Author's Note

Welcome to Part One EVERYONE!

As you can see this will be posted with no announcement. Kinda a gift for all of you for being patient with me.

I pushed my editor a little hard so the next one won't be available for a couple of weeks but I figure you all can be super duper appreciative of her effort. Shes been doing a fantastic job catching the little mistakes I have made.

That being said, enjoy and thanks so much for coming to see!

Thanks for reading.

Peace

Unspoken Past, Part One

As rain drummed, and thunder boomed, the jarring blast of someone else's snores joined them.

Trumpeting exhalations from one individual that was not Orion Falls. His left eye cracked open to glance at Miss Sapphire in annoyance.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" He mentally shouted at her. "Shut the hell up!"

This was ridiculous. He had just been drifting off himself when the racket had begun. He winced as her breathing hitched sharply, before another mind rattling wheeze nearly squeaked out of her. It sounded like a train engine just starting up.

He had been trying to sleep. He needed it after the night he had. It seemed the only thing to do other than berate himself some more, but that was getting tiresome. The black colt had attempted to fall asleep early on, already figuring it was likely to take days for the pull team to lug the carriage all the way to the capital. Judging by the cursing, it was definitely going to take longer. Not to mention soon they would have to stop and rest for a while.

Orion sighed. He was gonna have to be really tired if he was going to get any rest tonight. The mare's snores were equivalent to nails on a chalkboard for him.

He looked at Miss Sapphire again, a pained expression replacing the annoyed one that was on his face. Though not for the belligerent breathing this time. He had really, really, fucked up.

He knew what she was risking getting him away from Manehattan like she did. He felt bad for Miss Dream as well. Poor mare was likely feeling the brunt of that bitch's wrath by now if his suspicions were to be proven true. Considering the number of police out and about this night in the city, it was too much to be a coincidence to think this hadn't been planned for.

He glanced out the window, his thoughts turning dark as he contemplated the terrain before him, the sheer cliff face falling away into shadowed darkness. He could just disappear. In this storm no one was likely to notice as hard as it was going. The rain would likely cover his tracks as well as his scent. But he quickly shelved that idea, then tossed it into the bin of useless plans. That was getting rather full since his arrival.

He knew nothing of this world, there had been no survival books in either the orphanage or school's libraries when he had looked for them. His brief experience with nature early on wasn't any kind of instruction either. Just days of confusion and desperate search for shelter.

Outside of what his grandparents had taught him, which had kept him alive early on by the narrowest of margins, had kept him alive. How long could he apply that knowledge to things that it was never meant to handle?

He had been lucky, extremely lucky.

He shifted in his seat, the couch was rather comfortable but his slumped position put a bend in his back that wasn't. Weren't kids supposed to be as flexible as a snake at this age?

He shifted to a better sitting position, and resumed his self reflection.

All this trouble because he couldn't keep a handle on his temper. "Well, beating myself over the head with this endlessly will get me nowhere. What's done is done, what can I do to make it better going forward?"

It was his grandfather's saying, and it was words he had begun to live by since Stalliongrad.

Just thinking of the name brought unwanted memories of his terrified, confused arrival . Three years since he went from being a man, to a child again.

The hiss of hydraulics and the clang of retracting bars jolted Orion from another fitful night of sleep. If it was even night at all. There were no clocks down here. Nothing by which one could tell time. Only smooth white walls, and bright fluorescent lighting.

"Subject three-one-two-five-nine, it's time to get up." The smooth feminine male voice was ruined by the antiquated crackle of the speaker on the wall of his cell, but he easily recognized that tone and manner of speech.

Adam Levine Burbidge, astrophysicist, direct descendant of Margaret Burbidge. A mantra that he repeated at nauseam so often that Orion was sure made others want to bludgeon themselves to death every time the man decided they needed a reminder of who he was in exposition form.

He knew he himself certainly wanted to get a running start at the wall in front of him, but due to his cell's given eight by four space, he was sure all he would get is a headache instead of the sweet release of death he so craved.

Just as well. Despite his situation, suicide wasn't really appealing.

He sat up, trying and failing to work the kinks out of his back. The mattress that occupied half his little room was barely two inches thick, and he was certain that the inside was lined with cardboard rather than cotton. Hell it was a miracle that he hadn't caught a cold as they had yet to provide him with even a sheet to cover himself with when he went to sleep. Or a fuckin' pillow!

"Three-one-two-five-nine, come greet this glorious day! Come join us. Today is the day we-" he tuned the man out. Burbidge, was an individual in love with his own voice, and was prone to droning on and on about whatever he was interested in just to hear it. Even if no one knew what the fuck he was talking about most of the time.

He had often seen the confused looks on his assistants' faces when the man launched into what he could only guess was something akin to theoretical physics. He couldn't be sure. Chemicals, molecules and such were more his speed.

No one came to his cell, which was not unusual in and of itself. They didn't have to. Not after the first week of his stay, or was it a month?

"Jesus fuck! How long have I been down here?" The question had rattled around in his head often as of late any time he regained consciousness.

It didn't matter, his "orderlies" had gotten him and his fellow "patients" into the routine of heading to the security gate immediately on being called out. It had been a painful lesson for all of them.

He shouldn't even be here, in this hellhole. It was bad enough he was already being used as a scapegoat for terrorism.

After his trial, which was a sham and a shitshow in which no one believed him. He had been loaded onto a truck and transferred to an unknown facility in what he thought was Utah. He wasn't sure as he had only glimpsed a black sign with a white bee hive on it. The number twenty-two stamped in black and white.

The last he saw of the sky had been late evening, twilight hour, just before he was unceremoniously dumped on an elevator that was much larger than normal with other criminals. The platform did not stop for a long time once it started its descent. Hell, he hadn't seen the surface or his fellow inmates in awhile now.

