For the following weeks, The Gift Giver spent every moment of her free time searching the future of the minotaur king, no longer content in doing things from the safety of the grove. Since she now knew that the minotaur king would personally participate in raids on the Far North, his future had to hold some hint to where the minotaur’s city, and the island it resided on, was located.

Starting months prior to the moment she last saw her corrupted self, wanting above all else to keep her out of her visions. Alice’s logic was that so long as she viewed things that Future Alice could not intervene in, then any new information she gathered could not be used to meddle even more with things in the future. It was a flimsy assumption at best, because Future Alice could theoretically be anywhere she wanted, but if her future self was the result of following the Path of Fate without straying even slightly, then Alice had to believe that any point where she wasn’t present could not be used against her.

Going through months worth of visions each night, skimming through the days in order to find what she needed, Alice would only stop when he was speaking with other minotaur, as Alice spent a few weeks worth of her time learning much about the minotaur lord’s plots, which were what she had expected from the slaver lord. Having long since dominated the Antlerteans completely, the next goal of the minotaur was to expand their reach to the other species of the world. From the way the minotaur king and his associates spoke at times, this had been plotted since the empire’s inception, something they were slowly putting together since they founded Minopolis.

Alice also learned that they would occasionally perform small expeditions across the sea, traveling to areas far outside Equestria’s borders, seeking isolated tribes of creatures to capture and forcibly induct into the minotaur’s culture of tyranny. SInce this required many trips from the continent the minotaur had annexed,the reindeer eventually discover a point where a map charting the location the bovines’ domain was, far off the shores of the West Equestrian Sea.

With the their island’s place in the world discovered, Alice prepared for a time she could set her own plans in motion, where she could make a journey to Minopolis long before the minotaur came to enslave the reindeer of her home town. While preparing gifts for the winter holidays of all creatures was a year round job, there were days permitted weekly where the Gift Givers had time off, just like any other job. For Alice, these days were used for either lounging around the cabin, or more often going to the reindeer village to spend time with her real family. So once a few off days came around, Alice had no problem convincing Bori and Aurora that she was going to do the later, when the truth was she was going to find the wretched maze city.

Alice departed as soon as she got off work the day prior, giving both her fellow Gift Givers a quick farewell accompanied with a tight hug before she left. The second she stepped outside and closed the door though, she gathered up a backpack lightly filled with supplies she stowed away for her journey, and took to the sky. Utilizing her species’ ability to use the northern winds to emulate flight, the yellow doe headed of to where she knew she’d find the civilization the minotaur had claimed as their own. It was known that the fastest flyers among reindeer could travel to every city in Equestria in a single night, but Alice was nowhere near that adept when it came to speed. Even going in one direction towards where she assumed this island continent was, it would take some time for Alice to arrive, with her having to stop and rest at several points prior to reaching the coast. Not wanting to travel across the ocean at night, Alice camped on the beach until morning, and continued her journey the next day as dawn broke. From here forward, she knew there would be no place to stop, lest she found a small island along the way, which she could not depend on.

Thus began the actual search for the minotaur’s continent, with nothing but ocean in all directions for some time. With only a general idea of her destination, she could only hope that Minopolis was not so far away that she couldn’t reach it. Alice could have of course checked her own future again to see if she would have gotten to the island by days end, but the Gift Giver was starting to see a pattern of how each time she looked into her own future recently, it lead to a new horrific revelation that she wished she hadn’t seen, so she chose to refrain from using her gifted abilities for the time being. Her target was, after all, an entire continent, and a landmass that big would be hard to miss, even if she was off by a wide margin.

For several hours, there was nothing as Alice made her way across the sea, seeing nothing but a blue horizon ahead, and an ever shrinking land mass behind her when she took the opportunity to look back. Eventually, the doe could no longer see the land she had left, which put a slight sense of fear in her knowing she was so far away from any place that she knew, that if anything bad happened no one would be around for miles to help her. This was expected though, as it would be ridiculous if the minotaur’s lands were close enough to be seen from the shore, but being this far away from her home, heading into what she saw as ‘enemy territory’, felt terrifying now that she had gotten this far.

