Guardian

The little house on the edge of town was a simple thing, all dark wood with stout windows along the centre of each outer wall, cramped rooms despite the minimal decoration, with the kitchen and living room getting the most space due to family and food being the most cared about things in this community.

This property had gone cheap, just a little unassuming place that no one would take a second look at, one of the walls hadn’t even been finished! Yet, it had been bought on the spot, the builders didn’t even get a chance to get on the property to work after that, the reason they received being ‘that’s the best view of the sunrise from the property, don’t need a window here.’ And so they moved on, accepting it.

That was just how Blitz wanted it. He and Corvus living un-bothered in a warm part of the country, they got that view they wanted with a seat to go with it, and didn’t bother with much else besides a sign on the door that warded away potentially overly-friendly neighbours.
The other ponies got used to this loner attitude rather quickly, but not without some stubbornness while attempting to make initial contact

Even while going into town, the unicorn stallion avoided the popular, town-wide fashion sense; no hats or boots for him, just the cloak he always had and maybe a crow on his shoulder. He wasn’t exactly completely different though, he paid for goods at the same store as everypony else, joined the crowds at town meetings to hear news and plans for their settlement, he would sometimes even pay the orchard a visit. This setting, despite the heat, was so different to his last home that he intended to live it like a normal pony, there were just a few things he refused to take part in, and they accepted that.

He had spent only a few months here, the first had been eventful of course with all the settling in to be done, but after that it had all flown by and it had felt like he had started to fit in there, it started to feel like home.

Stepping through the door after his little ‘trip’ out of the scrub-lands, Blitz’s cloak was immediately hung on a coat-hanger just by the door, one of his other rare additions to the place, and Corvus took off for his favourite perching spot, the upstairs ‘window’.

With the door locked behind him, it was now time for him to deal with the main problem of the day, back pains and accommodation could wait a little longer when there was a burned foal in his hooves who had left soot patches on his once white coat, he couldn’t even tell what colour she was meant to be any more.

Getting light into the room would be a good start, the dawn had not quite arrived yet, and so with a little flare from his horn he lit the candles in the sitting room as he walked in. Nopony else would be seeing the place so he didn’t care if it wasn’t exactly going to be presentable any more. The candles gave off a bright green flash at first, but then faded to regular, gentle yellow flames.

Blitz set the foal down on one of the seats. He knew just the spell for this situation, but he hadn’t had much practice with it, it hadn’t been required for so long, but he was confident in his abilities and set to focusing on his magic anyways.

The spell always required himself and a secondary injured being for it to be used at all.
As his horn and eyes lit up some of that light spread to the burns and open cuts on the filly and they began to gradually close up and fade, however they reappeared exactly the same as before on Blitz’s body instead. Any pain he felt in that process was completely ignored in favour of focusing on the spell until finally he was sure that he had mended as much as he could, there was nothing to be done about anything older, they had already scarred over.

By that time, the sun had broken over the horizon and had begun to fill the room with a golden glow, it wouldn’t take long for the higher temperatures to arrive too.

With the foal now stable and sleeping, and his newly-traded injuries healing at their own rate, he could move onto the second problem; where would his new ‘tenant’ stay? There was absolutely no way that anypony would have returned to the village in less than three hours, and still no chance of her staying there either when the place was just piles of smouldering rubble, and possibly a few lingering demons.

The ground floor windows were an issue, any passersby could just take a glance in, until now he had seen no use for curtains. A bit late, well, early, to go shopping for those, so it could wait. Perhaps one of the upstairs rooms would do better.

Holding the foal away from his healing skin, he headed towards the stairs. As an afterthought he paused, came back into the room and then left again with a larger seat levitated behind him.

A super basic room only took minutes to set up. The foal was now sleeping peacefully and Blitz’s wounds were well on their way to closing up completely.
That reminded him of the final issue; his back. Without his cloak he could take a better look, but still that revealed nothing. No marks of any kind, no sign that anything had hit, bit or cut him. Maybe magic could have been involved in this, he hadn’t thought about that at the time, usually it was a very noticeable thing, especially with ponies. Though he realised it could have been something else entirely.

Blitz left the room before testing his theory, pulling the door to behind him. There was a faint green glow from his eyes as he attempted to detect magic, and it worked. In fact, he could even see the etchings along his spine that something had left there…
“Who the fudge gave me unwanted bone tattoos?!”

-

Slowly waking from her deep healing sleep, the filly’s thoughts were clouded. Waving away the fog in her memories, she saw the previous night and at first assumed it to be a dream, well, a nightmare. She was comfortable and warm, not burning, it was peaceful, how could anything bad have happened?

No pain or searing heat, no gently rocking cart below her, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all wrong, her bed wasn’t this material, and it was always cool in the morning.

