Where am I? What happened? It opened its eyes slowly, but quickly shut them because of the blinding light. When it tried to stand, a white-hot pain shot up its hoof and collapsed to the ground. As it laid there, it tried to remember how it got there, wherever ‘there’ was. It tried to scavenge its memories, but only came up with darkness. It tried again to open its eyes and was able to with only a slight stinging. As its vision came into focus, it noticed it was on a mountain. It shifted its head to check on itself for injuries, but screeched in pain as it tried to move its head. It could feel the darkness coming over its consciousness and accepted it.
When it awoke the next time, it was no longer on a mountain, but was inside a house. The heavy curtains were pulled closed over the window so little light was coming in. It could hear of talking from somewhere down below. It tried to stand this time and braced for the pain it thought would come, but it never came. When is stood up, it looked down at itself. Not know what it was in the first place, it was taken aback by the sight of its legs. There were holes in each of its legs, but they didn’t hurt.
It slowly tested each hoof, putting pressure on each one individually, before slowly walking out the room. The room it was in was the last room in the hallway. It could hear voices coming from the passage to the left. As it followed the voices, it could hear that whatever they were talking about, it was a casual conversation. It followed the voices down the stairs and saw two ponies, one brown stallion and one white mare. Both ponies stopped arguing and stared at it. It suddenly felt out of place and shrunk back, a voice in its head told it that it was bad to be seen like this.
“It’s alright, we’re not gonna hurt ya.” said the brown stallion.
“But how do you know it won’t hurt us? I mean look at it. It ain’t natural for a pony to look like that.” the white mare said.
“I don’t know, okay? But it hasn’t tried anything yet so I don’t think it will,” the brown stallion looked over at it, “Can you speak, sonny?” he asked.
It frowned as it tried to remember, but couldn’t. Then it tried to force itself to speak, but all that came out was a hiss.
“See, that ain’t natural for anypony to do!” the white mare said.
It tried again to speak and came out with a hissy ‘Yesss’.
“Good, do you remember your name?” The brown stallion asked.
It closed its eyes and tried to recall something, but came up nothing. It shook its head with frown. It wondered why it couldn’t remember anything before waking up on the mountain.
“That’s a shame, I wonder if anypony would know what it is in town.”
Something in its head snapped when he said that last word. He didn’t know why, but he just knew that being seen was bad. At that thought it, dashed passed the two ponies and ran out the door as fast as it could. It kept running from the house and past what looked like farmlands. It tried to remember if anything looked familiar, but still couldn’t recall a thing. It could hear the two ponies calling after it, which only caused it to run faster.
After a while, it slowed down when it realized it was running blindly though a forest. The woods themselves spooked it. Nothing here looked natural and everything was so dark. It just wanted to leave this place. It didn’t want to spend another second here, so it flew up in the air and escaped the horrid woods.
It sighed when it realized it was no longer in the woods, but then realized it was in the air. It wondered why it wasn’t falling to the ground, then noticed it had wings. Although they looked tattered and ruined, it was still surprised and happy that it had wings. It took the chance to see what else it had. Aside from the holes in its legs and the wings, it noticed it had fangs and a horn on its head. It made a mental note to take a look at a mirror as soon as it could.
It looked around from its vantage point in the sky and noticed that there was a town some distance away. It still felt that odd feeling it felt back at the house, but felt something else too. It wanted to see what the place was like and if the people there were just like it. The new feeling it had easily overpowered the other and caused it to dash towards the town.
As it got closer to the town, the feeling that made it afraid of being seen caused it to slow down and just circle the town from afar. It watched the tiny ponies walk around the town and it wanted to join them. The feeling it had prevented it from going any further and made it wish it could just disguise itself. It tensed up in frustration at the predicament and didn’t notice that it was slowly changing. When it looked at itself again, in noticed that its legs no longer had holes or were black. It now looked similar to the brown stallion back at the farm. It also realized that the pony didn’t have wings, so it dived towards the ground. It also remembered that it couldn’t remember how to land and hit the ground with a ‘thud’.
It could feel something else now, it made it want to cheer and jump up and down. It decided that it liked this feeling and made its way towards the town. When it got to the town, all the ponies walking around amazed it. All the colours made it smile, but brought on the same feeling it felt at the farm. It decided that it would try its best to stay inconspicuous and avoided the busy streets. It took in the sights of the town, which were still dazzling despite hiding as much as it could, when it walked into a pink pony.
“Oh hey! Didn’t see you ther-” the pink pony took in a huge gasp before shouting, “NEW PONY!”
This made it turn and run in fear of being discovered. Even though it was running quite fast, the pink pony still caught up with it.
“Hey mister, I never got your name. How can I send invitations to your party if you don’t tell me your name?”
