Chiaroscuro : The Pattern of Light and Shadow

Prologue: The Prisoner

It had been years since he’d seen the sunlight. The only light within the caverns was the meager glow of a single torch, several cells away.

A plate clattered at the cell’s entrance, indicating that they were bothering to feed him that day. He dragged himself over and ate from the plate like a dog. He’d stopped caring years before.

The food was the same as it ever was. Disgusting, grimy, and not enough. He finished up quickly, knowing the plate would likely be taken away soon.

And it was. He watched jealously as the glow of a unicorn’s magic enveloped the plate and brought it out of the cell. He scratched at his own horn, a stump now since it had been shaved off.

His hindquarters itched as well, so he bit at those. The last prisoner who’d used his straw had had fleas, and he gained them as a result.

Other prisoners had used everything inside the cell many times before it trickled down to the most hated prisoner.

Most hated, perhaps, or most forgotten. He had no idea if anyone outside of the prison knew he existed.

He hated this pathetic existence. He was a prince once, set to inherit an entire kingdom by his king’s right of conquest.

But then the one pony he had trusted betrayed him, and he ended up in the crystal cell.

He needed to relieve himself, and he went to the front corner, on the opposite side from the entrance. It smelled horrible, but this was the one corner where the smell would stay in place.

He hadn’t thought of that pony in quite a while. A few months, perhaps a year, by his reckoning. He didn’t have any sense of time anymore, however, so it could have been a few days.

He thought of her marble-blue hair and bright blue eyes, setting her apart despite her fairly drab coat. Her intellect and attitude only further served to keep her hold on his mind, a hold that hadn’t faded with time.

He growled, one of the few sounds he still bothered to make. He didn’t want to think of her, of his mistakes with her.

He feebly attempted to produce light with his stump of a horn, but it was no use, of course. He’d been trying for years to do something.

‘Wasn’t that a sign of madness?’ he thought. ‘To do the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result?’

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind.

Feel frustrated with his situation, as always, he went back to his flea-ridden hay pile and tried to sleep.

His thoughts, however, had different ideas, as they kept returning to that pony. The stone blue mare with a war horn cutie mark. How strange, when his own had once been a red war horn.

He sat up to scratch at the burn scars on his flanks. His war horns were gone, as was his army and his own identity.

He sighed and flopped down on the hay again. Once more, he tried to create a spark of light, of anything, with his horn.

A tiny spark of green light burned his eyes and disappeared.

Perhaps he wasn’t mad after all.