Nightmare

Quicksilver supposed he should be grateful that this time they weren't dragging him face-down. That had not been a pleasant experience. In comparison, though any such comparison of dragging must be considered altogether relative, this particular dragging was almost kingly. As it turned out, barely being conscious put the sensation into a whole new light. Imagine that.

Never mind his profusely bleeding skull, or the bruises that would surely form, as long as his face didn't scrape across every pebble before he was thrown in front of which ever noble thought to imprison him this time, Quicksilver was content.

He opened eyes as far as he could without developing a headache. His vision was still blurry, but enough detail was returning to allow him to identify which manor he had been taken to.

Rathborne's. It had to be Rathborne's.

Quicksilver had nothing against griffons. Most of the time he liked them better than his fellow ponies. Count Rathborne, however, was a bastard covered bastard with bastard filling. He had tried to have Quicksilver executed on more than one occasion, and was otherwise entirely rude when Quicksilver had never done anything to him. Well besides regularly robbing him blind. But, come on, Quicksilver robbed everyone. There was no need for some special beef.

A door slammed open somewhere ahead. One of his captors, a gray feathered fellow, took grip of his short mane in one claw, while smacking him quite rudely with the other;.

“Wake up.”

“Oh, but a nap sounds so appealing right now.” Quicksilver coughed through a freshly bleeding jaw. The griffon gave a short grunt before tossing him into a nearby room. Hmph. No humor on that one. The landing hurt as much as he thought it might. Surely by now something in his body had been broken. Pride, if nothing else.

Quicksilver took stock of his surroundings after the initial post pain nausea began to wear off. The place was oddly plain. Bare walls, no carpet or fluffy couches. A small coffee table sat in the center, unvarnished. No dust anywhere. This room was new.

Its only other inhabitant, however, was not. Count Rathborne's feathers, once the very essence of autumn tones, had started to lose their coloring. His beak was a crooked cruel black hook set upon a squashed face. Two cobblestone eyes squinted forward with barely hidden contempt.

“Quicksilver” he spat with a nasally voice.

“Reginald.”

The griffon bristled. “You will address me as My Lord, peasant.”

“As my lord Reginald wishes.”

“Glibness will find you no profit here.”

Perhaps, Quicksilver reflected, poking a bear that was already contemplating a pleasant mauling with a stick would be considered by most a terrible idea, but Reggie deserved it. He was a pompous ass, and Quicksilver had let him know that on multiple occasions. Not that it ever stuck. He was still a pompous, violent, featherbrained, specist, classist ass. Perhaps a reminder was due.

“You're an ass.”

“I advise you to watch your tongue, thief”

“Apologies. You are an ass. My. Lord.”

“Of course this would be a waste.” Rathborne rose from his seat and made for the door. As he made his exit, his thugs took hold of Quicksilver once again. They hoisted him to his hooves, such a small courtesy, before dragging him from the room.

“And I thought our courtship was going so well Reggie.”

Count Reginald Rathborne scowled to his guards. “Put him in the dungeon. Maybe a few days without food will make him more willing to listen.”

_________________________________________________________________

Quicksilver awoke very, very sore, and very, very hungry. Six days. Six long days he had been locked in this cell. Six days. At least he thought it had been six days. There was no real way to tell down here.

He rolled onto his back, stared at the ceiling, and tried not to think about food. He tried not to think of the merchants in the streets above him, peddling their lemon cakes and loaves of sweet bread. Oh! The sweet bread! The Crystal Empire may be primarily famous for its jewels, but surely the sweet bread was worth a few pages in history.

His stomach growled, and pain followed soon after. He curled into a ball, praying to anything and everything that he would just die. He didn't. Instead, a small sound was heard down the hall.

Hoofsteps.

Quicksilver slunk as deep into the shadows as was possible, his breath short and quiet. They had been coming every few hours to taunt him with food, or just to outright beat him. Rathborne may have wanted to talk originally, but now he seemed content to take vengeance on Quicksilver for every crime, real or merely perceived. His black fur and feathers would have rendered him invisible in the gloom had it not been for his disheveled silver mane, which glowed like a beacon in the darkness.

