of them where broken, scarred or damaged in one way or another. There were also numerous scorch and scratch marks along the right wall, and there were some of the dummies set up in what looked like firing ranges, although the weapons looked mostly like strange spears or bows, in fact, looking around most of the weird gizmos looked like weapons or armour of one form or another, worrying.

While I was staring at what looked ever more worryingly like a weapons development lab, albeit a very ancient and magical one, Shine had led me of to the wall on the left side of the room, I on this side there seemed to be more desks and less finished gizmos/weapons along with some other stuff, including a weird long, wide opened tube attached to the wall with a whole slew of wires and what looked like a fancies up dentists examiner thing, you know with all the little microscopes and stuff attached, only this looked less like microscopes and more like sci-fi lasers with large compartment slots, oh and the whole thing was all gold, this seemed to be our destination. Sight stopped right next to the machine before looking at me and staying "get in."
"Yeah, no thank you sir," was what I wanted to say, instead I settled for looking at it warily and taking a small step back, Shine just sighed at this and muttered something to himself before picking me up with his magic and dumping me in the tube and then closing the dam lid.

Fortunately the lid was mostly glass with a golden rim so I had light, so my pounding against it was slightly less desperate, although there was only a small blue glass hole in front of my face, a bit of a design flaw. Then I found myself pulled up against the lid, my face squeezed awkwardly to the side and putting an abrupt halt to my pounding while also managing to cover up most of my mouth and nose making it very hard to breath. Fortunately this only lasted a moment and I fell back down onto the lower half of the tube, seems like someone forgot to turn the dam collar off.

As I lay there nursing my bruised face I suddenly heard a kind of whirring sound from through the tube, before the little blue circle began to glow. I started pounding against the tube lid again with even more desperation, increasing even further when I heard a click from above the tube and the circle began glowing even more fiercely. Soon enough I was shouting out in panic, no words though since I still, even now, was unable to talk, and the glow grew even more and more, I closed my eyes in a futile attempt to shield them but the glow just seemed to go straight through my eyelids, then there was a blinding flash of blue light and my world became pain

Chapter 4

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<--------<Star Shine>-------->

Star Shine growled in irritation as the screams of pain form the human kept piercing his ears, he knew he should have sound proofed that thing. The device was one which he was especially proud of, he called it the Intelligence Transferrer, and he had made it by modifying the memory restoration spell and his magical energy focuser. The Tube itself was just to hold the 'patient' in place whilst it goes to work, although the gold it was made of was to keep the magical energy further focused and powered, the real work, was from the device that was attached to the arm above the tube. Using the focusing lenses which where able to better focus, aim and empower the magic for direction, a small orb above it containing the spell he was focusing, launching his modified memory restoration spell into the human.

The orb contain a modified version of the memory restoration spell, where, instead of memories, it inserted raw knowledge, in this case, a clear understanding of written and spoken equish, but this knowledge was worthless without the sufficient brainpower, so the key modification was a wipe of a non-important section of the brain and converting it into a processing function, as to what part of the humans limited brain it would wipe, he didn't know for certain, it wouldn't wipe anything he needed to survive, and wouldn't wipe his memories unless absolutely necessary, that could have major side effects.

Eventually the screams came to an abrupt halt as he assumed the pain had become too much for the human now, good, that should keep it asleep for a while. Shine headed back upstairs to the library, he'd need to make the last few arrangements before he cold relax, "it's almost over, this menial work is almost finished, soon I won't need to do anymore of this," were his thoughts before he turned into the library and stopped still. In the middle of the library there was a gigantic pile of books taller that some of his smaller bookcases, he watched with his jaw on the floor as the little golden lizard climbed up the tower with a book in it tail to place it on top before scurrying away, oh right, he'd asked for books on humans, he didn't think there'd be that many though.

Shaking his head roughly Shine spoke up to the little lizard, "STOP!" The lizard stoped midway up the book mountain, another book clutched in its tail. Shine closed his eyes and lowered his head slowly, "Those stupid constructs, never know when to stop," truth was they still amazed Star Shine at their complexity, and the fact that they had been built during the time immediately before Discord's reign only increased his amazement. He'd studied them intently and looked as close as he dared at the constructs spell weaving, he'd take them apart if it weren't for the fact that didn't know how to replicate them. There were only seven left in the entire tower, where, if the tales of this place are to be believed, there were once hundreds.

Star shook those thoughts away, no use dwelling on lost glories, time to focus on the present, opening his eyes he thought for a moment before lifting his head to look at the construct again, "Okay, first, give me the best book we have on training humans, and then put every other book back where it was." The construct gave no sign of recognition, it just scrambled into the pile of books, before emerging a few seconds later, with a new book wrapped in its tail. It plunked the book at Star Shines feet before scrambling off to undo its long work.

Shine smiled to himself as he levitated the book in his magic "another good thing about constructs, they never complain, just work." He trotted back to the testing room, skimming through the book as he went, when he got to the testing room he walked over to the tube, listening in for anything that signalled the humans awakening, nope, nothing, so he wandered back to a nearby bench and began reading, he may have smartened this human, but it was still a beast, a beast that needed to remain tamed.

<-----------<Jacob>----------->

I awoke to a pounding in my head, again, I'm starting to think this world just wants me to feel pain as often as it can manage. I groaned before attempting to sit up, only for my head to meet some unexpected resistance, hard metal resistance, a loud almost gong sound rung out as I winced with the new pain lancing up my head, before leaning back down again, to lay my back on, more metal? Then the previous event came back to me and I opened my eyes in a panic, my eyes displayed their displeasure at this act by filling my head with even more piercing pain, and blinding me. But as I lifted my arm to cover them I was again reminded of why I had opened them in the first place, this time not moving my head and keeping my eyes closed, I began to pound against the metal tube, panic rising in my head yet again as I began to shout wordlessly and started kicking at the tube as well, it didn't budge.

Then the lid suddenly swung open, with my legs and arms flailing about in the air, I quickly scrambled out opening my finally clearing eyes as I threw my head about in panic, suddenly I felt a painful, yet chillingly familiar feeling of pain in my head. I flopped down on the hard ground again, screaming wordlessly in pain as I clutched my burning head. When it finally came to a stop I opened my eyes again, much more slowly to see Star Shine standing there, holding the amulet threateningly in his magic, "calm down and stop moving, or else you get another taste of that skullburn spell." "Skullburn," I filed that away for later as I threw my most hateful gaze possible at the unicorn, and it actually seemed to work for a bit, his ears twitched ever so slightly, before he regained his composure, "Now I know you can understand me, so follow me, or else you know what will happen."

Grudgingly I stood up slowly, glaring at him the whole time, but not attacking, he turned his back to me and headed to the exit, three strides, three strides and I would be right on top of him, but, no, it would be so simple for him to use that skullburn spell, too risky. So we climbed up those stairs into the entrance room, before he whirled around, with a great deal of speed, to face me. "Now, you are no doubt curious as to what has happened, so listen up. I have implanted within your mind the ability to understand what I am saying, and the ability to understand written words. I have here a list of your tasks around this tower, and another list of the rules you WILL follow the letter."

Sure enough he gave me two scrolls, pretty long scrolls as it turned out once I had opened them, the jobs scroll landed at my feet and rolled on for about half a metre. "Now got to work," and with an overtly dramatic turn around he trotted back to where we had come from, [why he didn't just give me these lists there and shooed me away, I have no idea. I decided to take a look at the scrolls, best find out why he had subject me to that painful and terrifying experience. The list was filled with some of the sorts of tasks you would hire a butler for, answering doors, receiving orders, ordering the usuals, though thankfully cleaning wasn't among my duties. So apparently he had made this extremely special order, performed a presumably expensive and definitely painful experiment on me, so I could be his butler?

Still I had very little to do and no real way of harming him so after throwing a quick glance up to make sure he was gone I decided I'd check this place out, and at the very least find a weapon. My first stop was the door he had spent the most time in, this was the second door on the left hand side of the lower floor, from the entrance, I walked over slowly before opening the door as quietly as I could, and saw a most confusing sight. It was a library, not unusual for big family inherited homes, as I assumed this was, in the middle of the room there was a small table, not unusual for a library, on the table there was a pile of books, also not unusual for a library, what was unusual was the little golden gecko trundling along with a large book in its tail. Just wow.

