First and Only

Sister Pearl pushed through the castle gates with a choked cry of effort. Behind her the wind roared and the rain pummeled the earth with relentless force, as though the sky sought to drown everything that lived on dry land. But the castle was cold, bitter stone, and stubborn like the unicorn race that had built it in olden times. Enclosed within its walls and mighty bastions, the priestess knew she was safe.

She sighed as the doors closed shut behind her and her grim companion, the pegasus barbarian. Two guardsmares secured the heavy wooden gates with an iron bolt and extended a dry towel to the priestess so she could tend to the mess that had become of her mane. Though she wore her silver frock and hood tight around her body, the heavy rainfall had soaked clean through it all.

"Are you alright, sister?" a guardsmare asked.

"I've had worse," she replied and rubbed the towel over mane and coat. "Where are my guards?"

The main hall of the Crimson Castle, a bustling beehive of servants, courtiers and retainers, was still and silent that evening. Though it was well after sunset, the Princess much preferred to spend her nights being attended to in the grand space of her hall than in the solitude of her chambers or the gloom of her throne room. Yet now there was naught but the crackling of the fires in the great brazier that burned in the middle of the hall.

"Her royalness took them back," the barbarian said from beside the brazier, and broke the silence that had accompanied them since their meeting outside the walls. She extended her long, golden wings by the flames and shook them dry. Her mossy-green mane too, until puddles formed at her hooves and made the guards glower at her.

"She's called a War Flight."

'A what?'

"Her Majesty has called a war council, priestess," the guard responded. "Unicorns only."

By the brazier the barbarian flexed her wings and stretched. The toned muscles of her back tensed and relaxed with every movement, to twist and move the lithe, yet powerful form of the pegasus creature in a dance that was every bit as graceful as it was mesmerizing.

"Stupid name," she growled, and pushed her rump in the air to stretch out her spine. A series of gentle cracks! echoed through the chamber, followed by a low, guttural groan of satisfaction.

Pearl didn't realize she was staring until the guard poked her in the ribs.

"A flight council!" Err... "War council, sorry. Has something happened?"

The guards shook their heads. 'We don't know,' and the matter was buried in mystery. With the eerie silence of the main hall as their dreadful companion, the two mares continued to the dungeon with one guard as their escort and a rattle of keys as their marching tune.

The iron door scraped open against the floor and the darkness of the dungeon stairwell loomed ahead. Sister Pearl watched the stillness of the gloom with a growing sense of... something that was hard to place. An ache at the base of her stomach between excitement and dread. The guardsmare chewed on a thought for a moment before she let them in.

"...is it dangerous, sister?" she asked, and Pearl knew she had no truthful answer to offer. She wanted to say no, and yet...

"It's in the bucking dungeon, genius. What do you think?" Rainstorm shouldered her way past the unicorn priestess and took the first step into the dungeon’s maw. The priestess’ jaw tightened and the color rose to her ivory cheeks.

"He's my patient, y-you... barbarian!"

Rainstorm stopped and turned to face her, pine-green eyes alight under the candlelight. The cool, bored expression she wore belied the barbarity of her animal temperament, poised to maim and murder at the vaguest whim. A knot the size of a walnut clogged the priestess’ throat faster than she could register fear.

“Her royalness says my job here’s to keep yer heart pumping,” she said, with her muzzle close enough that Pearl could smell... mint? The hairs of her face brushed against the priestess’, and some distant part of Pearl’s mind registered that they were oddly soft. “That still leaves me quite a bit of wiggle room though. Get me?”

The barbarian took the first step down the long, iron stairwell with the bitter, professional resignation only a mercenary could show. Pearl followed with a final glance at the guardsmare and her aforementioned heart in her throat.

"I have to lock the door behind you," the guard said. Regret dripped from her voice, like she was about to close the lid on a coffin. It was anything but reassuring. "Luna's shield go with you, priestess."

The reality of the situation dawned on Pearl like it hadn't before. She was trapped in the lion's den...

Literally.

The descent went by in agonized silence. The clip-clop of their hooves against the wooden steps echoed all around them, detonations of sound in the dark. Shadows danced on the walls, always at the edge of their vision where the gloom was deepest and the pale light of Pearl's horn failed to reach. The door was just ahead.

Rainstorm paused to sniff at the air. Behind her, the priestess almost bumped into her tail but managed to stop herself in time. She looked over the mare's shoulder—a feat that had her on the tips of her hooves—at the first door to the left of the long dungeon corridor where she had spent the night. Something was wrong.

