The Man Who Might Be King

Damn these ponies. Damn them all straight to hell. This city, which was absolutely one hundred percent called Manhattan, was just awful. It was my fault, this time. Really, I should have expected showing up in a pony city wouldn't have gone too well. There was screaming, lots of screaming. Then the pony guards came, with shiny armor and spears that they just couldn't quite hold.

This continued for a long while. The only good thing about it was that those guards had a hard time actually following me anywhere. I was agile or some shit like that, I don't know. Maybe it was the brief period of time where having four legs gave them a disadvantage for getting ready to run. But a few twists and turns and they'd never catch up.

That, unfortunately, left me stuck skulking around alleys pretty damn often. It wasn't too bad, really. The company was fairly decent at least. Awful lot of crime seemed to be going on, and there seemed to be an unspoken agreement to avoid each other. It worked out well enough except for the occasional time a guard chased one of them down here or they just did their own little crime purge.

Although the rule for avoiding contact didn't seem to extend to the other resident of the slums: changelings. Even if they left the ponies alone except for the occasional... transaction, I didn't get the same courtesy. It pretty much became the given thing that whenever I woke up quite a few of the little blighters would have clambered on or around me. It was a bit creepy, but it could have been... worse. At the very least, they tended to try to clean up before trying. The shit they did was a lot less messy than I expected.

But that didn't help me out right now. Because, for once, the thieves had come to talk to me. It also turns out they did a lot more than steal, probably.

"Maaster, wakey wakey." A hoof poked into my ribs. Somewhat dulled from the layers vagrant clothes I'd pilfered during my stay, but it still hurt like fuck. I grunted, and rolled over to come face to face with an ugly as fuck pony. It was just me, her, and some thugs, all of them in rather stylish cloaks that did almost nothing to hide their faces. The black horsies that usually hung around apparently abandoned me without waking me up first. No honor in the heart of a black horse.

With a scar running halfway across her face and a disgusting orange shade of fur, this pony was truly one of the most foul things that I ever had the misfortune of looking upon. I would have felt sorry for her if she wasn't about to rob me or kill me. On a related note, that led me to my response. Rolling myself away my hands flew to my face in a vain attempt to shield me from the inevitable onslaught. "Please don't kill me!"

"Wha—?" she exclaimed, jumping back at my outburst and twitching convulsively. It didn't take her long to get on top of it and back to what she came here for, though. Her thug friends didn't even flinch, cold and uncaring bastards that I'm certain they were. "No, no, never that, no. It's the pretender cult. We've found them, yes, yes we have. Shadow Stabber will lead you there. And then we can stab, stab, stab..."

It helps that she was a unicorn, I think. Because the whole theme would have been kind of ruined by anything else. Although, I think some bonus points might be in order if I ever saw a regular pony with fangs or some shit. The novelty would have worm off eventually, but it seemed a way better idea right now.

Speaking of crazy, she'd just taken out a knife and started thrusting it into the air. She even hummed a little tune as she did it, all of her focus on that strange task. But then she looked back to me, staring with a manic grin and unblinking eyes that seemed like they were really, really struggling to keep open.

Overall, basically the normal kind of person you met in alleys.

But since my choices were now somewhere between follow the lunatic and maybe get stabbed or don't follow the lunatic and probably get stabbed, I figured appeasement would be the best form of defense. Even she was giving off a few creepy vibes. I wasn't really following this too well anyway. I think she was trying to induct me into a murder cult.

"Eh, alright. Lead on," I said. Stabber let out a little squeal as I got up and ran off without me. Her thug friends were a bit slower about it, and had the foresight to actually make sure I was going the same way. Helpful, since I'd have had no chance at following her in this blackness anyway.

But then, like a demon, she popped her head back around from a corner I couldn't even see but for the glowing fire of insanity in her eyes and started to beckon me toward her. "Come, come! Yes. Not much time until day comes and she will judge us."

