-Uncommon Treatment-

It was a long night for Rainbow, filled with half formed dreams of big dogs and dragon shaped boats filled to the brim with red wine. She swam with barely thought questions throughout the night, unable to remember any once she’d woken up; only that they had been there. She was certain she’d seen a hoof step in dust and leave a pawprint.

She didn’t pay any mind to it, she just blamed it on the sleeping spell. She was pretty sure that that kind of stuff did that to a pony, just magic induced dreams.

Her room was thankfully absent of the constant filigree of the rest of the castle, instead it aimed for comfort and convenience over fashion. Though the dark tones and thick curtains told her that these rooms were most likely structured toward nocturnal species, she found it comfortable. But not so comfortable that she'd bothered with the liquor cabinet in the suite's kitchenette.

She eventually settled herself to fly lazy circles around her room, no clue if she was permitted to leave since there were no guards to ask outside. She wasn't entirely sure how this was supposed to work, but she assumed that the requirement of an escort was still there even after last night's events.

She dropped unceremoniously onto the large four poster bed in frustration, nearly swallowed by the mess of covers and sheets she'd made of it the night before.

Rainbow simply couldn't fathom it, all this worry and fear of Coalback even from herself. He was just a stallion, big and mean and strange, but still just a stallion. Then again: He'd been able to take out four Solar Guards in as many seconds; He knew, down to a science, how to move silently and invisibly; he was big too, extremely big for a pegasus, and obviously extremely strong if the rippling muscles and broken lock was any indication.

And another thing: The scars. He had so many, but at the same time they simply weren't right. The scars didn't go through his coat, it was like his fur just grew back over them. And the amount was staggering, just from a glance Rainbow had seen them on his neck, across his chest, and all up and down his arms. He must be either very lucky or very unlucky to have them all.

The Guards and the Princess had called him things too: "Misplaced Blood-Born," "strange, beautiful creature," or just simply "it." What was she supposed to make of that? Or how she was tied up in it? He looked like a pegasus to her, again larger than most any other pegasus she'd met, and strange in his linguistics. But otherwise he seemed fairly normal.

Did this have to do with his legion? Rainbow herself came from a branch of Imperial Pegasi, which did occasionally become an issue with a few ponies. Coalback didn't resemble any Legion she was familiar with though: His wings were too long to be Imperial and his build was too heavy to be a Roamane Legion like Fluttershy.

Rainbow mumbled to herself over it for some time before somepony knocked on her door. She groaned, it was just her luck that when she finally found a way to keep herself busy, somepony interrupted her. When she opened the door, Clean Cut greeted her drowsily.

"Afternoon, sorry I left you here for so long, had to get some shut eye before we started on the ... the uh ... The therapy! Physical therapy," he struggled to say, very clearly still half asleep. "Even if your wing feels fine, gotta check and make sure that it wasn't healed incorrectly, and if it has we can correct it," he explained.

"Okay," Rainbow said as she stepped out into the hall with him. "That’s better than sitting around here, I guess."

"Indeed, and I've also been instructed to tell you that the other Elements are on their way to Canterlot as we speak. The train should get here by suppertime," he said as he led her back up the hall.

"Hey, Doc, I been thinking," Rainbow decided to say. With all her questions, the doctor was bound to know something.

"A dangerous practice," was Clean Cut's snarky reply.

"I know, but-" she suddenly felt unsure. The hostility of the Princess the previous night still lingered in her mind. "Why did you call Coalback a creature?" she spat out.

Clean Cut stopped in his tracks and gave her a surprised look. "Observant but blind," he said under his breath and grinned. "You haven't noticed the difference between him and you? They're subtle, I know, but you especially should have seen them," he said, and Rainbow was certain he was teasing her.

"Of course I can tell he's different, he doesn't look like he belongs to any Legion I've ever heard of," she explained. "But I don't get why you and the Princess and all the guards keep calling him things like that."

"He's more different than you realize. Haven't you been watching him? He acts nothing like an Equestrian, barely acts like he has equine instincts. More ... wolf-like if you ask me," he said with a smirk and Rainbow was forced to agree. "Perhaps raised by wolves?" He winked.

He had a point. Coalback hadn't whinnied, knickered or made any sounds she would have expected from another pony. He'd growled and snarled. He hadn’t spread his wings to make himself look more threatening like somepony might expect from a pony, instead it looked like he didn’t know what to do with them at all. Clean Cut was right, Coalback didn’t act like a pony at all.

“You really think that’s why he’s the way he is?” she asked, incredulous. The idea of being raised by wolves seemed ridiculous, especially a pony.