The Golden Gecko climbed up one of the numerous gigantic bookcases lining the wall, before plonking it in an empty slot, and then scurrying back to grab another book and repeat the process. I stood there for about five minutes before it finally stopped and just stood at attention on the table, facing me, with an unblinking stare, creepy. I just stood there for a few more minutes, before slowly backing away from the tiny metal moving lizard. Closing to door behind me, I decided to put this strange experience behind me, and explore the rest of the tower.

The other rooms revealed a large kitchen, noted for later, a storage room, and what looked like a servants quarters, although there was so much dust in the place I could be easily mistaken. I hope he doesn't plan on dumping me in there. I didn't go down those stairs again, too creepy, so I decided to explore the upstairs. The side doors for the balcony seemed to lead to a stairway and a bathroom, while the middle one lead to a massive hall, with actual balconies leading outside, a set of tables and chairs, a huge dance floor, and more balconies overlooking the place. Jeez and this was just the first two floors.

After exploring this place for a while, finding a small passage leading to the kitchen, a few more doors leading to the outside, some stairs to lead to the overlooking balconies, I'm sure they have some other name, because that's getting repetitive, and some hidden passageways, probably for servants. I went up the stair way afterwards, which turned out to be quite a long trip, there were studies, bedrooms, smaller 'guest rooms,' in the studies I found a few more golden statues, and while they didn't move at all, I got the feeling they could, given what I'd seen in the library. At the very top there was an observatory, along with ore balconies providing an overlooking view of the whole place, which I immediately took advantage off to survey the surrounding terrain.

The Tower was in the middle of a large forest, well, not really the middle I could see the forest went much deeper away from the city, which I could just make out, I could also see the ocean, and a few roads in that direction, but otherwise it was mostly forest. Looking directly down I saw that the courtyard which surrounded the tower was mostly free of trees, the odd few here and there being the exceptions, there was also only one gate, the one we came in from, there might have been a few secret doors but I doubt it. Escape wise it looks like it'd relatively easy to lose any pursuers, with it being a forest and all, downsides being I don't know how to survive in a forest.

As I was musing this I suddenly felt a very familiar tugging sensation on my neck, "not again." I spun around expecting to see Star Shine up here but he was nowhere to be seen, yet instead of pulling me into the floor it dragged me to the stairs before forcing me down the stairs. I hurried along as fast as I could, not wanting to fall down this extremely long stairwell, I rushed past the many empty floors, in fact, empty seemed to be the general feel of this place, wonder which bedroom is his?

After about two minutes of this mad scrambling whilst avoiding tripping on this incredibly long stairwell, I finally could pull out of the doorway, barely, and ran down to the lower floor where Star Shine was standing there, looking rather agitated from what I could see, what with the annoying tapping of his hoof on the floor. "Finally, where were you?" I just stood there for a moment before he continued "Doesn't matter, now listen here, you will be staying in that room there," pointing at the dusty probably servants quarters, "and more pressingly, the food stocks are low and I don't have enough round topaz's the mailmare will be here tomorrow morning so get to work." And then he turned around without another word, leaving me very confused.

How much food does he mean? 'Mailmare?' I'm really going to stay in that abandoned room? And most importantly, what in the hell is a round topaz? Still, I figured it would be best if I played along for now, at least look like I'm working, so I decided to check out the food first, I was hungry enough anyway. A search of the kitchen revealed a door at the back leading to a pantry/freezer place, sorta, like half the room was ice cold, while the other half was about room temperature. The place was, in keeping with the theme of this place, very empty, only little bits of food here and there, still I had pretty much no idea what I could order, so I just stuck to flour, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, no meat, wasn't sure how my 'master' would react to that.

Course I stretched the whole task along, less work for me then, and more time to plan, there was a very large selection of knives here, so the whole order took me about one hour, what, I stretched it out, and I couldn't find a pen or paper for about half an hour. After writing this up and making sure I knew exactly were the knives were I began searching for the mailbox, or wherever I was supposed to put thing, after about twenty minutes of searching it had gotten dark outside and I found the mailbox attached to the inside od the gate. So I decided to take advantage of the dark and the fact that I was 'searching for the mailbox' to search the wall, it turned out that as I had guessed previously, there were no secret doors leading outside, but there were a few doors leading to outdoor workshops and closets, with tools, benches and best of all, ladders.

I then found myself being dragged back inside about five minutes after dropping the mail off, courtesy of the collar, again, where Shine was once again waiting in the hallway next to my door with a small box in his magic. He magically shoved me inside my 'room' before throwing the box in after me, shouting "here's your dinner, now stay here." I had figured that I would be going to 'bed' before him so had already resolved to carry out my escape later tonight, so I opened to box to find out what my dinner was, surprisingly it was adequate, it wasn't the gruel from the train, it was a large slice of bread with water and, meat of some kind, so apparently he new I ate meat, I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised. I wolfed it down before sitting by the door and waiting.

<-------------------------------->

About two or three hours after he had shut me in here, I finally heard him go back up stairs to presumably his bedroom, I waited for about two more hours after that before I finally got moving, first test, see if this door was open. I reached my hand up to the door handle, which was the round type and made me wonder why they had round handles with their lack of hands, and ever so slowly turned it, then slowly pushed on it, the door opened extremely smoothly, much to my relief, "This guy's fucking arrogant to be leaving my door open," after that step two, I slowly walked along the very dark entrance room, which surprisingly had no windows, so I had to feel my way along one I'd reached the other wall.

Eventually I found a door and eased it open to look inside and find, two fucking glowing red eyes straight out of a fucking horror film, I just barely managed to avoid screaming as I fell on my back and began crawling away from the faraway glowing red eyes. After backing all the way to the other wall, at which point I huddled up and began shacking as I could till see those fucking red eyes even from this distance. Eventually I calmed myself down enough to notice that the eyes hadn't moved, they were little more than little red dots, so after burying my self preservation and my memories of those oh so few horror movies I had grown the spine to see I slowly stood up and walked back over to the eyes.

When I reached the door I decided in an amazing feet of stupidity and/or bravery to keep going, walking forwards as slowly as possible I closed the distance between me and the glowing red eyes, noticing at this point that they were at a lower level than mine, they came up to about my waist really. Then as I got closer I noticed a golden 'aurora' around the red glow, "no," I took much faster steps at this, close enough to make out the shape the eyes were attached too, it was the golden gecko, fucking really? Anyway, I still left the room as quickly and quietly as possible, closing the door behind me, even though I knew what it actually was, that little gecko was still creepy as hell.

I moved along the other way, to find the kitchen at last, with thankfully no creepy lights, although the open dark window was creepy enough, and grabbed my weapon, a large kitchen knife, excuse me if I didn't know its actual name, all I can say is that it was one of those regular but large knifes, not a butchers knife, and not a bread knife. I then headed upstairs, now you may wonder why I insisted on killing this pony, and I will say anyway that it wasn't entirely revenge (but that was a major part of it), I still had this stupid collar on, and I didn't know the range of the magic collar, I certainly didn't want to test it out, so simple solution, kill the stupid pony, take the medallion, and the magic collar is just a collar, now comfortable, but not head splittingly painful.

It took many tense hours of opening each door one by one, peeking in and then quietly moving on, and real creepy, the emptiness of the place and the huge lack of windows, made for another setting straight out of a horror film, but at the moment, freedom trumped fear. Eventually, well after I lost count of how many doors I had opened, I came up to another freaking identical door, and slowly opened it to find, a small shape inside the bed, excellent, a rather malicious grin came across my face, and so I failed to be suspicious of the incredible convenience of this whole 'escape' so far that what came next in hindsight shouldn't have really been a surprise. I placed my foot inside the doorway, slowly testing the ground and wincing at the slight creaking sound it made, before bringing the rest of me inside, then my head exploded.

