Return Of The Bull

Four Hundred Years Ago...

Black Horn was burning. The Equestrian Royal Guard, although relatively few in number, were taking the city with sheer force of will, iron discipline, precise fighting drills...

And the fact that their princess was currently unleashing deadly blasts of magical sun-fire as she attempted to bring down the head of the army of mercenaries, wandering warriors from far-off lands, and the rough but determined and supremely dangerous Black Horn Army, as well as hordes of armed civilians.

Black Horn was burning, huge sections on both tiers of the two-tiered city set ablaze as ponies, minotaurs, griffins and more were incinerated by flame, gutted by blades, impaled on spears and pin-cushioned with arrows as spells were thrown about in deadly abandon.

Black Horn, only and greatest city of the minotaurs, was burning. And above the shouted orders, screams and explosions, above the roaring flames, a loud voice was booming out with a laughing taunt, "Is that all you have Celestia? Come on chica! Put some spirit into it! Your ponies certainly are!"

Landing on a rooftop, Celestia looked up at the hovering opponent who stared down with glowing red eyes, armed crossed over his bulky chest, "Why are you doing this? Why fight?"

"Why? You dumb nag, I'm fighting because you barged in and interrupted the course of justice! You accused me of sending assassins when it was you who took those criminals away from their punishment! And as for why I fight? Isn't that obvious?"

He dropped out of the sky, grabbing a passing Royal Guard Pegasus as he fell, and with a sickening, loud crack smashed the pony into the stone rooftop his killer was aiming for, "I fight because I! AM!"

A roar sounded out across the city, carried by thousands of throats, "THE BIIIIIIIIIG BULLLL!!!"

"That's what I'm talking about! You come into my city, flout my laws, and then have the balls to demand that I do things your way? No fucking way, bitch! Black Horn is everyone's city! Black Horn is a Minotaur city! Black Horn is MY CITY! And I will not let some jumped-up winged freak of a horse tell me how to run my city, sun powers or no sun powers!"

"You were going to throw them into that arena of yours! They wouldn't have survived!" Celestia cried out, "That isn't justice! That's murder!"

"And what do you think they were being judged for? You must be the most naive soul in existence if you think your ponies are sinless, pure beings. No such creatures exist in the world, not even in your self-made paradise."

The giant minotaur, seemingly clad in heavy plates of thick green-painted steel, reached behind his back and detached the strange rocket that had allowed him to fly, a handle connecting and extending until the minotaur was holding an equally huge hammer, "Now shut up and die."

Celestia sucked in a painful breath, suppressing a wince from the way several of her ribs groaned in protest, before gathering her energy. The Elements of Harmony had been unusable ever since Luna was banished, but the imprisonment spell was still viable.

Preparing the spell, she watched the ruler of Black Horn charge with a roar and a billowing cloud of steam from the grille on his glowering face-mask. Celestia never believed the rumors that Big Bull was made entirely out of steel, that he was some reincarnation of an ancient Minotaur war god.

What she did believe was that unless he was stopped here, his tyranny would continue and more would die in his arena. The citizens of Black Horn were swept up in his cult of personality, when Black Horn was free they would surely realize the horror of what they had allowed.

She could save this city. She had to.

Big Bull, the ruler of Black Horn, landed with hammer in his hands to smash Celestia into the ground through the building they were standing on top of, and as he raised it to swing down, Celestia struck.

Black Horn burned to ash, even though the fight had been won. It would take weeks to rebuild.

Celestia had thought that Black Horn, now the farthest of Equestria's holdings, so far that it now considered a colony of Equestria, would readily accept the rule of Canterlot and Equestria.

When the arena was closed and converted into a market place to encourage trade, Equestrian traders who set up shop in that arena never saw a single soul as the Black Bazaar, the city's own market saw booming trade. Eventually, those same Equestrian traders would return, penniless and destitute while the goods they had been forced to abandon were taken and sold in the Bazaar.

When the Black Horn Enforcers, the officers of Black Horn's laws, refused to enforce Equestrian law, they were replaced by Equestrian Home Guard. Within weeks they were the most overworked and stressed local police force in the world while the retrenched Enforcers simply took up their Beat Sticks and began enforcing Black Horn's original laws, most of them anyway, in the neighborhoods they lived in.

When the nobles who once maintained Black Horn's trusted banks and money-changers were replaced by Equestrian nobles who wanted to run things their way, those same nobles and their families were quickly ensnared by the myriad web of titles, connections, and protocols their predecessors navigated easily with the knowledge of all the loopholes.

And when those Equestrian nobles melted down the giant statue of Big Bull standing in front of his sealed palace in a desperate need for gold, that was the last straw.

The Black Horn Rebellion was one of many historical records expunged on Celestia's order, fearing that any information of dissent, chaos and disharmony could infect her ponies with violent ideas. And so only in the dry and dusty books of Equestria's civil accountants and other offices was the name of Black Horn remembered.

And so the city began its long decay.