For some time after that, all she could see was blue ahead of her. The calm, light blue skies above, and the roiling, dark blue waters below. It was quiet, with only the repeating sounds of waves and wind around her, as she kept a slow steady courant, going as fast as she could without building up fatigue. Finally though, Alice saw new land approach, and while that meant she was still a good distance away, the doe’s mood brightened as she realized she had found what she sought.

When Alice was able to touch down on dry land again, landing on the first bit of green grass her hooves could reach, she gladly collapsed to the ground. The doe had been running on the winds from dawn till a few hours before noon, and while this was not her first long distance trek, with previous ones having her pull a sleigh full of toys and presents behind her as well, this trip had been both physically and mentally exhausting.

But we made it! Alice thought to herself, replying to a thought of how harsh traveling this far alone had been.

The doe was ecstatic that the she had made what had to be a several days trip by boat in such a short time, and even more so that she had indeed found the right place, as while landing she had spotted several large landmarks that looked like buildings and cities, including one off in the distance which was the maze she recognized from her trip to the future. While it was still tens of miles away, Minopolis was in reach.

Rolling around to put her back to the ground, Alice took a moment to rest and recover, assuming that she had landed far enough in the outskirts of the minotaur’s kingdom that she had to have gone unnoticed. However, she was ready to take off the moment that assumption turned out to be untrue, understanding that a hasty retreat back to Equestria’s borders would not be easy in her current condition.

So let’s think here, Alice said to herself in her mind, since step one of her plan was now complete, Now that I’m here, what to do?

Alice had no grand delusion that she was gonna fix everything in a day, but she was never going to solve anything staying at home waiting for the minotaur to come to her. What she needed was information, to figure out how she was gonna convince the minotaur to give up their evil ways, and release the creatures they currently had enslaved. Where to start on something even that simple though? It wasn’t like she could walk right into the maze city, and start asking questions. She probably couldn’t even fly in through the top, just to spy on what people were saying, without being noticed and captured.

“Maybe I should try one of those smaller places first,” Alice said aloud.

Among the several locations she had seen while up in the air, she noticed a few areas that were like the maze city, but not nearly the same. Places that had thick, encircling stone walls, with a single large building in them, along with open areas comprised of a large field and some wooded areas. Alice wondered if those were maybe where some richer minotaur lived who didn’t want to reside in Minopolis itself.

“Probably not gonna get any help from there,” Alice said, thinking that any rich minotaur was likely the ones that profited the most off the system of slavery this kingdom had.

Other locations outside of the main city looked akin to farmlands, quarries, ship yards, or mining operations. Minopolis, from what she had seen from above, took up a large amount of land, being one, huge, mega city that could have been divided up into four or more of the largest pony cities. It must have taken up a lot of resources to operate something of that scale, and which would have explained why the things outside its outer walls were mostly dedicated to producing everything they would need inside them.

“If I were to make a guess,” said Alice as she formed a theory of how things worked around here, “I bet all of those places are operated by some Antlerteans that the minotaur have do all the work for them.”

Having said that, it dawned on Alice that one of the best ways to deal with the minotaur might be to get to them through those they had enslaved. The deer native to this island had to hate being oppressed, as freedom was a concept that Alice assumed all creatures desired. Sure, she had encountered one Antlertean doe who seemed happy to obey the minotaur during her first time going into the future, but it was likely that particular one was deeply brainwashed, or perhaps in a privileged position due to her knowledge of Antlertean technology. The vast majority must hate the position they were in, and would surely want things to change. With that in mind, they would be Alice’s greatest allies if she told them she intended to liberate them from their bonds.

Having rested enough, Alice got up and looked around for the smallest of the nearby farming operations, as she took into consideration that each one she had seen were probably not left solely in the hand of the deer who did all the work, and would have a task master to assure that the slaves do what they were supposed to. More slaves would require more minotaur to keep them in check, so something small may only have one or two of the bovines operating things, an amount that she felt she could tiptoe herself around. It might have been easier if she could steal the trick she saw Bori do in her future visions, but that was not a skill Alice could effectively emulate, since she couldn’t move about as freely while using her powers. Maybe some day she could do that, if she put practice into it, but right now she was better off with her mind staying in the present.

