Prologue

~The Conquest of Mag~

It is strange, you are the supreme king of the largest empire of the steppe, your strength wot surpasses that of the depredators of the lands, your tactical knowledge at the same level of the ancients of the desert, a height that any of my kind could envy, a historic and powerful ascendance, and just then, you lose the title to a foreign, red-eyed ram with the size of a horse accompanied by a brute donkey of the lowest class possible.

Grogar is the name of this ram, I did not expect to witness such person in my life, his goatish yet intimidating voice, his ambitions to conquer the world outside of my land, his magical, dark blue horns that I could not surpass even being the greatest of the troggles, his deadly gaze upon Ponyland…

Whatever his story was on the land of the little ponies, he seems to have a profound hatred towards the equines, as if he wanted to seek revenge on them, at the same time I am supposing it is a very sophisticated way of racism and narcissism at them, or even hate to himself by how he had to be born, since this ram does not stop having movements reminiscent of bipedal creatures such as the gizmonks or ourselves the troggles, I will try to figure out what his gaze means.

About the donkey servant, his name is Bray, he was somewhat taller than the average male of his kind, but his manners were still that of a lame, stupid donkey; interestingly, he wore clothes of the Jewel Kingdom, more specifically, those of a slave of the ogres, he presents his loyalty towards Grogar like how a grundle slave shows his frightened obedience to their masters the ogres, or it could be simply one of his natural behaviors of donkey, but about if he is a slave of Grogar or not, I am not interested in their story.

Now, how did I lose my nation against him? I simply rejected his demand of an alliance, all according to my own beliefs and the philosophy of my father, one must not trust anybody who comes from nowhere and claims to give everything, but I regret making that choice, it was an error that lead him to defy me for the right of the command of the troggles, and so in a not so mortal battle, he defeated me and won the rule of Troggleland.

I failed to maintain my father’s work under my hands.

The blue ram, now as the new Trogghan, commanded me to go to the nearest and most isolated unicorn village of North Ponyland with an army of my kind, expecting me to capture all the ponies of said town, especially unicorns; he does not care if some of my soldiers slay some earthlings or flying ponies, he is only interested in the magical ponies, but why those? I wish I knew the answer right now.

And by all honesty, the idea of conquering the southern lands is something that excites me, like a fire waiting for someone to take out the rocks surrounding it and to expand itself not only on the grass lands of the steppe but also the forests to consume everything and leave nothing for the other animals to eat.

Centuries ago, before the unification of Troggleland, some of the old tribes used to have conflict with the ponies, stealing resources was the common thing we did to them, but else we had made back then is now irrelevant to us, what matters now is our first strike in a long time of peace to the ponies, it excites me so much even if I am no longer the king of the troggles.

But I must concentrate on this task, step by step my we will conquer them all.

My men and I are traveling around the snakey river: a big, large river that descends from the frozen north, passing through the mountains of Grundleland, then dividing the steppe in two lands, and finally passing through the territory of the little ponies. It is a big coincidence that the village we are traveling to is not very far away from the river, that way we won’t lost our track on the territory of Ponyland, at least not until we get a map of it.

My father Rag told me to never pass the river to extend our empire, as the other part of the steppe is highly dominated by the witches, very wicked people that should not be messed with, so much trouble they have caused through the history of these lands that even the great Ice Kingdom does not dare to defy them, 'Never mess with fire unless you are another creature of destructive power' I recall, were the words the Rex Penna himself told to my ancestors the Trobanik as a warning of the other side of the river.

Wonder if that has anything to do with our tale of the Fire Horse…

As we marched on, I heard my kind speak all types of complains about the ram, 'why do we have to serve a foreigner?' and 'why are we going to the south?' were the regular complains amongst them I retell, but the one that caught my interest was 'why did Grogar have magic?' since I asked that to myself too; as far as I knew, only pennas, unicorns, the Moochick and presumably the penguin king had innate magic, could it be that a few selected of his kind had magic like the penguins, or that he got it from another source like the witches or ogres themselves?

I would ask him that personally once my mission was accomplished.

§

After two days of walking, we arrived at the town of River Hills, exactly as Bray described it: pink houses with red roofs, all built and settled in an irregular way, one cross shaped stone road that splits the town in four sections and a marble fountain on the center of it, despite the childish look of this place, no pony was around on the outside, it was definitely a lone boring town set in the frontier between Ponyland and Troggleland.

Alas, poor ponies, for long time they have been blessed with no conflict with other kingdoms, they think that they are safe but no, even if they have great territory extension, decent armies and architecture, they would never be able to defend themselves against a strike from my men, even if we are currently at the lead of someone else.

As soon as we came, we hid ourselves on the bushes nearby, mere luck that the inclination of the land allow us to hide better from their sight; even if it was long ago that we fought equines, my men and I still had a clue about how to fight the earthlings, pegasus and unicorns. We came very well prepared, light spears to throw at the winged ponies, long swords to swing at the earth ponies, and special units trained to combat the magic ponies and their different types of magic, along with ropes to tie them up once they are defeated; and me? I had the most optimal weapon for every occasion, a warhammer.

Taking a glance at the village, I saw three unicorns playing around the fountain, whatever they were playing I did not know of, why would I care about equine culture?, the first that caught my attention was a beautiful yellow unicorn, the second was a cheery red mare, and the third a chubby light blue unicorn; the others I guessed, were inside of their houses doing business and more unimportant stuff.

