On Ponies and Daedric Princes

Twilight Sparkle woke with a start, the frozen ground chilling her fur. "Wh-where..?" She tried to shake the muzziness from her thoughts, and brought a hoof up to her face to rub the bleariness from her vision. "Can't see a thing..." Her horn glowed brightly and the darkness of the cave retreated. She had been laying beneath a large statue of Clavicus Vile, easily twenty feet high. The unicorn shot to her hooves and backed away, only to find the hard ice of a wall pressed against her back.

"Why, hello dear. Glad to see you're finally awake. You were out for quite some time. About a day, I believe. Granted, inter-realm transportation does tend to take quite a toll on people." The statue didn't move when Clavicus spoke, but Twilight felt its eyes piercing her, and his voice rang in her ears clear as a bell.

"Where am I?" Twilight croaked, her throat dry.

"Tamriel. The province of Skyrim, to be exact. Lovely place, Skyrim. The locals are pretty friendly. Except for the bandits. And highwaymen. And the Forsworn. And the dragons. And sabertooth cats…they'll try to kill you. The weather is always quite nice, however. I hope you like snow." Twilight was certain that the statue would be grinning if it could move.

"Well… what about that infinite knowledge I wished for? We had a deal!" Twilight stamped her hoof on the ground. "You promised me omnipotence, not to throw me into some strange dimension I don't know anything about!"

Clavicus just laughed. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. If the statue could move, it'd on the floor, clutching its sides. "Oh, dear, I never promised you anything! Only the opportunity at gaining infinite knowledge. The knowledge you seek is here, in this province. It isn't any fun to watch a mouse squirm in its maze if there isn't a hope of finding the cheese. Well… okay. It is. But, what you seek is here. In Skyrim. It's up to you to find it. You can start by following the road outside the exit behind my shrine, and take it West."

"That's it? Go west? You can give me more to go on than that!" Twilight galloped up to the foot of the statue and stamped her hoof on the ground. Her gaze met the statue's cold eyes, and she received no response. The unicorn sighed and shook her head as she made her way up the stairs on the left side of the statue, a shiver passing down her spine as she felt the cold chill of the outside. She turned her head and noticed, resting behind the statue, a wooden chest. Who knows? There might be blankets or something in there. The latch on the unlocked chest glowed with a purple aura before it flipped up, and the lid creaked open to reveal the treasure inside. A wool cloak, a pair of glowing swords and a golden staff, the top shaped like a serpent. Twilight draped the cloak over herself, grateful for the warmth it brought, and closed the chest. The thought of using one of the blades made her stomach turn, and she figured traveling light would be best, anyway.

Twilight glanced toward the exit and noted several metal bars jutting out of the floor. "Ugh… really?" She turned, about to venture into the depths of the cave, when she noticed the pull-chain on the wall. Oh. Her horn glowed again, and the chain came down with relative ease. The steel bars slid down into the floor with a loud, whining sound, and years of dirt crumbled from the holes they left in the ceiling. The unicorn cringed at the sound, then trotted down the narrow tunnel toward the bluish light at the far end.

Once outside, Twilight stopped cold in her tracks. There was a 'thud' as her jaw hit the dirt below her, and she fell back onto her haunches. She was greeted by the sight of an endless, star-filled sky. The green and blue auroras cast a blue-green light on the earth below, and the light played off the mist that coated the snowy mountains in the distance. For a moment she simply sat there, dumb-struck by the beautiful sight. The unicorn looked toward the trail ahead of her and was reminded of her quest. Slowly, carefully, she made her way down the uneven surface of the small mountain, tempted to kiss the dirt road when she finally came to the bottom.