Making her way to one that looked like it was full of fruit producing trees, the reindeer deemed it the best one to approach because of the cover they would provide as she got close. She wasn’t wearing her red cloak at the moment, as she was well aware that the bright colors would get her spotted no matter where she went to on the island, opting for an older brown cloak she hopes would be close enough to the parkas she saw the Antlerteans wear in her visions. Whether or not it would help her blend in, the reindeer got to the farm with no issues, able to walk right up to it and enter without being stopped or approached.

Alice entered the boundaries of this bovine owned orchid by hopping the fence surrounding its outskirts, and once inside she could see that these trees bore fruit that looked like peaches, save for the odd purple skins they had.

I guess it might be a regional thing, Alice thought, knowing enough about plants that a different climate could cause them to have slight changes.

Honestly, the fruits looked nice and ripe, and the doe had an urge to grab one to eat, despite having packed herself food for a day or two, but she decided against it. She didn’t want to benefit from anything that might have been the product of another creature’s enslavement. Maybe she could give one a try at a later date, after she helped liberate the deer here, but for now she forbid herself from partaking of these ill produced fruit.

As Alice made her way into the orchard, she found herself enjoying a leisurely walk through this patch of nature, the surrounding foliage much more enjoyable than her morning jog in the skies over the ocean. The warmer climate of the minotaur occupied island also had some novelty to it for the doe, since she seldom visited places during their summer, spring, or fall seasons, the Gift Giver’s Grove well within the Frozen North where it was perpetual winter. To a reindeer, such greenery made for a vibrantly scenic view, and while the Antlerteans of this day were used to it, or had more pressing matters to worry about, Alice wondered if they too appreciated these sights when first settling on these lands.

Shortly after the Antlerteans came to the forefront of her thoughts, Alice noticed some movement among the trees that made her duck behind one. She waited a few seconds, wanting to make sure she hadn’t been noticed as well, before peeking around her cover to see an Antlertean busy atop a ladder, plucking the purple peaches from the trees to drop them into a large bushel bucket set at the tree’s base. Having not been seen by this other deer, Alice took the time to examine what was the first Antlertean she had encountered in her timeline, even though technically she had already seen and met others when her mind was projected into the future.

It was a stag, wearing the parka she had seen on others of his kind, and an accompanying collar on his neck that identified his status as a slave. Aside from this, he wore nothing else, a detail Alice could see each time he reached up to grab a fruit from the tree, revealing through the gaps of the cloth draped over him that he was completely naked underneath. This let her see the tan fur that covered most of his body, as well as the tribal markings that adorned his kind, his being red, as there didn’t seem to be a standard color that was shared by Antlerteans.

Part of Alice wanted to approach the deer, but her better judgment kept her in her hidden spot. She didn’t know what would happen if she just went up to one of these enslaved deer, and while the reindeer would hope their response would be positive, there could be many disastrous results to them seeing a strange doe that could mess up what she was trying to accomplish. They could panic encountering someone they had never seen before, or get startled and attract more attention than she wanted to her location. While she did want the Antlerteans to know someone was here to free them from their bonds, if she got crowded suddenly, it could draw in the eyes of whatever minotaur were managing this place, and lead to her being incapable of escaping. As the yellow doe had refrained from looking into her own future, she didn’t yet know if this adventure ended with her returning home unharmed.

The Gift Giver wondered if there was a more isolated area to speak with this stag, as he couldn’t be the only one around. Unfortunately, there were no buildings this far out in the orchard, and the trees were too uniformly grown to provide adequate cover at all angles. For now, the reindeer felt it was best to just observe.