That didn't really make me go any faster, but at least her little motivational speech let me know what way to go. It was just a pity that the downsides of the night meant that I was totally reliant on Stabber to occasionally turn back and lead me toward our destination.

"You wanna say where we're going?" I said before she bounded ahead. I'm not sure if it was the whole being up to my waist thing, but I wasn't really that afraid of her. I mean I was afraid, of course, but I had a pretty good gut feeling that she wasn't going to kill me and string me up by my guts.

"One of the faithful saw markings of dark magic in old house when he broke in," Stabber said. I had no idea what dark magic was, but it sounded bad. Otherwise, it wouldn't be called dark magic. I was going to ask about it, but Stabber felt the need to start muttering to herself. "He came back to tell Stabber. And now we will go, and we will kill them. But must do it now, before they call the power of chaos. We shall come first, and we will stab and make the house clean with their blood."

Now that I think about it, it wouldn't be good even if she was a normal pony that had fangs. Changelings already had that one monopolized. When it comes to originality, I was lucky that she stabbed things with magic instead of having something nearly normal like just fangs. And, just to really savor my companion's uniqueness, we continued on in awkward silence. I had to hand it to her two buddies though, they really just did not care.

Through twists and turns and really very messy streets we went. The path we were taking was probably fairly roundabout since we went to a great deal of effort to avoid any of the streets that were actually trafficked. Granted, it was quite dark, but that was when they tried to outfox you and before you knew it they'd catch me to... I don't know, really, but something bad!

Eventually, we went into a part of the city that I'd never seen. Not that it was saying much, since I didn't really make a habit of exploring and hadn't been here too long either way. But the buildings were starting to become more like proper houses, instead of the standard fare of a city, and took on a more rustic and ancient look with slate roofs and, as we went on, eventually became outright mansions that stood as titanic monuments to being rich mixed with a lot of general opulence. Essentially, the houses were detached four story affairs now.

We stopped in front of one. It didn't really look too different, but as far as spooky rituals went it really had the vibe. It just had that haunted feeling to it. All the black tinted windows didn't help too much. Even the garden around it seemed a little, eh, off. A little off-color, maybe. These houses didn't have much of a garden anyway, just a few meters spread out from each building that might allow for a single tree at most.

"You wait here, Master. I will open the way," Stabber said, teleporting away because magic was the ultimate abuse of everything apparently. I wish I could do that shit, I wouldn't have that whole issue of having unicorns randomly abducting me then. Her random thug friends hadn't gone with her so even with the issue of magic I would have been stuck getting beaten up if I tried to bail.

"So... you guys... Know her very long?" I said. They didn't really acknowledge me, but they did shift around a little bit.

"By Celestia, no. She just paid us, and saying no wasn't good considering her... reputation," one said. She sounded like a girl. I was either way off or she looked like a steroid infested demon about twice the size as most of the female ponies I'd seen.

"Repu—?" But then there was a mighty crash, and the front of the house came crashing down onto us in a flurry of shrapnel and dust. We didn't really get hurt, but apparently this wasn't a task for subtlety.

Stabber stood at the front with her horn faintly glowing. A big demented grin was on her face, and it looked like she'd picked up a bit of blood from somewhere. I had a good feeling that it wasn't hers. While the other two may have been a bit shocked from the flashy entrance, it didn't stop them pushing me forward toward the inevitable death by whatever awaited us inside.

The foyer was pretty spacious and truly deserved the fancy word I use to describe it. Well, once I excluded the giant hole of rubble that had inadvertently been made to convenience our entrance. A massive stairs led to the higher levels of the mansion and a golden chandelier loomed precariously above us. Paintings of fine art lined the walls on all sides, and the whole building gave off a truly ancient feeling.

I also got to find out why Stabber was covered in blood: there was a dead body just pushed off to the side. The poor bastard looked like he once had a brown coat, although it was quickly turning red as a pool of blood blossomed from his body, a body with many, many stab wounds. But, the pony also looked pretty old so that whole theme was still... kinda there.

