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Frieden sat in his cell, contemplating his past. He was surprised they'd let him live at all, the corrupt council usually executed those that displeased them. He'd been involved in a plot to introduce a new ideology to his country. Far away, ponies lived free in the land of Equestria, but here in his little broken corner of the world they suffered under the Council.

The Council was a tight knit group of unicorns who ran his country with an iron hoof, stifling anything new or anything they considered inappropriate. He could understand the need for order, ponies could be monsters as he well knew, but their methods held back his country from being great.

Frieden was a arcanologist. It was a strange title for an earth pony, but it was accurate. In his early childhood he'd grown up on the back streets of this corrupt little country and he knew who was really in charge. The unicorns, the ponies that could do magic. Everypony else was scum beneath their hooves.

So he sought to understand magic. He'd gotten a prestigious position for an earth pony, a shelf stocker working for a kind unicorn librarian. It was a far cry from his childhood on the streets.

When he had been a child, he’d been forced to join an earth pony gang just to survive. His mother “worked” for a local official, but he knew what that really meant. She was a whore. He didn’t know who his father was, and had no siblings. Part of the initiation for the earth pony gang he was in was to catch a pegasus and “ground” it. He’d caught a little pink one, and the look on her face when he smashed her wings had haunted him for years before the last of his conscience died.

He knew she’d never recover, grounded pegasi never did. He’d hoped that she died, but he met her later. He’d been older, he was in charge of a gang then and he was looking for action. He found her working for a gang like any other earth pony might. She didn’t remember him, and he paid her seven bits for thirty minutes. It was all he’d had that day.

He made her look him in the face when he came inside her, hoping that it would replace his nightmares. After they were done, he asked about her wings, and she said that she didn’t remember. Just one day she was flying too low and some jealous earth pony caught her and left her like that. Crippled forever.

That’s when he realized that this couldn’t go on. His world was controlled by the unicorns. The pegasus didn’t deserve what he’d done to her, and he shouldn’t have had to do that in order to survive. He leveraged his gang to get books, and began to study. Soon enough, he found himself in the nicer part of town working for an older unicorn whose magic had failed him. The unicorn was a cripple, but managed a library.

Frieden had offered to shelve his books and help out for half the wage any reasonable unicorn would ask for. The crippled old goat took his offer, and Frieden handed his gang off to his second in command. The transition was far from bloodless, but he’d made it out with all his limbs intact. That was more than some ex-gang leaders could say. He’d seen quite a few of his rivals shoveled off the street and into the garbage carts, either through infighting or an occasional power play on Frieden's part.

He was smart though. He knew that his gang life wouldn’t last forever. If he kept it up, maybe he’d have had a few good years as a leader, then he’d be the one in the garbage cart. So he’d bailed, and done it with style. The old gang wouldn’t look him back up, and any new ones would know to stay far away from him.

In his new life he lived in the basement of the old codgers library. He spent his nights studying magic, law, sociology, warfare, history, anything he could get his hooves on. He spent his days working, helping the old unicorn manage the library.

He grew to be a familiar face, and some of the locals would talk to him. He found a group that preached about equal rights, equal power. They said that ponies shouldn’t be looked down upon because they were different. That earth ponies were just as good as pegasi, or even unicorns.

At first he’d dismissed it as fantasy, but as he learned more about other countries he began to realize how it could be possible. The group called themselves Einheigeist, and the members were just called Geists. They had to stay secret, it was too dangerous otherwise.

Friedan knew they were just another gang, but he couldn’t help himself. The stories caught his fancy, and soon enough he was a member of their secret organization. Since he was an earth pony, they figured the government wouldn’t be watching him closely. So they used him and the library to pass notes and messages.

He became the conduit, the central nerve through which they talked. And of course, he read everything. In a matter of months he had a mental map of every member in the organization, and a clear understanding of their ideals. They wanted every pony to be equal, every pony to have the same shot at life that they should. It made sense to him. He couldn’t help but read their secret missives, he was used to clawing and tearing to get power and information when he could.

All the while he kept up his studies, and began to truly understand magic. He discovered that the unicorns didn’t know it like he did, they couldn’t feel it with their hooves like he could. They practiced and learned spells, but a precious few studied magic itself. Very few unicorns actually understood how their magic worked, and Frieden assumed he was the only earth pony that did.

Months passed, and he made a discovery that he knew would change the world.

Rune magic. It was assumed to be a party trick and was widely known a waste of energy for any unicorn. The runes would putter out quickly and leak their magic. Any self sustaining rune could only perform very simple functions, and any complex rune ran out of power in moments. What Frieden discovered was that he could feel runes with his hooves. He couldn’t see them, not a like a unicorn could through their horn or through a spell, but he could feel them.

With no way to dump power into runes, he experimented with drawing a few simple ones from an equestrian book anyways. While he didn’t speak Equestrian all that well, he managed to translate it enough to practice. But what happened surprised him. The runes would draw power, pulling it from the world around them.

Confused, he rechecked the book he was copying from only to realize that he’d misread the instructions. Unicorns created runes by building them into the fabric of reality, using their horns to create constructs. He’d accidentally translated “Construct” to “Carve”. He’d been using his hooves to carve out the fabric of reality.

