To stand valiantly against those that dwell in darkness.

―Motto of House Shield; whose ancestors were elevated to nobility for their distinguished service, during the final battle of the Nightmare Rebellion.

A few hours later, I was reluctantly brought back into the land of the living, by someone shaking me rather roughly whilst calling my name. My real name, not some fake pony one. The gruff voice told me that the offending pony was Shieldwing.

Opening my eyes a crack, I was greeted by the guard, looking at me with his characteristic wide grin plastered on his face.

“Well look at you, Mr. Pony Man,” He declared with his usual tone of brashness, “decided to join the herd after all.”

At Shield’s not-so-subtle reminder of the series of events that had befallen me the previous day, I once again began to feel my sadness and betrayal weigh down on me. Though I fought it off as best I could, out of a sense of manly reluctance to cry in front of another guy.

Clearly, I did a poor job of this, as Shieldwing immediately seemed to notice something off about me.

“Hey, is everything alright?” he questioned, in a gentle voice, or at least what could be considered gentle for him.

His simple question broke my resolve, and I was quickly engulfed with sorrow. A strangled sob escaped me, and I felt warm tears begin to streak their way through my fur, a foreign sensation that only made me feel even more miserable.

Immediately Shieldwing rushed to comfort me. However, it was clear that he had little experience in it as he remained awkwardly standing at my bedside, doing nothing besides patting my shoulder and saying that everything would be okay.

Eventually I had calmed down enough that I was able to tell Shield everything that had happened to me since we had last seen each other. After getting everything out I felt a little bit better, though it clearly shocked Shieldwing, as he stared back at me with his mouth agape.

“Wow, buddy, that’s rough,” he managed to say, after giving his head a firm shake to clear it. “You must feel pretty awful right now, anything that I can do?”

“Actually, there are two things,” I replied, with a watery smile, “first, could you possibly get me something to eat? I’m starving.”

“Sure, hold on. I’ll run to the kitchens right now, and get you something. Just sit tight.”

Hastily, Shieldwing exited the room, without even giving me the chance to voice my second request. I was left alone, with nothing but my own thoughts. In the time that I waited for him to return, I attempted some breathing exercises that I had picked up back in my university days. They always seemed to be able to calm me down. Slowly, as I performed these exercises, I could feel my emotions beginning to focus, as I brought them back under my control. However, even once I had achieved this, I could still feel my anger at my transformation and cutie mark lingering just beneath the surface of my self control; ready at any moment to break through and wreak havoc.

Once I had done this, I occupied my time staring at the wall, whilst reciting famous quotes over and over in my head. I attempted to forestall heavier thoughts from entering my head, as in my current fragile state, they would no doubt shatter my hard earned self control and leave me a crying wreck or an uncontrollable scion of rage.

Luckily, there was no time for this to happen; shortly, Shieldwing re-entered the room with, a tray clenched in his teeth.

Thankfully, Shield had foreseen—or perhaps it was simply blind luck—that I wouldn’t be too keen to test the effectiveness of my imposed new taste buds and digestive system, and instead opted for a large, but simple, fruit salad and a glass of orange juice. It was a meal that I had eaten a lot of for the duration of my stay in Equestria, owing to the restriction that my previous biology placed on a number of traditional pony dishes, many of which normally included hay.

As I stared at the meal, I could feel my mouth watering and my stomach rumbling, and I was reminded just how hungry I was. Owing to my summons yesterday, I had not eaten for over twenty four hours, a new record in my life.

However, before I could begin to gorge myself, an issue presented itself. Though Shieldwing had included cutlery, I realised that I had no idea how I was going to use them with my lack of hands. After contemplating the issue for a couple of minutes I conducted a number of attempts to hold the cutlery, though they all proved pointless as the fork clattered uselessly to the tray every single time. Eventually, my frustration began to build, and I opted to simply shove my muzzle into the bowl, and eat like an animal. I quickly choked down the food in large mouthfuls, in an attempt to end my torture faster.

Even this simple act flared my temper at Celestia, over what lows she had forced me to. After all, before anything else, I was a proud man. It did not sit well for me to have to eat my food in such a demeaning manner.

My unflattering method of eating didn’t seem to bother Shield, however. Though I was not positive if this was because ponies always ate like I did, or that he simply did not care.

Once I had consumed every morsel of the fruit salad, and, to my shame, even licked the bowl, I had to confront another problem, in how I was going to pick up the glass. I chose to simply sandwich it between my two hooves, which was thankfully made easier by the fact that the cup was square. After a few awkward moments, where I could swear that the glass was going to drop any second, I managed to gulp down the juice, and return the glass to the tray.

“So what was that other thing that you needed from me?” Shield questioned, distracting me from the brief moment of pride I felt at overcoming this obstacle without also losing any more of my dignity, what little of it remained.

“Yes, Shield, I need your help. I can barely walk in this form,” I said, bitterness dripping from my words, “ let alone do anything that would be required for basic living. I need you to help me get used to everything so I can get out of here as fast as I can.”

”Sure, buddy, no problem,” he spoke whilst nodding his head vigorously, “when do you want to get started?”

“Straight away,” I replied with the briefest of smiles.

*****

So, that was my life over the next few weeks. Every single waking moment I had was spent with Shield, relearning the most basic of tasks. I had to be taught everything, from how a pony walks, to how to manipulate objects effectively. In this time, I channeled every little bit of my rage into completing my goals, as every activity had me in some way imagining it being involved in my revenge on Celestia.