"Did you leave the candles lit?" Rainstorm asked.

From under that wooden door the fiery candlelight shone feebly, cast across the cold, wet stones of the dungeon floors. Like the tide, the light rose and ebbed, flickered under unseen air currents, and regained its strength. Pearl felt a cold grip over her heart.

"T-there wasn't enough left to last this long," she muttered. "Did you...?"

The pegasus shook her head. They waited there for what felt like hours, a watchful eye always on that wooden door. It wouldn't have been left unlocked, not by the likes of the Crimson Knights, and especially not by one of Glowspur's own daughters. The door was locked and there was nopony left inside, so...

"How smart did you say this thing was?"

Pearl swallowed hard. She didn't know. By Tartarus, but she hadn't a clue. How strong? How fast? How potent in its magic, if it had any at all? Had she doomed them all by resuscitating that which had no name?

"Perhaps a servant lit the candle," she ventured.

"From behind a locked door?" The barbarian took a step back. "We should come back later. Armed."

Pearl felt a surge of relief flow through her. They could come back later, with a larger guard retinue, with shields and spears, chains and collars... They could come back with the entirety of the Crimson Shore's army in tow. Yet it wouldn't make a difference.

Pearl took a deep breath. Inside that room was a creature she had brought back to life, probably scared to death and in pain. The lack of thrashing, the absence of sound in any capacity, frightened her deeply. Moreso than any bestial growl. What if it needed her help?

"I am a priestess of the Great Alicorns and my patient is in that room," she said, though the words felt like somepony else’s. "I will see him now."

The pegasus did not turn to look at her. She did not say a thing. Seconds mounted and nothing but the flickering candlelight and Pearl's own hornlight existed in that dank hallway, they were so still. Then the barbarian folded her right wing to let the priestess through.

"Don't you dare die," she hissed as Pearl forced herself past her.

Every step was a prelude to disaster. Every breath, the last she'd ever take. She held the key she'd been given to the cell in her aura like the first time she ever held a knife over a patient, firm and steady, to belie the excruciating anxiety just beneath the surface. That train of thought led her mind to the memory of all the ponies she'd leave behind were she to die in that dungeon.

‘Will Longstar call another priestess?’

The key slid into the keyhole with an audible rasp of rusted iron. It turned quickly, activating the mechanism before Pearl had the sense to stop herself. The lock snapped! open with finality.

‘What would become of Dew's leg and foal? Was it a filly at all?’

Pearl opened the door a smidge. Just enough to let the light through the crack... A powerful smell of brine and dampness hit her like a sudden breeze.

‘Who would help Emerald smuggle Sunpeach's next birthday cake?’

"H-hello?" she asked into the void. The pegasus barbarian was right beside her, heavy hooves twitching for a fight.

"Is anypony in there?"

The door opened a little wider. The unicorn priestess ventured a little closer to the threshold. Behind her, the pegasus took a deep breath. Candlelight once more flickered at the new intake of air, and as the room breathed, so did the storm outside reach its zenith. Thunder bellowed from on high. Flashes of lightning preceded the roaring skies, and cast the cell in a different light. Shadows grew longer and blacker for a split second, and both mares saw through the widened entrance the silhouette of something alien, beyond ponykind...

Pearl gasped. Beside her the pegasus let out her breath slowly, perhaps to soothe her own nerves? Pearl didn't know, but anything that could unnerve a barbarian must surely spell trouble.

'You've seen this creature before.'

But the thought wasn't reassuring at all. She remembered his thick arms, nearly as large as a pony's neck; the powerful chest, twice the girth of any unicorn, and the rough features of his masculine face, carved on a reddish skin discolored by death. More frightening however, were the clothes on him. They could have meant anything when they first found him, but now, under the pale glow of a mysteriously lit candle, the explanations had dangerously narrowed...

"Can it speak?" the barbarian whispered. Pearl didn't get a chance to answer for him.

"I am here," a voice said from within the darkness of the room. Its sound was mighty, deep and penetrating, like the very thunder that hammered the heavens outside. It spoke to them calmly, perhaps too calmly. There was a deep strain to it.

Both mares froze solid. Pearl’s heart thumped! with desperation. The sound was in her ears and inside her skull, like bells and stomping hooves. At her side the barbarian fared no better... her own organ beat loudly, a war-drum of the frigid north. Her lips were so dry she could taste blood.

"Do not be afraid," the voice said. "I will not harm you."

