From The Shadows

TALKS

From The Shadows

by DeepThought

Dear princess Celestia,

finally I'm proud to announce, that we found the cause for the magical anomaly you reported on friday evening. Its source was a male alicorn, who was still at the place of the incident, deeply exhausted, when we arrived. His magical aura is the most unique I've ever sensed and the most powerful except yours and princess Luna's. He isn't awake, yet, but it is just a question of time until he wakes up, as the vital data collected by the instruments of Royal Canterlot Hospital tells us. We do not know at the moment why he blew up the Everfree Forest. Even if I'm usually not somepony who judges a book by its cover, his physical appearance intuitively suggests he is dangerous. Also the fact that he doesn't have a cutie mark - he has to be around my age - underlines how strange the situation is. It's like he didn't exist before.

Your faithful student,

Princess Twilight Sparkle.

P.S. Do you know anything about this stallion?"

"Dear princess Twilight Sparkle,

my most faithful student, I really take your concerns seriously, so I decided to come back from my visit to the Griffon Kingdom in a few hours. I don't know anything about this certain alicorn and I'd like to meet him myself, since this seems to be a very extraordinary case. Until I arrive, I wish to put this pony in a separate, guarded hospital wing.

There hasn't been a male alicorn for millennia and hardly anypony, who could rival my sister's or my magical ability.

Please take care, that the news of his arrival don't spread around, for the sake of Equestria's safety.

Princess Celestia."

'This might become a problem,' she thinks sending the letter.

After the mane six left him in his hospital room, unsure if they could trust him, Fire thinks about what he experienced.

'A world ruled by cartoon ponies... and I'm one of them. I'm no human anymore," he sighs, "Why am I here? Do the other ponies trust me? What will happen to me? The guards, supervising me, seem to be strong and my 'room' is on the sixth level...'

Then another thought flashes through his mind, 'This princess, she seems to be very popular... I don't believe she really ruled this country for thousand years, as Twilight told me. This whole goddess of the sun thing reminds me of ancient Egypt. The ruler claims to be connected to some sort of natural power, which legitimizes his rule. Maybe I can learn about it from the Equestrian history books later. I'm sure they are full of propaganda, but maybe there's a grain of truth in it.'

Bored to death, staring holes into the room's door, Fire sits up from his bed. His legs still prickle because of the unusual stress of the escape from the Timberwolves. The mane six have long left.

'Time to learn something about my new body... Huh, that sounded weird.'

Slowly he raises one hoof then the other one,  feeling that he can't use his limbs now as intuitive as he did full of adrenaline, fleeing from his death, before. It is strange and unusual. He stands up, slightly shaking, and trots to the room's window.

He sees a well-designed garden some metres below his position, nicely decorated with flowers he don't know, covered in bright sunshine.

Behind sprinkling fountains stands an opulent building with several obviously royal symbols on it.

'Clearly absolutist architecture.'

Some gardeners are busy with cutting the hedges that limit the garden.

Fascinated by how talented they use the secateurs with their hooves he looks at his own.

'How are they even capable of this?'

He tries to grab a notice block from a near desk, wondering about the flexibility of his own hooves. It just comes naturally to him.

'What's next?'

Fire slowly goes to the room's door, not sure if this is a good idea. He opens it, two guards in golden armor eye him, obviously suspicious.

"You're not allowed to leave, sir. If you need anything, ask for it."

"Can you bring me some food, and an interesting book, maybe about Equestrian history or something entertaining. I'm terribly bored," he says honestly.

One of the guards grins slightly, it seems he isn't used to people stating their opinion bluntly. But when the other armored stallion, who is obviously older, gives him a reproving look, it fades in seconds.

"We'll do what we can, please get back in," he says.

"Thank you, sirs."

'There's no big difference between this place and a jail...'

Pieces of memory, totally random bits, come back to him:

The carpet on his room’s floor was soft underneath his cross-legged form. Happily, he played with his Legos - while he successfully tuned out the world around him. Brick by brick he built a white castle and filled it with the small figurines, imaging heroic fights and clever deceptions like in the fiction books he used to read, when his mother entered with an exhausted smile.

“Val, dinner’s ready.”

