I awoke to the sound of water dripping. It was slow and methodical, like a metronome.

drip. drip. drip. CLANG!

That last sound broke me out of my trance, eyes slowly opening to reveal a dark cave with a light source coming from above me. I opened my eyes further and noticed, thanks to the light, that I was in a metal cage. I also noticed that all that was stopping me from escaping said cage, was a giant metal padlock, affixed to the door of the cage.

I sat up straight and moved my arms out in front of me. I examined my body for any signs of abuse or any missing items. Then again, all I had were the clothes on my back, so there wasn't much to take. I was still relieved though when I discovered I still had all my clothes on. I then looked up to find out what was giving me light to see by and discovered that it was my hair. It was casting light as if it were on fire. At first I thought my head was on fire, but after a cursory swipe at my hair, I found that my head was not, in fact, on fire. No, it was actual fire. I could hear it crackling in the silence of, wherever I was at the moment.

Before I could investigate this strange phenomena, I heard a clicking noise coming from the door and saw another bipedal dog unlocking the cage. Before I could move towards the now open door, it pointed its spear at me and growled, "fire head not run. You work for us now." It then thrust a pickaxe into my hands. "You mine for ores with rest of workers. Slack off and we punish." With it's declaration of servitude issued, he motioned for me to follow. Not seeing any way out at the moment, I did as instructed. Soon after I left the cage, another two dogs seemed to materialize out of thin air and accompanied us to wherever it is we were going.

We waked along dark hallways for a bit, turning left or right whenever the path branched off. I tried to remember the combination of twists and turns, but I gave up after about the 20th turn. I figured I could solve that mystery another time. For now, I just needed to think of how to escape. There was no way I was becoming a slave to these stupid dogs. For christ sake, they couldn't even form a single complete sentence.

After another few minutes of twisting and turning our way through a labyrinth of tunnels, we emerged into a spacious cavern filled with luminous gems lining the walls. Aside from the gems adorning the walls, there were also several large towers surrounding the cavern, each with a dog holding a crossbow positioned so they could see the entire cavern. Most likely they were watchtowers designed to discourage a riot if I had to guess. I looked around some more and saw that along with myself, the dogs were forcing all sorts of creatures to dig up gems. There were small horses, griffins, more lizards, and even what looked like minotaurs. Some of the horses looked like they were sick, and a few other creatures looked to be at death's door.

I was about to say something to the lead dog in front of me when one of them shoved me from behind. Without even thinking, I placed my hands out in front of me, caught myself before I hit the ground, and used the forward momentum to hand vault back to a standing position.

'Wow, that was new. Guess it's something to do with the new body. Maybe this isn't so bad after all.'

I turned around and faced the dog that had shoved me, and stated in a controlled voice, "Do that again, and you'll wish you were never born."

The dog looked at me for a second before it, along with the other dogs near it, started laughing. I waited for a bit for them to calm down and just continued staring at the same dog. It in turn looked to me, then at it's fellow dogs, and stated out loud so that everyone in the cavern could hear. "Puny creature thinks it can take me? Ha! Tiny thing need to learn place." It then proceeded to hand its spear to the guard next to it, and cracked its knuckles.

I stood there, dropped my pickaxe, raised my hand palm up, and flicked my fingers towards me in the universal symbol of 'come at me bro.'

Now, I had been in plenty of fights before. As I said before, plenty of people would poke fun at me to try and prove they were tougher. Well, there was a reason people did what they did. I was the best. Nobody at any of my old schools could beat me in a fistfight. When I first started to fight, I could barely hold my own, and lost my fair share of fights. But, as time went on. I learned from my mistakes. It eventually got to the point that I wouldn't even need to move for me to take down an opponent. This case was no different. I may have stopped fighting back in high school, but that didn't mean I didn't still practice my moves. Once you start, you never stop; I was no exception.