Groaning, he stood up and brushed the long brownish red hair away from his gray eyes. A haircut was badly needed, it was down to his fucking neck now. He noted with disgruntlement that some of that hair was now gray themselves. Outright ignoring the scraggly beard growing in with redneckish abandon, he turned toward the now open cell door.

Scratching at his ass he stared at the entrance to his accommodations with unease, contemplating the inevitable ass beating he would get if he did not appear soon. Whether it would be worth it or not to show a little defiance.

He decided it was not.

Finally stepping out, he noticed a change to his normal view, all the cells in his block were open, every single one. But there was no one in the hall with him. That was concerning, though his groggy mind couldn't place why. Before they had always been closed, only permitting one or two out at a time for strange tests and cognitive trials.

Turning to the left, he noticed the two "orderlies" standing by the security gate.

Calling those two vaguely neanderthalic individuals anything close to medical professionals was pushing the realm of realism. More like bouncers that took courses in meat tenderization, and drank protein like one would drink water.

"There you are, Subject three-one-two-five-nine! So good of you to join us!" Blared the speaker once more, the whir of a camera lens focusing could be barely heard.

Always "Subject three-one-two-five-nine". Never Orion, or Mr. Thatcher. Just, "Subject three one two five nine".

"Egotistical, fat, beady eyed, shit sucking fuckhead. Could you for once use my goddamn name?! For once!" He groaned internally. He knew why they called him by number, of course. It was to dehumanize him. To make him be seen as only an asset or some such shit. That way the technicians and researchers didn't get attached or sympathize.

It was annoying as hell.

"Morning fellas, thought I told you guys to quit this gig and go pro." He joked in a dry voice at the two he tentatively knew as Bill and Edwardo. Bill cracked a smile, but Edwardo didn't even chuckle. Just as always, he stood there arms crossed, with a perpetual frown on his face.

Orion was convinced the man had been born without any sort of understanding on what a joke was.

"Enough of the pleasantries, it is time for us to take the next step, a step toward the future." The speaker barked once more.

Orion's brain had finally started working. Man he missed coffee.

"Step? What step?" His mind replayed the last ten minutes for him. "Wait! What history?!" He most certainly did not whimper. He did not. But he did back away.

Both men seized his arms and legs roughly before he could even complete the second step. The security gate opened, and a pasty white, balding, plump man stepped out, a grin spreading that doughy face nearly in half. Dr. Burbidge.

"Why human history of course! For you to take the next bold step for humanity and egress from our world to the unknown! To further our understanding of the plains of existence outside our own!"

"Oh no. Oh Shit. OH FUCK!" His stomach sank.

The look of horror was obviously ignored by the good doctor. He spun around flamboyantly on a heel and gave a come hither motion with his hand.

He knew it was pointless, but his panicking Lizard Brain screamed escape at all cost. This earned him a particularly vicious punch to his stomach that took the air away from him, and promised him more pain when it finally returned. He stopped struggling and hung between the pair, trying to stifle his own groans as best he could. Staff didn't want to hear the assets cry after all. Another lesson given in the darker corners of the facility.

A thought floated in his head. This is why he hadn't been fed anything the night before. Made sense, as anytime they were tested, food was withheld till after examinations. Something about being well fed flubbing the results.

Trussed up like a puppet on very thick meaty strings, the two linebackers turned thugs, marched him through security behind Burbidge. They claimed, well Bill did at least, that it was never personal what they did. Orion could smell the lie. It smelled like weak old bullshit that someone left in a can of chaw.

"Are you sure it's today?" He gasped out, pain making his voice strained as one of them to tighten their grip. "I'm sure there are a couple before me."

"Nope! You are the last!" Sing-songed fatass.

"And?!"

"No report back as of yet, but I'm confident we will hear from them soon, we did start sending them out only a week ago. For you, we have a special destination. Just discovered by accident last night as it so happened." One stubby finger tapped at the man's lips. "It has a very unique signature so you're gonna go with a bit more equipment than the others were given. Sorry about the change in schedule, but we need to learn all we can!" Burbidge practically danced ahead, his excitement was not shared.

They marched him down the all too familiar white hallway, Edwardo's foot making a sticky sound when it stepped into some spilled soda. By Orion's nose it was the same Mountain Dew that had been spilled a week or so prior. The safety department was sleeping on the job, and the janitorial. For shame.

The sticky sounding steps continued all the way to what he had been told was "The Transference Chamber". The words alone didn't convey much terror, but the equipment inside looked like very much on par with what a mad scientist's laboratory might contain.

He had told them the first time he had seen it that they were ripping off Stargate. That they should be ashamed of themselves. He now had a loose tooth over his first little jab at humor with them.

But the giant circle of metal, that was currently pulsing with a strange rainbow hued light as they marched in, honestly looked nothing like a Stargate. It was all white for one. With metal wires leading into it in a jumble he could never know the purpose for. For two it was more oval than an actual circle and about half the size as the one in the show. And finally, there was no super cool rotating wheel within the frame.

In a phrase, it was lame.

The moment they stepped inside he was hurled to the floor, being promptly descended upon by technicians and engineers before he had made it to his knees again.

Under Edwardo's ever watchful glare, he was stripped naked and forced into a very unflattering black skin tight suit with red piping that looked like rubber but felt like silk. There were connections and sockets built into the shoulders, hips and thighs. A belt was cinched around his waist with a lot of big pouches. It was actually comfortable, if not for how thin the one piece garment was he might not have minded having to wear the damn thing.

"Sorry ladies, it's cold in here." It wasn't. His dick had just shriveled up in fear, taking his ball sack with it. Couldn't even add a nut cup to the damn thing, nothing to hide the fact that he was becoming a Ken Doll.

Actually, now that he thought about it, it was pretty damn hot. Many of the technicians were sweating behind their scrubs. He could see damp spots.