Alice’s cautious nature was soon confirmed to be the correct decision, as a carriage approached the location the yellow doe had hidden at, traveling down a dirt path that she had neglected to see beforehand. It was a simple, if large, harvest wagon, being pulled by one of the bovines that Alice wished to avoid at all cost. The minotaur parked his wagon close to the working deer, and then approached the tree had been collecting the peaches from.

“How’s it coming along?” he asked the slave deer rhetorically, as he looked over his filled buckets, “Not too bad. Four buckets full on this tree, and I saw the other ones the night shift did. Speaking of, have you seen Shade? She didn’t check into the belfry last night, and I assigned her to this lot.”

The stag looked down from his elevated position, and to Alice’s surprise, gave the minotaur a smile before answering, “Yes sir. It looks like she met quota early last night, and decided to take a nap before dawn. She’s sleeping on a tree branch over there.”

“Sleeping huh?” The minotaur said gruffly, making his way to the indicated tree, which was not too far away from the one that Alice was hidden at, “Well at least she’s not eating the product again.”

As the minotaur got to the pointed out tree, Alice had to quietly move herself around her own to avoid the bovine’s line of sight. Managing to avoid detection, she watched as he approached the tree, and then grasped it by the trunk. To Alice’s amazement, the bull used his massive muscles to shake the entire tree, causing many of the peaches it held to come falling down, along with the body of the creature that the minotaur and stag had been talking about. At first it looked as if the creature was going to follow the example of the fruits, but at one point her descent stopped, and she started swinging mid air like a pendulum.

The minotaur had to catch the creature and physically stopped it from swinging, giving Alice a good look at what looked to be a pony. At least, it had the basic shape of a pony, but her features looked unlike any the reindeer had seen prior. In many ways she looked more feral, with her fur being more disheveled, her ears being pointier, and mouth sporting a set of sharp fangs, a feature the doe had never seen on any pony she had ever seen. Even odder, this mare, as Alice could now see, had wings like a pegasus, but instead of the feathered kind she had always seen prior, these ones looked to be those of a bat.

“Hey,” the minotaur said sternly, as he shook the body of the mare, which was currently upside down, her tail hairs coiled around the tree branch she had been resting on, “Wake up. Your shift is over.”

The bat-like pony yawned and opened her eyes with a few blinks, looking at the minotaur with tired eyes. “Morning, master.” she said, “Did I oversleep again?”

“You shouldn’t be sleeping during your shift at all,” the minotaur said, “I swear, of all the thestrals, you are the one who gives me the most trouble.”

“But I also get the most work done,” the bat mare replied with a stretch before curling up again and closing her eyes, “So you can’t be that mad at me, right master?”

The minotaur gave a groan, and placed his hands as to catch the mare’s body, as he said, “Come on, uncoil your tail. I’ve got a lot to do, and you’re delaying me.”

The bat mare complied, releasing her grip on the tree branch so she could fall into the minotaur’s arms, not even opening her eyes as she did. Shaking his head, the minotaur took the bat pony to his wagon, set her within it, and then proceeded to go about the nearby trees, collecting full buckets of peaches, and replacing the filled ones with empty ones.

Is he another worker? Alice questioned to herself, as this particular minotaur didn’t seem as heavy handed as the other bulls she had seen, That can’t be it. The stag called him ‘master’. Maybe he thinks it’s easier for him to do the heavy lifting?

The size of the buckets did seem to lead to this idea, since it would take several Antlerteans to pick up something that heavy once filled, but that begged the question why they didn’t use smaller buckets to have the slaves do all the work.

Is this minotaur intentionally helping his slaves? It was an odd, seemingly contradictory thing to think, but if this minotaur was participating in the work, perhaps he had sympathy towards the deer he owned.

Alice couldn’t determine anything for sure based on this one observation, and it could have been that he was too busy at this moment to dish out whatever punishments he would give the bat mare later. Whatever the reason was for this display of kindness or indifference, the reindeer wasn’t going to act on a whim that this minotaur might be nicer than the rest, but this was the kind of thing that Alice felt was worth taking note of.