He rushed at me and I sidestepped, delivering a kick to the back of the knee. He stumbled, but didn't go down. He turned back around and tried to charge at me again. I ducked low and shoved my right fist up into his gut, knocking the air out of his lungs. Taking advantage of his temporary paralysis, I pushed him off and unleashed a flurry of punches to his chest and stomach. Noticing that I was doing no more than winding him, I stopped my barrage of punches and backed away. Feeling the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I decided to end this quickly rather than turn this into a match of who had more stamina. I rushed forward, wind whistling by my ears, at a speed faster than I thought possible of me, quickly closing the distance between us. Once I was within a few feet of him, I jumped up, spun forward, and brought my right heel crashing into his head. I heard something crunch as my heel connected with his head, and I had to assume I just crushed his skull. He staggered slightly, then fell forward onto the cold hard ground, not moving a muscle.

After a moment of tense silence, one of the other dogs started to slowly clap his furry hands together.

"Well done. Puny thing prove point. You stronger than Grunt. Now get to work." As he said this, the guards up in the watchtowers all aimed their crossbows at me. Seeing as how I didn't want to take a chance on being shot, I picked up my pickaxe and walked over to an empty spot in the line of creatures next to the small blue horse with wings I saw back when I first got captured.

I swung my pickaxe over my head and, with a loud clinking noise, brought it back down onto the rock wall of the cavern in front of me. Now, I did not quit. I just chose to delay my escape. I am many things; rash, violent, stubborn, and the list can go on. But I am not stupid. I knew that me going up against 10 guards and at least 7 visible archers would only end in my death. So I would bide my time. Wait for the right time to escape. Sooner or later, a chance would show itself. And when that time came, I'd get out. And, I'd make sure to kill a few guards on my way out. On that list of things I am, vengeful and vindictive were at the very top.

I spent the next hour digging further into the wall. Occasionally I would find something shiny, and I'd drop it on the ground next to me. About every hour, another horse pulling a cart would come by. We were supposed to deposit any gems we had found into the cart. I saw what happened to one of the lizards that tried to hide one of the gems. It was dragged back out of line and was then stomped on, spit upon, and beaten. Rather than risk it, I decided to toss the gems into the cart whenever it came by.

After the fourth cart trip, I heard someone whisper, "Hey." I looked around for the owner of the voice and only the saw the horse next to me. I looked at it for a second before it opened its mouth and I heard another "Hey."

I was dumbstruck. Talking bipedal dogs were one thing, but having a small blue horse actually talk to me was another. It opened its mouth once more and it said "Hey, can talk or are you mute?"

"Uh- yeah. Yeah I can talk. I just wasn't expecting a tiny horse to talk."

"For your information, I am a pony, not a horse. And what do you mean you weren't expecting me to talk? Surely you've seen a pony before."

"Um, I have seen a pony before, but it's never talked. And I didn't think ponies had wings."

"Well of course ponies have wings. Well, at least pegasi ponies do. Unicorns have a horn, and earth ponies don't have either."

"Woah. Pegasi? Unicorns? Jeez, I never thought they existed. Give me a second, this is a bit much. I was raised to believe neither unicorns or pegasi existed. But then here you are, living proof that it isn't true."

One of the guards growled at me and shouted, "Hey! Get back to work! No talking!"

I turned to the guard and glared back at him. He cowered briefly before shrinking back to the others, and I had to assume that my crimson irises were what caused him to back off. Score one for the death glare. After my internal cheer, I turned back to the pony beside me and started speaking to her again. "Sorry about that. Now where are my manners, my name is Ja-" I paused. I couldn't use my old name. That was when I was back on Earth, before that old woman duped us into this game of hers. If I was to play this game, I would need a new name. I thought about it briefly. "Blaze. My name is Blaze. What's yours?"

She stared at me for a second. "You started to say something else. What was it?"

"Nothing. Just an old name from before. Just call me Blaze."

She continued to stare at me for a second. If it weren't such a serious glare, I might have found it adorable. Eventually, she stopped glaring at me and spoke up. "Swift Gale. My name I mean. I'm Swift Gale."

We both turned back to the wall and continued mining, but a couple minutes later Swift Gale spoke up again.

"So I saw you fight that guard. That was pretty cool."

"Thanks. You can expect to see more of that sooner or later. No stupid mongrels are going to be keeping me down here."

"Then why haven't you left yet? Surely you could've escaped."

I stopped swinging to look at her. "I may be many things, but I'm not stupid. There are at least ten guards on the ground and as far as I can see there are seven archers up in the towers, so-"

"Twelve."