The first time he had been here, when they were testing resonance between the prisoners and the portal, it had been rather cool in the room. On some of his trips it was downright freezing.

"Uh, hey. Why's it so hot in here?" He called out.

"Oh, that's actually the portal's field. For some reason this dimension has a particularly warm energy field." Burbidge helpfully answered. "Nice of you to actually take an interest, Subject three-one-two-five-nine! It is so lovely when you understudies take initiative to learn about your jobs."

Understudies. That drew a snort of laughter from someone in the chamber.

"Well excuse me, maybe I'm just a dumb 'Subject', but isn't that just a bit of a cause for alarm?" It was a stretch, but maybe he could buy himself another day or two before inevitable death.

"It falls within established parameters, no need to worry. Though I do thank you for your concern!" This fucker could not, or would not, be deterred.

Before he knew it the swarm that had surrounded him was gone, and his suit felt twenty pounds heavier after their departure. Orion now bore instrument blocks where those connectors were. He had no idea what a tenth of them did. But the fishbowl they shoved into his hands was new, and explained the purpose of the stiff circular collar.

The AES, or All-Environmental Suit, was designed to operate in every conceivable condition. Save for a few that were not feasible. One being him dumped into a volcano.

From what he had been told when they had been measuring him, this thing was supposed to be better than even SpaceX's new EMUs. Capable of keeping the wearer alive in vacuum as well as acid rain.

Next a pair of medical technicians came up with some kind of gun with multiple chambers, and jabbed it into his neck. The sound of rapid hisses was soon drowned out by his shout.

"AHHH THE FUCK IS THAT!" He clapped a hand down over his neck, the other fending off another of the silvery metal guns. Bill had to come over and restrain him.

"Those are your vaccines, three-one-two-five-nine. We would not put you into danger of infection after all." Oh of course they would want him to be able to survive any potentially preventable biohazards. After all, a lot of money went into this project.

They hurt like hell.

After the battery of shots he was released. He didn't know whether to rub his neck or arms first. He watched in awe as the hole that had been punched into the AES, where his inoculations had gone in the shoulder, sealed itself up. Now that was seriously cool.

Burbidge had sat his royal fatness into his "command" chair, smiling like the kid that got the whole cake.

He began to orate, it looked like he was speaking to no one as it seemed the majority of the techs and engineers had heard this speech before. It was what one would expect in his situation. The glories of mankind's future should this work out, the furthering of American ideals.

You know, the usual smug speech before disaster struck in any sci-fi movie.

It dawned on Orion, as his mind tuned out the obnoxious tone of Burbidge, that this was likely his last moments. They were going to shove him through a big ass portal and into the unknown, and he was likely going to die.

The last vestiges of what he supposed was the indomitable human will to live arose in him. It was hopeless, and in the back of his mind he knew it to be so, but he couldn't help but begin to babble. Hoping and praying that his mind would come up with something, anything, to delay all of this further.

"Hey Dr. Burbidge?!" He shouted, interrupting the man mid speech.

"Yes." The man snapped, annoyance clear on his face.

"Are you positive today is the day? It couldn't be next week?" He tried to sound concern for the project, it came out more constipated than anything else. "I was positive there were at least a million more calculations to do before you open up a new portal. Weren't there?" His brain was doing a wonderfully subpar job.

A gesture from the good doctor had Edwardo smack him so hard upside the head he ate the floor when he landed, his helmet skittered off to the side. The man did not skip on arm day. Or any day judging by his tree trunk legs that he was now gazing at in a daze.

"You're right, today is totally the day. All calculations are good. No need for any more tests." He wheezed from the floor. He could hear more than a few chuckles around the chamber. At least he was making this memorable.

Burbidge made to speak again but noticed the mood had passed, and signaled for it to begin. Disgruntlement large on his even larger face.

He stood shakily on his feet, his helmet slammed down on his head by one of the orderlies. The hiss as oxygen began to pump could be heard and made his right ear pop painfully.

Bill, with the eternal sourpuss known as Edwardo, began to push Orion toward the portal. At this close distance, he began to notice how loud it was. Like seven forty-seven that was breaking up with you in your bedroom loud. Using a loudspeaker. And the helmet did nothing to dampen the noise, in fact if he didn't miss his guess, it made the reverberations louder.

What a beautiful symphony.

He noticed with some annoyance that everyone else had hearing protection. Not poor Orion. Couldn't afford that for poor old soon-to-be-deaf Orion.

The closer he got, the more he noticed the hue of the portal was changing. Gone was the rainbow hued that danced and swirled, instead there was a really angry looking churn of black, gold, and an evil brand of green.

"Um, is that normal!?" He shouted once more.

They ignored him.

Orion was shoved another foot forward.

"Hey Burbidge! I've got one last question for you!" He desperately cried out, no more than two feet away from the spinning vortex of doom. He knew he wouldn't be able to stop the inevitable. But his brain had latched onto the most ridiculous thought, and he had to know.

The doctor signaled for the orderlies to stop, and looked expectantly at him. A scowl on his face.

"Are you gay?"

The technicians who had giggled before, now guffawed. Bill roared in laughter. Even Edwardo was having trouble breathing as he staggered a few feet away.

"Finally got the asshole to laugh. Now how about that?"

Adam Levine Burbidge, astrophysicist, three time winner of the Bruno Rossi Prize, stuttered out in a shriek:

"I-i-i have a wife!"

"Lots of men say that, I mean look at Tom Cruise." He quipped back.

Edwardo was now on the ground, Bill shoved him through, gasping and wheezing for breath.

It would have been lovely to know that he was going to feel some discomfort. It would have been the polite thing to inform him of before he stepped, was forced, through. It felt like every cell, every atom, was on fire and being pulled apart all at once.

Most notably the pain was, well, everywhere. Every fiber, right down to his very soul, felt like the weight of a mountain and the complete vacuum of space all at once.