Pearl and Rainstorm exchanged a glance, and in that look neither saw each other in the same light as before. They were two scared little fillies with nopony but each other in that deep darkness, alone with that powerful voice.

"B-bold words..." the pegasus answered. The tremor in her voice unsettled the priestess to her very core. "...for some creature locked in a d-dungeon!"

His laughter boomed through the tiny cell, vibrant and hearty, without the slightest hint of malice. It might have been soothing had they not been so frightened, or if the cramped space between dungeon walls had been more spacious. As it was, they recoiled and tensed at its intensity and the cavernous echo that surrounded them with its sound.

"Fair enough, ma'am," he said. "In any case, I am too sore to try anything, even if I meant to. Please, come in."

"I don't like this..." Rainstorm said. Once again she had stepped before the priestess, wings slightly flared as though they could do much within the dungeon. "We should go back."

Pearl once again felt inclined to agree. Under these new circumstances... the creature was conscious, he seemed alright... surely it would be best to return later, once they had... A series of coughs detonated within the cell. Wet, hard coughing, followed by a pained wheeze. Pearl’s thoughts and doubts faded away instantly.

"My apologies," the creature said, voice strained and tight. "I seem to have caught something..."

Gingerly, the priestess stepped closer to the door.

"...do you have a fever?" she asked. Her own voice sounded so tiny...

"No," he responded. "There is blood in the phlegm, however. You wouldn't happen to be a doctor, would you? I’ve been... it’s hard to describe. I’ve been seeing these strange little creatures roaming about. I think I’m unwell. I can’t quite recall..."

Pearl licked her lips to clear away the worst of the dryness, only to find her tongue just as painfully coarse. She looked at the pegasus, as though seeking permission. The barbarian’s answer was a stern shake of the head, 'no'.

She stepped through the threshold anyway.

The cell was as she left it. Straw lay strewn over the cold stone floor, the lone cot and blankets were at the far end of the tiny room, the latter all neatly folded. Her desk and her chair, however, and all the clay tablets were currently occupied by the sole creature in the room. A fresh candle from her spares had been lit.

The creature raised his head from between trembling claws, and his small, dark eyes to look at her in the gloom. Her own horn remained lit, and it illuminated those same, sharp features she still remembered from onboard the 'Gaze of Sol'. The being's dark mane was messy and black, like she remembered, as were his clothes. The smell of brine was pungent in the air.

Seconds turned to minutes in that room. All spent in silent shock.

"Good evening," he said at last. There was a deeply unsettled shake to his voice. "You're like the others... I don't suppose you are a hallucination, then?"

Pearl gently shook her head. He was even larger than she had thought, and he was merely seated. His frame dwarfed the chair, the desk... she doubted he could fully stand in the cell. He raised what passed for hooves among his kind to his face and rubbed his eyes with a tremulous sigh.

"Interesting..." was all he said.

Pearl tried to remember her training and abide by the familiarity of professionalism where sense and normalcy had failed. She cleared her throat and hoped it didn't come out like a panicked squeak.

"...you mentioned blood?" she asked.

The creature paused and focused on her once more. A series of emotions flashed through his eyes, too quickly and too subdued for Pearl to make sense of them—so small were his features in the gloom—but in the end they seemed to settle on amusement. Perhaps he had sensed her intention?

"Yes," he reached inside one of the pockets of his foreign wear, and produced a thin sheet of cloth, perfectly white except for the thick splotch of phlegm and fresh blood.

"The cough seems to be a new development. It first started earlier in the day, after the... Well, I suppose after the not-hallucinations in armor left." He smiled, and under the dim light of her horn Pearl saw perfect white teeth. Smaller than a pony's, and sharper still. "Though, like I said, no fever."

Pearl nodded and took another step forward, slowly easing into the routine of her profession and leaving aside the strangeness of the situation.

'He's just another patient... A very big and weird-looking patient, but a rose by any other name and all...'

"I assume you have no other respiratory issues? Nothing persistent?"

"No," he said. Pearl took yet another step towards him and reached with her aura for another candle, then a few more. She lit them one by one and gently placed them around the cell, while the creature watched in silent contemplation. Behind her, she felt a shift in the air as the pegasus slowly edged past the threshold into the room.

"That's a little better," she grinned, and dimmed the light of her horn. The being said nothing, but shared with her the oddity of that encounter, under the shimmering candlelight and the screaming thunder beyond the dungeon walls.

"The coughing is probably a normal side effect of the resuscitation," she continued, more at ease now that the cell was not as steeped in gloom. "Most likely your lungs reacted poorly to magical manipulation, so they've become irritated and inflamed. They should return to normal on their own, but this place..."