"Excuse me?"

"I said twelve. There are twelve archers. I can see them all from here." She then proceeded to point out the other five I had missed. I was amazed that she could see easily in the darkness.

"How exactly can you see them? I can barely make out any shapes in the darkness from where I am."

"Pegasi have enhanced eyesight." She said while pointing at her eyes. "We need them to be able to see our way through heavy thunderheads."

I paused to consider this briefly. This mare had the eyesight of a hawk. Surely that could come in handy some time down the road. I thought about it some more until I finally came to a conclusion.

"Hey Swift Gale, mind if I ask you something?"

She looked at me briefly, only pausing mid-swing for a second before continuing and motioning me to continue.

"How long have you been in here?"

"About a month. Why?"

"Well, I was wondering if you wanted to come with me when I bust out of here. You seem pretty resourceful, and that enhanced eyesight of yours is pretty handy. I'm going to escape here some time anyway, so why not come with me? Also, I have no clue where anything is. So what better way to escape, than with a tour guide." I said while grinning at her.

She continued swinging her pickaxe, but I could see she was internally debating whether or not to take me up on my offer. She casually glanced over, and asked me, "And just what makes you so sure you're going to escape from here? You said yourself that there were too many guards."

"True, but I never said when I would be escaping. I only need to wait for something to happen. Eventually, guards will get lazy and leave an opening. Or, something could happen to distract the guards. When the chance presents itself, I'll take it whether you're with me or not."

She continued to swing her pickaxe, not even focusing on striking the wall. Eventually, she made up her mind and turned to me. "Okay, I'm in. But if I go with you, I need you to take me to Canterlot before we go anywhere else. You do know where Canterlot is, right?"

I just continued smiling at her. "Not a clue."

She sighed. "Well it's lucky for you that I do. I guess we're both going to need each other's help if we want to get out of this alive. Oh, and before I forget to ask. What's with your hair? Did you put an enchantment on it to make it do that?"

I looked up at my hair, which was still in its fiery state. "Nope, that's natural. I don't know how to explain it, but my best guess is that it does that in dark areas."

"Your best guess? Hasn't it ever done that before?"

"Nope, today's the first I've seen it like this."

I noticed a few guards were starting to get closer to us, and I whispered, "Some guards are coming. Just pretend like you're working for now. And trust me, I'll get us out of here. Just gotta wait for anything to happen."

And so it went for the next two days. The same boring routine of wake up, follow the dog, mine for ores, get a small ration of bread and water, mine some more, follow the dog back, and sleep. Occasionally I got to chat with Swift Gale, and we would talk about anything.

She talked a bit about her foalhood, and how she was the top flyer in her class back in Manehattan. She didn't really tell me much, but she did tell me that she got her cutie mark, which I found out was a special mark that appears on a pony's flank when they find their special talent, while she was bored over one weekend. She told me that she found one of her father's old training swords and training dummy up in their attic and decided to try it out. She slashed at the dummy for a while, even going as far as to add a few aerial flips. Afterwards, she confronted her dad about it and asked for him to teach her. Long story short, she ended up winning against him and gained her cutie mark. Though she admits he probably went easy on her since she was a beginner. Other than that, I barely knew anything about her.

Sometimes, while we were digging for gems, I would ask her a few questions of my own. After asking her these questions, I found out that we were currently in a mine under a small town on the edge of a country called Gem Fido. She also told me that the city of Canterlot, which is where Swift Gale wanted to go, was the capitol of Equestria, the country that was just across the border from Gem Fido. And residing in Canterlot, were two princesses that she said could move the sun and the moon respectively. Normally, I'd have called her out on it. But seeing as how I was now somehow in a land populated with mythical creatures, there was a small part of me deep in my mind that actually believed it was possible.

We were just biding our time, waiting for the right moment to present itself. As it turns out, we only had to wait three days before the opportunity to escape showed itself. And you better believe we took it.

Author's Note

Sorry to leave it here on somewhat of a cliffhanger. But I felt like if I stopped here, I could focus the entire next chapter on the escape. Maybe make it longer than it originally was intended to be. Anyways, rate, comment, enjoy. And remember, be as harsh as necessary in the reviews.