"Alright... So, how about you guys go up and I'll go down?" I said. On the off-chance that they listened, I got the cushy job of going into the dark dungeon that everyone would expect things to be in. So, really, I'd find nothing while the real eldritch abomination murder cult would be in a well lit room of the tallest tower while they waited for lightning to reanimate the monster. That, or we were the murder cult. It was still kinda hard to keep track, although the murder was starting to give me a definite leaning.

"Oh, yes, master! Yes!" Stabber exclaimed in a euphoria, thumping her hooves against the ground. The other two were silent, until I looked back and noticed that they were just gone.

"I only hired them to take us this far. But I thought they would stay to bask in your magnificence," Stabber said, either reading my mind or guessing. "But after, I shall find them. I will find them both and give you their eyes as an offering!

"But first, the followers of madness!"

With that, she bounded off upstairs. Which was what I wanted so I can't really complain on that front. But I also got a really, very unpleasant view that nearly made it all seem not worth it. I honestly didn't know it could get that messed up without them defecating on themselves, but it's not that surprising. The streets would have been a lot dirtier if I was right.

It didn't take long before I found the incredibly ominous door that screamed secret clandestine meeting, and opening it revealed the expected nearly pitch black descent into the bottomless cavern of evil. Each step on the stone steps echoed painfully loudly as I descended into the dark hallways of some foul underground lair.

I felt a feeling of claustrophobia as I moved into a dark and narrow hallway. On each side, walls lined with paintings of a chimeric beast seemed to collapse around me. The hall wasn't especially long, but I still wondered at the sanity of a mind that would put up so many nearly identical paintings side by side.

At the end, yet another wooden door greeted me. With a giant knocker formed into the visage of the same creature that covered the walls in some sort of messed up tribute. The door had no visible way to open it easily, so I went with the ancient tradition of pushing against it with my entire body.

With great force on my part, it slowly creaked open. Eventually, I was able to slip myself inside. Although I was lucky to not slice myself in half as the door fell back into place behind me with a great slam that sounded incredibly ominous. And I wasn't alone anymore.

In front of me, four ponies were gathered around a... rainbow colored mini statue of the chimera thing. They were bowed in front of it, and I just heard the end of a creepy chant cut off as they turned to face me. Naturally, all four of these guys seemed to be unicorns so I was totally screwed.

"You see, brothers, the sacrifice has been delivered!" one shouted. Moving in front of his compatriots, he got onto his hind legs and splayed his front hooves out in an amazing display of balance befitting the most raunchy of tightrope walkers. Raunchy because he was a dude, which I was now fully aware of. "The shrine in the basement works every single time!"

Now was naturally about the time I started to want to leave. So, turning around, I began to slam against the door behind me. Unfortunately, it was as smooth as a polished piece of wood can get and my nails scratched uselessly against it as I tried to force some grip. It did screech horribly though.

"Ah, fuck. Stop that and come over here! We've a very particular list to get through and you're cooperation would be appreciated." Glancing back, I saw the unicorn behind me had stopped his foul display. He also didn't bother to come at me and instead had grabbed a piece of parchment out of seemingly nowhere. Or he got it when I wasn't looking.

"Now, first things first. I have to laugh maniacally. Very important to the chaos business, I hear. Don't get much practice, so do forgive the accent," he stopped speaking, and coughed. Then, with an intake of breath, he let out a maniacal laugh. Well, it was more of a dark hearted chuckle, but that was pretty evil too in a way.

"Hey, Cloud, you sane bastard. You aren't meant to do that yet. You're meant to say the plan first," a grey unicorn said, coming up behind his compatriot. Who was also a unicorn, which was kinda weird since the name and all. Unless his name was Cloud Magic. "If you could kindly come and lie on the ground here, we could get on with sacrificing you to usher in a new age of darkness."

Not exactly a tempting offer. Once they figured out that I could do absolutely nothing to stop them, I was pretty fucked. But it was definitely in my favor that none of them had managed to make this leap of logic. "I'd rather not."