It desperately just wanted the pink pony to stop following it and wished that it would just trip or get stuck in mud. Just then a mud puddle formed just beneath the pink pony’s feet and caused her to face plant into the ground. It smiled at the stroke of luck it just had, but kept on running to put distance between it and the pink one. As it looked back to see if the pink one was still following it, it collided with another pony. The collision broke its concentration and caused the disguise to disappear.
As it shook its head to clear its mind, it could feel countless eyes staring upon it. Then there was a scream followed by a rampage of scared and angry ponies. What it felt when it was in the forest was just one-tenth of the fear it felt now. When it tried to escape through the chaos, something hit it in the back of the head and caused its vision to swim. Everything was just a haze and the sounds were like muffled whispers. Then another blow to the head caused it to sink into darkness.
It awoke with the back of its head radiating pain. It opened its eyes and checked its new surroundings. It was in a dark room somewhere and there were figures in the shadows. When it tried to get up, it realized that it was tied around a post. A large door opened up at the other end of the room and two figures entered. The light from the doorway revealed a glimpse of the surroundings. The room was quite large with red walls and no flooring.
A purple light appeared in the darkness and a voice spoke, “I want you to tell me everything you know.”
All it could do was just stare up at the purple unicorn. How could it tell her anything if it didn’t even know what itself was? It gulped, terrified of what she might do to it.
She leaned closer and stared it right in the eyes, “Last time I’m going to ask. What do you know?”
It finally found its voice and said, “I…I…” but the words got caught in its throat.
“Speak!” she yelled.
“I don’t know anything!” it confessed, “I don’t even remember my name.”
She looked at it, confused, then back to angry, “How can you not remember even your name?”
It shrunk under her glare, “All I remember was waking up on a mountain. Please don’t hurt me.”
Another voice spoke up, “Do ya think it’s telling the truth, Twilight?”
The purple one, Twilight, spoke, “I don’t know, maybe.” She looked back at it, “Do you even know what you are?”
All it could do was shake its head, afraid she would think it was lying to her. It had no idea why they were asking it these questions. It was scared and just wanted to be gone from this place.
The one called Twilight just stared at it before speaking, “Let’s leave it tied up, I’ll talk to it later.”
They exited through the doors and left it there in the dark. Waiting for somepony to open the door and ask more questions. It tried to writhe out of its bonds, but the rope was tied too tight for any movement. It gave up on trying to escape and sat there, waiting for hours.
As it waited, something ran across its leg. It pulled its hooves back, afraid of whatever was in the darkness. There was a squeak nearby, not knowing that it was a mouse, it was scared and started to try and tear out of the bonds. The fear fueled its muscles and it could feel the rope starting to give way. It freed an arm and tried to tear the rope by separating the fibers. It was able to get through three out of five coils when the door opened. To it, time itself slowed down. The purple unicorn came back and saw that it was trying to escape.
“Stop!” she yelled as she charged her horn.
It closed its eyes, awaiting a blast of magic. There was a ‘zap’ followed by a ‘thud’. It opened its eyes and saw the purple unicorn on the ground. It tore free of the last two coils and ran over to check on the unicorn. She was alive, but unconscious. It ran out of the large doors and realized two things. The first was that it was on a farm and the second was that it was midnight.
It ran at full gallop, then took to the skies. It climbed the air and searched for landmarks. It noticed the town nearby and knew it had to get as far away as it could. It looked around and noticed a particularly large mountain. That has to be a perfect place to hide from these ponies, it thought. It dashed off towards that mountain in hopes of escaping these ponies.
As it rounded around the mountain, looking for a cave to hide away in, it saw that attached to that particularly large mountain was a particularly large castle. It tried to hide itself from view, but was too late. A fairly large group of royal guards we’re on an intercept course towards it. Fear propelled it faster, but not fast enough to outfly the guards. As they slowly came closer to it, it felt that its fate was inevitable. It did the only thing it could do in that situation, it tucked itself into a ball and plummeted straight down.
It slammed into the river down below at bone-breaking speeds, but since it had no bones to break, it was just really painful. The guards slowed to a stop and turned back to the castle. As it watched them fly away, it felt joy along with the pain. Then it realized it couldn’t breathe underwater and swam to the surface. It coughed out water and started to swim to the shore. Once on the shore, the events of the day took their toll on it and collapsed on the ground.
It woke up sometime after dawn and noticed that the pain was gone. When it stood it felt something. No, it sensed something. It felt that there was something calling it north and it was compelled to obey. As it started its journey towards it, a collection of memories forced their way into its head.
It remembered who it was, what it was, and who it served. It remembered the collapse of the shield, the charge into the Canterlot Castle. It remembered the fight with the six ponies, and the blast that sent it into a mountain. It also now had information on the current state of the castle, the people, and the land around. Now all it had to do was find the Queen.