“Not even in the simplest sense,” he said with an excited smile. It looked like he would have gone on, but he stopped himself. “I’m sorry, I’ve gotten a bit excited over this, and I’m really not supposed to talk about it with you. However, Coalback has made no such promise yet, maybe once he has learned some more of the language he can tell you himself - if you can convince him to that is,” he said as he continued down the hall.

It wasn’t a moment before they were back at Coalback’s door, which was slightly ajar. “Not again,” the doctor mumbled as he pushed open the door in a panic. But when he revealed the room they both froze in shock.

The room had been devastated, even destroyed. And that’s not just to say that Coalback had toppled all the furniture, or broken open the locks on the liquor cabinet and drained it of its contents, or destroyed all the furniture, or broken holes in the walls to the other rooms of the suite. No, he’d done all of that only to collapse in a heap of destroyed couch cushions, surrounded by empty bottles and was soundly asleep.

“Coalback!” Clean Cut screamed, whether in anger or fear Rainbow couldn’t tell, as he trotted hastily into the room. Coalback woke with a snort, his head shot out of the cushions instantly awake and on edge. “Therih fa la may?! Therih maythe la therifa?!” the doctor nearly screeched as he yelled at Coalback, obviously beyond angry at the pony but unwilling to do anything more than reproach him.

“Fa thethe may rihfathe the! Fa la may rihdoh!” Coalback bellowed back, all at once on his hooves and big as a barn again. Rainbow could smell the liquor from where she stood at the door, but Coalback didn’t look like he suffered from the overhang at all. “Fa rihmay may, Fa rih therihfa so,” Coalback said calmly after a moment. He walked out of the mess of cushions and retrieved his bag. He slung it over his shoulder and started toward the door and Rainbow Dash.

“May la fa may,” Luna said from behind Rainbow and gave her a start. Coalback stopped in his tracks. Luna’s voice echoed again, this time only in the other language and in Equestrian: “We are afraid that you owe Us a debt, and We know well that your kind do not enjoy leaving debts unpaid. So you will stay.”

Coalback shrunk down to proper size, only as big as his body should have been in the Princess’s presence, which was still abnormally huge. His growl was low in his throat, but remained that way and would not rise so long as the Princess was there.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rainbow asked, a slight bit more accusatory than she'd intended.

The Princess grinned confidently. "Not only did We defend him when he himself could not, We also have arranged a Royal Court hearing to determine his fate where others would simply have him imprisoned or executed." She turned to Coalback before she spoke again. "But that can wait until thou hast learnt the language properly. We are sure the Court would prefer to hear your side of things first. Is seven days enough time?"

"A week?! How's he supposed to learn how to speak Equestrian in a -"

"Yes," Coalback's voice rumbled among his unbroken growl.

"Very good," the Princess said with a nod, one that Coalback returned hesitantly. "Now, We believe you both have your first therapies today, We will allow you to proceed," Luna said as she turned away. "Oh and, Rainbow Dash? We will be hosting dinner with the other Elements, and We had hoped that, should thine doctor approve, you would join us at some point," she said, though her stiff outer appearance robbed from the friendly tone of her voice.

"Yeah, sure. I guess."

"Excellent, We look forward to it," she said. She left the door and the resentfully cowed stallion only to drop her veil once she was out of sight. She'd done it, actually out-threatened one of the Blood-Born. She'd bought some time, but now she just had to use it.

She would return to her sepulcher, attempt to discern some meaning from the bird's letter and the strange dreams that had lurked in the ether. They couldn't mean anything good, the sense of foreboding within the dreams was enough to make her suspicious, and her sister's recent strange behaviour was more than enough for Luna to suspect something of Celestia herself.

The only thing she knew was that she needed to protect the Elements, perhaps attempt to train them to better use the artifacts. And she needed all the help she could get, even if it meant she had to bully an ancient apex predator into doing it.

Rainbow had quickly passed every test the assistant pegasus nurse could come up with, her wing was in perfect condition and she was practically free to go. She'd spent enough time in the disinfectant stink of the padded mat gym room but she stayed to watch Doctor Clean Cut work with Coalback.

First, Clean Cut had Coalback simply walk back and forth slowly between a set of bars meant to keep the stallion from falling over. When Clean Cut had determined that Coalback had practiced walking on his significantly less shaky hooves he moved them on to an exercise with his wings. It was absurdly simple, and Rainbow had wondered if the stallion would gain the same frustrated scowl he'd worn while he walked. But Coalback was enraptured in the simple exercise of that moved his long wings in slow, jerky circles.

Rainbow was surprised at this. A stallion as old as Coalback shouldn't have this level of skill with his wings. Anypony should be able to at least get off the ground with their wings, but he seemed to barely be able to control them.

