Earthen Spire rushed down a back alley of Atcanta, a small city in the east of Equestria. She had been on the run for a few hours now, trying to escape her pursuers. It wasn't as easy as just going to the guard, no, she had gotten herself mixed up in some less than upstanding business. Her only option was to hide now, find somewhere to lay low for a few days until she could get some semblance of a better plan.
As she was galloping through the alleys, each one a little tighter than the last, an idea struck her. A boat. She'd get a boat and escape to some far away land. It was the moment that line of thinking stopped that something else hit her: a wall. She was trapped now, a dead end, the sound of hooves on concrete filling her fluffy ears. If she were a unicorn or a pegasus, she could easily have gotten out of there, but she didn't have the privilege of being born with wings or a horn, and as earth ponies go, she was quite delicate. This didn't make for a good day when when getting chased by four huge stallions.
It really wasn't hard for them to find her when the only sounds echoing though the crisp night air were the sound of hooves and the panicked breaths of whom they were perusing. When one set of hooves stopped making noise, it was simply a game of marco polo.
Earthen Spire looked around frantically as her hunters crested the corner of the ginnel she was trapped in. High walls, far too thick to buck though enclosed her on all but one side. The only object in her three walled prison was an old, deep brown stump with axe marks on the surface. There was nothing she could use to try and fight them off, not that that would work in the first place. She was no fighter, no criminal, she was a maid. There was no way she could fight four stallion that were easily twice the size of her. You could almost mistake them for horses.
Quickly, the four stallions crowded into the fairly wide alleyway. They had her. Slowly, like wolves toying with their pray, they encircled the delicate looking mare, pushing her backwards until her rump hit the cold, unforgiving wall. The leader of the small group spoke up. "Finally, after three hours..." He stopped to breathe "For such a pretty looking filly, you sure know how to run fast." His smile widened to maddening proportions, "But now here you are. Trapped."
At this moment, a tear fell from the auburn mare's cerulean eyes. Then another. Then another. Then she broke down, her shaky legs collapsing under her, streams of tears escaping her eyes. "I'm sorry!" She wailed, "I'll get him the bits, I just need more time!" She moaned between sobs.
"You've had six months. Either pay up or... Well, I'd rather not ruin the surprise." He spat.
She couldn't believe it. "I- I" She stammered, "I don't..." She broke down, her head dropping to the ground. There was no way out of this one.
"You don't? You don't what?" He laughed menacingly, "Oh, I do hope you don't mean that you don't have the bits. That would simply be... Tragic." His smile dulled a little. "Because if you didn't have the bits we would have to get... Rough."
At this point, Earthen Spires was huddled up in the corner of the alley, trying to make herself as small as possible, sobbing into her tail and just hoping that they would disappear. 'Somepony... Anypony...' She thought 'Please... Please save me.' No one came.
One of the goons walked over slowly and grabbed Earthen by the main, holding her up with his hoof in the centre of the alley. At this sudden change of position and the pain of parts of her mane getting pulled out by her body weight was enough to illicit a scream from the young mare.
"Look around you. You're in the middle of an alley in the middle of the night, far away from any guard or vigilante that would help you." The behemoth sneered, then spat in her face.
She recoiled from the sensation, and with a voice barely the volume of a whisper, choked out between sobs, "You... Can't do this... I- I have a foal."
The huge pony just laughed and threw her onto the ground. "Well I hope he has enough sense not to borrow what he can't repay." With this, he took his gigantic hoof and, with his full weight behind it, stomped on her extended rear leg. It snapped instantly, Along with a great crunch came a guttural scream, that was quickly silenced when another hoof struck her directly in the chest, forcing all the air out of her lungs.
"Have your fun, boys." The leader says from the back, "I'm not a fan of getting my hooves dirty." He just stood and watched as his posse advanced on the mare before them.
"It's a shame I have to do this to such a pretty face." One of them sighed, as he bucked her with enough force to send her flying back, hitting the wall and audibly breaking several ribs. That was the signal to advance. The poor mare was held up by the neck and viciously beaten. Teeth were scattered around the floor, her nose was broken in three places, her torso was visibly misshapen, her front legs were utterly shattered, bones breaking through the skin in several spots, and there was blood everywhere, her coat was stained crimson.
The stallion finally dropped her into the pool of blood at tears below her, and to finish it off, one of them got out a butterfly knife and carved the word 'thief' into her once pristine flesh. At this point, the only thing keeping her awake was the spell that one of the attackers put her under in order to drag out her suffering,
When this was finished, the leader spoke up once again. "Come on, lets go. With that much screaming, I wouldn't be surprised if the princesses themselves heard. Let's go get cleaned up and tell boss that we dealt with his little 'problem'." With that, the four hulking stallions made their way out of the alley, leaving the mare for dead.
As the unicorn that cast the spell that was keeping her alive got farther and farther away, the spell got weaker and weaker, meaning she was slowly slipping away. Somehow she found the energy to move her eyes upwards towards the sky. It was a full moon that night. There were no clouds and the stars were brighter than they had ever been. Utterly beautiful. Her final thoughts before she slipped away into the sweet embrace of death were similar to most others that had been in her situation. 'Please, I'd do anything... Princess, God, Discord, I don't care who... Just please... Let me live. I'll do anything...'
"Anything you say?" A new, different voice pipes up. "That sounds an awful lot like you're proposing a deal, to me." The voice was strong, and smooth, and calming.
Somehow, Earthen no longer felt as if she were about to drop dead any second. A few thoughts rushed through her mind at that moment, 'Are they back?', 'Do they want to finish me themselves?' and 'Who is this?' were a few among them.
Due to the feeling of oncoming death slowly receding, she managed to summon the last of her fading strength to turn her head just enough to see what the voice came from. Surely enough, what she saw was no attacker. In fact, it was no pony at all. Sat upon the stump that lay next to her was some sort of creature. Extremely tall, with only two legs, no fur to be seen, and an expensive looking... Suit... on. But by far, the most defining trait of this creature were the two huge, majestic, white wings that stood, stretched out from it's back. The creature was flipping some kind of coin in its claw like appendage. It turned to meet her gaze, its emerald green eyes quite literally glowing in the moonlight.
"So what do you say?" He paused, not actually expecting an answer. "I can give you your life back. What do you say?" He reinstated. "Deal?"
'Yes! Please, whatever you are! Please! Whatever you want, It's a deal!' She practically screamed in her head.
The strange creature simply smiled and flicked the coin onto her ravaged body, the small piece of metal disintegrating on contact. Quickly, her bones moved back into place, her skin healed, her fur regrew, and her bruises vanished. The mare still had no energy left, but she still managed to choke out "T-Th-Thank... You..."
With a small chuckle, he replied, "It's my pleasure."
The moment she blinked he was gone. Left only with wisps of black smoke where he once lay, and a final echoing message. "Remember. A deal once made must be completed. I think you understand that quite well after tonight, don't you now, Earthen Spire. I'll return one day to collect my half."
And with that, the spell the strange creature had cast wore off, and Earthen Spire dropped into unconsciousnesses, unsure if any of what she had just saw was real.