Okay, not literally, but rather the same splitting pain I had felt when he had 'punished' me, and immediately fell screaming to the ground, remarkably, dropping and missing the knife in my pain-fuelled spasms. So I lay there screaming on the floor, clutching my head while it was filled with burning, splitting pain, but I still had enough sense of mind to recognise that it had started when I entered the room and the best solution was to get out of the room. So, till clutching my head, I scrambled backwards with my legs, scraping my back and arse against the floor, which as it would later turn out was wooden so that resulted in splinters, which I didn't notice at the time due to the pain in my head.

Eventually I made it out, where the pain did stop, but my head was still in ringing agony, and I was now noticing the splinters that had slipped through my rags into my back, but eventually I could notice other things, like the pony shaped figure standing in front of me. My vision cleared to allow me to see Star Shine, standing there with a shit eating grin on an overwhelmingly smug face, the kind the villain makes in those movies when he has the hero at his mercy, they dangerous kind. "Naughty, naughty, and here I'd thought I'd made you smarter, not smart enough I suppose." I growled at this and attempted to leap at him, I say attempted because by the time I had shifted my stance into a slightly pounce worthy stance/crouch, my head was filled with that same pain again, leaving my clutching my head again.

"Now now, lets be civilised about this, and perhaps we should discuss some of the rules and formally introduce the repercussions," he strode forwards and lowered his head to be mere inched from mine, but still kept some pain pressure on my head keeping me from doing anything other than clutch it in the vain hope that that will solve the problem. "First of all, don't try to kill me, or escape, it will result in nothing more than this repeat experience, and nothing you being dragged back to your room, secondly, if you leave the tower grounds, or any certain area that I decide upon, you will experience the same Skullsplitter spell until you return to wherever you had been." His voice was the kind you use on a child you've caught stealing some other kids snacks, condescending, over-exaggerated, slow, "now lets get you back to bed shall we?"

With that he picked my up with his magic and walked me all the way down the stairs again, bumping me against the walls 'accidentally', and constantly talking about him being a 'nice master' and that I shouldn't attack 'master' like his abused pet had attempted to attack him and so he beat it with a club, which was pretty much what had happened. When we got to the bottom floor he threw me back in the servants quarters before placing two something's on the wall just outside the door, "now you stay here, we have a busy day tomorrow." With that he slammed the door and headed off leaving me alone and in pain, that toss had not helped the bruising I had received on the way down, leaving me to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep.

Chapter 5

View Online

"Hurry up you, I don't have all day!" I grunted slightly at this, a massive, and heavy, cardboard box in my arms, who'd have thought crystals could weigh so much? This delivery had just arrived this morning, and after punishing me for not getting up in my sleep and grabbing this box before he was awake, he got me to run outside and carry it all the way down to the testing labs, and I know it was crystals because of the sounds it made when I moved it, why he didn't just pick it up with his magic, because he wouldn't get to punish me for being slow, obviously.

It had been five weeks since my first escape attempt, I had tried two other times, my most recent attempt I mixed it up by setting a trap at the bottom of the stairs, he had survived and set it to 'skullburn' if I so much as left my room. He had adjusted it to entering the stairway now, but the message had been made clear by now, I haven't attempted to kill him or even flee since then, he'd whipped me into obedience like a dog, and as much as I despised it, it had worked. I followed every command he gave, whenever he gave it, however impractical, and he still found reasons to punish me.

I was driven to my knees at this moment, a sharp pain in my skull, not enough to make be drop the box, but enough to get the point across, go faster. "Why not drop it on him, should be easy enough, and leave enough time to throttle him." Did I also mention he's driven me crazy? And not the kind of crazy obsessed over something, but crazy as in, hearing a voice in my head, a violent and sociopathic voice that always managed to suggest extremely gruesome, impractical and stupid ideas to me, "wouldn't work stupid, he'd have me screaming on the ground in seconds." I had also taken to talking back to this voice, probably not the best for my mental health but good god, I needed something to talk to.

So as my new internal 'friend' continued to spout increasingly gruesome ways of getting out of this and making Star Shine feel incredible pain, I got myself back on my feet and set off towards the labs again, Shine walking ever more briskly in front of me. Descending the stairs to the laboratory was hard when you're carrying a massive heavy box that obscures your vision, and believe me the tumble down the stairs would be the least of my worries if I did lose my footing. Still I managed to make it to the laboratory with only two stumbles, an improvement from my average.

We entered the laboratory passing through the massive collection of failed and inefficient experiments, I shuddered as we passed the tube that I had entered on my first arrival, that memory still fresh in my mind. "All the more reason to gut him!"
"And how exactly do you propose we do that?" I replied. Despite my arguments I was all for very painful ways of killing Star Shine, but I knew any attempt would be futile and result in more pain for me, which my inner psychopath seemed incapable of comprehending.

I was shaken from my internal argument by Star Shine, "put it over there next to the lance." I feel I should mention that his experiments, where all in weaponry or some other method of warfare, such as armour, shields and transportation, the lance was what he was using these focuser gems for, I didn't get all the details but basically the lance was a magic laser gun, using the focuser gems to, what else, focus a beam of magic into something far more deadly. It also relied on some form of battery storing magical energy, likely due to the fact that his primary buyers were non magical species, gryphons and minotaur's appearing quite regularly on his lists, they paid quite well too.

After dumping the box as carefully as it is possible to dump something I was shooed out to continue my jobs, after all I had a lot of work to do. Apparently Shine was throwing a party tomorrow and was inviting major business ponies and gryphons to attract more buyers, and I only found this out four days ago, so I was now having to rush around getting more foods, 'high class' party stuff and still manage my usual jobs, God it was tiring. Fortunately I didn't have to directly set this stuff up, turns out that golden lizard was one of several 'constructs' as Shine calls them set up all throughout the tower, not many mind you I think there were around thirteen of them total, and they were very receptive to any order given. Granted I had to write these orders down due to my loss of speech, still didn't know quite what that was about, still those constructs were creepy, and no, I couldn't order them to kill or hurt Star Shine, or any intelligent being for that matter.

So I had one construct cooking, and two more setting up all the party stuff, though I had to be very specific with my written orders, since they seemed to almost deliberately misinterpret them when ever the chance arose. And the does raise the question as to why I'm carrying the heavy boxes, mostly I thought it was because he was an arsehole, though the more logical part of me though it was because I would be gentler with such 'delicate' objects, probably.

I still needed the supplies though, and those were a pain, not the supplies themselves but the delivery pony that came with them, then there was the bell sound that accompanied someone at the gate, "speak of the devil, and she shall appear," least I think that's how that saying goes. I turned around and headed to the entrance gate, rather slowly I might add, see I wasn't the biggest fan of the mare who delivered our goods, though she was certainly one of my biggest fans, you'll get what I'm saying in a moment.

So I arrived at the gate in about four minutes too see the delivery, on the other side of the gate was six large crates and an empty, unhooked chariot, and in front of it all was the mailmare, Lightwing. She was a pegasus mare, with a bright green coat and a sky blue mane, her ass tattoo (I had by now learned that everypony had one of these, still didn't know why) was a trio of feathers arranged in a fan shape (the hand held variants), and she was small, like only just above my waist height small, most ponies heads cleared that level easily, so yeah small.

Light (the pony, its a nickname I took to using) looked up at me with a big smile, "Hi there big boy, great to see you again," now when I say she looked up, I don't mean at my face, see the reason I disliked this mare, despite her very cheery attitude, was her fascination with staring at my crotch, with a very odd expression no less. Now I hadn't been the most social person but I was intelligent enough to figure out why she was doing this, between that and the occasional overhearing's of her wanting to ask Star Shine if she could "borrow me," made me very glad that she either hadn't asked it yet, or Star Shine had said no. I just grunted back, I'm not quite sure if she knows whether or not I'm intelligent, I don't hide it but then I'm not exactly open with it, then again I am receiving the mail. I walked over and reached down to pick up one of the crates, now it was big, over one cubic metre in size, and very heavy, it's a wonder this little pegasus can carry it all in that chariot.

Light watched on rather intently with some increasingly annoying giggles as I went back and forth taking the crates into the courtyard before my deadline was up. See when the gate was open I had a few minutes where the skullburner to the outside was turned off to grab this stuff, Mr Shine took great lengths to make sure that I did all the work while he just stayed in his lab, at this rate I'd be the one greeting the guests for the party. After taking the crates inside the courtyard, I went to the small pouch of bits that Shine had placed next to the gate, or maybe one of his constructs, I just knew the payment was always right there when a delivery came, I was tempted to steal some of the money just out of spite, but no, better make sure he has as few reasons as possible to use his stupid skullburner.