What Orion didn't get to see but would have likely appreciated very much, was that he wasn't going to die alone. A feedback was triggered the moment his body passed through the event horizon of the portal. As his form was ripped apart atom by atom, so too was the very fabric of reality in that space. A currently unknown force mixed and fought with the tide of his world's reality, causing micro novas to explode and implode as things began to warp with brief possibilities that would never be realized.

That power sent ripples into the vicinity, like a wave of water that was pulling and pushing impossibly at the same time.

Burbidge had a brief thought that something was wrong as these waves washed over him and his team.

The twin fission reactors fell into catastrophic meltdown almost immediately. Due to interference, none of the safety systems engaged and for the team of researchers and orderlies, the world went white.

Utah had been a nice place from what some online reviews had said.

Impact drove the wind from him with a forceful grunt. He had landed on his back, and the screaming pain let him know promptly as it rippled up his spine that it was not happy.

Orion gasped for air as he rolled over onto his right side, struggling weakly with the fabric covering his head. Soon he gave up that fight, lying on his side as breath slowly returned to him, hoping the pain would leave as his heart slowed.

Laying there, he just let the world stop spinning as his throat took in air raggedly.

"Oh Christ…" he groaned internally, resisting the urge to try and sit up again. "What the fuck happened…where the hell am I?" In all honesty, he was shocked that he was still alive. The last memory of his was unending agony. Was this hell?

Something was certainly wrong. He felt twisted up, as if he had been compressed like he had spent a day in a centrifuge. Lighter than he should be, too.

As he continued to lay there, steadily breathing slower, his senses began to return to him. He could hear the sound of babbling water filling his ears, as well as bird song. "The hell?" That was concerning. He recalled one inmate that had been the first to be sent out and had said they were likely a mile below ground. His assumptions had led him to believe that he would appear, if he survived the portal itself, in the strata of some weird alien soil at the very least. Buried for all eternity.

But it wasn't just the fact that he could hear water and birds, it was how clear he could hear everything around him. Almost painfully so.

Satan and his demons had to be screwing with him, there was no way his hearing somehow improved after going through what had been the most painful moments of his life.

While living in Florida, Orion would often go to parties, often filled with underage kids making grievous life choices. He was mostly there for business but sometimes he would partake in the various shenanigans and drinking competitions if he was having no luck.

One of these shenanigans cost him hearing in his left ear. Why did he think trying to launch a hundred bottle rockets at once would work properly if you just duct tape them together?

The doctors at Dade City Hospital informed him that he was likely to lose all hearing in that ear by the time he was forty. That day had taught him a valuable lesson, never partake in your own stash. And yet now, he could hear everything so clearly.

Under all the various nature noises were other sounds. Sounds that are hidden in the background of life. His mind began identifying them. More bird song, the rush of wind through branches, and the only thing his brain could determine as chittering echoed between his ears.

"Bugs?"

He had never heard insects moving except in those NOVA shows, and it was beginning to freak him the fuck out. The sound of chewing had him the most alarmed.

The panic that suddenly seized him forced him to ignore the pain his body was still informing him of, his struggles to escape his cloth prison renewed. Light shown at one end, it too seemed off somehow, yet he pushed for it in a frenzy.

Sunlight blinded him, forcing him to blink through tears in an attempt to clear his vision. As things began to come into focus, he gaped. He had to be getting fucked with, there was no other explanation.

The first thing he noticed was how far to the sides he could see, as if his eyes had been stretched to the sides of his face but not quite. He could still see everything forward of him, but it was like he was seeing more than what he normally could have.

But it was what he saw that made everything so surreal. He had been told he was going to another world, another reality. But the bluejay sitting on a branch just in front of him begged to differ. Had they fucked up and given him his freedom by sheer accident?

"Doubtful, I'm not that fucking lucky."

The chewing noise returned. As he focused in on that sound it seemed to magnify and he felt something strange moving around near the top of his head. He slapped at it, thinking one of the bugs had landed on him, and winced in pain as he briefly deafened himself.

Still wincing and holding his head, he turned to look at what had first grabbed his attention. His jaw and hands suddenly dropped.

Behind him was a massive furry animal. Unbidden his mind started to conjure up horror movies about aliens and being eaten alive. One of three top fears.

When he was still a free man he lived in the swamplands of Florida. Not because he wanted to, but because that was the safest, or so he thought, place to do his business. He had never once been comfortable with the fact that he had alligators and other potentially large critters that were unknown to him, as neighbors.

He took precautions, stayed alert, which afforded him the blessing of keeping his limbs one morning when an alligator had taken up residence in his lab. It took him most of a day to get the damn thing out.

Back in the now, the furry head lifted and he breathed a sigh of relief. The chewing noise was of it, tearing into a large bush with berries in it at the base of what looked like a pine tree, its gaze was passive and dull. Just like any other herbivore he had seen from a farm or zoo.

A rather unusual one though, as Orion's gaze swept slowly across the beast he noted some similarities with a deer, no, the horns were far too thick. Thicker than any animal he had seen and more than one set.

The blunt and wide racks jutted out in two directions. One set along the neck as if for some protection, and it was thicker than the other set that jut out to the sides.

A loud snort startled him from his observation. The creature had clearly gotten bored of looking at him and had gone back to its methodical destruction of the bush, giving him a better view of its body doing so as it shifted its stance.

It looked like a big black and brown furred Bison. That was his best guess. Only skinnier, made for running.

He shook his head in exasperation, and his vision swam, as he was still used to his increased range of sight.

He went to rub his eyes with both hands and stopped the moment his hands made contact with his eyelids.

Something was very wrong. Very wrong.

Pulling them back he gasped in shock. Four digits on each hand, covered in black fur, were held in front of his face.

As he stared in horror he noticed something else that he had not initially realized. The hands, that were and were not his own, shot to his face and he screamed.