That gave me the advantage of a sigil raid.

With sun setting off, I have ordered my kind to split into squads of three troggles for each house, and sneak into the inside to knock them out as fast as they can at my signal, those left would be an aid if the situation required it, meanwhile I take down the three unicorns playing on the outside, I did not think the Moochick would give us such an easy raid, may he bless us.

My men followed my order with a 'yes sir' and each group went to surround every house in the vicinity, very well hidden on each wall from the sight of the three ponies at the fountain, they remained playing as if nothing was happening, I would approach them directly.

Walking towards them without pretending to hide, I drew their attention, confused gazes were upon me, yet I walked to meet the little mares, they seemed to speak something, "..... invoke......... golden string" is what I heard from them, but whatever they spoke did not change what I had to do.

Now in front of the unicorns, they still gave me confused gazes, so I raised my hammer and hit the red unicorn on her left shoulder, whom screamed in agony while she fell to the stone path, and so I shouted "Attack!" as the signal to the others who immediately started their job to infiltrate and combat the ponies; this would alert the ponies inside as well but I hoped it would not be an inconvenience to my troops.

I stared at them, the yellow mare seemed to be frozen out of fear for what I did, pure terror of a victim with no escape possible, the chubby unicorn murmured something to her friend, making her react and run away for help, but as soon as she started running, she stopped to give view to her surroundings, every neighbor she knew was being attacked by troggles on the insides of each house, and so she fell in terror again.

Suddenly I was trapped inside of a bubble, how cute, the fat unicorn has bubble magic, as if dumb bubbles were able to stop me, I swung my hammer and popped off the bubble, hastily she invoked another bubble around me and I popped it again with ease, though brave, this pony did not seem to be very smart at combat, and fearful, after noticing it was useless to distract me with more bubbles, she lifted and carried her fallen friend, running at the exterior along with the yellow pony.

I would not let them flee.

As the unicorn with the harmed friend on her back ran, I followed and swung my hammer directly at her head and knocked her successfully, thus both falling to the ground, the third stopped a few feet away to contemplate the scene.

Still conscious, the red unicorn was crawling away trying to reach her yellow friend, hah, some still struggle to avoid their doom, I will remind them they cannot; the yellow pony summoned what seemed to be a light yellow string coming from her horn to drag her friends, now I see why they mentioned something about a golden string, they spoke about a plan to escape if things went wrong!

"You will not!" I shouted towards her while I headed to the floating string, grabbed it and brusquely dragged the yellow unicorn to my hands.

Now holding her, she yelled "release me!" but I did not care, I took out a rope from my right bag to tie her up at once, her magic will not represent a problem on our way back to the steppe.

The other unicorn on the ground seemed to whisper something and then, I was covered in flames which made me drop out the golden mare out of pain and burning.

The fire was momentary and faded away, leaving me some burnt skin and damage to my leather armor whilst the others were running away of the village, I thought that the smash with my hammer would not allow her to walk even but I guessed wrong, either that or she is ignoring her pain to flee from me.

I started running towards them to tackle the mares, the yellow pony noticed that I was pursuing them so she alerted her friend but the red unicorn did not react in time to get out of the way so I successfully hit her and we fell to the ground.

I happened to fall over the reddish mare so I hastily raised my fist and hit her on the head to leave her out of combat.

While I got up, I stared at the yellow unicorn, who was staring back at us with fear, I appreciate her natural beauty, her slim body, her wavy, pale yellow hair being blew by the wind, her orange eyes, and her ribbon of the same color eye, tied to her tail; with no doubt she is the prettiest mare I have seen in my life, yet her face was of horror, of someone who has given up, last thing I had to do was tie her and bring her along with my troops like a mascot.

"... Why, why are you attacking us?" she said to me.

"It is an order from the new trogghan, to get all of you to the steppe, our lands" I told her.

She did not speak anything else, my response was enough, she simply and truly gave up on an escape, so I started my job to tie her up, she was sobbing silently.

While I was tying her up, my soldiers exited the houses carrying ponies on their backs, exactly as I planned, no damaged troggle, no complications other then the small burnings of a little ago, no broken or lost weapon, this is a successful raid with no more than half hour of duration, there is not a single non magical army greater than us the troggles, and after I tie up the unconscious friends of the yellow pony, we will bring them all to the exterior to make the counting of captured ponies.

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I counted them, it is a total of 83 captured ponies, by which 45 are unicorns, 31 are earthlings, and 8 are pegasus, I also got the anecdote of one of my troggles that almosts finishes a unicorn by accident, even with that, this attack was well elaborated.

I finished my task, all the unicorns except one were unconscious and tied from leg to leg, every single one of them is being carried by a troggle, to think that she, the pretty unicorn, has to presence this event, all her equine neighbors captured and taken to my lands, makes me feel a bit of sorrow towards her; about the earthlings and winged ponies we tied them on the same way as the unicorns, but to the last ones we tied their wings too if one of them dares to escape flying away when they regain consciousness, it results me strange that there were no kids other than a pink filly with a red mane, which I am carrying on my back right now, I would have liked to leave her safe, away from us but an order is an order and we have to fulfil them even if there are kids involved.

I will return victorious of my first conquest of Ponyland.

Author's Note

Unicorn's Odor
-Hippogriff Navy