For the remainder of the time the minotaur stuck around, Alice managed to keep hidden from him, moving around every time he got into a position that threatened to expose her. Thankfully the minotaur was hyper focused on his job, and the stag was diligently picking peaches to complete his own tasks. When the minotaur finally pulled away in his cart, taking his collected fruits and bat pony with him, to head off to different parts of the orchard, Alice was relieved that she had gone the entire time unnoticed.

From that point, her next plan of action was to move elsewhere, away from the direction the minotaur went, when she was certain that the slave buck was distracted, with the intent of going deeper into the farmlands to see how others here took to this enforced labor. However, what she intended to do didn’t matter, not when she heard the slave stag suddenly say ‘You can come out now”.

Alice’s eyes went wide, as she didn’t know yet if the Antlertean was talking to her. She hoped that it was someone else he was addressing, but when he followed up with ‘I saw you trying to avoid the master earlier’, she couldn’t think of who else he could be talking to. Still, she didn’t simply reveal herself, hoping that he was actually talking to another slave deer that happened to be hiding in the area at the same time as her.

“I don’t know if you’re slacking off, or trying to snag a Passion Fruit for later,” the stag said, stepping off his ladder, “But you know that not reaching our quota affects everyone on the farm. No use hiding when you’ve been caught.”

The stag was coming right to Alice’s tree now, and while the stag clearly thought he was addressing a fellow slave, it was also apparent that he had seen her scuttling about to keep from being seen. Still, the reindeer couldn’t find the will to stop trying to hide, sitting with her back pressed up against the bark of her cover until the moment that the stag bent his head around the tree to look at her directly.

“Oh!” the stag said, surprised at what he was looking at.

While Alice had the hood of her cloak up, the mere fact that nothing she wore matched what he currently had on let him know immediately that he wasn’t speaking to one of the slaves of the farm. That this doe had actual clothes on further alluded that she wasn’t a slave at all, as it was customary among minotaur to keep their Antlertean property naked, or as close to it as they could, at all times.

“Sorry!” Alice yelled, picking herself up and readying to go into a sprint, continuing to blurt out, “I think I’m in the wrong place!”, as if she needed to excuse herself.

“Wait a second.” the stag said, managing to nab Alice by the cape of her cloak, preventing her from getting away, as the resistance pulled the hood off her head.

With her features from the neck up revealed, the stag could now see that while this intruder was a deer, she was not of this island. Not with her broader nose, brightly colored yellow fur, and green hair. Antlerteans were more slender, and their fur colors were mostly neutral colors of brown and gray. Not only that, but her neck didn’t have a slave collar on it, and her antlers were grown out to full length, unlike his own which were trimmed to mere nubs.

Alice took the opportunity to yank her cloak away from the shocked stag, and was about to run all the way off the farm, but before she could get a good distance away, she heard the stag say to her in a calm tone, “Are you from off the island?”

The question was presented without alarm, or desperation, only simple curiosity. As if what he saw was no different than if he was asking if she was from another city. It was somewhat disarming for her to hear the nonchalant question being asked of her, when she was expecting some more emotional response from a creature who had been enslaved by bovine tyrants for so long.

Alice came to a stop, and looked back at the stag, who was still right where she left him, “Are you… not surprised to see a doe like me?”

“Well sure I am.” the stag said, “I’ve never seen a deer quite like you before, but I’ve heard tales of other tribes existing.”

“So…” Alice said, calmly walking back to the stag, “You know there are deer beyond these lands. Free ones, that aren’t ruled over and imprisoned by your minotaur rulers?”

“I know of them,” the stag answered, “My nursery mother used to talk about the other tribes all the time, and why our tribe broke off from the rest.”

There was a lot to take in from that sentence, but what stuck out to Alice the most was that this stag seemed to know why the deer tribes inevitably parted ways with one another. While much was revealed to Alice during Aurora’s exposition of the deer’s past, that particular part had not been discussed. Not that Aurora had omitted it, just that the separation of the four tribes was beyond the events the old doe spoke of, and had no baring on the prophecy of the Promised Gift.