"If we drag her in we could end her right now, quick and easy just a little snap," tempting, but no, she wasn't an arsehole, just a pervert, not worth it for another skullsplitter, didn't make her any less annoying. I handed her the bag as she slowly sifted through it, making way too many glances up at me while doing so. Eventually she seemed satisfied before nodding her head, "yup, everything seems in order here, see you later," she said with a wink before latching herself back on the chariot and flying off. I just rolled my eyes before dragging the crates back inside, Shine never helped, and no, I couldn't poison his food the constructs always seemed to know, and then somehow reported it to Star Shine, ensuring more punishment, I chalk it up to magic, really hating that stuff.

<-------------------------------->

I was standing next to the front door as quietly as possible, standing stock still as I watched the gate for a sign of movement, Star Shine standing just in front of me gazing out to the gate with a scowl on his face, come to think of it, that seemed to be his standard expression. It was the day of the party and I had, just barely, managed to get everything finished, I'd even managed to get those presentation booths set up that he told me about literally just five hours ago, its like he was trying to get me to fail, then again, that did seem to be a possibility.

Shine was wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo, made for a pony, it was a deep black with a silver tie, or grey, hard to tell really, and he had also done something to his mane, it was all smooth and silky now, myself, well I finally had some decent clothes, he'd given me some long brown pants, with a plain lighter brown shirt. No shoes still, but my feet had healed, or at least gone so numb I didn't feel any pain from them, so that wasn't a problem.

Where was I? Oh yeah, waiting, we'd been standing here for, I think, half an hour now, and I was getting fidgety, I didn't dare move though, I had orders to stand still, so that's what I'm doing. Eventually the first guests arrived, I saw movement at the end of the courtyard as I stood up straight as possible, wonder what it was, Shine seemed relieved that something was happening, I think he actually slouched a bit, dick. Then the guests stepped into the light and they were, oh boy, griffon's five of them, although two of them looked more like bodyguards. The lead griffon was an older looking male with white feathers, the ones on his head arranged in a very tall plume, and wearing one of those fancy suits that Victorian generals used to wear, a red one, complete with a strap across his torso, if he has a British accent I'm going to punch something. On his left was a younger female griffon, also white feathers but with yellow tips, she was wearing a blue dress? Yeah that what I'm going with. And on the right of the centre griffon was another male, this time with red highlights, and wearing a more identifiable dark blue suit.

Shine nodded to them as they came up the stairs, "greetings Whitewing, glad to see you made it." The griffin, Whitewing, nodded slowly, barely glancing at ,me as he looked around the inside of the tower.

"Yes well, I wouldn't want to miss your new, 'revolutionary' weapons now would I." I should note that he sounded very sceptical as he said this, he then waved one claw to the other male griffon, "I believe I have yet to introduce you to my children, this is my son Stormtalon," the blue suit griffon bowed slightly before Whitewing gestured to the female, "and this is my daughter Quickclaw." Quickclaw didn't acknowledge this, she just ran her eyes up and down my body with a look that said, "I want to eat you, literally," and making me very uncomfortable. Eventually she turned her attention to Star Shine, bowed her head, and followed her father into the tower after receiving a few directions from Star Shine, much to my relief.

It wasn't much longer before the next 'guests' arrived, three big minotaur's strode forwards through the gate, and boy were they big, I came up to about halfway up their chests, and one of them, a really big one, was nearly twice as tall as me, now I'm not exactly tall, but I'm not short either, I consider myself just under average height. They strode up with the middle one of this threesome, a very elderly looking minotaur with a long almost white beard who still looked like he could snap me like a twig, introducing himself as Long Horn which seemed rather accurate given that his horns were almost as long as my arm, and the other not gigantic minotaur was introduced as Sharp Wit, wow, where do they come up with these names. The really big guy didn't get an introduction so I'll assume he was a bodyguard although I do question why these giants needed bodyguards.

For the next near half an hour more and more guests arrived including more griffons and minotaur's, some strange bipedal dogs, and zebras, really, zebras, who'd have thought. So after that we went inside to the 'party' closing the gate and door behind us, I suppose anyone else just won't get to come in, to bad for them being late. So entering the, well I suppose party hall is as good as any name I can fit into this, so entering the party hall The guests were just standing around, a few of them talking to others but most just stayed with the group they came in with, some were outright glaring at each other, at least they appeared to enjoy the food. So while Star Shine went off to mingle with the guests, I just stood here wondering what to do, looking around the place watching as the golems ran back and forth picking up empty plates and bowl before replacing them with new filled ones.

Then I noticed Quickclaw looking at me again and decided that now would be a good time to check out the exhibits, "coward," well you'd run too. So I quickly rushed behind the curtains surrounding the exhibits and saw, a completelty different set up to what I'd put up, he would have only had a few minutes to set this up himself, how?

"Why do I get the feeling he could have done this all himself very easily?" Probably because he could, arse. What was on display, well a few of his lances, looked like he thought he'd figured that out now, some small golden orbs, and a large gold shield with a small gem inside, wonder what that was supposed to do, there were also a few crates which I assume had other items in them. I didn't have anymore time to look around before I heard a rustling noise from the curtain. Thinking fast I quickly ran up behind one of the target 'walls' and hid for my life "cowa-"

"yeah yeah I'm a coward now shut up." I quietly peeked my head around to see who it was, Quickclaw? She'd fllowed me in here, creepy! "Take one of the weapons and gut her with it," I thought about it but, well, best case scenario, I grab a weapon, somehow figure out how to use it, shoot the griffon, then curtains open and Star Shine Skullburns me, not a good outcome. So I settle for hiding as Quickclaw warily looks around, as if expecting someone to follow her, before she slowly strode towards one of the crates, so she wasn't following me? Well that's a relief, but then what was she doing here?

That was answered when she opened one of the crates, very slowly might I add, before slowly picking up an orb like the ones on display, so stealing, but why would she steal an item that she's about to but anyway? "A better question is, why do you care?"
"Eh, good point." She placed it inside her dress, which seemed very odd on her, before glancing around, looking at my hiding place for an agonisingly long few seconds, before turning around to head out. Of course then the universe had to fuck with me, my collar decided to play tug of war with me right now. I was yanked from my hiding place and forced to stumble forwards to the curtain, while the griffon just stood there gawking, as I rushed past her and burst out of the curtain. I found myself shoved through a large group of minotaur's, bipedal dogs and griffons, seriously, I couldn't piss off the zebras?

Fortunately the worst I got was a minor scratching from one dogs claws before I was safely beside Star Shine, boy never thought I'd ever be glad to be near Shine. Star Shine was once again tapping his hoof on the ground impatiently waiting for me, "there you are, where have you been? Doesn't matter, set up the lights, its time to begin the exhibit." And then he trotted off towards the stage, I went to the back, my role in this is to just really shine the lights and keep an eye on everyone while the show was going on, not sure what I was supposed to do if I did notice anything but still. "Should I tell him about Quickclaw?"
"So now you want to help him?"
"Good point." Besides, its not like I had any realistic way of telling him bout that. So I made my way up to one of the balconies overlooking the hall, setting myself up next to the light controls, which looked freakishly modern next to all the classical style curtains and clothing, and waited. Eventually, after all the guests had gathered and Shine had completed some speech of some kind about the great quality of his work and whatnot, the curtains opened, I switched on the lights, and, with nothing else to do, watched the show.

<--------<Star Shine>-------->

Star Shine felt a small feeling of satisfaction as his human turned on the lights to reveal his stunning new work, the scorcher orbs weren't much, but the magi shield lance were some pieces he was sure would sell for millions. He cleared his throat, "welcome, welcome all, I'm so glad you came here today to view my newest pieces of magical weaponry, I have many works here today which I'm sure will catch your attention, so lets not waste time shall we?" He turned around to levitate one of his Scorcher orbs to him, it was an unassuming little golden orb, with no noticeable features, but then, that was the design.

