Justice

The sun is shining. The birds are chirping, and overall it is a beautiful summer day. It would be perfect if not for the fact I am staring at the freshly dug graves of my parents. Its as if nature itself is mocking me. Why can’t it rain like in the movies? Why can’t it be dreary and dismal to match my mood? But no, nature made it a gorgeous day just to annoy me. It was nature that caused this to happen after all. A random bolt of lightning just had to hit the perfect tree, and from there the fire just spread. Someone had helped spread the fire, but nature started it. Nature is mocking me.

I awoke in a dark and damp cell, my face against the cold stone floor. I tried to stand, and quickly gave up due to how much pain I was in. The memory that invaded my dream didn’t help. I simply laid there for a few minutes, then decided I would get up regardless of the pain. After a few tries, I was on my feet. I felt dizzy, so I put my hands to my face, trying to regain my balance.

That was a mistake.

As soon as I touched my face, I was hit by a bolt of pain so strong it almost knocked me back down. After catching my breath, I looked around and saw a pile of hay in on corner, and a mirror on the wall opposite. I limped over to the mirror and looked at my reflection. My face was just one massive bruise.

“When those pegasi knocked me out, the left one hell of a bruise.” I thought.

I looked around and said “I wonder where I am? Getting knocked out and waking up somewhere new is kinda getting old.”

I looked at the pile of hay. “I wonder if that’s the bed or the food?” I smirked at my own humor.

Another mistake. Smirking hurt.

The room had three stone walls, and one wall was just a bunch of vertical iron bars. I walk over to it, look for the lock on the door, and try to pick it. The only problem with that was that there was no keyhole.

“How do they open the door without a key?” I wondered aloud.

I looked around the cell again, but I don’t see anything I can use.

“Well, I might as well rest up while I can, who knows how long I’ll be down here.”

I gingerly slump against a wall, and try and fall asleep.

I awoke cold and stiff to the sounds of hooves on stone. My pulse skyrocketed as I jump up and ran to the door. Through the bars I see two pegasi and a unicorn trot towards my cell. The unicorn was slightly larger than the other two, and had fancier armor, so I assumed it was the leader of them. I yell to the unicorn, “Who are you?! What do you want with me?!”

The unicorn calmly replies, “Its nothing I want, but what my princess wants. We’ll be taking you to her now.”

Okay, so he wasn’t the leader.

I look down at the lock and ask, “Well how are you going to get me out of here?”

The unicorn simply smirks and I watch in amazement as his horn glows. The lock glows with a weird colored mist, the same as his horn, and I back up quickly. I hear things moving inside the lock, and suddenly it opens. I tentatively ask, “How did you do that?”

“Magic.” Was his smug reply.

I gingerly step out of the cell, and as soon as I’m out, a pair of handcuffs levitate towards me and bind my hands in front of me. The unicorn says snootily, “Shall we be going?”

I give him the look of death and begin to follow, the two pegasi flanking me. We walk down the stone corridor a little ways, and eventually go up some steps. At the top of the steps, we come to this elaborately decorated hallway. There are plush carpets on the floor, paintings of all kinds of ponies, and stained glass windows lining one side. The windows didn’t interest me, it was what was beyond those windows.  As we walk down the hall, I scoot closer to my guard on the left, and he unconsciously moves to his left to keep his distance. Once I was near enough to the windows, I looked down and saw that there was a huge drop and then a lake at the bottom. Not the best option for escape, but I would keep it in mind.

“So where are we?” I ask the unicorn.

“We are in Canterlot castle of course, home of the royal princesses.”

“Alright, now there’s two, or more, of them,” I thought, “perfect.”

Seeing me thinking and falling behind, the unicorn says, “Hurry up! We don’t have all day!”

“Whatever.” I mumble back.

The next thing I knew I was surrounded in the mist, and thrown against the nearest wall.

Hard.

I gasp in shock as my right arm and a few of my ribs break upon the impact. The mist leaves me, and I crumple into a heap onto the floor. I struggle to hold back my cry of pain, and I see the unicorn trot over and glare cruelly down at me.

“The princess told us to bring you alive, but she didn’t say in how many pieces, now get moving!”

I struggle to stand up, and when I finally do, they immediately start moving again. Every now and then the unicorn uses his accursed magic to grab the chains and yank me forward, almost causing me to black out each time due to my broken arm. When I thought this hallway would never end, we finally reach two massive doors.

“Well this is it,” I thought, “If the behavior of the guards and the ponies they rule are any indicator, I will have to be very wary of these princesses.” I thought to myself.

The unicorn uses his magic again to open the doors, and I step through. The first thing I notice is how massive the throne room is. It has high vaulted ceilings like a cathedral, and is at least half a football field wide. In the center of the room are two thrones, one with a large, white… what? She has horns and wings, what is she?  There was a smaller blue one next to her, that had horns and wings as well.