"No? Is that allowed?" grey pony's eyes widened. He began to hyperventilate, twitching shiftily in place as he muttered to himself. "Apple, get the rule book!"

Apple was, apparently, yet another unicorn. This time, and going against my first guess, she was a mare. A murky purple coat covered her and she seemed pretty... bulky, for a pony. Not the bad kind of bulky, but she had a look about her that hinted she might be able to snap necks with her muscly looking legs. I'd seen bigger, but it didn't usually come packaged with a horn on the head.

Aside from that, I have no idea where she got it from, but she'd managed to grab an extremely over-sized, old looking book and was now perusing its pages.

"I don't think there's a rule for that... Could we just take a guess?" she said quietly, unsure of herself as her timid voice struggled to be heard as it made even the air itself seem loud in comparison. Even though what she said might have been a bit dark and bad for my health, I love how she said it. Her voice was like honeyed silk to my ears.

"Guess?! Absolutely not! The first rule of being a chaos cultist is that you have to obey all the rules!" Cloud shouted, directing his ire toward the poor, defenseless Apple Light. Spittle flew from his disgusting horse mouth as he verbally assaulted the cowering mare. "Now, look up the rule we follow in case the rule we're looking for hasn't been added yet!"

"Cloud, I think she's right. I don't think the book has a rule for that," grey pony said, walking up beside the violently raging Cloud. "Calm down, we can pray to Lord Discord for more rules after we call upon him."

"Yeah, you leave Apple Light alone!" I shouted, with maybe a bit more enthusiasm that I really should have had. They all turned to me, expressions of shock on their faces. Although whether that was because they had forgotten about me or that I was getting into their freaky argument I don't know.

"How did you know my name?" Apple Light said, sweetly looking up at me as she raised her head from the dusty dark pages of that ancient tome. Her adorable brow knitted in concentration as she gazed at me with cute eyes that, like her coat, were purple. "Have you been stalking me?"

"What? No, that's—" I started. Before I could continue, Cloud the dick unicorn pointed his hoof in my direction and took on a terrified look.

"That's it! He's been trailing after us for weeks to steal the poor maiden's innocence!" Cloud yelled, with enough violent flaying that his cohort dived away from him. "If we don't stop him now, he'll overpower us all! Then, he'll loom over the sweet girl, tantalizingly probing her with those foul appendages while she can do nothing but shudder in his grasp!"

Cloud, you might be, ah, focusing a bit too much on this," grey pony said. For the most part, I agreed. But there was that whole killing me thing that was going on in the background. "Let's just be moving on. I'm sure the master wouldn't like to wait any longer than he has to."

That seemed to mollify Cloud, which turned his strange, foul, twisted thoughts away from Apple Light before he did something untoward to her or made me do it to her. But as great as that was, it meant his attention was back on me. Now, I hadn't been idle for the past few minutes at all. On the contrary, I had done an extremely good job of looking for a way out before promptly giving in to despair.

Magic was still an unfair advantage.

Right on cue, his horn lit up as a sadistic grin appeared on his face. Grey and that other unicorn followed up behind him, horns also pumping out magic signals. Apple Light was the same, but the clear hesitance in her step made it obvious that it was peer pressure that forced her into going with the crowd. They'd probably kill her otherwise, the savages.

"Come on now, my little ponies, we should all just sit down and talk about this," I said, backing away slowly. That was mostly because I had nowhere to back away too, and not so much a tactical choice.

When a burst of light came flying at me, I dived out of the way. When it rushed past me, it impacted the door that had caused me so much trouble and turned it into a pile of mush. Seeing a shot at living, I jumped to get going and flee for my life.

It was just unfortunate that Shadow Stabber happened to be standing in the hallway.

"Master, you found the heretics!" she shouted gleefully, sidestepping the puddle of sludge on the ground. She levitated her knife out of some dark recess in her cloak. "Now, let me stab them in your name!"

It might have been appropriate with her name and all, but that she said stab specifically is a bit strange. I'm not gonna lie to myself here, I think it's because she didn't plan on killing them. Although all this meant she wasn't part of the murder cult trying to kill me! Just the other murder cult trying to kill this murder cult. But I think I can live with that.