"This here is one of my newest projects, the scorcher orb, now I know it doesn't look like much, but believe me, that is the intention, so now, observe its use." Using his magic he slightly twisted in half of the orb until it turned red, before hurling it at one of the target dummies he had set up, the orb sailed through the air before colliding with the dummy, and upon impact the orb exploded with a fiery blast. Shine turned back too see expressions of awe on the faces of the majority of the guests. He chuckled to himself for a bit before continuing, "now imagine yourself, on the battlefield, the enemy his holed up inside a house, or under a bunker, an assault would be costly and highly difficult, but if you just toss one of these orbs in, boom, problem solved." He was glad to see numerous heads nodding in agreement to this statement, perfect, now on to stage two.

Shine reached out with his magic again, lifting up one large lance next to an even larger shield, "now this here is a piece of work I have been attempting to complete for some time now, but I think you'll soon see, the results were worth it." Star Shine then pointed the lance towards another particularly large testing dummy, this one complete with armour, before his magic gripped the trigger on the lance handle. "Now I call this particular weapon, the flare lance, behold its power," then he pulled the trigger, a bright red beam of energy shot out from the lance tip, heading straight towards the dummy, the impact was devastating. The lance beam seared straight through the armour of the dummy, and then turned the dummy into a heap of molten metal, Shine then turned back to his audience, "now this is a result that has been available and known to m for some time now, but the previous problem with this is that the lane burns up a lot of magical energy, and in my experiments to solve this, I found a solution that could very well hold up on its own."

He then gently placed the lance on the ground, before turning around and lifting up the large shield next to it, "I know this seems very unoriginal, but the trick with this shield is not the shield itself, but the gem in the middle of it," he said, pointing at the gem in the process. "This gem, is currently draining magical energy from the air around it, before sending it to another orb in the lance, this is maintaining a constant recharging power supply for the lance, the biggest trick however." He lifted up the shield, and twisted a small ring on the inside, the gem went from bright green, to dark blue, then suddenly it fell to the ground with a thud.

He turned his head back to his audience, pleased to see looks of surprise on the faces of his guests, "what just happened there, is that the gem went from draining the raw unused magical energy around it, to now draining all kinds of magic from the surrounding area, active and inactive." He grinned at this, "so not only does this shield block physical attacks, but it will now block magical attacks as well, or indeed, any magic of any kind, no need for rune specific armour, you can just pick up one of these shields whenever you must fight a magically attuned foe," he now had their absolute attention, including, strangely enough, his human too, who seemed to be leaning very far forwards over the balcony. "And best of all, all the magical energy that is drained, will automatically be sent to the lance, granting it even more power." The whole room was silent, nopony spoke, Shine cracked a large grin, "well then, lets move on to the next object," as he turned around to pick up the next object, and show it to the audience.

[center<----------4 hours later---------->]The tower was silent, all the doors in the entrance hall closed, no movement, no sounds, at least at first. One of the doors opened quietly and silently, before a tall figure crept out, walking along as silently as possible, ignoring the two great big staircases, and entering a small door between them. Jacob crept along the hallway, ignoring the silent stares of the nearby paintings, reaching the end of the tunnel before descending the steps in complete darkness, but he'd walked down this path blind enough times to know the way. He reached the large door to the laboratory, before creeping inside the dark room.

After a few steps in the lights came on, much to Jacobs shock, fortunately, no-one was here to notice it, so he continued along, now with some light, he walked along the laboratory before coming across a door marked as Study, and he opened the door again as quietly as possible, and walked inside. The inside was a mess, it consisted of papers thrown all across the room, desks covered in books and papers, and large chalkboards covered in writing, along with some chalk on the walls too. He shook his head slowly before he began shuffling through the myriad mess of papers, until one paper in particular caught his attention, on the main desk, smack bang in the middle of it, was a paper he was interested in.

The paper was yet another detailed diagram of another weapon, this one a carved up view of a highly detailed lance, and on the paper underneath this one was another plan detail of a different item, a large shield, with smack bang in the middle of the shield, a small gem. Jacob picked up the shield design, taking a look at the note attached to the small orb image, "absorbs and removes magic, see nullifier or for more details." A dark smile spread across Jacobs face, before he began to chuckle, idly grasping at the collar on his neck

Chapter 6

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"GET UP!" Those were the words that I was woken up to today, and the fact that it was accompanied by a slight searing in my head, got me up right and quick. I blinked the drowsiness out of my eyes as I struggled to remain upright despite my body's attempt to topple me, likely in protest to the rapid awakening, watching as the room came into focus to see Star Shine standing there tapping his hoof against the floor. "What's wrong with you? You had an early night last night and yet its six o'clock and you still haven't started on your jobs, now get to it!" Sure, if by early night you mean I went to sleep at eleven instead of twelve o'clock then sure, early night, arse.

Then my collar glowed yellow and I was once again dragged forwards out the door and stumbled into the much brighter light of the main hall. Shine trotted off towards his laboratory again with his snout held high, "we're killing him slowly when we get out."
"Oh absolutely." Sadly continued thoughts of Shines slow and painful death had to put to the side as I got back to my chores, this time "hopefully for the last time." I went into the kitchen rather slowly before checking off the checklist on our food stocks, things were looking fine so far, we were short on many long term necessities, but the restock should be arriving soon, perfect.

With the food all checked out I slowly walked back into the hallway, checking to make sure that Shine was gone, before quickly stumbling into my room. Closing the door behind me I walked over to one of the many box covered shelves at the far end of the room, before pulling out one specific box and throwing a quick glance inside, everything seems in order here.

See, today was the day I was making my escape, well tonight is more accurate, but I was getting out of here soon, and unlike my previous escape attempts, I was sure this was going to work. I'd been making my preparations for this for some time now (a few months probably), ever since that 'party' where Shine had shown off his many weapons to all those guests, it had given me an idea and now that I had done the research and actual work, I had a confidence rate 73% that it would work. And what's more I had done some work into what would happen after my escape, I had checked the maps, read the guides and gathered my gear, all at night mind you, and I had a plan of where to hide, and what I'd do after fleeing. Of course I had to escape before any of that could happen.

Last night I had made my final preparations, I'd only gotten to sleep at about one thirty last night, but now I had everything ready to go for my big escape. I had my food, I had the survival gear, the maps and now I just had to wait. I got up again after placing the box back in position and went back out to continue the chores, no need to make Star Shine suspicious.

<-------------------------------->

It was around midday when the mailmare finally arrived, I'd spent the time in between essentially stalling, checking lists over and over again, carrying boxes around and basically doing my best to look busy, not that Shine had come up but I couldn't take any chances, I was going all out for this and I needed it to work. I opened the front gate to see Lightwing standing there once again, probably fantasising having a time with me.

I'd spent a lot of my nights reading books in the library and apparently bestiality was OK with ponies, especially with humans, have to say that was a rather unsettling fact to learn. Humans had other uses in pony society, slaves for farming, gladiators for fighting arenas, and some actually used them as beasts of war, many ponies also kept humans as pets, especially the mares, "can't imagine what that was for," (that was sarcasm by the way). I gave her the bag of bits before getting to work loading up the boxes into the courtyard, the job had gotten much easier lately, after all I had been carrying heavy items with much regularity, and I'd also been working out a bit in my small amount of spare time and at the night, needed to be ready after all, so I'd gotten a much stronger build than what I used to have, probably why Lightwing's eyes were traveling higher nowadays, still weird.

"Its good to see you're getting better, you looked so scrawny when I first saw you, and you still aren't wearing those clothes Shine had bought for you." The fact that Shine takes no interest anymore in these deliveries had allowed me to order some of the items I felt I would end up needing but couldn't get though the tower itself, things like steel and boots. Fortunately Lightwing's stupidity had worked out in my favour, ok perhaps that was a bit harsh, but the point remains, she hadn't questioned the ordered goods purpose, and that meant I hadn't had to come up with some excuse which probably would have ended with another burning.

