I wake to something poking me. I groan and roll over. Wait a minute! I live alone! Alarm fills my veins and I grab under my pillow for my hammer and jam my fingers into a rock. ”FECK! My fingers! Why!” I leap up and curse cradling my hand.
“W-what are you?” A quivering voice asks me.
Distracted by the pain I don’t take my eyes off my hand as I answer. “More than likely the same thing you are pal.” I glance up and my eyes widen as I behold a creature resembling a griffon. ”Scratch that. Where am I?”
“Well… you’re in the lands formerly owned by the Griffon Empire.” The griffin replies nervously.
“I meant what planet I guess. What happened to the empire you spoke of?” I ask curiously as getting to know the land seems useful.
“Well you’re on a planet called Equis and our benevolent overlords in Equestria decided our model of living was too outdated. So they destroyed our empire, killed the Emperor and his children. Though the ponies say that a rogue griffon did that.” I frown, this sounds bad. “You asked what planet you’re on, why?” He asks inquisitive now that it’s clear I’m not a threat.
“Well I’m from a place called earth and over there we don’t have any people with fur or feathers.” I reply.
A haughty voice intrudes upon his shocked silence “well well, looks like another of those hairless apes. Will you fight me or surrender and die quietly?” I look at the arrogant creature before me, examining it for its weaknesses. A unicorn, male by the voice of it, favoring his right foreleg, a flintlock pistol hovering through clearly arcane means.
I push myself up and turn to the griffon “close your eyes. This will be bad.” His eyes widen and he shakes his head franticly but does as I ask. I grab a sharp edged rock and dodge the poorly aimed bullet and rush him while he reloads. Bam! Slash across his face blinding an eye. Bam! I get flung away by his magic while he struggles with the pistol.
“How do I-“. He grumbles as I throw the rock at him he grabs it and flings it back I dodge but too late it cuts deeply into my side. I pant knowing I need to finish this fight soon and that the horn looks like the source of his magic. I fall to the ground in apparent defeat and slow my breath, pulse and thoughts as I stare into the sun. “Ha! The Great Poker has defeated yet another of these monstrosities! I shall now go loot its mangy corpse!” Seriously? Ugh. I hold still until he is right on top of me then I strike launching upwards I grab his horn in one hand and his snout in the other. With a great heave borne of desperation I snap his horn off and stab him in the eye staring while his gurgles fade away.
“Forgive me my trespasses against him who sought to kill me.” Only then do I notice the unstable glow building around the stump of his shattered horn with a violent blast that which I assume is the arcane energy escapes him and rushes to the nearest living thing, me. I howl in agony as the violent energies rip into me filling my veins with ice as it seals the wound in my side shut and sharpens my eyesight before everything goes black for a few brief, intense seconds before returning brighter and sharper than ever. I fade out of consciousness for however long it is between day and night here. When I awake the griffon I was speaking to before had lit a fire to keep us warm on the frigid tundra. “Why?” I croak feeling like I got hit by a freight train.
“Why not? He would have killed me too. Plus you seem to know how to fight unicorns so I figure I’ll keep you alive ‘til you meet the others.” Those pistols I saw are lying there next to him.
“Hey, have you ever seen those things like that before? Are they an invention of the nation below?” He tosses me a journal bound in white skin scarily similar to mine.
“He picked them up off the first of you that he found tortured it until it told him all of the secrets of the things. Everything he has done for five years is in this journal.” I scan the pages. Apparently he and a group of others were deputized into an undercover army created five hundred years ago by the Solar Princess who wanted her nation as the unchallenged head of the world. This tyrant will fall before me this I swear. Anyone who creates something like this must die.
“Give the pistols here.” I hold out my hand and suddenly a gray glow covers it and ice fills my veins as I pull them over to me. “What?” I whisper astounded. The griffon solemnly hand me the shattered spire of the unicorn I killed and tells me
“You keep what you kill. Or at least you have a memento of your first kill on this planet.” You keep what you kill? Sounds familiar. I shrug and start searching through Poker’s bags finding an oddly long cloak for him to own and the powder horn for the pistols and oddly enough my hammer. I blink at the oddity and shrug while searching the next bag. There I find a large amounts of seals which I show to my companion as well as an iron rod threaded on one end those weren’t seals they were branding irons! Ouch.
“I ever tell you my name before?” I ask off hand. “No I don’t believe you did. Oh! That reminds me, mine is Glen.” I think rolling my tongue around before responding
“Well Glen you can call me Walker. A useful moniker if ever I saw one.” He nods grinning before a sudden wave of weariness washes over me and I fall asleep once again.