Looking deeper, unicorns never carved as he’d just done. He had created a hole, and the hole naturally wanted to be filled. It was probably something that never occurred to unicorns, or perhaps it was something they couldn’t do it all. Curiously, he toyed with his runes, and quickly realized that he could create stable and powerful runes with little effort.

He thought about that. Why had no other pony done this before? Unicorns were a constant stream of energy, holes probably messed with their spells. They probably saw holes as dark or bad in their magic because of how it would disrupt their flow. Pegasi and earth ponies never worked magic, they wouldn’t have the knowledge to construct something functional. At best, an earth pony could disrupt a unicorn’s spell, which was something he’d actually heard of happening. Earth ponies were known to be slightly magic resistant.

He kept his discovery a secret, practicing and learning runes over a few years, until he could whip up a rune to do what he needed in a matter of minutes. He didn’t memorize them, not like Unicorns did with spells. Instead he memorized the process, their constituents. It was a language. In simple terms, once he knew the vocabulary he just asked the universe to accomplish a task. The task could be simple like “Make this sharper” or complex like “Sort this book.” Complex runes took longer and more space.

He also had to be careful, if he created a rune too large it began to draw power from everything near by, including him. He’d realized what was happening one day when he was halfway through a rune that was his body length. It was sucking his life force, using him to fill the holes. He’d quickly erased it before he collapsed on the ground. While his death would have been painless, it wasn’t the end he sought.

Eventually Einheigeist got sloppy, and they were caught. He was ignored, he was an earth pony after all. Frieden stayed low, quietly doing his job until one day, another Geist showed up. Her name was Priscilla, and she was a unicorn. She asked him if any other members had resurfaced, and he told her that she was it. Saddened, she left.

Priscilla came back once a week, and asked the same questions, and left with the same sad look. Frieden found himself growing sad at disappointing her, she was the closest thing to a friend he’d had in some time. After a while, he offered to keep her company, and let her stay in the library for a while as he worked. They chatted, discussing normal things, until one day the conversation had drifted to magic.

Priscilla was surprised at his knowledge, and he decided to share his secret with her. When he told her that he could use magic, she hadn’t believed him, and had bet him he couldn’t do it. She’d offered her body, jokingly commenting on how he’d probably never fucked a unicorn, and if he could do magic she’d let him “Bury his horn”. A coupling between a unicorn and an earth pony would end up with the unicorn being ostracized from proper company, and Frieden had never found a unicorn willing to bridge that gap with him. He took it as a challenge, and proved her wrong.

Frieden had enjoyed proving her wrong. He proved her wrong quite a few times, keeping her in the library’s basement for an entire night.

When Priscilla finally left the next morning, she was obsessed. She returned the next week, quickly asked her usual questions, and then wanted to see some more magic. He asked for more time with her, and they came to an agreement. While Frieden didn’t count Priscilla as a lover, she had been someone close to him, and he had enjoyed her company immensely, and frequently. Their relationship had lasted the better part of a year as he showed her more and more complex runes.

It made it all the more traumatizing when the council killed her during one of his private magic shows. The assasins came swiftly and silently. Both assassins were actual members of the council—Madam Haftling, and Baron Fackel.

Frieden had never kept up with the council, but its member were considered archmages, each specializing in a potent school of magic. The two ponies had apparated into his basement, and then Priscilla had ignited like a bonfire. She’d called out for him to save her, but Frieden had been horrified at her melting flesh, pulling away from the blaze as she crawled desperately towards him.

After that he’d been taken captive. Madam Haftling had frowned at the still floating teacup, and then turned to look at Frieden. He’d expected to be killed, but instead he blacked out. When he came to, everything had changed.

He found himself standing trial between all thirty members of the council. Some were arguing that he could be pivotal the revitalization of their country, and should be made an archmage. Others considered this heresy, there had never been and there would never be an earth pony archmage. Frieden was just confused, still traumatized over the sudden loss of his friend and the jarring change in location and time.

He had refused to cooperate with the council, and they had thrown him in here. This cell had been his home for two days already, and only water had been offered to him. He knew they were trying to starve him into submission, he’d done something similar as a gang boss. But he was done playing by their rules. He refused to cooperate now.

They deserved to die for what they’d done to everypony he’d ever known. His mother had became a whore because of these ponies, he’d become a murderer and a thug, and his only friend had been burnt alive with no trial or question. All of it was their fault, and he would make them pay.

Frieden moved for the first time in days as he looked around the cell. He calculated the space on the wall, the volume of the room, and how thick the stone was. It might be enough. He’d never done a rune larger than his body before, but something terrible was forming in his head. He could see it stretching across the walls and the ceiling, covering the floor and charging the space inside.

Frowning, he realized that there wasn’t quite enough surface area. He’d need more to carve the rest of the rune. He hadn’t wanted to use it, but there was more space in the cell. Exactly enough space to finish his rune.

He took his hoof, and began to carve holes into his flesh. He’d never tried it before, but he had nothing else left to write on and nothing to lose. It tingled, the negative magic disrupting his life-force. The holes would slow the drain on his life-force, but not stop it. Grimly, he decided that his death would be worth it.

The words in Runic would be an epic, a poem of majesty never before seen. They would take every runic symbol he knew and many more he would create as necessary. He would be writing his own book, several hundred pages long across this room.

While the rune was impossibly complex in Runic, in his language it could be translated to a single word—Rächen.

It meant “Revenge.”