Justice

The breath was driven out of my body by the impact, but surprisingly, I was alive. I heard a mumble of voices coming from my left, but I couldn’t make out what they said. I unsteadily rose to my feet, and trying to clear my blurred vision by blinking rapidly, I looked to the my right. Once my vision cleared, I noticed a dark and somewhat forbidding forest. By the forest, there was a small simple sign that said “Everfree Forest” . I shook my head in confusion and wearily glanced to my right. Any grogginess I felt a moment before was instantly replaced by extreme shock. There was a town that looked like it came from a coloring book, a house in a tree and one building looked to be made of baked goods. But by far the strangest thing was the inhabitants.

They were ponies.

“What the hell…” I murmured to myself, “This cant be real. This is just some weird dream or hallucination.”

But it certainly felt real. My whole body was aching from the fall, my head was spinning, and I felt like I was about to retch.

“Alright, just calm down and think this through”, I said aloud, “This is just a dream and it will go awa-” “Oh my Celestia! It talks!”

I looked at the group of ponies in shock.

“They can talk?” I thought, “No, this is just a weird dream, not real.”

Six ponies separated from the group and cautiously walked, no, trotted, over. The apparent leader of the group, a dark purple one, spoke out, “Who or what are you? What are you doing here?”

It commanded in an obviously threatening voice, but I could still detect a hint of fear. That’s when I noticed that some of the ponies had horns, and even wings.

“Okay, now I know for sure this isn’t real.” I mumbled.

A rainbow colored pony with wings fly up to me, and yelled, “You answer us when we ask you a question! Are you a spy for him?”

Imaginary or not, I don’t like people, or in this case, ponies, getting in my face. I snarled back at her, by their voices and appearance I guessed the six were female. At the sight of my teeth, She flew back in a hurry while shouting,

“It’s a carnivore!”

All the ponies, not just the six, gasped and took a few steps back. I shook my head in confusion as I was about to respond to these mirages, but I was interrupted by a loud roar behind me. I turned and saw this strange hybrid creature step out of the forest. It had the body of a lion, but the wings of  a bat and the tail of a scorpion. But the colors weren’t right. It’s entire body had a gray overtone, like it was drained of color. It took one look at me and bounded over, intent on attacking me.

My first instinct was to run, but then I thought, “If its only a dream, It cant harm me. If it attacks me I’ll just wake up.” I said aloud triumphantly.

I turned to it, crossed my arms, and waited, the ponies behind me watched in horror. The creature ran up to me, raised its paw, and struck. The force threw me ten feet back and I landed with a loud thud. Upon hitting the ground, I gasped in shock and looked at the four bloody gashes on my chest. I felt my mind crumbling as I realized what happened.

“Thi…This place is real” I stuttered to myself. “What happened?” I asked myself, laying on my back. “How did I get here?”

I wearily looked up again, and the creature looked back. Seeing me down, It must’ve figured  I wasn’t a threat anymore, because now it turned to the six ponies. A little yellow pegasus flew out and landed between the other five and the creature. The pony started to talk to it, but with every word the creature seemed to get more and more aggressive. I stumbled to my feet. The pony and creature were only ten feet away. The other five were about thirty feet away. The yellow pony started stuttering upon seeing the creature get more aggressive, and hesitantly tried to take one step backwards. The enraged monster lunged forward and swung its tail right at the pegasus. I was always a protective person, and I couldn’t just stand there while the pony was killed. I was wounded, but the gashes weren’t deep. Right before the creature struck, I stepped between it and the pony, unsheathed my sword, and blocked its stinger with the flat of my blade. The thing was unbelievably strong. The ponies behind me gasped at what I had done. Struggling to keep the monsters tail from overpowering me, I turned my head to look at the cowering pony behind me, and shouted, ”Don’t just sit there, run!”

The pony looked at me for a brief second and then turned tail and ran. With that gone, I twisted to my right, letting the stinger slam into the ground on my left, and hit the creature on the head with the pommel, making it immediately back up. I repositioned myself between the ponies and it, showing that it would have to kill me to get to them. It glared at me, and circled me, trying to get around. I didn’t let it. It took a quick swipe with its left paw, and I blocked with the edge of the sword. It howled as it stumbled back, a deep gash on its paw.

“The tail is the only thing that is armored,” I thought to myself, “ The rest of  its body will be easy to attack.”

I rushed forward and swung at its head. The creature brought its tail up to block the attack, but I quickly feinted left and slashed its right paw. Now both paws were useless. It howled in rage and use its wings to hover ten feet above the ground.  It dove at me, struck with its tail, which I blocked, and hovered again. I cursed silently to myself. If it kept this up and would never have time to strike back and I would eventually become exhausted and unable to defend.

“Unless… no, too risky. But what else can I do?” I thought, all the while staring it down.

“This is my only chance.”

It dove again. But instead of trying to block its attack, I threw my sword, which impaled it in the side. But without my sword, I was defenseless, and its stinger struck me directly in the chest. Thankfully it missed my heart, but it punctured a lung. Laying on the ground next to the wounded monster, I felt a searing pain in my chest.

“The poison.” I thought to myself.

I staggered to my feet, took the sword from its side, and chopped off its head. I dropped my sword on the corpse because I was simply to tired to hold it. I put on my best triumphant grin and turned to the ponies that were watching.

But all I saw was horror.

They were even more scared of me than before. The only one that didn’t look horrified was the yellow one I had saved, she just simply looked confused, as if death was a new concept for her. Then, somepony  from the crowd yelled out,

“It’s a monster! It killed a manticore and it’s going to eat us!”

I shook my head, about to correct him, when torches and pitchforks seemed to spring up from the crowd like magic. I’d seen movies like Frankenstein enough times to know what that meant. The crowd surged towards me, shouting things like,

“Monster!”

“Murderer!”

“Drive it away!”

I turned and limped away as fast as I could.

“Maybe if I can make it into that forest I’ll be safe,” I thought.

But I wasn’t sure I could make it. The forest was only twenty feet away, but the mob was thirty feet away and closing fast. My entire body was burning because of the poison, my vision was getting increasingly blurry, and I was weak from blood loss. Just when I thought they would catch up to me, I heard a voice scream over the mob’s chants.

“STOP!”

It was the yellow pony I had saved.

The mob stopped and looked at her for a second,  and I realized she was buying me some time. Before the mob could catch up, I limped into the forest, and because of how dense it was, almost immediately lost sight of them. It was then I realized something.

My sword.

It was still lying on the ground by the dead manticore, or whatever they called it.

I feel to the ground, and snapped.

Not only was I in a new world, and am being attacked by freaking ponies and mutants, but now my sword was gone. The most precious thing in the world to me was gone…

“What does it matter…” I thought, “I’m mortally wounded, poisoned, and in a forest that is probably full of monsters like the one I just fought. There’s no way I’m going to survive…”

My vision was so blurry now I couldn’t even make out the trees, only distorted colors. Right before I lapsed into unconsciousness, I saw a distorted shape that was black and white move towards me. And then I was gone.