Pearl scowled. The damp, unclean dungeon was a certain way to catch an infection of the lungs, especially in the creature's condition. It wouldn't do, not at all.

"...I'll have to request that you're moved to different quarters."

She stopped when she noticed the hard look on his face. Ashen-gray where before his skin had a reddish tint, the creature watched her in a silence that was deeper than the Mournful Sea itself. Colder, too—and in the priestess’ eyes—much more dangerous.

“I was dead,” he said, with an intensity that made Pearl’s scalp tingle and made the hairs of her coat rise. “For how long?”

“A few minutes at most,” she said, and hurriedly added, “but it’s alright! I ran a few tests and vitals scans. You weren’t gone for long, and it doesn’t look like there’s any lasting damage...”

“Should have done us all a bloody favour and stayed that way...” Rainstorm growled. Pearl went pale. She watched the human, sure that he would take offense and strike them down! Those mighty arms, clawed and stronger than any sword, would grip them and tear them limb from limb...

The creature laughed. A low rumble, deep from within his chest that made the priestess jump and had the pegasus recoil. He pressed his face into his claws, still in the throes of mirth, and laughed until there was no laughter left in him. Perhaps it was her imagination, but when his face finally rose, Pearl thought she saw glistening droplets trail down his cheeks.

“You can’t be real,” he said, and reached for her with one of his front legs—alive with five protruding digits all straightened out in what Pearl recognized as a 'hoofshake'—like the earth ponies did. The priestess hesitated. It wasn't the strange limb, nor the odd gesture... Indeed, it was how familiar all of it was. How mundane, how inexplicably normal, and yet so very strange. Thoughts of sirens and mythical monstrosities not yet encountered by ponykind swam in her thoughts.

But in the darkness of the cell all movement was a viper in the grass.

"Keep yer bloody claws away from the priestess!"

Raisntorm’s wings flared, drool dripped from her bared teeth in a fierce snarl. Her eyes were wild like an animal's, and for a moment the priestess forgot who she was supposed to fear. The barbarian entered the cell room and pushed her aside with the shove of a wing. Pearl struggled to find something to say, anything that might calm the pegasus down. But her own mind was against her.

'Wings of death. Wings in the dark.'

Memories flooded her thoughts. The great blasphemy. The night raids, terror and blood in the gutters... She couldn't breathe. Her lungs were ice. Her vision tunneled, focused on those dreadful shapes in the dim candlelight, like homes ablaze on a midwinter night. The echoes of screams filled her ears.

The creature slowly lowered his claw. His features were impassive, as hewn stone or cold iron, and when they settled on the pegasus the effect was nigh immediate. Rainstorm withered under that terrible gaze, like a flower grown too close to a dormant furnace now awakened. Her wings, those terrible weapons of war and carnage, folded slightly. Her stance fell somewhat, and all the ferocity in her eyes was replaced by something else that Pearl could not quite place. Something primeval.

The creature placed both claws on his lap. Any trace of that gentle smile was gone from his features, and all that remained were those small, raw eyes devoid of any emotion. Impossible to read.

"I do not wish to hurt you," he said. "I apologize if I disrespected your priestess."

Rainstorm remained motionless. Pearl slowly regained control of her mind. The creature, impervious to his own powers, turned to face her, and in his face she saw a burning intensity that wasn't there before. His next words were not a question, but a command.

"Where am I?"

Water dripped from a hole in the wall onto the stone floor of the cell. Cockroaches scurried about, frightened of the candlelight and desperate to reach a crevice to hide. One such crevice, in pony size, would have been perfect for Pearl. She licked her lips and shuffled her hooves softly, so as not to disturb the mighty creature, the human, who sat in thoughtful silence by the arrow slit of his cell.

Rainstorm waited by the open doorway, silent as the grave, with all her feathers a ruffled mess. Her eyes never settled back into any semblance of normalcy, but remained savage and strange.

"Interesting..." the human muttered to himself for the third time since she had explained to him where he was. The Crimson Shore, the Mournful Sea, the land of the unicorns, home of all civilization... All these names and more were foreign to him, and even the very concept of ponykind seemed strange to the creature. He knew nothing of Windland, nor Verdant, or the Bay of Mangoes at the edge of the known world.

"You say I am in a dungeon." He suddenly turned to face them, and Pearl saw a glint in his eyes. The question caught her off guard.

