King and I - 20

“Rose, Rose!” Shouts a breathless Fury as he skids to a halt behind you. He takes a big gulp of air, before wiping a hoof across his windswept mane. It hasn’t been that long since you last saw him, you wonder what’s brought him back.

“Hey Fury, what’s up now?”

“Good news!” he smiles. “I got permission from the King to remove that collar.”

“Really?” you ask skeptically, “What’s the catch?”

“No catch at all, it’s just that Sombra has changed his mind on the matter. You know how he is sometimes with his silly ideas.” He cracks a nervous grin. To tell the truth you barely even notice you’re wearing it anymore. You’ve concluded that it doesn’t do anything, so it’s doing no harm. Even so removing that last little vestige of Sombra’s control is an appealing idea.

“Alright, let’s go get that done then.” Before you can ask where he wants to go he shoots off back the way he came, forcing you to play catchup with him.

“What’s the hurry?” You shout.

“I’m a very busy stallion; I have lots of things to do right now.” He responds swerving around a pair of startled maids.

“We can just do this later if you want!”

“I insist that we get it out of the way before I get sidetracked. I appreciate how you’re trying to accommodate for my needs, but we can’t have you in discomfort for any longer.”

He nearly blows the doors from their hinges as he stomps into the mage quarters. The table has been removed from the floor, and a new rectangular one has taken its place. He pats the white cladded table, “Hop on.”

“Why do we need a table?” You say hesitantly pulling yourself onto it.

“I need a lot of leverage to get this thing off.” His horn glows, a set of four magical manacles clasp around your legs and leave you lying on your stomach. You begin to heat up slightly as a nervous itch worms down your back and legs. You discretely struggle against them, but true to his word they don’t have any give.

“This’ll be an easy process; it just takes a lot of magic.” With a grin his horn charges up, ready to begin removing the piece of leather. You feel nowhere near as confident as he sounds. You can only pray to whatever cruel god is watching over you that he knows what he’s doing.

“First, I need to remove the anti-cutting spell.” His horn intensifies. You squint as you feel the tingle of his magic gripping around the collar. “Did you know where we got this thing from? I get the feeling Sombra never told you about these things.”

“N-no, he just put it on me and then never mentioned it again.”

“Typical. No disclosure until the last second. We used to use these down in the mines to keep all of the workers in line.”

“I figured as much.”

“Hmm. Versatile little things, capable of holding powerful enchantments. Some would argue a bit too powerful.” With a grunt you hear a fizzle come from under your chin. “There we go. Where was I? The collars were mass produced by skilled mages and paid for by the crystals mined in the caves, as they crystal had a long list of uses that we mages clamor for.”

Your head jerks forwards slightly. “Sorry, I need to maneuver you. Anyway, sometimes the enchantments were a bit too much and ended up having some nasty side effects. One of the main spells we used was an emotional manipulation spell, which allowed a unicorn guard to pacify violent individuals. Occasionally they’d go overboard and cause permanent damage.”

“What kind of damage?” You ask, very conscious of the slave collar around your neck.

“Don’t tell anypony else, but it’d make them go crazy. I remember one poor fellow who was accidentally hit with an enrage so powerful he bludgeoned himself on the cave wall until he died. The red stain is still there, they couldn’t clean it out so they had to move the slaves further in so they wouldn’t notice.” You remain deathly silent as the morbid story sinks in. You lapse into an awkward silence as the implication of the collar you’ve worn for so long sinks in.

“What do you think of him?” He asks out of the blue.

“Of who?”

“Sombra, you’ve been around him for a while now, so tell me what you think of him.” He hisses slightly as an unseen complication impedes his progress.

“I don’t think too highly of him, to be honest. He kidnaps me, transforms me, puts me in harm’s way, and made the odd decision to try and seduce me.” Fury laughs.

“That sounds like him alright. You should see what some of the others say about him, he doesn’t have too many fans these days.”

“These days?”

He hesitates for a moment, looking over to the three sets of armor stood proudly against the back wall. “Back in the day he was a really popular ruler. A stallion of the people, he’d always be there if you needed an ear to speak to, he’d always listen to the concerns of others, and he always made sure to be firm and fair when somepony did wrong.”

“…So what changed?”

He laughs again bitterly. “A lot of things; I can’t blame him. The conflict with Equestria, all of the fighting… it forced him to change.” He grits his teeth and grunts as his muscles tense slightly. “What in Tartarus? Did somepony put a damn shock spell on this thing?”

“I think so, the rebels tried to take it off when I was captured and got the same thing.”

He stops and takes a deep breath. With fresh determination on his face he tries again only to get the same result. He cries out as he loses control of his muscles. “Ah! Buck!”

Your ear flicks as the sound of rattling armor reaches you. You look over to the three sets of armor to find nothing amiss. “It’s getting stronger!” He pushes out. The rattling intensifies as the blue accented set shakes violently; it sets a hoof forward, before taking shaky steps to the still paralyzed mage.

“Fury! What the fuck is wrong with that armor!” You shout, struggling to escape from your bonds. Your fur stands on end once again as a violent cold front sweeps through the room. A light blue glow begins to seep through the gaps. “Fury let me out!”