“That’s odd,” I thought, “because they have both horns and wings they must be the rulers here. But something else is weird. It almost seems like they are radiating power. I’ll defiantly have to be careful around them.”

On my right, by the thrones, sit the six ponies that stepped out of the crowd before, even the yellow one I had saved.

Upon seeing me, she flew over and gasped, “Are you okay? What did they do to you? Will you be-”

“FLUTTERSHY!” The blue princess shouted, “RETURN TO YOUR SEAT!”

The yellow pony, supposedly called Fluttershy,  looked hesitantly at me and back to the blue princess, and slowly flew back. I was only twenty feet away from the thrones now, and could see both of the Princesses clearly. The white one was clearly the elder, as she was about twice the size of the blue one. Her mane sparkled like the sun, and I noticed a tattoo of a sun on her flank. Upon noticing that, I quickly looked at all the ponies nearby, and noticed they all had varying tattoos of sort. The white one also had a golden crown, and some very fancy looking armor, clearly for display only. The blue one, besides being smaller, had a mane that sparkled like the stars, and a smaller black crown on her head. She had a moon tattoo on her flank.

I looked up at the white one, and said, “Who are you and why am I here?”

The princess simply smiled and her horn glowed yellow.

A second later I felt like I was being burned alive.

I fell to the ground and writhed in agony. From what seemed like a long distance away, I heard Fluttershy cry out, sounding like she was on the verge of tears,

“No! Please stop! Don’t hurt him!”

A few seconds later I felt the pain subside. I took long deeps breaths, trying to get myself back under control. I hesitantly rose to my feet again, and I gave the yellow pegasus a look of gratitude. The white Princess spoke then, saying,

“I am Princess Celestia, and you will not speak without being spoken to, do you understand?”

I simply nodded.

“Good,” she said, “Now, here is what will happen. You will answer my every question, and for each question you answer truthfully, I will heal a part of you, does that sound fair?”

I look up at her and say, “And what if I don’t?”

She just smiles and says, “I will burn you again, but next time it will last for a hour, instead of a few seconds. Understand?”

I gulp and nod quickly.

“Good. Now, what are Discord’s plans?”

I stare blankly up at her and reply, “I have no idea what your talking about.”

Her brow furrows as she realizes I’m telling the truth. Her horn lights up, and my cracked ribs are healed. “A portal containing Discord’s power brought you here, how could you not know of him?”

“Sorry, but I don’t.” Her horn lights up again, and the bruises on my face are healed.

“Hmm… Well then, I shall just have to explain. Look to your right at the stained glass windows. They tell Discord’s story.”

I looked where she directed and noticed a window to my far right that showed two ponies with horns and wings fire some kind of beam from their horns at this monstrous creature. The creature reminded me of Frankenstein due to it being made up of so many different things.

“Is that… thing, Discord?” I asked.

Celestia glares at me, but then seems to forgive my one small question.

“Yes it is, and the two alicorns at the bottom are Luna and I.”

“Huh, so that’s what they are, alicorns. And the blue one is called Luna, makes sense.” I thought.

“Look one window over to your left.” Celestia commanded.

I obeyed and saw the six ponies firing some other kind of beam at Discord, and I even noticed Fluttershy in there as well.

I looked back at the Princess and she asked me, “Well? Do you have any questions?”

I reply, “Yeah, why was this discord guy so bad you had to attack him twice, and why didn’t whatever that beam thingy was work the first time?”

She said, “Discord is the spirit of chaos in mortal form, he tried to destroy everything and wipe out my entire race!” She was seething in anger.

“I’d better change the subject quick,” I thought. “Well what was that beam thing meant to do?” I quickly ask.

She seems to calm down and replies, “It was meant to trap him in stone, which it did, but it wore off after a few thousand years.

“A few thousand years?? How old are you?”

She glares at me, and I quickly shut up.

She goes on, saying “The second time he was trapped by my good-for-nothing pupil and her pathetic friends.”

I notice the six look down in shame, especially the purple one.

“But because of their lack of experience and talent, he escaped within months.”

“Well, if you said he was mortal, why didn’t you just kill him back then?”

She replied, looking horrified, “We are a peaceful race! We would never kill him!”

“Peaceful race? Could have fooled me…” I mumbled under my breath.

“WHAT DID YOU SAY TO MY SISTER!?!?!” The one called Luna shouted at me. After the ringing in my ears died down, I quickly replied,

“Nothing.”

Celestia gave me another disapproving look and continued.

“Anyway, we couldn’t kill him now if we tried, he has summoned his grayscale guardians.”

“What?”

Celestia sighed, “The grayscale guardians are creatures Discord summons to protect himself. As long as they live, he can’t be touched. The manticore you killed was one of them.”