It took a little longer than it should have before she shot up in ‘bed’, eyes wide and glowing as she sensed the presence of demonic energy and took in the new, unfamiliar environment.

A tiny window, out of reach of the bed, was no help to her with her short legs, but bright sunlight shone through and illuminated the opposite wall. What she had been lying on appeared to just be a sofa with a thin blanket on it. There were no decorations, only simple, warm red walls with a light wooden floor.

And there was a demon nearby… This was definitely not home, and she was completely sure by now that her family was not here either, no demon would be this close otherwise.

Hesitantly, she stood up, thinking through all the events of the previous night; waking up, watching the skies, the fire… That last part. She remembered galloping towards the doorway of her bedroom as her ceiling burst into flames, the crunching sounds as a beam collapsed, and her darn tail got stuck under it, tripping her, and then she looked up and… That was it.

There was no need to look at her body to realise that she wasn’t injured, but she did anyways in disbelief, her fur was a little patchy and was blackened with soot. No doubt there, she had been trapped in the rubble. Now she needed answers from whoever brought her here…

A sudden caw surprised her, in her confusion a crow had flown through the gap in the doorway unnoticed and had landed on the armrest of the sofa. There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other, head’s tilted, before Acry awkwardly waved at it.

It responded with a loud caw and a flash of green in its eyes that set Acry’s demon warning off a second time, and then hoof-steps were heard heading down the hallway, approaching the door. Strangely, the glow faded as the stranger entered the room.

-

With a little time to spare, Blitz had taken the chance to relax a little, drinking cider and watching the last of the sunrise as he cleaned up his fur, the transferred injuries reduced to little red marks, nearly completely gone. White coats were a pain for stains, but thankfully he was able to get the worst of the dirt out.

He chugged the last of the cider bottle upon hearing cawing from the other room, dropping it in the corner of the room and heading along the hallway over to the brand new spare ‘bedroom’,

Blitz was met with a very unintimidating glare and stand off from the foal when he entered the room, he wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting from a youngling from that particular village, but he was glad she didn’t go for the violent option. He’d only just got the soot out of this coat, no need for a second wash to get blood out.

He was happily surprised to not be met with fear, though he supposed hiding behind a sofa would not do much.

It was a good start though, now he just needed the impression he made to be better, if he wanted to help this foal it would be best to make that job as easy as possible, he was sure she didn’t trust him, why would she?

And now what would be the very first thing he’d say?

Glancing between the floor and the filly with an extended, silent pause, he spoke first.
“Hi?”

In his mind he was far more vocal. ‘Fudge cakes, that was awful, all those years of etiquette learning wasted, my family would be disappointed…'

Two voices responded in unison, which was extremely rare for them. 'We’re disappointed.'

‘Shut it.' Blitz shook his head slightly and tried talking again, noticing the confused look on the filly’s face as she went from a bold but nervous stance to a more relaxed one, if her look was unintimidating to him, he was even worse. “You’re in Appleloosa. I saved you from the fire demon horde… Apologies for the rather rushed accommodation.”

Her head tilted at that news, she supposed it explained the heat and how she got out of the rubble, but now she would start with the first question of many, many more…
“What’s your name?”

Easy enough to answer, “my name is Blitz Emerald Fire, and this,” he gestured to the crow as it fluttered up to land on his shoulder, “is Corvus, my companion.”

“I’m Acry.” The second question arrived almost immediately, “how did you get rid of the burns?”

“Uhh, some unique magic of my own, I specialise in fire spells, so burns are my healing speciality.” To prove the point, his horn flared with a little green light, a few embers spiralling around.

“Oh,” she tilted her head, “I’m not very good with magic…” There was a quiet second before she asked her most important question, “you’re a demon… Right?”

As expected from somepony from that village, she had indeed detected his true nature. He simply nodded and answered, “I am.”

“And… You saved me instead of hunting like the others?” Acry had never communicated with a demon before, stories of their kind that even said or did anything other than snarl, roar or bite were very rare, as infrequent as her luck was any good. Looked like this time both had turned around in her favour.

“Well, no need to tell you I’m any different, you’ve no doubt figured that part out yourself. I’ve been here in Appleloosa for a long time now, just trying to be a pony like everyone else, I would rather not go into detail on my reasons, but let’s just say that sometimes a demon is allowed to disagree with killing. I can get away with it since I can defend myself if I attract enemies, but for now, we should worry about getting you food and getting you cleaned up, your coat isn’t getting back to its normal colour by itself, right?” Effectively ending the questions for now, he gestured to the foal who lifted a hoof to see all the soot caked on it, it was getting rather uncomfortable.

“That sounds like a good idea…”