He could feel the smooth short fur of a muzzle that greeted his trembling digits as they probed across his altered face. He screamed louder.

The not-bison that was before him bellowed in startlement. It kicked, as it bucked and bounded away, barely missing his head. The huge thing was oddly light on its hooves as it took off.

But Orion barely took note of its flight, as what was apparently now his hands swiftly patted down the rest of his body.

Most of it was the same, though again, everything seemed smaller somehow. He pulled his legs from what he could now tell was the suit that he had been stuffed into violently only a short time ago. Naked black fur greeting his eyes.

"This isn't happening!" His mind reeled as two pairs of hooves capped the end of his legs came within view. He tried to flex his feet, and the hooves moved in response instead. He screamed again, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

His awakening this time was prompted by something wet pelting him in the face, several wet things.

Eyes fluttering open soon shut themselves again as a flash blinded them and a boom followed shortly afterwards causing him to jump.

Rain burst forth and chased his scrambling form from the middle of the clearing he was in, to under one of the heavy pine trees that wreathed it. The branches and needles doing a surprisingly good job of keeping most of the rain off of him.

In his dash for cover he managed to grab the suit, the helmet could not be found during his rush for protection. Wrapping it around himself he stared out into the downpour, trying to piece together his situation.

Judging by the creature he had seen from earlier, and unless he hadn't paid as much attention as he had thought in class, he had done it. Or, to be more accurate, Burbidge had done it. He was in another world. Unless that animal that had almost caved his head in was an aberration. That and the bluejay from earlier still left doubts settled in his mind.

But something had gone wrong, very wrong. The thought whirled in his head as he stared at what should have been his feet. He shuddered as he fought down the panic and revulsion that had claimed him earlier. He would be damned if he'd pass out again.

In hope, he fiddled with the devices on the suit. Maybe Burbidge had thought ahead and put some type of communication device on the AES.

Nothing. In fact all the devices on the suit were broken. The faint smell of burnt wiring clung to his nose. The now overly sensitive sense caused him to sneeze violently from the odor.

He checked the pouches that were on the belt, and nearly cheered as he found food bars and several water bottles. Tablets were also available to purify water, or so the instructions read and he breathed a sigh of relief.

The bars were just heavy protein blocks, but according to the writing on the packets each bar was meant to last a week. So three weeks of food was all that had been afforded to him. Well, he had made do with less before.

Unfortunately for him he didn't think he was going to get a paycheck from this expedition. An uncomfortable notion that he might not be able to eat anything in this world flashed through his mind. Movies, and even books, alluding to space and dimensional travel put new worries into his head. He pushed all that aside.

"Worry is like wondering if the hen is going to lay the egg. Of course it will, you will just have to choose what to do with it when, and not if, it comes." Another saying from his past, his grandmother this time.

Looking out at the rain, he watched for a while till he figured it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. With that he decided he best check what exactly had changed for him, this time with a more level head.

His feet being in view got him started there first. Though he was hesitant to begin, it was not every day that one's body was transformed into an entirely new entity after all.

His hands roamed over them. It was weird, the hooves felt the pressure from his fuzzy digits, but not any actual feeling. As his fingers traced up he found that his legs were actually digitigrade.

Great, he was a fucking furry.

The rest of the legs were surprisingly normal looking, if you discounted the fact that they were covered in soft black fur.

He continued his inspection until he got to the crotch, he wanted to scream again. But bit down on his tongue and merely hissed.

Instead of the usual bait and tackle he once had, he now sported an extra fuzzy pair of nuts and a, he tested the unfamiliar term in his head, sheath. It was unnerving to say the least and he poked at it more than anything else.

He did not like it. Not one bit.

Chief reason among his concerns was how the hell he was supposed to piss.

He had a normal anus, if nothing else, and a tail. Shorter than what he had imagined, it ended in a nub that long strands of brownish orange red hair seemed to be attached to. The tail fur went past his knees as best as he could tell from his current sitting position.

Further examination revealed everything else normal, besides the missing pinkies on his hands, those would be missed. How the hell was he supposed to grip things properly now?

Eventually he made his way to the head.

There he found the snout, or muzzle, whatever, as he had before. He then noted the ears on top of his head, far removed from the sides like he was used to and long. He could feel them twitching at the sound of the rain.

"Okay, so new body...what in the fuck am I?" He was deeply concerned for his own mental well being. He was also having major difficulties coming to terms with this form and its reduced size.

It had become clear to him during his examination, that he was smaller than he was before. He had never been a giant, but this was ridiculous.

His hands started to fall when they bumped into something else, causing his head to hurt slightly. Slowly he lifted his right hand up once more to feel what he hit.

A spiral pattern of what seemed like bone and felt, that he could both feel with his hand and head. He slowly realized that he had a horn. What in the hell was he?

He leaned against the tree as his hands found their place in his lap.

"This is so fucked."

He jerked awake, the first rays of dawn blasting straight into his eyeballs. A quick look around showed him still in the same place as before.

"Fuck, it wasn't a dream," he mumbled.

The need for the bathroom drove him from the cover of the pine tree and suit. Not that he needed them anymore, the rain had stopped sometime while he slept.

Stepping over to another tree, he wondered how the hell he was supposed to do his business. As he thought about it, he relaxed and the tip of what was now his dick peaked out of the sheath. The head was flat with a little hole at the bottom.

"Oh, I guess that works." He finished up rather quickly after that, the head disappearing back inside the fuzzy sleeve that caused him to shudder in disgust, then returned to his tree and drank some water from one of the bottles, careful to not spill a drop. "No sense in being wasteful."

Looking around once more he noticed a creek about twenty yards from his chosen tree. The rush of water reminded him what he had ignored yesterday for other, obvious, concerns.