She shivered as she turned left on the road, under the assumption that the moons of this world rose from the East the way Equestria's did. The cold of this place was hard to bear. Even the wool cloak wrapped around her did little to hold back the bitter winds that swept through the craggy valley. Twilight sighed and wished she had her saddle bags with her. She'd have packed a blanket, a few books… Wait. books… The unicorn blinked, stopping and sitting on her haunches again when the thought hit her. Her copy of the Treatise was still in Equestria. With the day's events, she hadn't even considered the book's whereabouts. Back in Ponyville, she could scarcely go twenty minutes without having it in her presence. She needed it the same way she needed air. "Uuugh. Why did I do this? Of all the stupid, stupid things you've done, Twilight..." She scolded herself, hooves scraping noisily as she trotted down the dirt road.

The unicorn pony shook her head and huffed, her breath clouding the air ahead of her. No. Can't think about it right now. Maybe after I find a warm place to hunker down. She continued down the path, occasionally stopping to stare in wonder at the lovely scenery this land provided. Maybe this wasn't such a stupid decision, after all! She turned a corner on the road, a smile still on her face after she'd witnessed a family of foxes snoozing under a tree. Fluttershy would adore the wildlife here, and the sense of serenity the landscape offered. The smile quickly dissolved when the smoking ruin of a town entered her vision, her nostrils burnt by the acrid odor of sulfur and smoke. Underneath the scent of hot steel, burning wood and cloth, there was a stronger, more pungent odor. One she couldn't quite place.

Once she reached the front gate of the city, she bit her lip, unsure of what to do. Opening the gate would be the easiest way through to the rest of the road, but who knows what's behind those doors? Steeling herself as she sucked in a deep breath, Twilight's horn glowed brightly as the giant oak gates creaked open. As she walked past the front gate, the sight Twilight took in made her turn her head and wretch, vomit splashing on the ashen ground at her hooves. The town was decimated, some fires still raging, but most buildings were reduced to smoldering ruins. Dozens of corpses littered the streets, burnt to a crisp, the horrid scent from earlier much stronger now than it was before she'd opened the gates. Burnt flesh. The unicorn carefully made her way through the ruined city, her jaw trembling all the while as she climbed over ash-covered rubble to get to the other side of the ruins, her pace breaking into a gallop when she saw the exit.

When Twilight was outside the walls of that horrid nightmare, she collapsed, sobbing loudly. The day's events had taken their toll on her, the unicorn's cries quieting down as her adrenaline dried up, dragging her down into a restless sleep.
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"So, Boss, what should we do with it?" A gruff, gravelly voice slowly began to drag Twilight's tired mind kicking and screaming back to consciousness.

"Hell, I dunno. Hasn't been a unicorn on Nirn in… Decades, at least. Certainly not a purple one." An older, equally gruff voice chimed in.

Twilight groaned, opening her eyes, trying to bring herself to her hooves – her eyes went wide, her heart pounding in her chest when she found she couldn't move her legs. Glancing down, the unicorn let out a muffled cry, a sob hitching in her throat – she'd been hog-tied, and her muzzle had been tied shut! "Aebjorn, you ever heard a horse make noises like that, before?" Twilight tilted her head, getting a good view of the people that had captured her: two of them were bipedal, with pale skin and large muscles, wearing iron-studded furs and leather, wielding bows and axes and swords.

One, however, stood apart from the others: he stood at roughly seven feet tall, and was clad in segmented armor made of a green-colored metal, the spiked pauldrons reminiscent of the Daedra that plagued her nightmares in Ponyville. Strapped to the creature's back was a large one-sided axe made of similar material, the jagged edges of the blade glinting in the spotty, forest-obscured sun. "I say we eat it."

The one with the gruff voice, the archer, gave the green monster an incredulous look. "That's disgusting, Grolag. I'm not eating a baby unicorn. It's barely seven hands tall!"

Sitting on a rock a few feet away from him, the older man ran a whetstone over the blade of his iron sword, shaking his head. "I'm the boss, an' I say we cage it up, and make it do tricks. Charge admission. We'd make a killin'!" When the others gave him dumbfounded looks, he sighed, sheathing his blade. "Or we could… I dunno, sell its horn or something. We'd get more money that way, anyway."