A ghastly howl rings out from the glowing set of armor as it shambles towards an alarmed Fury. An ethereal blue spear forms out of thin air as is thrown his way. Fury yelps and barely manages to crawl out of the way, taking partial cover behind the table. “Fury!”

The knight isn’t interested in you. He slowly circles around the table as Fury attempts to regain control of his limbs. You need to buy him some time. You close your eyes and concentrate, bringing your magic reserves to the surface. You don’t know how to deal with this guy, so you resolve to just blast him with as much power as you can.

The knight seems to catch your intentions, and with a short detour he whips a hoof around and slaps your spiky horn with an armored gauntlet. Agony rings through your mind as one thousand migraines hammer into your skull, damn it you can’t cast like this!

Fury finally gets his shit together, hopping back up and ducking as another ethereal lance is swung his way. The clanking of armor and panicked shouting interrupts your moans of agony. Who decided putting something so sensitive out in the open was a good idea? You can’t even reach up to cradle it because…

“Fury let me go!” You grunt once again. He finally seems to listen and the shackles holding you down disappear. The knight swings again forcing Fury to throw himself onto the ground, the knights raises his spear and stabs downwards at the prone pony but he rolls out of the way, starting the cycle anew.

There must be an insane amount of force behind that spear. Several cracks have been left around the perimeter of the table. Whatever, or whoever is trying to get him is going in for the kill. Is this the work of the rebels?

You look around the room for something to help stop the marauding knight, but nothing useful reaches your gaze. Somepony has to be casting a spell on this thing to get it moving, that or somepony is actually inside the armor right now. You need to find the culprit before Fury gets himself gutted.

Fury in a moment of clarity dashes away from the center of the room and barrels into one of the bedrooms. The door slams shut as the Knight makes his way over. He pushes against the wood, but the shimmer of magic on the door shows that he’s casted some kind of spell to keep the murderer out.

You charge up your horn while he’s distracted, this time not hesitating to release a blast of red energy at him. It eclipses the Knight’s body completely, smashing against the magic shield Fury has erected. You maintain it with force for around three seconds before slumping onto the ground, exhausted.

Much to your horror the Knight remains mostly unscathed, the various little flourishes like the blue banners have been burnt away under your power, but the smoking armor remains standing. Agonizingly slowly it turns its head back around to you, seemingly waiting for something. You don’t make any motion, hoping that he’ll ignore you and go back to pounding on the door.

But just as he appeared, he disappeared. The armor falls to pieces and drops onto the ground as if nobody wore it. You trot over, making sure to keep a wary eye on the deadly armor. Fury pokes his nose out from the other side of the door. “Is it gone?”

“More than gone, it disintegrated.” You say kicking one of the pieces with a hoof sending it sliding across the marble floor. “What the fuck was that?”

“Somepony trying to kill me, obviously.” He wavers. With still shaking hooves he leaves his sanctuary and picks up one of the pieces with his magic. “Somepony… that’s some strong telekinesis right there. Whoever just tried to assassinate me has some skill with their magic.”

“You okay?” You ask concerned for his health.

“I’m fine, just a little shaken up.” He smiles with an unconvincing chuckle. This is surprising; he’s really cracking under the pressure but is also supposedly a powerful battle mage. “I’ll have to look into this, but let’s just hurry up and get that collar off before something else tries to murder me.”

You pull the table back onto its legs and climb back onto it. The shackles reappear and Fury, now looking a lot more urgent in his job hurriedly begins to work at it again. “Why did we have to make these so complicated?” He grumbles under his breath.  “Now, where is that shock ward?”

You lay there for another ten minutes as Fury gets absorbed into his work. The drama of the Knight attack is forgotten as he works his magic in order to remove the collar that’s been strapped round your neck for weeks on end. You’ll probably need to have a bath after this; the collar is just tight enough to ensure that you couldn’t clean under it very well.

With a loud click the collar falls away. It feels strange, just like you predicted, to have your neck not constrained by that piece of dark leather. “Finally!” Fury shouts.  You let out a small sigh of relief because the ghost Knight didn’t come back.

“Thanks Fury.” You say hopping off the table. You crack your neck as you work out the kinks from being held stationary for so long.

“Not at all an issue my friend.” Using his magic he teleports the table away, and pulls the old round one back into the middle. “Before you go running off again, I’d like to have a little chat about a few things.” He asks eying the scars left in the floor with slight fear.

He pulls up two chair and places them close together. He sits on the left. Not having anything else to do you decide to see what he has to say. “You’ve been here for a long while now, and I’ve grown to value your presence around the palace for the brief moments we’ve had together. I did this as a favor to you, because I would not like to see you lose yourself in this conflict.”

“So you’re expecting one back? I’d be ha-“

“No, no, no…” he interrupts, “This was free, don’t feel obligated to do anything in return.”

“Well thanks.”

“I get the feeling that you’ve been left out of the loop for a lot of the time you’ve been here. Sombra is a very secretive sort and would rather cut away his stallion-hood then let something slip. I have to say that’s one of the many reason why I feel, he is no longer fit to lead this empire.”

“W-what? Where’s this coming from?” You ask confused, Fury is supposed to be his most loyal subject.

“From somepony very close to him, for his own safety…” He chews his lip for a moment, looking down at the table before sighing. “I wish to remove my brother from the throne.”