"Ah, yes," she said. "...but it's only a temporary arrangement..."

Rainstorm's brow furrowed. She stepped forward.

"So I am not a prisoner."

"No! Of course not!" Pearl shook her head. "You are under my care for the time being. This is just... a precaution?"

His lips curled into an amused grin. Without warning he rose to his hooves, and his height was such that the ceiling forced him to bow. His body blocked out the candlelight almost entirely, and in the gloom his shadow grew to drown out the two frightened little mares. Pearl took a step back. Instinct overcame all, and both her and Rainstorm edged past the doorway before they took notice of their own actions.

"Then I will leave," the human said, and was at the door in one great stride.

Pearl gawped as the creature's claws grasped the threshold to the hallway, one after the other, and he pulled himself free from his cell. He emerged from the room as a mythical dragon might do so from its cave, only to meet the pegasus once more. The mare stood between the human and the stairwell at the hallway's end.

"Get back in yer cell," she said. Pearl stood behind her.

"Please, you can't leave," she said, trying to grasp at his filthy clothes with her aura. "You have to remain in bed, you've just gone through-!"

"I have slept enough!" The human entered the hallway. "Stand aside, please. I must see for myself... I have to know!"

'See what?'

"Back in your cell! Now!" Rainstorm gnashed her teeth and extended her wings fully, so that the entire hallway was blocked off. Pearl heard the sound of hoofsteps beyond the stairwell and the rattling of keys.

'Oh no. Oh, Celestia, this can't be happening!'

"Sister! Are you well?" came the cry from the guardsmares beyond.

"The beast is loose!" the pegasus cried back. "Bar the gate!"

"NO!"

Pearl's breaths came ragged. Wide-eyed, with her heart in her throat, she fought hard to regain her voice after such a powerful shout. But it had worked, and the panic that gripped everypony seemed to fall away for just a moment. Even the human had paused in his escape.

"H-he's with me," she stammered out. Her hooves trembled underneath her. She repeated herself, louder for the guardsmares outside, "...the human is with me! I am responsible for him, and I ask that you let him through!"

"Are you mad?!" Rainstorm all but howled, yet never turned her back to the creature.

"N-no! I am a Priestess of the Temple of the Sisters and this is my patient." She was hyperventilating. Her insides were jelly. "By my authority, I demand he be allowed some fresh air."

"The Princess said-" Rainstorm didn't get a chance to finish.

"The Princess said to guard me," Pearl said. "But he is my responsibility, and I say he must be allowed outside."

Rainstorm trembled with a rage that was unnatural to the civilized unicorn race, but relented. Her wings relaxed and folded, her head dropped, and she stood aside to let the creature through. Outside, Pearl heard the sound of the dungeon gates unlocking. The human looked her in the eyes. Those same, impassive features of stone relaxed.

"Thank you."

Pearl felt so dizzy she was sure she would faint.

She led the way for her strange entourage, a barbarian at the far end, and the strange human behind. He had a graceful gait, agile in spite of his awkward anatomy. He leapt through the stairwell in leaps and bounds that devoured two, three steps at a time, and left both Pearl and Rainstorm in his proverbial dust. He was at the dungeon gate long before them.

The unicorn guardsmares stared with awe as the giant stepped through the dungeon gate and emerged into the hall in his full glory. Pearl and Rainstorm too had to pause and behold the beast, the human, as he rose to the fullest extent of his height. He was almost three unicorns in height, as measured from hoof to withers.

Then he stretched and if Pearl had found the pegasus interesting, this creature was on a league beyond fascinating. His long arms reached for the ceiling, raising his height to almost five, perhaps six unicorns. His legs alone had enough muscle in them to make them weapons all their own. Pearl saw out of the corner of her eye as the pegasus went pale at the sight of so much raw strength.

One strike of those limbs... Even a glancing blow might be enough to cripple a mare for life, beyond the skill of any priestess.

"Ah," the human groaned, as he pulled his upper limbs back to pop the joints at his shoulders. "That's the stuff."

He wasted no time after that. He stepped past Pearl, past the pegasus and the guardsmares. Nopony had the guts to tell him 'no'. Not anymore. He left the hall towards the gates where the rain hammered mercilessly at the bolted doors, and slid the heavy iron bar open with ease. He paused for the briefest moment then. His hands pressed against the double doors, brow furrowed, the human seemed to doubt himself.

Then he pushed them open, and before anypony could say a thing he stepped outside.