The green one grinned, unslinging his battleaxe from his back, giving it a few test swings. "Sounds like a good idea, to me. What're we waitin' for?" The axe was brought up high above his head as he prepared to swing, and Twilight clenched her eyes shut.

This is it. I'm going to die. I'm sorry, Celestia, that I didn't do better. Twilight waited for the axe to come down, but instead of the sharp pain of death, all that assaulted her was the horrible sound of the green monster screaming. Twilight opened her eyes, the blood going cold in her veins when she saw the creature collapsed on the ground in front of her – an arrow had pierced through his gauntlet, the axe's handle, and his off hand, effectively pinning his hands to the weapon.

Seeing this, the old man almost had time to draw his iron sword before being dragged into the bushes behind the rock he'd been sitting on – the only noise he made was the rustling of the bush when he fell, and a wet gurgling sound. The younger man, while all this was transpiring, set his back to a large tree and knocked an arrow back, shakily scanning the forest around him. "Stay back! I'll shoo-" He almost finished his threat, but the war axe that had buried itself in his head, thrown from the shadows of a group of shrubs, had cut him off.

Twilight cringed, choking back vomit as her stomach turned over at the sight of the pale creature's head splitting open like a honeydew. From the bushes in front of her emerged a tall, bipedal reptile, clad in black robes, the green and red scales covering his head shining dully in the sparse sunlight. He sheathed his pair of steel daggers, glancing in Twilight's direction before letting out a loud whistle.

From the forest canopy above her dropped a short, lithe biped with pointy ears and dark hair, clad in leather armor and armed with a curved wooden bow. The tan-skinned creature made a motion with his right hand, before moving to retrieve the dead archer's arrows. Out from the bushes walked another massive, hulking green monster – this one was clad in the same armor, but was armed with a jagged, two-handed sword, rather than a battleaxe. He removed his helmet, his lip curling into a wicked smirk behind his large tusks as he marched forward, removing his axe from the deceased archer's face. "That was too easy. Bandits are getting' t' be less of a challenge every passin' day, ain't they?" The creature grinned over at the reptile, receiving only a mildly disappointed head-shake in return.

"You are getting cocky, Urgak. Cockiness is what gets people killed in battle." The reptilian man sat down on a nearby boulder, staring at the bandit that was just now starting to rise to his feet, groaning in agony. "You should probably do something about him."

Before Urgak could draw his blade, the heavily-armored bandit cried out, jerking his arms outward to snap the arrow that had his hands pinned to his axe, kicking Urgak's feet out from under him. Urgak drew his war axe from his belt as he hit the ground, but the bandit kicked it away before he could use it, stooping down to pick up his battleaxe while Urgak crawled backwards, reaching for his boot knife.

The pointy-eared archer had knocked an arrow back, but the reptile sprinted to him and brought his arms down, the arrow loosing and sinking into the dirt. "Aendal, no! This is Urgak's fight. He can handle a lowly bandit on his own." Aendal glared daggers at the reptile, but nodded, slinging his bow on his back.

Meanwhile, the bandit had gotten a hold of his axe, and with one swing, broke Urgak's boot knife in half. The large man brought his battleaxe up again, preparing to chop Urgak into mutton. "A boot knife? Are you shitting me, brother? You thought that butterknife would hurt me?" That axe started to come down, but fell to the ground next to Urgak after a thrown war axe buried itself in the bandit's throat, the purple sheen of magic surrounding it fading after a moment.

The group of fighters stood there, dumbfounded as the final bandit fell over, their gazes turning to the small Unicorn, her horn's purple glow slowly fading. Aendal was the first to move, rushing over to Twilight and untying her feet and removing the rope around her muzzle, allowing her to look up at him and offer a small smile. "Thank you…" Then, fatigued from exertion and lack of adrenaline, Twilight was dragged back into unconsciousness.