Regardless of her exact intentions, Stabber rushed forward at a blinding speed into the bastards and Apple Light. Before they even had a chance to react, her knife went flying into the side of Cloud. When she pulled it out, blood went spraying into the air covering her in a thin sheen of red. Of course, since she was using magic, it's a bit debatable why she barreled into them at all...

I moved toward gaping hole that served as an exit, but grey unicorn jumped in front before I'd taken a step. Looking completely out of it, with a frothy mouth and scraggly looking beard, he ran toward me. Ponies didn't seem to have much going on beyond charging at people once magic was out.

He was also the first pony I've ever seen with a beard. It wasn't pleasant.

I jumped out of his path, an easy feat since momentum was not on the side of the four-legged. When he turned around, quite a ways beyond me, he glared at me hatefully and his horn sparked.

"Honestly, even we wouldn't work with a lunatic like her!" grey shouted. Then the inevitable bean of white light came gushing out of his horn toward me. "I was a bit leery about all this, but we must be the sane ones!"

Dodging magic death rays was a lot harder than a charging pony. As such, I stopped and dropped.

"You can fold!?"

There were apparently some disadvantages to having not so bendy legs. As the beam went flying over my head, I rolled and starting rushing toward my greatest and only friend in the whole world: Shadow Stabber. Luckily, my position meant I got to avoid running in a straight line and the grey one actually had to aim.

As yet more magic went flying past me at angles that implied grey was probably half blind, I saw Shadow Stabber doing something terrible.

She was savagely fighting Apple Light in an epic clash of misguided youth and stone-cold psycho pony. As Stabber's knife flew with magic in a flourish tearing all around her, Apple Light took the grand strategy of backing away quickly. Admirable, but doomed to fail and if Shadow Stabber killed her I bet she couldn't save me from the ponies trying to kill me!

Before I collided with Stabber, her errant, rapidly flying knife grazed across my skin. A trickle of blood went with it, and Stabber immediately focused on me.

"Oh no, Master!" she said, her unjustified fight with Apple Light forgotten as she looked at me with creepy levels of concern.

"The ritual is complete!" Cloud yelled. Turning around, I saw him limping forward as grey unicorn supported him. That was with magic of course, because ponies can't do shit with hooves. There was a fair amount of blood trickling down his side, but he also wasn't dead so I guess he was fine. He was still a horse, after all.

"It is?"

He ignored me, of course, and Apple Light started yelling at the top of her lungs as that musty old book hovered in front of her. "Lord Discord, Lord of Madness, bestow upon your disciples the aid of one of your lordly creations!"

The room started glowing an eerie rainbow of colors. The crazy cultists and Apple Light rushed off to one of the corners of the room, leaving me and Stabber relatively alone.

"We should probably go," I said. Stabber looked up at me with puppy eyes.

"But... stabbing?" She pouted. It would have been cute save for the blood covering her. An awful lot of it seemed fresh considering only one person got stabbed, but maybe horses bleed a lot more than I guessed.

"No." I moved out, dragging her with me. She wasn't too reluctant after we were out of view of the ponies. Speeding up, we navigated through the dark corridor, not so dark now that the walls were lighting up too.

The foyer was the same as we left it though. Which is to say, destroyed. But the familiarity and lack of disturbing shit was comforting. The dead guy was still there, but he just wasn't doing it for me anymore.

By the time we reached the fence of the house, the world illuminated around us. Turning back, I saw a beam of light shooting up to the sky. Naturally, it was rainbow colors and probably the weirdest thing I'd see today as crackles of rainbow lightning burst from it and set buildings alight with rainbow fire.

"Seems like a good time to get out of town for a while."

Then, a massive roar echoed from the chamber beneath the building. So I burst out into a sprint, Stabber following behind me.

Whether Stabber followed or not, I do not know. I was far too into running as the roars began to rise in volume to pay attention to small details like that.