Pearl watched from the threshold as the human's world crashed to ruin around him. Any doubt he may have harbored died then, as he beheld the great courtyard of the Crimson Castle, and beyond its open portcullis the vastness of the city of Crimson Shore... and beyond that the great, terrible sea that had birthed him into this new world. Black and roiling under the storm above, the Mournful Sea seemed to scream and bellow in hateful wrath.

Unicorns stared from the ramparts in awe as the creature stumbled towards the main gate. They followed his every step with their eyes, until he fell to his knees under the rain, just beyond the great bastion that guarded the keep. Pearl saw his trembling claws clutch at the dirt and leave deep furrows in the wake of his digits. He remained there for a minute, eyes stuck to the city and the sea beyond, until a coughing fit and exhaustion overwhelmed him.

The priestess was by his side, her aura alight on his shoulder to help support his weight, which even his muscles could no longer lift. She struggled, but the creature managed to regain his hoofing on his own. He stammered out a quiet 'thank you', like a ghost of the voice she had heard before. She smiled as best she could manage, but the sight of him shook her deeply. His deep-red flesh was ashen-pale, his shoulders sagged with a terrible weight, and his eyes were so sunken and lightless...

It was hard to believe this was the same creature that had so terrified her.

"Let's get you back inside," she said, and pulled on his clothes back in the direction of the keep.

"I'm so hungry..." he managed to say before his legs gave out from under him. Pearl couldn't hold him, not alone... But she wasn't. Four hooves grabbed the human's clothes from behind as two mighty wings struggled against his weight. Rainstorm growled from the strain, but she held him long enough for the guardsmares and Pearl to regain their hold on him.

Together they hauled him back through the gates and carried him to his bed.

The human coughed violently. His lungs were on fire, his throat was a swollen mess, and blood came out in a drizzle every time the fits took hold of him. He was in a delicate state, though there was nothing delicate about him. Pearl monitored his vitals religiously, horn alight as she tried to get a sense for the speed of his heartbeats, the strength of his pulse, the depth and intensity of his breathing... It was all so magnified it was hard to believe it could be normal, and yet the creature was stable.

"The Unicorn Shore..." he muttered, half-conscious and shivering from exposure. As midnight drew ever-closer, the cold bite of the sea encroached all along the shoreline. Pearl could see mist in her breath.

"That’s where we are," she said to him, as she soaked a towel in hot water, hastily boiled and brought down by a very sleepy servant colt. "This is the city of Crimson Shore. You’re in the castle of Princess Crimson Belle. You’re safe."

“...in the dungeon...” He laughed, weakly, but it was a laugh nonetheless. If nothing else, his sense of humor at least seemed to be okay. Pearl sighed with relief before the words registered fully. She scrunched up.

“It’s temporary!”

Her ears and cheeks bloomed a bright red. It was temporary! Why must everypony tease her so?

The human’s grin widened slightly. He tried to sit up, but another bout of coughing dropped him on his back as he covered his clenched up fist in blood. Pearl quickly levitated the towel to his forehead and gently forced him back on his bed. This wasn’t the time to go exploring.

"Thank you," he said. The faint glow of candlelight cast a pale golden glow across his skin. Some of the color had returned, but there was little of that fierceness they had seen before. "Though... forgive me, but I seem to have skipped over proper introductions..."

"We can do so once you've rested," Pearl said, perhaps a bit more harshly than she’d meant to. Her features softened. “Don’t worry, we’ve asked the kitchen to bring some food down. It should be here in a few minutes.”

“I appreciate it... but I fear we may have started off on the wrong foot,” he groaned as he forced himself into a sitting position. His features strained against the blazing fires that must surely rage in his chest, and still he spoke. “I’m not... I don’t know what happened yet. Not exactly. But if it weren’t for you...”

His eyes, deep almond pools, settled on her for a moment and some of that intensity and fright returned to the little priestess. She forced herself to stand her ground.

“Thank you,” he said, and turned his gaze to the open doorway, where Rainstorm watched in silence. “Both of you.”

The pegasus said nothing, but remained still and framed by darkness against the shimmering candlelight. Stunned, perhaps, though Pearl wouldn’t have been surprised if her kind did not know the meaning of gratitude. She merely watched the human with those wild, barbaric eyes of hers and nodded.

The human did not remain awake to see his food arrive. The servant colt left it with her, and the priestess ushered the curious pony away before he had a chance to wake up the creature. She remained awake by his side for a while longer, and still wondered if it hadn’t been a dream.

Author's Note

Sorry about the slight delay! There were a few things here and there that I needed to tweak! 😎