Walking over he found a small pool, still save for the small eddies that were near the opposite end of him, where the water was being funneled in and out. He finally found his helmet, shattered and useless. It laid in the mud and muck.

Here he got his first good look at himself in the muddy murky water.

He was a fucking horse. Not just a horse but a child, foal, whatever! He was a baby fucking horse!

The horn he had discovered earlier stood boldly smack in the center of his forehead.

"Let's amend that, I'm a baby fuckin' Unicorn!"

What kind of little girl's wet dream did he fall into?! He was going to kill Burbidge if he ever got the fucking chance!

He stared for a long time at what he had become. A similar brownish red mane being pushed over his shoulder by a stiff breeze.

For a moment he thought he was in a fever dream. But dashed the idea because his everything still hurt like hell.

He splashed into the water after a while, determined to clean himself as much as possible, as the past two days had caked on mud and dirt into the fur. Once done, he climbed out and air dried as he decided on what to do next.

His food and water would only last so long. He would have to find another source eventually. He retrieved and then gnawed on one end of one of the heavy blocks, they could have field tested it before they sent it with him. Tasted like sawdust.

He also debated on what to do with the suit. He had checked over it again before the failing light forced him to stop last night. There was no power, the tears in it were no longer self repairing. He understood basic circuitry, but none of that helped him here as he didn't even have the tools, nor the knowledge, to try and get it working again.

The suit was also way too big for him to actually wear, now. So there was no point to having it, though he could try and wear it like a toga. He dismissed that idea as easily as it came, all that chunky equipment would just make it hard to do that as well, not to mention the connectors.

The weight was hard to ignore as well. While it did feel like a second skin, it was best to just leave it here. No, bury the damn thing in case he needed to come back for it. No sense letting an animal take off with it.

Dusting his hands off on his fuzzy knees he reached over and picked up the belt with his food and water pouches. A compass was actually in one of those, but it was useless.

The face had been cracked, the needle bent. He must have landed on it when he crashed into this place.

The issue with the suit was just one of his problems. He was in pretty bad shape, he had no real shelter, effectively naked, and no viable way to communicate with Burbidge and his team. He had no idea what to do. His training had essentially been; stand in one place and let the equipment do the work.

Was he to stay or go and explore what could be a dangerous area. As he pondered this, with the afternoon turning to dusk, another piece of his grandpa's advice came back in stark clarity.

When he had been a child, he and his grandfather had gone camping with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a knife for each of them.

"Rule one Orion. Orientate yourself. Find out where you are and what resources are available to you. Climb a tree, get to the top of a hill or cliff. See what's available and how you can use that to your advantage."

His grandmother had dropped them out into the woods that morning, and it wasn't till dusk three days later that the pair had found their way back to the cabin. The argument that sprouted from that had been hilarious. They had been blindfolded, his grandpa's idea to make it more realistic. And grandma had taken full advantage of it, and pulled a prank on them.

Still the logic was sound. Especially now.

He eyed the pine tree, his little arms were not going to cut it. There was no way he was going to be able to reach those branches. That left a tall hill or a cliff to search for. A mountain was out of the question.

Tightening the make-shift harness of his belt around himself the next morning, he set off. Every so often stopping to arrange a small mound of stones with an arrow pointing back the way he had come so he would not lose out on one resource already found, water.

As he pushed through the sparse forest, he found berries, much like what that weird animal had been tearing into. Remembering that he had limited food, he reluctantly tested a tiny piece of it. Dropping the rest, he carried on. After a couple of hours, he determined that at least a piece would not kill him, and the next bush he passed he took another one and ate the whole berry that time.

The sweet flavor that he hadn't tasted before popped in his mouth. It tasted like apples, if apples were bite sized. He hoped the seeds didn't carry the same amount of cyanide in them. Of course he waited before trying more, but soon enough he was popping the berries in like grapes.

Mid afternoon he spotted a hill that seemed to suit his purposes of needed elevation, and clambered up to the top on hands and hooves. The notion that he no longer had feet was going to take awhile to sink in.

Reaching the top he sat down, breathing heavily. He had never been 'in-shape' but in his old body he wouldn't have struggled this much.

After a little rest he took a look at what was around him. Open plains spread out before him, the hill actually ended abruptly about a dozen feet from where he sat. Carefully he got up and peered over the side, and saw that it went straight down about a hundred yards or so. It wasn't a mountain side given the amount of dirt, but it wasn't exactly a hill either.

Whatever. He didn't actually care.

Turning his attention back to the plains, and backing away from the edge a bit, he started to locate and identify landmarks.

Judging by the sun's position, and unless he missed his guess or was in a southern hemisphere, or if the world itself was weird as hell and made no sense with sixteen poles that all said purple, the mountains stood largely to the north. Massive, jagged, and heavy with snow that he could see even at this distance made him glad he didn't end up there. He shuddered at the idea of being dropped into a blizzard.

Directly across from him was more plains, and what could be farmland of all things. Though he wasn't positive. A good indication of civilization if it were true. But if it was, the absence of any structure made doubt linger in his mind.

Turning around he saw above the trees that had been behind him, and above him when he had still been below the canopy.

"Holy shit, is that the fucking ocean?" He exclaimed in his head.

The large expanse of water far to the west had no end behind it. So it was his best guess given the limited view, it could just be a massive lake for all he knew.

Seeing all that water, and the mountains to the north made him feel very small. He stood closer to the tall tree that sat upon the hill-cliff, then looked south and gaped.

To the south was a city. "Civilization confirmed!" He cheered inwardly, and did a little happy dance.

His head began to fill with ideas of getting there and getting help, then his brain ruined that by reminding him that he was no longer himself. People would definitely not take well to a little talking horse boy, a naked little talking horse boy. He could see the men in black putting him under lock and key, he would be right back where he started from, with no way to escape.

As he gazed at the city forlornly, details started to dash away his fears a little, but left him perplexed.