My progress was hindered slightly, by my straight up refusal to use my mouth in any of the tasks, unless there was absolutely no alternative method. That little quirk annoyed Shieldwing to no end. Eventually, I developed strategies to circumvent almost all mouth manipulation. I found that I could hold most large objects by sandwiching them in the joints on my forelegs that essentially amounted to wrists. Through this, I could slowly see improvement in the tasks that required fine motor control. Particularly, this was present in writing as I had to relearn how; I was now holding the implement in a completely different way than I did as a human.

As the days wore on, I could see a subtle but continuous improvement, as my childlike script soon evolved into a style that somewhat resembled what it once was. Though I knew deep down, I would never be able to recapture the fluidity and neatness that I once had. It was a revelation that would haunt almost everything I did in this new body.

Despite this knowledge that gnawed away inside of me, I still persevered. Even though, at least once, every single day, I would perform some menial task that would drive me to such levels of frustration, over the loss of dexterity afforded by my hands, that I could barely contain my screams.

The monotony of my days were sometimes broken up by an excursion to the castle’s gardens. During such outings, Shieldwing and I would explore a variety of different paces, from a gentle walk, to a full-on gallop. This imparted upon me a level of fitness I had never before achieved in my life, though I could not be sure if this was because of the physical activity or because of my new pony physiology.

One disturbing trend that became apparent in the first few days after Celestia’s visit, was that her words about my cutie mark were beginning to ring true. At every moment where my mind was left to wander, I could feel a tugging at my thoughts to express my cutie mark and knit. As the days continued on, this compulsion began to grow worse and worse. I steadfastly refused to give into the fate that was decided for me, at least this one I could fight and stand a chance of winning.

The issue was not helped by the fact that every day, when Shieldwing began his shift and would meet me in the living area of the suites, he would have with him a ball of yarn and a pair of needles. The first time I had seen him with these, my anger had exploded, and I practically threw him out of the room. I refused to speak to him for the next two days until he managed to tell me that they were not from him, but rather that Blade Storm was under express orders to give me those. Certainly, I could not confirm where the orders had originated from, as I was uninformed how many were aware of my plight. Nevertheless, in my heart I knew that it was undoubtedly given directly by Celestia in some misguided attempt at kindness to get me to accept my chains, and in turn be “happy”.

Each day, I threw the “gift” out of the window. Each day, Shieldwing would enter with a new set, intended to replace the old one. What made this even worse, was the way that, as the days wore on, I could feel my resolve to resist my mark weakening, and each day I would hesitate a little longer before throwing it out the window. My lowest point came when, in a moment of weakness, I had taken the two needles in my two forelegs and began moving the two of them in a way that I somehow knew would be perfect for knitting a sweater. Luckily I managed to strengthen my flagging resolve in that moment and toss them out of the windows, though I did not manage to escape from the disgust that I felt at myself for almost giving in and accepting my “fate”.

Though I tried to explain my reasoning behind why I resisted my cutie mark to Shieldwing, it was clear that he didn’t really understand my aversion to it. Happily enough, though, he tried his best to support me in the matter.

I did not blame him. After all, I could only assume that he had a mark that suited him perfectly, and which made him proud when it was displayed. He was only following orders when he would bring me the equipment each day, and offered no resistance when I would dispose of it.

This mutual understanding also carried over to our discussion of Celestia, and her motivation for changing me. It was clear to me that Shieldwing didn’t approve of my anger at Celestia. In his mind, she had taken the route that ensured the happiness and safety of everyone involved, just as she would do for anyone under her rule. I knew that I could never convince him otherwise. Unfortunately, there were a few days, where he tried to convince me to apologise to Celestia for what I had said to her, which resulted in flared tempers, and barely avoided fights. We both came to the conclusion to not bring it up in conversation again.

Another fact of note, was that during the first few nights of sleep after my transformation, I was assaulted with nightmares, where I would relive the moments before my ponyfication. This time though, as a third party, observing the actions that lead me to naively answer Celestia’s summons. In these, I would scream with all my might to try to get the past version of me to run, and escape. Every time, it proved pointless. He was lead as a lamb to the slaughter, completely ignorant of the betrayal that would take place. Every time, I would see myself wreathed in the magic of the two sisters, and witnessed the grotesque transformation, where I would slowly be morphed into my current state. Each time, I would awake in a panic, covered in sweat, and feeling phantom fingers dancing at the ends of my stumps.

Mysteriously, these dreams stopped after a few nights, and though I still dreamed, they were filled with vapid things that were of little conscience to me. Despite this, every once in awhile, I could swear that I would catch sight of another figure that would disappear quickly into the shadows. Despite the absence of the nightmares, I still feared each night that they would return. I admit that I was disturbed by the mysterious figure that I would sometimes see skulking in the shadows of my dreams. To reduce my chances of reliving these experiences, I coerced Shieldwing to wake me up as soon as he began his shift. Normally, just when the sun was beginning to rise, which soon forcefully adjusted my body clock enough to allowed me to wake up under my own power, even before the light of the new day had appeared. It was a habit that would serve me well in the future.

I would work late into the night, every single day, performing all of the possible exercises that were available to me, in an effort to keep my mind off of the anger that even then threatened to engulf me, the temptation to knit that risked to destroy all that I was, and the dreams that disturbed me, even though they carried little substance.

A consequence of this was that I barely read anymore. By the end of the day, I was so exhausted that I could just barely muster up enough energy to collapse into bed, ready to wake at the same time I did every morning, and continue where I had left off.

In this way, my life developed a clear schedule that carried on uninterrupted. Until one day, in which I received an invite to a party, dedicated to the engagement of one Mi Amore Cadenza. Unknown to me at the time, I would facilitate my exodus from the castle directly after that, and plunge into the cold world that I would one day lead.