“Wait, if I killed one of them, why would you suspect I was working for Discord? And exactly how many are there?”

“There are only 2 remaining, the dragon and the hydra. And I suppose you couldn‘t be working with Discord.”

“Well that doesn’t sound good,” I thought, “But at least she knows I’m not working with him.”

I spoke aloud saying, “Well why don’t you just kill the guardians, then kill Discord?”

She said, exasperated, “Its not that simple, to kill him you would need the elements of harmony, and since he became immune to the ones normally wielded by these six,” She points to the group on my right, “It would take the hidden element to kill him.”

“The hidden element?” I ask.

She says, “I originally thought there were 5 elements, but it turned out there were six. Now I realize there is a hidden seventh as well. But that is beside the point, now that I realize you aren’t under Discords control, what are you?”

“I’m a human.”

She looks at me oddly, and after a few seconds she heals my broken arm.

“Finally!” I thought, “All healed.”

Celestia looks at me and says, “I have never heard of a human, tell me of your species.”

I spent a good fifteen minutes telling her about my race, sugarcoating it wherever possible because I didn’t want her to find some other reason to kill me. But apparently it didn’t work. When I was finished, she said, “Your world sounds a lot like mine does now. Discord hasn’t been idle since he escaped. He has been murdering ponies, and burning whole towns to the ground. It wasn’t always like this, Equstria used to be a happy place, where ponies could play without fear. But that’s all gone now, the land has been transformed by fear. Crime is rampant, and everypony is slowly turning more and more scared and distrustful. But that doesn’t matter to you. I’ve decided what I’m going to do with you now.”

I didn’t like where this was heading.

She spoke, saying “Discord no doubt brought you here to spread more chaos and fear, well, I won’t allow that to happen. You are obviously dangerous, my pupil told me how you killed the manticore, and I can’t allow someone like you to be running around spreading more fear. Guards! Take him back to his cell and execute him immediately!”

Fluttershy gasps, “No! You can’t do this!”

“I can do whatever I want!” Celestia roared back.

As the guards tried to drag me away, I knew I had one shot at getting out of here alive.

“I can see why your so angry Celestia!” I taunted up at her, “Apparently you're so powerful but you can’t even deal with a little spirit like Discord!”

Her eyes grew wide and I saw fury blaze in them.

“Almost…” I thought.

I yelled again, “You're pathetic and weak! You tried to get rid of him twice and you still failed because you can’t do anything yourself!”

Her fury is volcanic. The temperature in the room has to be at least 110 degrees.

“Just  a little more…”

“Oh, by the way, I love the tramp-stamp on your butt, it really suits you.”

That's the final straw.

Her horn glows a magma red and a fireball launches itself from her horn directly towards me.

I had been counting on this.

I raise the shackles in front of me, and when the fireball hit them, they dissolve into ash.

Everypony looks at me in confusion at what just happened, and how I had just tricked Celestia.

I take advantage of their momentary confusion and run to my left as fast as I can towards the windows. I hear the guards shouting, and I hear another fireball come flying towards me. I duck just in time, the fireball goes right over  my head, and it vaporized a window in front of me. I ran to the window, turned around as I jumped through, and gave a two fingered salute to Celestia just to piss her off. And then I was falling. I got in position to dive into the water as I fell, and right before I hit I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

But I didn’t hit the water.

I felt something grab my leg and I was hovering in the air. Looking up, I saw the rainbow colored one holding onto my leg, struggling to keep us both up. I looked past her and saw the two pegasi guards flying swiftly down towards us.

I looked back up at her and said,

“Sorry.”

I used the foot she wasn’t grabbing to kick her in the face. I didn’t want to do it, but it beat getting executed. She let go, clutching her face in pain, and I fell the last ten feet into the water. Once underwater, I swam to the shore a little ways from the castle, and surfaced. I crawled up onto the bank of the lake, and hid behind a bush growing there. The guards and the rainbow pony were flying around looking for me, but eventually they went back up into the castle. I breathed a sigh of relief. With the castle behind me, I looked around, and saw a small forest to my left, and a pretty fancy looking town to my right. That one guard called the place Canterlot Castle, so this must be Canterlot. I strain my eyes to get a better look at the town, and I see a sign that says,

“Armory”

“Maybe that’s where my sword is! They probably brought it here when they brought me. I look closer at the forest on my left, and I notice it stretches to the right and eventually goes behind the town.

“Perfect, I’ll go into the forest, and use that as cover to sneak into town.” I mutter aloud.

I hear a deafening roar of pure rage from behind me. I quickly turn around, and I see that part of the castle is on fire.

“Oh boy, She is mad. I’d better get moving before they find me.” And with that, I disappear into the forest.