She realized something else strange while he practiced: Without his exceptionally large wings in the way, she could clearly see that Coalback had no cutie-mark.

It wasn't unheard of - for a pony to never have gotten one. However Coalback didn't seem the type to not know that sort of thing about himself, not with the surety with which he held himself. Which only left the fact that he had lost his.

Losing the thing that makes a pony feel whole, alive, unique ... It was not something easily misplaced. Maybe that was why everypony treated him strangely, or why he was so inequine.

By the time they were done with Coalback's wings he had worked up a light sweat and had pushed a breeze across the floor of the physical therapy gym. Clean Cut led Coalback through several stretches, most of which Rainbow herself had done after her short session.

If not for the clock that chimed out the sixth hour, Rainbow never would have realized that Coalback and Clean Cut had exercised for almost two and a half hours. A Lunar Guard came to collect her before she could consider that Luna hadn't told her when nor where dinner was. Clean Cut had taken Coalback over to a table the doctor had set up, which kept the large stallion occupied in a way that he never noticed Rainbow leave.

Rainbow was immediately barraged with questions when she met up with her friends. They fawned, questioned, hugged and swooned over the drama of it all. All before she could get a single word in.

Their voices filled the private dining room with their worries, teasing and reassurances. She had to explain, with some help from the Princess, that there was nothing to be worried about. The conversation drifted away from the events of the previous few days, much to the relief of Rainbow Dash. The conversation was lively throughout the light meal, it drifted as conversations between close friends tended to:

"And then the crusaders absolutely destroyed my newest dress," or "I've been really busy settling in all my animals for the winter ..." and "WITH BALLOONS AND BIG BANNERS AND TONS OF CAKE!!!"

Luna enjoyed a more contained conversation with Twilight Sparkle but with a look of realization announced: "My friends, I have something to ask of you." The varied and laughter filled conversations around the table came to a fluttering halt before Luna continued. "We wish to extend an invitation for all of you to stay as Our guests here in the palace for a time. We would enjoy it very much if all of you would."

"Like a sleepover?!" was Pinkie’s immediate response to which the Princess only smiled wider. "WAHOO! Princess slumber party!" Pinkie cheered.

"Oh, how marvelous! You see, Applejack, I told you there's always a good reason to pack all of the essentials," Rarity said. She lifted her nose in triumph toward her friend who only rolled her eyes and mumbled something about full train cars.

The doors at the end of the dining halls slammed open and brought any idea of continued conversation to a grinding halt, the sound echoed off of the polished floors and carved wooden frames. Coalback walked through with determination in each step, his intense green eyes locked on Luna instantly.

"I'm sorry, my Princess, I've tried to stop him," Clean Cut said, hot on Coalback's hooves.

Luna stood carefully from her seat, her gaze and entire demeanor aimed at Coalback. Twilight followed Luna’s example and voiced her shock.

"Excuse me! What do you think-"

"Lafa, dolathe fa!" Coalback barked. “The the therih la the, Mayfa Fa, may the the rihthe so!” he demanded of Luna, he stopped at the end of the table opposite her.

Rainbow slid down in her chair, a desperate attempt to disappear alongside Fluttershy. Applejack stood with Twilight and the Princess, her eyes roamed over the strange stallion. Rarity only flinched at the stallion's offensive entrance and elected to remain silent as the Princess handled the situation. Pinkie was uncharacteristically silent.

“Coalback, fa fa ririh may la ri rih maydoh,” Luna snapped at the intruding stallion, which thankfully for her stopped him dead. “Ladies, We are sorry to say that we must continue our date later, We have something rather important to attend to at the moment,” she explained, but Rainbow knew that she was probably just going to yell at Coalback some more. “Clean Cut will escort you to Our chambers.”

Luna didn’t wait for Clean Cut to gather the girls, with a flick of her hooves she sailed over the dining table and forced Coalback to move back or be crushed under her gilded hooves. Coalback scrambled back, and without a word Luna swept him through a side door. Rainbow never had a chance to even come up with some sort of request for explanation.

“Ladies, I suggest we leave now,” Doctor Clean Cut announced as he stepped aside of the door and motioned for them to exit. “We’ll not want to be around for Her Majesty’s … conversation.” He hesitated with the last word as if he were unsure it was appropriate.

The girls shuffled out in confusion, their eyes flitted between the door Luna had left through and each other. All except Rainbow, who only looked to the door. Should she follow the Princess? She felt an obligation to keep her from going overboard; she didn’t want to see that stallion break down again like she had the night before.