“Yes, mum,” he responded cheerfully, oblivious to his mother’s tiredness.

He jumped to his feet and hugged his mother who still stood in his room’s entrance, turning to leave. Finally, she was there! Back from work and ready to spent time with him!

“I love you, mum.”

“I love you, too, honey,” she said warmly.

And he feels the pain of loss, unsure why.

He waits, not sure how long exactly, until someone knocks the door.

Expecting the guards he says, "Just come in, please."

No guard enters the room, but two ponies, both of them with a horn and a pair of wings. The taller one has snow-white fur and a multi-colored mane, an aura of authority surrounds her. The smaller one isn't less impressive, her mane and coat are midnight-blue, she seems to be the more reserved. The symbols on their flanks are the same Fire has seen on the building in the garden, the guards' armor, even on the wall in his room.

'Are these ponies the princesses?'

"I'm princess Celestia and this is princess Luna," the taller pony says, "Who are you, my little pony?"

'They somehow differ from the ponies I've seen before. I can understand why their population respects them.'

"I'm Fire Void, your Majesty."

'I should avoid to offend the rulers of this country by violating the etiquette, since my fate lays in their hands... ehm.. hooves,' the black stallion thinks nervously.

"Princess Twilight Sparkle told us about the circumstances of your first meeting in the Everfree Forest and the little conversation you had today. We'd like to perform some tests on you, to determine your magical ability and to reveal your true form, since you told Twilight you hadn't been a pony before," Celestia says with a motherly smile.

"Do I have a real choice?"

"Well, you blew up a whole forest and killed many animals in there. Considering you a threat isn't that far-fetched, isn't it?" the dark-blue alicorn replies.

'I better follow their orders. I don't want to end in the dungeon.'

"Alright then, start your tests."

"Thank you, we really appreciate your cooperation," the goddess of the sun says with relief in her voice.

'Good cop - bad cop...'

Celestia points her horn at Fire, it slightly starts to glow in the color of the sunlight, while a stream of light in the same color heads in his direction.

'Is this what they call magic?' Fire asks himself, baffled, 'Did I really cast a spell in the forest? Was it the reason for the terrible exhaustion?'

Then the stream hits him. He feels his body moving in cramps on the floor, but there is no pain. Memories of the time in the forest flash before his inner eye, the magic seems to move something inside him, which he wasn't aware of.

Now his horn starts to shine in fire-red and deep-black, but suddenly Celestia stops, so does he.

"Enough for now."

'Interesting...'

"I have to talk to my sister privately. Please wait a moment, " Celestia says with a clearly concerned look.

'I don't have a choice, you know?' Fire thinks to himself, annoyed.

They leave for a moment, but after a few minutes they come back into the room leaving the coal-black alicorn wondering about their reaction.

"We've made an unexpected discovery," Celestia starts, "As Twilight probably told you, alicorns are connected to royalty, but that's just half the truth. Twilight for example is a princess, yes, but she's not immortal like my sister or me, and she doesn't feature our level of magical ability, either. She and Princess Cadence are 'just' unicorns with wings, our way of honoring some ponies for their great achievements for Equestria," she stops for a moment, "But you are different. You are just like us."

'Did she just tell me I was a god-like being? I don't believe there's anything that really is immortal, but I'm in a world full of talking ponies. Maybe the rules are a bit different here, if there are any rules of logic at all' he thinks, half amused and half skeptical.

"If you proof yourself worth our trust, I will see forward to work with you, and, of course only if you want to, help to prepare your return home - since your memories, or at least those which aren't hidden by the mist of oblivion, show me a foreign, distant world, I can tell you, you are not insane, and right about the fact that you were not a pony, nor in Equestrian before."

Her sister continues, "But if you are not willing to cooperate, we will make sure, that you won't be a threat to our subjects and banish you to a place where you can't harm anypony."

'A good example for the downsides of monarchy. They can do with my life what they want to. Nothing limits them.'

"I promise you I won't do anything like that," Fire tells them.

"We expected you'd tell us that. So we decided to send you to Ponyville, where Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends will make sure that you get proper magical education and physical training. They will keep an eye on you and report everything suspicious to us," the princess of the sun explains, while she thinks, 'I hope I won't regret this.'