-Chapter 1-
The Way Winds Blow
"I'm dying. Your life is in my hooves. All that I have is yours."
Overnight, those three sentences indirectly led to sporadic riots across the land, an attempted coup in the Great Northern and more than a few arrests of ponies both guilty and innocent.
Directly, they changed one pony's idea of how his life would play out.
Now, while the riots were calmed after a few hours and a few beatings, and while the coup was decimated in a day and those arrested thrown in dungeons, the thoughts going through that one pony's mind only churned around more and more, multiplying and accumulating like a carbonated brandy until they popped.
"Why me?!" Barrier roared, throwing himself out of bed and landing shakily on the cold obsidian floors with visible effort. His shout bounced disjointed through his wing of the palace reminding him of the situation with each reverbing word.
It had been three days since he received the news. Three days since he became a High Lord overnight. Three days spent with plentiful food, plentiful pillows and plentiful alcohol. Barrier didn't eat much or get much sleep, but he did make use of all those drinks.
"I wasn't an old friend of his," he whispered as he paced back and forth. "I never sided with him, I never dined with him, i never even met him!" Barrier's voice grew steadily until he was shouting again. He stopped to listen. The only answer he received were his own desperate words.