I finished carrying all the boxes into the courtyard, while Lightwing just shook her head, "no idea why Shine would need twelve boxes of the All You Need Easy Packed Traveling Kit," yeah, unimaginative, isn't it, "after all he hardly strikes me as the traveling type, but, not my jobs to be confused, I do enough of that at home, ha."
"Yeah, I'll bet you do." I think my crazy chuckled at that.
"So anyway, nice to see you again your always such a good listener, well, seeya!" And with that little plate of stupid air headedness, she finally left and I was free to check the crates for all the goodies, lets see, yep those traveling packs (no I'm not gonna say the whole name), blanket and of course, all the other random goods I needed to stock up on. Smiling to myself I lugged the boxes back inside and began unloading, this was going to be a night to remember.

<-------------------------------->

After Shine had went to bed I stayed up and waited for about two hours, had to make sure he was asleep, but those were the two longest hours of my life. Eventually two hours had passed, (or at least I think it had been two hours, hard to tell exactly without a watch) and I set my plan in motion. I went to the back shelf and pulled out my projects. Two golden gauntlets came out of the box, I had been working on these things for months now, it turns out gold isn't as valuable here as it is on earth, so it was easy to swipe a bit of it for my own purposes. That was strange in itself as, apparently, gold is a strong, 'conductor' if you will for magic, hence the reason Shine's many weapons being made of gold. The gauntlets weren't made entirely of gold though, in fact the gold was mostly just the outer coating, the inside was mostly plain steel, it would probably reduce their efficiency but I had to make sure Shine didn't notice that this stuff was missing.

The gauntlets were layered items, with nothing covering the fingers and came to halfway between my wrists and forearms when I put them on, they each also had a small perfectly spherical imprint of silver in them. They also had a small switch on the top part of the 'wrist' of the gauntlets, which would flick on some silver lids over the empty sockets, it relied on very simple mechanics, basic flicking the switch would move the lid, they also had another socket, these ones with their own lids which would have to be opened manually, at a point where the gauntlet would come up to halfway up my forearms.

Also in the box I had stored many other items, including a map, a human backpack (well actually it was a small minotaur backpack but what the heck, it looked and functioned the same), and a large brown duster jacket, a leather belt and a pair of big leather boots, those had been hard to order. I had to pretend Star Shine had wanted to dress me up, and making sure Shine himself never found out had been a trick involving some false bumbling at key moments and suffering severe amounts of pain. Don't ask what the leather came from, I ordered this stuff from the Griffons and since they have a history of using humans like cattle (incidentally local cattle are actually sapient beings here), I'm not sure I want to know.

Now it was time to get to work, I firstly slipped on the gauntlets, which, while they were heavy, where not quite as heavy as one would expect given that they were half a centimetre thick at their thinnest, strapped on the belt, and slipped the duster on over my shirt and pants. Then I set out towards the lab.

Shine had never actually put any skllburners around the entrance to the lab, so I had been able to wander in whenever I wanted, its where I had the equipment to make my projects, I do wonder why Shine had never bothered with the lab, perhaps he had thought I was too stupid? "Understandable, given you never even TRIED to use these weapons in the lab."
"Hey, shut up, you never suggested us using them either."

So I got down into the lab, turned on the automatic lights, they were movement sensitive I think, and I quickly headed towards the lances and shields. I got two pairs of lances and shields, and carried them over to the workbench, and a quietly as possible, I may have multiple stories and metal doors of freaking tower between me and him, but I didn't want to take any chances. So I got to the workbench, and began to pull apart the shields.

The first things I wanted were the magic cancelling gems, I'd figured out how they worked through long and boring studies in the library, and here was the jig. The orbs were designed to pull away all local magic around them, but since that would mess with the lances Shine had wanted to link them with, he had placed them in silver sockets, now I don't know by but apparently, silver is a kind of magic dampener around here, to by placing the orbs in the silver sockets, they would only target active magic, they would not effect a certain 'frequency' of magic nor would they take out non active, passive magic, that is spells sort of encoded within an object for an effect, like my collar, speaking of which.

The first thing I did with these orbs was bring them up to my neck, and just the orbs, I watched with glee as the orbs glowed brightly for a second, while the constant blue aurora from my collar dimmed, without the magic dampening effects of the guntlets, these gems would just drain any magic around them, active or not. Giddily I placed the orbs into the sockets of my gauntlets, before picking up a knife, sticking it between the collar and my neck, and began sawing. In hindsight not the best idea, but I was excited and wasn't thinking very straight. It took a long while, but finally the knife came out, with me getting only a few cuts on my neck and jaw. I held the broken collar in front of me staring at the dull gems, the pain in my neck forgotten, I was free, finally free.

I quickly shook my head clear, not quite free yet, still had to deal with Star Shine, "slowly and painfully," I gave myself a savage grin, before getting to work on the handguns, flicking a silver lid over my gauntlets to make sure there would be no interference with the magic in the lance gems. The orbs from the lances I placed in the sockets further up my gauntlets, and then completely closed their lids, these were just there to store the magic from the magic drainers for later experiments, I also took a few focuser gems and some more of the energy storage gems and stuffed all that into my bag. I also took a large number of scorcher orbs form the lab, and with everything set, it was time for some long awaited payback

I headed back up to the main hallway, then passed through the doorway into the stairwell for the upper levels, flicking open the lids on the gauntlets to drain some magic from the Skullburner orbs as they activated to the presence of me, but with no collar to activate, the magic form the crystals was simply drained into my gauntlets. Then I headed my way up the stairs to find Star Shines room, that part was rather long and boring, I think I ended up finding him on the eighth floor.

I quietly opened the door to yet another room and found Star Shine, all tucked up and asleep, feeling completely safe, well that wouldn't do, I wanted him to know this was coming. I walked over to one of the lamps, its active magic quickly draining into my gauntlets, and dropped it on the ground with a loud crash. Shine burst up from the bed ears swivelling on his already quickly moving head, his horn charged up with some sort of spell, and the necklace dangling form his neck, it took him about three seconds before he saw me, his eyes narrowing and face twisting into a scowl as I just gave a carefree smile, the kind that shows teeth and waved at him, "what are you..."

I didn't let him finish before I rushed at him, his eyes suddenly widening as he realised just what I was doing here, he let out a burst of magic, but it just dissipated a few feet from me, I think his eyes widened even more at that, before I tackled him. Now one thing about the local humans that I'd read is that they were extremely fierce fighters, more so than most local species, considering I had yet to fight another human here I wasn't quite sure just how strong that was, but what I had assumed from it was that ponies at least, were rather weak. This assumption proved correct as I grappled his head with one had, him putting all his weight into trying to break free while I used my other had to drive my metal covered fist into his face in rapid succession, he tried to cats some spells of some kind but the short little auras from his horn would always dissipate almost immediately after it started. Eventually I started smashing his head into anything nearby, watching with glee as his face became more and more wrecked and bloody with each blow, but it seems I got a bit carried away as I hurled him into the desk where the lamp had been.

I strode forwards confidently as he wearily got back up before his horn began to shine again, ha, good luck, haven't you figured out I cant be blasted with your cheap magic tricks. Then I noticed just about every small object that wasn't nailed down, including the pieces of the desk and broken lamp, all covered in a similar aura, before an entire room worth of shrapnel was hurled at me. I dived out of the room, fortunately not hitting any walls, as the lethal hail of bedroom scrap smashed into the wall I had been standing in front of before. "Come back here you ungrateful human scum!"

Ungrateful, what did I have to grateful about, regardless I now had a problem since Shine could just throw anything he wanted at me if I tried to enter the room, fortunately I had come prepared. Closing the lids on my gauntlets, I pulled out one of the Scorcher orbs, primed it, and hurled it into the room, "what?" Lousy last words, before the whole room was engulfed in fire, I walked back into the room to find the whole place blackened, and Shine lying against a wall, battered and burnt, but alive, "good." I walked over to him, more quickly this time, and picked him up, enjoying his little wheeze of pain as I lifted him to a standing position while I crouched down so I could look at him eye to eye. His face was a mess, it was broken all over and most of it was burnt black, one of his eyes was burnt to a crisp, yet his other eye remained staring fearfully at me, I smiled again, before I reached up with one had to his horn, grabbed it firmly, and snapped it clean off, he wheezed again, gee wonder what happened to his lungs. Still smiling I brought his blackened horn right up to his face, and then stabbed him in his other eye, then again, then again, then I started stabbing him in the neck, I think I was there for about three minutes stabbing him, even though I'm sure he dies about half a minute into it, before I finally let his body drop.