The city itself looked to be surrounded by massive stone walls, complete with gates.

"The fuck?" He whispered to himself.

If he discounted the big four horned fucker in the clearing the day before, he idly thought he might be in Europe.

Something flew up into the sky from the city, something fast as hell. A drone? More darted up into the sky, and some shot back down.

"The fuck is that?" He wondered, concernedly.

The longer he stood up there, watching objects fly up and down from the clouds covering the city, the more exposed he felt. He bit his lip in consternation. One of the objects that flew up, was now lazily making its way in his direction.

"Nope!" He was not about to wait around for that nonsense, he had seen that movie, they all usually died. Orion bolted down the hill and into the evergreen forest. Once under the cover of trees, he retraced his steps by following the stone arrows back to the small creek. He had to think.

Words from his grandfather echoed in his head; "Find your position, secure resources, decide how to get out of your predicament. And remember boy, you are the smallest animal in the forest. Stay on your toes."

He wished he had a knife.

He thought alright.

For an entire week he contemplated on what the hell to do. In that time, he had made a shelter of pine boughs, using the sharp edge of a stone to saw the branches off.

That stone was now fixed on a spear with sapling bark wrapped to secure it there. It had taken quite a few times for him to get it right, he was no woodsman. Woodshorse.

And as he thought and waited for some sign of Burbidge and his team, it slowly dawned on him that odds were there wouldn't be a rescue. Dread filled his belly.

During the week of contemplation, he braved scouting out the city to the south, careful to remain unseen behind the various stands of trees and leather leaf bushes. He'd often set out before dawn to get in position to watch just so he wouldn't expose himself.

The walls were not quite as solid as he had originally thought. Cracks, some big enough to fit his tiny frame in, were scattered along them. Getting in and out would likely be easy.

But that wasn't what made him pause. Nor was it his horsey form. It was the fact that there were other horses that did that. Them and some weird ass bipedal genetically confused birds at the gates.

The horses looked a lot like him. Some with horns, others without. There was even a few that had wings, and they fucking flew everywhere. All in a multitude of colors and combinations in which some hurt his brain trying to understand.

The bird people were even stranger still. Like the winged horses, they had all the bells and whistles. Unlike them they were covered with feathers roughly from the waist up. It looked like they had been bred with some kind of cat. Judging by some of those tails, more than one species.

Like the horses, they came in a variety of combinations, but far more muted in hues. Most color coalesced around their eyes, what might have been ears the way they flicked about, and the edges of their feathers.

"Pegasus. That's what they're called." His eighth grade literature classes slowly filtered into his mind as he made his way back to his hidden campsite. He certainly didn't remember covering bipedal animal people in those textbooks.

If those winged horses were pegasus, then that made the bird-cats, griffons. Details of those classes were hard to come by, lost in whatever forgotten hole in his brain he had dumped them into. He couldn't help but wonder if he was in the wacky world of some cracked out Grecian's mind.

Judging by the fact that there were elements of the middle ages and from what he could see of the buildings past the gate and cracks in the walls, Victorian era housing, he didn't think so.

But what to do with this knowledge? He just didn't know.

The second week of contemplation and wait, gave the discovery of something amazing, and a massive headache.

The horn that adorned his forehead wasn't just for show.

While water wasn't an issue any longer, his food supply was. He had been careful and only eaten twice a day. If he was lucky, he might stretch his food another week. The berries he had been enjoying seemed to fall out of season quickly as none were to be found by the time the second week had begun.

After helping himself to the creeks' now rather clear water, and not shitting to death, he eyed the fish in the pool dubiously. It could be a new source of food if he could manage to snag some. Though it would take more than a few to feed him.

He tried spearing, no dice. He tried using a net cobbled together with sapling bark. That fell apart the moment it hit the water. He even tried noodling, and had almost drowned in the river as the fish he had managed to catch nearly dragged him under. His grandpa had sworn by that one.

He likely didn't have the mass to make it work.

He even dove headfirst into the water trying to gore one of the little bastards on his horn. All he got for his efforts in that tactic was a mouthful of riverbed. All of this nearly made him scream in rage.

He glared hatefully at the little fishy bastards darting away, wanting nothing more than to catch a half dozen of the slippery fucks and crush them in sheer anger. PETA would not be happy with him. The very real fear of running out of food plagued him, those bars were down to a little less than a block and a half.

As he continued to glare, he felt his face, his whole head grow hot as hell. His vision doubled briefly and before he knew it, a fish floated in a golden black aura in front of his face.

He could feel the thing thrash, in his head, as if it was his hand holding onto it, yet not.

The sudden onset of piercing pain ripped through his brain and he dropped the fish and struggled to shore as everything loose in the area flung themselves, in a haze of black and gold, everywhere.

He awoke some hours later wondering what the hell happened. His head felt stuffed in wool, and a dull pain throbbed at the base of his horn. He slept the rest of the day away.

The following morning found him feeling decidedly odd.

He awoke as if he had a sense of things that weren't there before. As he focused on the feeling he could see a strange glow come from between his eyes. Gold and black.

Looking at his fairly destroyed campsite, he sighed knowing he was going to have to pick that all up. Suddenly loose stones, branches that he had tied together with other branches, began to stir and arrange themselves back the way they had been in jerky order. All in that strange hazy black and gold glow. He could feel what it was his mind was doing, as surely as if he had gotten up and done it himself with his hands. Numbers played in his head.

Unicorn horn, moving objects with his mind. He was either telepathic in some way, or magic was a real thing here. Judging by the glow that surrounded what he was manipulating, he would guess the latter. It seemed right. Felt right.

After a fair amount of practice, fishing became a breeze. That night he ate good, fishy flesh sizzling over the campfire.

Starting a fire was easy as hell as well. As he could spin the stick indefinitely with his magic, for lack of a better term, to get a fire going. Or near enough, sometimes he would wake to wet wood and it would take hours and a headache to get a fire going again.