“It’s not strange for us to see a new species arrive here on the island though,” the stag went on to say, “Our masters occasionally go on trips to find and bring back new creatures to be introduced to our kingdom, but…”

Alice could see that the deer had his eyes locked to her neck, taking note that it was devoid of the same accessory he wore, “Yeah, I’m not a slave like you.”

“Then how did you get here?” asked the stag.

“I… really can’t say.” Alice replied, not wanting to give any information that could be spread to the minotaur, accidentally or otherwise, “But I learned about this island, and I want to help free you all from these minotaur, in a peaceful manner if possible.”

“Why?” the stag questioned.

Alice had to assume that he was worried about her motivations, as he must have not been used to this level of kindness, since from the use of the word ‘nursery’ earlier, it sounded like he might have been trapped in a minotaur’s collar since he was a child.

“Don’t worry, it’s not so I can get something from your kind later.” Alice replied, feeling like she had to make that clear, “I just want to give you all a life where you don’t have to be a slave.”

The stag gave Alice a look of confusion, and then repeated his question of “But why?”, before adding, “My master treats me very nicely, and I enjoy my work on this farm.”

As if to emphasize his point, though more likely because talking about it reminded him there was work he needed to do, the stag went back to his ladder, and returned to plucking fruit from the trees to be collected in the buckets below.

“Sure, but wouldn’t you rather be your own deer?” Alice said, walking up beside him, “Own your own farm? Get paid for the work you do?”

“Not really,” the stag replied, “If I owned a farm, I wouldn’t know how to get my own slaves in order to take care of the land and collect my crops, especially if all us deer were freed.”

“You wouldn’t have slaves,” Alice said, thinking the stag was not following, “You’d get yourself other workers, like other Antlerteans and maybe the minotaur.”

The stag gave Alice an odd sideways look as he continued picking his fruit, “Why would a minotaur work for me? They have their own businesses.”

“Well… some wouldn’t if they didn’t have slaves to do the work for them, right?” Alice replied.

“So you’d be taking away their property?” the stag replied, “Also, if all us deer were free, wouldn’t that mean they should be running their own businesses.”

“That’s not exactly how this works,” Alice answered, “When everyone is in charge of themselves, some people run businesses, and the rest tend to work for them. Not everyone is going to be running their own shops, farms, or factories.”

“Why not?” the stag asked, his question being a simple dispute of the system Alice was trying to pitch to him.

“Because… Creatures just don’t work like that.” Alice replied, “One who’s actually good at running a store and finances usually takes charge, and then brings in those with skills they need to make the business run. Sometimes it’s the other way around, but not everyone is going to be able to have their own business with employees.”

Alice was starting to realize that explaining the workings of an economic system to a creature that might have never benefited from one prior might have been hard. Just because she lived in a place where this was a common practice didn’t mean she could adequately explain the inner workings of such a system in a way this Antlertean would understand.

“I’m gonna be honest, what you’re talking about just sounds like how things already work around here.” said the stag, “The minotaur take care of all matters of exchange, with my master trading with other minotaur to get everything he needs to maintain the farm and provide for everyone who lives on it. Supplies for planting seeds and growing trees, parts for the wagons and tools we use daily, food for everyone on the farm, and proper housing for all of us as well. Likewise, we deer do whatever work our master needs, and are given everything we need to live comfortably in return.”

“That’s not the same,” Alice disputed, “You’re supposed to be given a choice about what you want to do. What if you don’t even like farming?”

“But I do.” The stag replied, as he tossed more of the purple peaches into his baskets, “When I was young, I was allowed to pick from a list of things Antlerteans learn to do, while I could have been something like a techmage, working on crystal powered machines all day, I thought that spending my days in an open field would be much nicer.”

Frustration set in for Alice, as this stag kept making what seemed to her like excuses as to why he should remain a slave, when what she wanted more than anything was to undo the harm the minotaur have done to those who rightfully owned this nation. Whatever brainwashing these deer, or at least this one in particular, went through must have been deeply ingrained into their way of thinking. She couldn’t just give up though, as the fate she wished to avoid was tied to a future where the minotaur remained slavers.