I stood up, and breathed out, parts of the room where on fire, but I didn't notice, I just stood there breathing in the smells of burning wood. "That went well... wait what?" Was I talking? I experimented a bit more, "yes, hello, shut up, fuck you, goddamit YES!" I was talking!
"Focus, we need to burn this place and get out of here."
"oh yeah, of course, you're right." I quickly got out of the room, finally noticing the mortal peril I was in, before closing the door, now time to burn down his legacy. I headed down the stairs, throwing down another scorcher orb every few floors, before then heading down into the lab again, grabbing some more orbs and then picking up one of the lances. "Always wanted to do this," yeah I was now talking to myself out loud, but if you'd gone for as long as I had without talking you would too. Anyways I headed to the doorway, turned around, and fired the lance at the box of scorcher orbs, they went up spectacular, setting off a few more explosions from other experiments. Grinning I turned the lance on other parts of the lab, blasting them apart as the heat connected with more explosive experiments, after about a minute of this enjoyment, I finally headed back up, satisfied that no one would be getting anything out of that wreckage.

I got to the main room, idly noticing that the sun was coming up, and checked to make sure I had everything, survival guides, food, books on rune magic, and yep, I had everything. With that I walked into the library, and started shooting again, blasting the creepy little gecko to molten gold, before setting fire to countless precious books, normally I'd cringe at the loss of so many books, but right now, I was on a mission, a mission to burn Shine legacy to the ground. I gave the kitchen the same treatment, before heading out into the courtyard, noticing that smoke was now coming out of the top of the tower now, well that sure speeds things up, I quickly turned the lance on large swathes of the garden as I made my way to the exit, stopping as the gate opened to turn around and view my work.

The tower was smoking now, and even parts of the outside were on fire now, that couldn't last much longer, parts of the garden were on fire too, the smoke rising out into the air, they'll probably assume this was a lab accident when they get here, that's if they knew what he was doing, they probably did, in any case I'd now burned down any evidence of what exactly caused the fire, still I had to get out of here quickly to avoid getting spotted, the other ponies would be noticing this soon. Perhaps my awe at the destruction I had caused was what had lead me to ignore the world around me, or maybe it was just really loud at the time, but regardless I was quite surprised when I heard a small squeak behind me.

I spun around bringing the lance back up to aim to see Lightwing, standing there shaking and with her already enormous eyes widened to impossible proportions. I lowered the lance slightly as two words crossed my mind, "well fuck."
"No witnesses, she can't tell the others."
"But she's been ice, pervy but nice, besides maybe she doesn't know it was us?"
"We're holding a fire lance, she'd have to be an absolute idiot not to figure it out."
"But, she didn't do anything."
"No witnesses!"
Throughout this exchange Lightwing had been standing there watching me mentally argue with myself as I stared up at the sky, before eventually she seemed to work up the courage to speak, "um, hello, are you okay there."
I turned my gaze back to Lightwing as she squeaked again before huddling up a bit, innocent, ditzy little Lightwing, and sighed as I raised the lance again, "sorry." I could see myself in her eyes as she stared at me, standing there against a background of fire, golden lance in hand, and a face tired and weary yet still set firm as stone, "no witnesses," I pulled the trigger.

Chapter 7

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I hurried along through the forest, I needed to get away from that tower before the ponies showed up, now I was walking along looking straight ahead, my mind a train wreck of thoughts and emotions as I tried to get away from that blasted tower and into the forest, eventually the inevitable happened and I tripped over one of the many roots sticking out of the ground. I fell forwards into a rather conveniently placed ditch, which only added to the amount I fell as I crashed into a ditch full of roots and rocks. "And that's what happens when we don't look where we're going!"

I promptly ignored my inner psychopath as I painfully stood back up, my arms and legs covered in bruises and scratches, still I took advantage of the situation to try and take stock of where I was and came to a rather immediate conclusion, "I'm lost."

Kinda obvious that this would have happened with me just running off in a random direction, and it was rather worrying for how long it had taken me to lose my shit after, well. "After we killed Lightwing."

"SHUT UP!

Lightwing hadn't deserved to die, but, she'd needed to, she'd seen me, they couldn't see me, they'd hunt me if they knew about me, if only to recapture the escaped human, and I wasn't ready for that, not yet. Didn't make it any easier.

After I'd shot her I'd had to drag her body into the tower itself, if she was just found shot outside the whole courtyard, peo-ponies would get suspicious, so after dumping her body on the ground in the tower, and ditching the lance alongside her, I tossed in a primed scorcher orb and then ran in a completely random direction away from the tower. Now you may be wondering why I'd throw away a perfectly good lance like that, but really, it wasn't going to be much use to me, I wanted light equipment and that lance would only slow me down, well there's that and the fact that I'd used it to kill Lightwing.

"It was necessary, she'd needed to die, she'd seen too much."

"I KNOW THAT!"

Then stop moping about it, right now we need to focus on getting to a safe distance, your mad stumbling could be tracked through this forest by a five year old!" I begrudgingly admitted that my inner psychopath was probably right, I hadn't exactly been very subtle in my flight, "understatement of the century."

"I get it, I messed up, now shut up or help me think of a way out of this!" I'm not ashamed to admit that the silence that greeted me gave me a small sense of satisfaction. Still, I needed to lose this painfully obvious trail I had left, and quickly if I wanted any chance of staying away from these ponies.

I set off once again into the forest, this time making some effort to make my tracks herder to follow, stepping as lightly as possible and making a few twists and turns. But they would know that something had got away and there was still a good chance that they'll be able to follow these newer tracks, I just needed some time. "Time? Time for what?"

I was about to respond when I heard it, a small gushing in the distance, I grinned before rushing off towards the sound, "time to find some water."

"WHAT! This is no time for a drink break! We need to get as far away as possible!" I ignored the inner psychopath before bursting through the foliage to see it. It was a large river, at least twelve metres in width, and who knows how deep, but hopefully deep enough. I stopped to take off my boots first, enjoying the soft dirt under my bare feet before stuffing them into the backpack. The rushing water was much louder now, the current of this river seemed to be quite fast, but I had always been a strong swimmer.

"Swimming? With the load you're carrying? We could very well drown!"

"I never planned on it, besides it would lose the trail, no tracks to follow, and they may have guessed that I'm a human already, and if they assume that then they'll also assume I can't swim and drowned in my escape attempt."

I didn't wait for an answer, sticking anything else at risk in the water into my bag, wrapping up the maps and books in the boots and hat, before slipping my bag on again as I took my first step into the water, wincing as my feet where suddenly subject to the bone chilling sensation of cold water. "This isn't going to be fun." I walked further into the water, the cold rising up at a rather alarming rate, I couldn't have been three metres off from the shore and already the water had come up to my stomach. I bounced my shoulders up, making sure the bag was strapped on firmly, before turning right and trekking along the river itself with the current.

I had to place my feet carefully, the stones beneath where smooth and slippery, while the strong current constantly attempted to pull me along further, and more than once I almost fell over when I came across a small drop, and had to go around, bringing me closer and closer to the shore, after about ten minutes of walking I moved up much closer to the bank, the river had gotten wider by now but still seemed about as deep, if not more so, and with more and more of those drops I couldn't risk falling in, I'd probably survive, but all the maps and books would be ruined. My inner voice had been mercifully silent this whole time allowing me some time to think.

"That should have lost them, and with the gauntlets any tracking spells should be negated, do they even need other magic to function? Probably should have looked into that a bit more. Still now I need to figure out my next move, I need to find someplace safe to hide, preferably in this forest, perhaps a cave somewhere. I hope these books will have covered all that I need to know about survival, though I doubt it, might have to watch out for..."

"Quiet!"

I froze, my breath slowing, as I listened out. I could hear the running water, and the rustling of leaves, the chipring of birds, nothing out of the ordinary. "Listen harder!" Wincing a bit at that piece of illiteracy, I nevertheless continued to wait and listen. I was abut to ask what exactly I was listening out for, when I heard it, the dreaded sound of hooves.

"SHIT! How'd they find me!"

"That doesn't matter, there doesn't seem to be many of them, we can take them."