With the discovery that he could perform magic, or at least something akin to it, he could extend his wait time. Thus putting off making a decision that he was still unsure of.

However, the longer he waited the more certain he became the Burbage and his team wasn't coming for him.

A week later he would make his decision. Or more accurately, nature made it for him.

He had waited till dusk, about all the time he could wait. That morning, as he retraced his steps to the city he discovered new tracks. Giant paw pads easily five times his hoof had been following his path. They were relatively fresh.

That couldn't have been a good sign. So he gathered his things, buried the suit and helmet, and set off for the city, head swiveling for danger as he tried to make as little noise as possible.

Hoping that the cover of darkness hid his little form as he made his way to the walls. He had already chosen his point of entry a few days prior, a large crack that was more than wide enough for him, near a rather lightly guarded gate. Now to wait for the opportunity and hope that the wait wouldn't be for too long.

As it so happened, a cart being pulled by two regular horse people slowly made its way up the road. He almost snorted in laughter. On top of that cart was another horse with two little foals in their arms.

"Horses pulling horses, there must have been a circus act at some point that had that."

At the gate the five were stopped. Gruff words that he could clearly understand were barked out by what looked like the leader of a troop guards.

"State your name, your business, and your cargo."

Orion had damn near tripped over his hooves as he dodged from bush to a low hill. "The fuckers speak english!" The odds were impossible. How in the fucking hell did he understand them?! Funnily enough, they sounded Russian of all things.

He had missed what the two horses dragging the cart had said in a howl that rose from behind him, chilling his blood. That had come from the north, no doubt where his former campsite had been.

Shit.

"Volks be out tonight. Sounds like they found something's trail." One of the griffons barked out, barely understandable as thick as his accent was.

One of the pullers spoke up. "Well then, let me and my family inside!" Her voice grated. She. As he watched he began to notice the differences. The woman, mare, had breasts. So too did the other puller, he couldn't put an age to either of them.

The horse on the cart with the two babies were male, and young. Fear was etched on his face as his head swung to the darkness behind them and back to the safety of the fire and walls of the city.

"Fine, fine, let them inside." Another guard spoke out. He couldn't see the speaker but knew the voice for another woman. The more he watched and listened, the more he realized that most of those guards were female. Even the Griffins.

With a heavy groan, the portcullis of the gate slowly began to rise with a screeching sound as rust was filed away by friction of chain and teeth of gears.

Another howl of an animal, a volk, sounded again, followed by answering howls. They were closer, much too close, much too fast.

No one was looking his way so he made his dash staying low to the ground, fear gripped his heart in a vice-like grip. Just as he got to the big crack in the wall a figure, massive and on all fours, burst from the leather leaf he had been hiding behind not a minute ago. Orion looked back to see gleaming sharp fangs exposed from a growling mouth.

"Oh that is one big ass puppy…" he thought. Alarm bells blaring in his head despite the calm thought.

Shouts from the gates drew the attention of the wolf-like creature at first. They had spotted the mass of fur and anger, but it looked like they hadn't seen Orion just yet. In the distraction of that moment, he squeezed himself into the crack and through the other side, just as the sound of more large figures broke through the underbrush of the forest.

A whole fucking pack. He had not left a moment too soon.

He hid behind some crates and barrels that seem to have lost use over the years, clutter and refuse no one had bothered cleaning up. Listening to the noise of a brief battle that couldn't have lasted longer than five minutes but felt like hours, before the wolves howled as one and rushed off into the night, judging by the sound of snapping branches.

"They've never come that close before!" A voice shouted.

"Someone get a tourniquet on that wound!" Another shouted, female again and the sound of someone in charge. More shouts could be heard. Two of which were screaming.

From his vantage point in the alley, he could see the cart from before being pulled in. Not by the women from before, but the guards. On the cart were both mares, frantically trying to stem the blood pouring from the male horse's neck.

His throat had been ripped out. Orion felt himself grow cold.

The two foals that had been in his arms, we're now being carried by a pair of guards, a morose look on the pair's faces. The babies wailing into the night.

The stallion jerked and gargled, and then was still. Dead. This was his fault. If only he had left sooner. Instead of putting off a decision that he should have made a week ago. He caused this.

"Fuck."

Noise from the other side of the wall, near the crack he had used in his escape, startled him from his darkening thoughts.

"I'm telling you Altai! I saw something charge into the crack here!" A male voice angrily argued.

A female voice responded tiredly, the same who had shouted about a tourniquet from earlier.

"Commander. Buck me Fury Breeze, at least address me properly in the field!" There was a pause. "How many did we lose?"

"Fury Breeze? The hell kinda name is that?"

He pressed himself against the opposite wall, ready to bolt down the alleyway should they make an attempt to get to his side.

"Three. Four if you include that poor stallion. I don't think he's gonna make it." He said, sadness echoed in his tone.

"Celestia dammit all to Tartarus!" Shouted the female, the commander. "I know that colt. He had just gotten married to those two last year!" She shouted. The clang of metal meeting concrete swiftly followed.

After a few moments of heavy breathing she spoke again.

"You said you saw something over here?"

"Yes, ma'am. I couldn't get a good look in the dark. Not a griffon after all. But it looked like a little pony. A foal."

Dead silence.

"Are you telling me a foal was out in the woods tonight?" There was an edge to her voice. Hell there was an edge to this Fury Breeze dude's as well.

"It could have been, ma'am. I just don't know. I only caught it for a second, just when that first volk broke through our lines.

"Well get Ardgriff or Silent Wing over here. They got wings they can see what might be on…."

Orion had heard enough, and bolted down the alleyway down into the city proper. His little hooves clicking against the cobblestone in loud echoes.

He didn't stop, fear and his own guilt lashed his mind as he raced into the darkness.