“Ok, so you were given a choice on how you’d be enslaved, but you weren’t given a choice to be a slave. The work you do might go into paying for things like food, or the place you stay, but in the end it’s your master who profits from everything.”

“Just like I would if I was a free deer and owned the farm instead?” the stag questioned, “What is the difference between being a slave and being free while working for someone else?”

Alice was starting to see that her approach to this topic was wrong. She was trying to appeal to this stag’s desire to have more, when his time as a slave has conditioned him to settle for less. While this complete lack of greed may have been seen as virtuous to some, Alice could only see how this contentment with his position must have been instilled in him by the minotaur. She had to attack this from another angle, one that addressed not the functions of the minotaur society, but the manner in which they enforced it.

“Well what about this? Don’t you think that your master treats you and the other slaves here poorly?” Alice asked, trying to find a crack in the Antlertean’s defenses.

“Not really.” The stag said, climbing down the ladder as he filled up every bucket at the tree he was working on.

“I’m sure he eats better food than you all,” Alice stated, making assumptions.

“Eh, maybe more food,” the stag answered, placing his hooves on the ground, “But he’s a lot bigger than us, and everyone is usually full after meals.”

“Doesn’t he beat you when you do something wrong?” Alice asked next, knowing that there had to be something this minotaur did that the stag didn’t agree with.

“Hmmmm… maybe the occasional spanking if we do something really bad,” the stag replied, giving Alice a bit of hope until he continued with, “But he doesn’t do it personally, since he knows he’d really hurt us if he was the one behind the paddle. He lets one of the other slaves do it, and it’s not really that bad. More like a reminder that we have to work our hardest in order to make sure the farm works smoothly, than an actual punishment.”

Alice gave a sigh through her nostrils, not seeing how it was this difficult to get an enslaved person to understand they were being wronged, “What about when he rapes your does?”

Alice watched as the stag’s eyes widened, and for the first time she thought that she had struck something that actually mattered to the stag. The stag then shook his head, and said to the reindeer. “You think they rape us?”

“I know they do,” Alice said, having seen the minotaur lord commit the vile act in person.

“I mean, I guess that used to be a thing a long time ago,” the stag replied, “Back when they took over these lands, but that doesn’t really happen anymore.”

“Really?” Alice said, with heavy skepticism, “They don’t force any of you to have sex and have their children?”

“Not in such strict a word,” answered the stag, as he moved his ladder to another tree and started work on it, “Our masters do have the right to breed us as they see fit, and they usually decide when we have sex. I suppose the difference between when this started and today is that most of us like it now.”

“You’re kidding,” Alice said in sheer disbelief, “So let me get this straight. You know your species weren’t always enslaved. You know that you’re being forced to do things you don’t want. Yet at this point you’re just accepting it? I’ve seen a minotaur dick before. Isn’t it incredibly painful?”

“Not really,” said the stag, “The masters have allowed us to use our skills to come up with ways of making it all more bearable. You wouldn’t believe what the does and stags in the labs come up with. Actually, some of what we grow here is-”

“It shouldn’t be made ‘more bearable’,” Alice interrupted, the stag’s compliance getting on her nerves, “You shouldn’t have to go through it if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” the stag said, “Things have been this way for a while now. At least as long as I’ve lived, and most deer here don’t really mind it. Maybe the older deer who were around during the time of the old kingdom didn’t like the change, but they’re pretty much gone, and you don’t really hear complaints about how the masters handle things, at least not from the slaves.”

“Then who’s complaining?” asked Alice, since the stag was implying that there were complaints.

“Mostly the masters themselves,” the stag answered, “They like to argue about things like that all the time. Like how things should be run, or the price of things in the market. Every once in a while one will bring up how slaves are being treated too harshly, or too leniently. Really it sounds like a waste of effort, seeing how minotaur are allowed to treat their property however they please.”

“So there are minotaur who think that the slaves are being mistreated?” Alice asked, catching that part above everything else.

“Not so much mistreated, as much as having a different opinion on how they should be treated. I think it all comes down to personal preference.”