While I was inclined to agree with my inner psychopath, the risk was too great, so I instead set off further along the river, while wading in deeper into the water. "Get out of the water right now, if we get caught in the water we'll be sitting ducks!"

"Shut up!"

"They're getting closer! GET OUT OF THE WATER!"

"I SAID SHU..." At that moment my foot descended into a much deeper drip that I had anticipated, causing me to stumble forwards, before it came to a rest on a rather slippery stone, and, combined with my already loose footing and the increasingly strong current, the inevitable happened. I slipped forwards into the water.

My face slammed into the water before I was almost instantly submerged, water filling into my open mouth, climbing up my nose, and causing me to shut my eyes. I felt my body tumble about in the water, my limbs flailing about, and I managed to smash my hand against what I think was the riverbed, but it could well have been the shore for all I knew. I opened my eyes but couldn't see anything, by back felt heavy and strained, and my lungs where burning. I managed to control my flailing and desperately began paddling to what I think was the surface, as the current continued to push me along.

I managed to break the surface of the water, gulping the sweet, sweet air, only to plunge back down into the depths almost immediately afterwards. I was doing flips and twists, as the current got stronger and stronger, I continued to flail about, somehow occasionally breaking the surface of the water, but only long enough for short gasps of air. My lungs where on fire and the bag on my back seemed to get heavier and heavier. I don't know how long this patter lasted, perhaps just a minute, though it could have been half an hour for how it felt.

Suddenly I felt myself collide with something, fortunately it was shoulder first so I managed to avoid banging my head on it, after shaking of the dizziness I grabbed the rock, yes I think it was a rock, and righted myself, struggling to hold on to the slippery surface against the current.

Finally, after a few agonising moments, I burst my head out of the water, and kept it there, taking long gasps of air as the burning feeling in my chest sapped away. I just sat there for a while, probably a few minutes before my brain finally managed to start taking in some of the area around me. My eyes where shut as I was there so I just listened beyond my own breathing,, I could hear the rushing water, though it sounded louder than it should have thundering even. Tentatively I opened my eyes and HOLY SHIT!!

Just beyond the rock, was a god damm waterfall, a WATERFALL! I didn't see any waterfalls on the map! If I had missed this rock by just a few metres I could well have gone over the edge, and plummeted to a very watery death, that's if whatever rocks where down there didn't slice me up first.

"How do you know there're rocks at the bottom?"

"Because karma that's why!"

"Don't be ridiculous, if there were anything like karma we'd have missed the rock!"

I didn't answer that, choosing instead to take a look at the rest of the area, the drop of the waterfall had many more rocks jutting out of the water, and it the ripples and rapids where any indication, there where many more beneath the surface. Looking around I could safely say that I was still in the forest, there where rather orderly lines of trees lining the banks, with smaller bushes and patches of grass sparsely scattered between them. I couldn't see very far into the forest but from what I could see I was currently alone.

"Better get out of here before that changes."

"And how, exactly, do you think you're going to do that?"

"Well we can't stay here, that's for sure!"

Still, he had a point, I couldn't just swim my way to the shore, the current was too strong and I was still too tired, but there wasn't anything connecting this rock to the shore from what I could see, the other rocks at the edge of the waterfall where all rather spread out from each other. But I couldn't stay here for much longer, the bag was still weighing me down quite heavily and my hands where beginning to grow numb again from the water, then I had a crazy idea.

I glanced at the closest rock, judging the distance as best I could, before crouching into the rock, and then jumping off, I made quite a bit of headway before the current pulled me back towards the water fall. My ever helpful inner voice decided to voice its complaints right about now, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!!!" I ignored it for now, as I was pulled back towards the waterfall, right into the rock I had been aiming at.

I slammed into the rock with an uncomfortably familiar feeling, scrambling about with my hands scrabbling about the rock before finding purchase yet again on some rough slabs jutting out from the sides. Talking a moment to catch my breath, I looked over at the bank, it was still far, but at least it wasn't as far as it had been before. "Whelp, time for some more excruciating pain." And with that I jumped again.

<-------------------------------->

I don't know how long it took me of jumping over and over and over again to reach the bank, much longer than I thought it would have, since as I'd went along I'd had to take longer breaks between jumps, but finally I reached a point where I could plant my feet on more or less solid ground, at least as solid as ground under water can get, and crawled my way back up to dry land.

As I lay there, gasping for air, my inner psychopath, who's been seeming decidedly less psychopathic lately, decided to voice his displeasure at my actions. "YOU IDIOT! Do you know how close we'd have come to death there? Just one misstep, one wrong footing, one missed jump and we'd have gone over the edge!"

"Well how exactly did you think we were going to get out of that mess?"

"I wouldn't have got us in this mess in the first place!"

"Sure you wouldn't have, its not like you where just as surprised as I was when the ponies caught up to us."

"Well I wouldn't have gone in the water with a backpack loaded with books and maps in the first place."

Then the realisation hit me with all the grace and subtly of a freight train "OH SHIT THE BOOKS!"

Ignoring further shouts of condemnation and condescension from my inner psychopath I quickly jolted upright and tore open my backpack to reveal, much to my dismay, the soggy piles of books and maps. Desperate i pulled open the covers of the first book I could, and saw black smudgy, soggy pages, a quick search revealed the same situation for all of the books. All of that valuable knowledge, gone, all that preparation for nothing, I would probably starve to death out here now.

"How did this happen?"

"Well, when paper gets wet, it..."

"I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PAPER GETS WET! I just want to know how all this shit ended up happening to me, what'd I do to deserve all this crap?"

That seemed to shut him up, for however long that would last, but I would relish it while I could, given there was very little else I could relish. Sighing, I decided that I'd spent enough time moping around today, time to try and make the best of a bad situation. Throwing the books and maps into the river after making sure there was nothing salvageable left in them, right now they'd just weigh me down and they'd be a nice trail indicator is someone discovered them, not that they'd be able to do much with those piled of soggy paper but hey, I like to be thorough.

Then, picking my backpack up again, I headed off into the forest, best find some place to sleep before it gets dark after all, though it didn't seem like it was anywhere near afternoon yet.

Then, as if just to spite me, the sun began to rapidly make its way towards the horizon, casting ever longer and longer shadows across the forest floor.

"Seriously, what'd I ever do to deserve this?"

Not wanting to go trudging through the forest all wet in the dark, I decided to turn around and go back to the river, the trees looked thick enough to support my weight, what? You thought I was going to sleep on the floor? Heck no, there was a reason I'd brought a rope besides all the other more obvious ones.

Getting back to the river, I made my way along searching for just the right tree, eventually settling for one a very comfortable distance away from the waterfall, with some decently low hanging branches and very thick ones at that. I was no expert but I reckon this particular tree was near a hundred years old!

Placing my backpack on the floor, I sifted my way through what remained, pulling out a few wet apples and a very wet piece of rope. I munched on the apples with relish, my stomach reminding me of how hungry I was. And let me tell you those where the best apples I'd ever eaten, I made my way through what was supposed to be around two days worth of apple rations, which a small part of my mind chastised me for, and warned me to be careful on my food, before the rest of my mind crushed that thought brutally and efficiently, before driving me to eat three days worth of rations in spite of the other part of my mind.

Throwing the cores into the river when I was done, I slung my bag up on one of the low hanging, but still decently high branches, before slinging the rope over my shoulder and climbing up the tree. Now I'm proud to say that I've always been a good climber, I was pretty light, and quite flexible, still, I didn't climb trees that often, so it took me about three minutes and four more attempts before I got to a branch that was both strong enough to support my weight, and still a reasonable distance from the ground for me to feel safe, probably about six metres up.

I flung the rope around the rather thick trunk, now that took a few tries, before I finally managed to get it all the way around, then I sat myself down on the branch, and tied the rope around me. Heh, now all I needed was a bow and arrows and I'd be just like that Cadnace person, or was it Cadmus? I don't know, but my sister loved that movie, and there goes what little good mood was building up before.

Sighing I got myself in a comfortable position, or at least, as comfortable as one can bee while sitting in a tree, and closed my eyes. Sleep overtook me nearly instantly.

Gilded Vengeance

by DenyTheWitch

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7