The carriage ride was long, longer than I expected it to be but maybe that's just because time flows differently here. Twilight asked a multitude of questions during our ride but I'm still not sure how much I trust these ponies, so I only answered some basic questions about myself such as my full name and occupation. As I lie in the bed that was provided for me in one of the many rooms of this spacious palace I begin to think of home and the few people that might even be wondering where I am, my thoughts also wonder to my contract to destroy those chaos mages. What where they keeping down there, and why where they so intent on keeping me from seeing it? Whatever it was I will be going back there as soon as I get back to Viriana. As I continue to lie there with my thoughts I hear a now familiar sound of hoof beats on the marble floor in the hallway outside my room and not soon after, a maid comes in with a cart full of books and papers which I assume are the materials I will be required to study as my condition of staying here. Twilight offered to help me with understanding some of the more advanced books with terms I may not be familiar with but I'd rather be focusing on finding a way back home.

"The princess has requested that you begin learning our basic customs first thing in the morning sir, I bid you goodnight." The maid says with an unenthusiastic tone and takes her leave of my room. I wait for a bit to make sure I am truly alone and fetch a book from my bag, detailing all of the laws of magic from Viriana. I took it out and began to thumb through the many pages, trying to discover first why my arcane power was running so low and not replenishing as well as trying to see if there was any indications of spells that may allow me to return home. After what seems like hours of reading page after page without finding anything I decide to refresh my memory as to how magic works in Viriana.

Firstly, nearly all humans and elven races on Terra have an internal magical substance called Arcane Power, It goes by many other titles such as Qi or Chakra, sometimes it is even called Mana. Arcane Power is used to fuel nearly all spells in existence, such as healing or basic attack spells. This is done simply by focusing on drawing your Arcane Power to either a Focus such as a staff or a dagger, or simply channeling it directly into ones hand. Once one has channeled the sufficient amount of Arcane Power to their foci, they must the concentrate on the type of magic they'd like the Arcane Power to turn into. It can often take years for a man to learn to do this in a timely and efficient manner but some have a natural talent for it, the elves are a particular race who have said talent. I myself had some degree of natural talent and learned how to focus and control my magical abilities from my village elder, a retired royal mage. I practiced day and night to learn the illusion, elemental, and shadow magics that I use today in my job as a mercenary, which I quickly took to doing as soon as I learned to wield both spell and blade at the same time. I took all sorts of jobs, mostly just small time odd jobs such as killing pest creatures or roughing up bandits who had gotten too bold, but eventually my talents where noticed by a nobleman who contracted me to kill a group of wyvern trainers who where attacking his caravans in the mountains. I completed the job easily enough but at a great cost of several innocents who I was unable to save during the attack on the caravan I was protecting. From that point onward I vowed both to never work for anybody with ill intent and to always make sure I protected the innocent, even if it meant a lack of pay or comforts...even my own life.

I was suddenly startled out of my reminiscing by screams coming from the courtyard below, where I saw a group of guards fighting off what appeared to be a small pod of insect-like ponies. Quickly retrieving my cloak and my dagger I decided that'd it'd take me too long to go through the entire palace to reach the lower floor, so I jumped though my window and grabbed the vines clinging to the wall. I used them like a rope and quickly rappelled towards the courtyard five stories below. When I had reached the level of the second floor I kicked off the wall, pulling out my dagger as I flew through the air before landing on the nearest insect pony to me, thrusting my dagger deep into its chest eliciting a scream from the creature. As I removed my blade a thick green blood followed and flowed from the fatal wound, while two more of the monsters noticed me and began to charge a green energy in their crooked horns. With blinding speed I dashed to the first of the two and plunged my dagger through its neck, slashing as I do so, nearly decapitating the disgusting abomination. The other had fully charged it's attack and fired it at me, I was too slow to react to the fast beam and it hit me square in the breast plate, scorching my cloak as it did but thankfully did not penetrate it due to it having a fine inner layer of moon steel chain mail.. I quickly regained my footing and pulled a small throwing knife from the belt inside my cloak, throwing it with deadly accuracy, nailing my opponent between the eyes.

I turned to look for more targets only to see the other creatures had been slain by the guards, who where all staring at me with shocked looks. I ignored them, bending over to clean my moon steel dagger on the grass before walking over to retrieve my knife from the corpse of the slain insect pony. Shortly after I sheathed my dagger and began questioning the guards, the pony who had originally seen to me in the hospital room who I now knew as Shining Armor, the head of the royal guard burst into the courtyard floating a blade in front of him that was soiled with the thick green blood of those creatures.

"You have quite some skill Sir Mikail, I am quite glad that you were able to assist us in routeing this attack. I'm also quite thankful that our altercation in the hospital did not turn ugly as I now realize you could easily have slain us all." He said with a slightly cautious tone, "If you'd like to know what the creatures you just killed where, they are called Changlings." Slightly shifting one of the corpses as he begins to describe them. "They are evil creatures who live off of pure love, they absorb it mostly from foalnapped ponies and those who they deceive." He orders the guards to pile up the corpses in a field near the palace and burn them before continuing to speak to me. "They have the ability to change their appearance to resemble other ponies so that they may trick that ponies close friends or family and drain the love from them. My wife was replaced by their queen at one time and she nearly killed me." looking slightly sad and bothered as he added in this detail. "They usually make raids on border towns and small settlements but they are not usually this bold to attack the palace directly, this is something we need to report to the princesses right away." He concludes with a dutiful expression and tone.

"I have already been made aware Shining." says Celestia as she glides down next to us, a dark blue pony with a similar colored flowing mane gliding down next to her. "My sister Luna and I have already got the royal guard on full alert, and are ready to fight as well if need be." confidently walking towards Shining and I.

"Princess if I may be so bold as to ask who accompanies you tonight?" I ask curiously, as I have never seen this other princess before, though I spent the entire day touring the palace with Celestia.

"We are Princess Luna human, and we are responsible for raising the moon as well as assisting our sister with the running of Equestria." oddly enough speaking in third person. I kindly greet the other princess and ask them what they would like me to do with helping to defend the palace. They simply smile and Celestia shakes her head, "Please do not worry yourself about this Mikail, we do not need your help in this but we appreciate your offer to assist us." I make a shallow bow to the princesses and reply in turn.

"I understand, I am a mercenary where I come from but I shall offer my services to thee in repayment for your hospitality." I continue respectfully, "I would like to ask that I have permission to offer my services to your subjects though, I believe I could help them quite a bit as well as make myself a bit of coin so as not to appear a burden to your highnesses." The princesses look at each other with slight concern on their faces and eventually nod to one another.

"You may offer your services to anypony who may need or request them as long as you are to continue to respect our agreement." She becomes slightly more firm with her request, "If you are to hurt anypony you will no longer be allowed to leave the palace and we will be forced to confiscate your weapons." I nod and affirm the princesses that nobody shall be hurt and I shall do my best to respect and follow the laws of Equestria while performing my job. With this permission now clear, I should be able to pay a blacksmith to polish my now scorched breast plate, repair my cloak and to sharpen my dagger...luckily i brought along some moon powder to make moon steel. The princesses and Shining Armor bid me goodnight and we all return to our quarters to get some rest. I eventually manage to fall asleep but something feels wrong, like somebody is attempting to invade my mind...

Author's Note

I manged to get my laptop to run a little longer and managed to write a decently long paragraph. I feel as though things are starting to shape up and things will pan out how I'd like them to. Next chapter Luna will be attempting to enter Mikail's dreams but he has wards put up around his mind, we'll see how Luna reacts to this in the new chapter next week!