He could try to out maneuver them, but the cell was too small. He could fight, but his starved body would be too weak. No, there was no escaping this. All he could hope was that they would kill him this time.

But it was not the griffons who came to unlock his cage. A cloaked figure, standing shorter that Rathborne's lackeys, shuffled in carrying a tray of sweetbread and beer. A hood covered most of its face with only the tip of a small pink muzzle peaking out. A pony. Thank the Gods!

The pony set its tray in front of him and sat, staring. Quicksilver couldn't see the ponies face, but it made no threatening gesture. Still, Quicksilver did not trust it. Rathborne had it in him to stoop very low indeed. So he stared back. For a while, nothing happened.

“Eat.”

Her voice was gentle and firm, and it was most definitely a her. Quicksilver, more than willing to follow the order if still untrusting, kept one eye planted firmly on her as he took a bite. The sweetbread had certainly tasted good in his imagination. Now it was heaven. Soon everything was forgotten as he dove in. Only when he had finished his meal did she speak again.

“Come.”

Quicksilver was not given a chance to respond. The mare stood and walked from his cage, not bothering to check if he was following or not. She didn't need to. Quicksilver had grown very tired of his cell.

Rathborne's dungeons were the stuff of horror stories. A damp, decrepit musk hung in the nostrils, accenting the stains smeared across dark stone walls and floors. Cruel black iron chains and bars were perhaps the only new and well maintained things here. The prisoners certainly weren't. What few of them there were were silent and starving. They stared as the two passed. The mare did not notice.

Quicksilver noticed. A peculiar guilt tingled down his spine. This mare had fed him while the others had looked on. Their mouths would have become wet and flavored with imagined tastes. No she had freed him. Perhaps it would be best if he followed her example and walked with his eyes forward.

She led him down several more cell lined halls, thankfully unoccupied, and up a spiraling staircase until, at last, they exited the undercroft. Out they went through a large door of brown oak into the back foyer of the mansion.

The back foyer was not built with guests in mind. The floor was made of unpolished wood. Various archways and doors were splattered along the walls asymmetrically, none giving any sense of where they lead.

The mare – likely through some sort of divination, for she could not have been farther from Rathborne's usual taste in lackeys – trotted through an archway to their left. After two more turns they found themselves in the front foyer; one door away from freedom.

A door guarded by two of the three griffons in the world Quicksilver wanted to see the least. The bigger one locked eyes with him. He shoved an elbow into his fellow. The two made to stop the two ponies immediately.

Of course, Quicksilver thought, Who ever heard of a tale where walking out the front door actually worked?

The mare made no move to stop. The forward griffon – a burly greyfeather – smirked before lunging at her with a newly drawn dagger. He never made it.

Breathe in.

Flash in the moonlight. Splatter and gurgle.

Muffled yell. Twisting crack.

Breathe out.

Quicksilver could not comprehend what had just happened. Where the guards had just stood now lay two fresh corpses. The mare, cloak drenched in blood, dragged him outside and into a full sprint before he remembered to breathe again. Somewhere a bell sounded.

He could feel something hot on his muzzle. It dripped into his open mouth. It took everything he had not to wretch then and there. He had had no idea that could be that much blood in someone.

They made a sharp turn into an alleyway littered with trash. A sudden stop, then the mare tackled him into what must have once been a shop of some sort. She shoved a hoof in his mouth to keep him from screaming.

Outside he could hear the paws, claws, and shouts of what was surely hundreds of griffons frantically giving chase. Their chain mail hissed as they tore the world apart trying to find them.

They will find us! He thought, Surely they can smell the blood!

He could certainly smell the blood. The stench was overpowering. It filled his nostrils until all he could remember was the sight of metal ripping open the guard's neck. All he could hear was the final desperate gurgle the griffon had made as he drowned.

Breathe in. Breathe out. They can smell... Breathe... Blood. Breathe...breathe...brea–

Faint.