“And what about your master?” Alice asked, recalling that he seemed a bit nicer from what she had seen from the other minotaur.

“Yeah, I guess he’s a bit more on the nice side.” said the stag, “Certainly seen worse in the city. So long as we get our work done, he doesn’t care much whatever else we do around the farm.”

Alice took a moment to think about what she could do here. She was finding no headway with this stag, and if what he was saying was to be believed, other deer on this farm would likely be as indoctrinated as he was. However, if the minotaur who owned this place already had poor opinions of how the slaves were treated though, then maybe he was the one she should be speaking with instead.

This was a risky venture though, since he was a minotaur, and revealing herself to one of them could lead to a lot of problems, the most serious being if he captured her. The reindeer didn’t know how she was supposed to become a slave yet, and what if this was the moment? As much as she didn’t want to use her powers to look upon her own timeline, this felt like a point that she needed to check.

Closing her eyes, she chose to look two days in the future. Alice only intended to investigate the minotaur kingdom within that time frame, and so long as nothing bad happened, she should at least be making her way back to the grove. Taking a peek, she was relieved to see herself safe at home, sitting in the living room with Bori and Aurora. Since that was supposed to be her future, so long as she did nothing to deviate from the path, there was nothing that could stop her from being there at that time. That gave her confidence that even if things went sour, she would manage to escape if needed.

“Then… Maybe I could talk to your master about all this?” Alice asked, “I mean, if he treats you all so well, maybe he wouldn’t have a problem setting you free and letting you keep working on the farm under the same terms you already have.”

“I don’t see an issue with that,” replied the stag, “And since you’re not a slave like us, it’s not my place to tell you not to try. He’s probably still going around collecting the harvest from the others, but if you want to wait for him at the building, in the center of the farm, I’m sure he’d be glad to talk with you.”

Yeah, but maybe for the wrong reasons, Alice thought, while accepting that this had to be done.

The only issue the doe had was that she really didn’t think it would be best to just show up at the front door unannounced. Something in her gut told her she needed to have this stag prep his minotaur master for this meeting. The reindeer assumed this was the Path of Fate pushing her towards this decision, since following that feeling seemed like it gave the least resistance.

“I would love to meet with him, but do you think you could introduce me to him first?” Alice asked, “It would be rude to just show up out of nowhere, and a proper introduction might help out a lot.”

The stag paused task for a second to give a bemused chuckle, “You free creatures and your customs. I can do that, but you’ll have to wait till after I finish my work. Master would not be pleased if I put it aside just to escort a guest to the farm house.”

“Then maybe I can help with that.” Alice looked around at the surrounding trees, and waited till a decent breeze blew through them. Using the winds as her walkway, she made her way up into the branches, and started picking some peaches and dropping them into the buckets below.

“Oh, that’s impressive.” said the stag, “I’ve never seen a deer fly before. I guess that explains how you got to the island.”

Alice, having momentarily forgotten she was trying to keep that a secret, put her hand to her face, “Yeah… but please don’t tell anyone.”

“Don’t worry. I can keep quiet about stuff. I’m not completely beholden to my master.” replied the stag, “By the way, the name’s Nezzar.”

“Alice,” said the reindeer, returning the polite gesture as she did her part to pick every ripened fruit she could find, while trying to put together what she would say when encountering what was technically the first minotaur she’d ever meet.

Author's Note

Hey everyone. Here I am again, apologizing for a chapter that has come out far too late. So many things have been getting in the way in my real life lately, and it's been difficult for me to focus on writing. Particularly updating this story has been an ordeal, since I've been having a bit of writer's block on top of the other things making it difficult to put time into this hobby. For a story that is supposed to be seasonal, the delays have pushed it back so far that the winter season is pretty much over, yet I don't like leaving it off on this note. I think one more chapter would be needed before I can set it aside again, and get back to some of my other stories. So yes, do expect something else added to this in a week or so, but with the rate I've been writing at, it might take longer than that.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, along with all of this year's additions, and have a nice day.