“Miss Dash,” Clean Cut whispered to her, a hoof took hers and turned her toward the exit. “I understand that you are concerned for your friend, but the Princess has only good intentions behind her actions toward him. You can be certain that she will not harm him,” he said to her as he ushered her back to her other friends.

“I barely know him, he’s not my friend,” she denied on instinct.

“Perhaps you should change that,” he hissed as she pulled away. Before Rainbow could turn around to tell the doctor how much that wasn’t his business, he’d already walked past her to the front of the group. “This way, ladies.”

He ushered them through the halls quickly. Purple and dark blue tapestries whipped past them, much faster than Rainbow would have expected even at this pace. They were ushered into one of the only other intricate doorways in the entire Lunar Wing: Luna’s Bedroom.

Like Luna’s study and the rest of her Wing of the palace, this room lacked the filigree and decoration of most others. However, despite this her bedroom was much more homely and welcoming than her study. Large pillows spread around the room in place of chairs or couches, her bed itself lacked a head- or footboard and instead was simply open to any side of the room. Thickly padded curtains were half open to reveal the fading light of of the sunset. Every book on her shelves were well worn, as few as there were in there.

And it was totally empty save for Rainbow and her five friends, Clean Cut was simply gone. He walked through the door ahead of them, but he wasn't inside.

"How strange," Rarity mumbled as she carefully selected a pearl colored pillow for her to take a seat in. "To think anypony would have the gall to burst in on the Princess like that! And a stallion no less!"

"Ah'll say," Applejack put in as she took a light blue pillow as a seat for herself, though she opted to simply climb onto it instead of sitting against it as Rarity had.

"Ooh! Maybe that was the Princess’s special somepony, and they had a fight or something!" Pinkie conjectured as she jumped into one of the larger pillows with a "Woohoo!" and disappeared within its near black confines.

"Oh please," Twilight scoffed as she hopped onto a silver cushion. "It's more likely he's a displeased emissary. Did you hear that language he was speaking? I'm sure I recognise it from somewhere," she said with a thoughtful expression.

"Yeah," Pinkie hummed from within her cocoon of pillow, "but then why did Luna send us out of the room instead of him?" Pinkie popped her head free of the purple pillow and gave Twilight her best "explain that" look that usually accompanied her Pinkie-sense rebuttals.

"What do you mean, Pinkie?" Twilight asked, more confused as to how that was an argument than why it mattered.

"Well, whenever a pony comes to see Princess Celestia when we visit her, she always sends them away. The only time she hasn't done that was when it was really, really, really important to her. Like the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness: She wouldn't talk to anypony until she had eaten her piece!" Pinkie explained quickly with her usual exuberance. "So obviously Princess Luna must really, really care about what he has to say!"

"That is ... surprisingly logical of you, Pinkie," Twilight said, surprised. Pinkie smiled wide at the praise, if that's what it was - it didn't matter if it wasn't to Pinkie anyway.

"That is so not what that was about," Rainbow said, unable to put the image of Luna swooning over the muscled, scruffy, rebellious Pegasus stallion into her head.

"You know that stallion, Rainbow Dash?" Rarity asked scandalously. Before Rainbow could deny that though Rarity had already gained her answer from the blush that had crept into Rainbow’s cheeks unannounced. "You do know him!" Rarity said, whether elated over the gossip topic or just Rainbow’s obvious embarrassment the blue Pegasus could not tell.

"Well, who is he?" Twilight asked, joined soon by all but Fluttershy who simply sat on her own pillow and tried not to be embarrassed in sympathy for Rainbow.

"I don't know him know him!" Rainbow protested. "I barely know him at all! He just showed up when that dragon lost it! He helped me out, that's all! I haven't even understood a single word out of his mouth since I met him!" she spilt, she only realized she'd started flying in agitation once she was done.

"We didn't accuse yah a' nothin', sugarcube." Applejack smirked.

"However, now I'm starting to think we should have, darling," Rarity said, just as smug as Applejack. "You must know something, dear! We're at the disadvantage here; tell us everything!"

Rainbow sighed and unceremoniously dropped onto a thick cushion next to Pinkie to share as much as she could remember about the last few days.

Discord hummed to himself in thought. His paw drummed on his Jaguar’s head, her chains rattled with suppressed rage.

The image in front of him rattled and he corrected it with a slap of his claw against the ancient television. The black and white image cleared to reveal his program.

"Aha!" he bellowed in triumph. "Don't move!" he ordered his jaguar as he left her posed on top of the television, he ignored her yowl of protest. His yellowed eyes locked onto the screen with the same intensity a child would at the Saturday morning cartoons.

He watched carefully as Luna dragged a grey stallion out onto a balcony. "Scandalous," he smirked, a shovel full of popcorn found his mouth. But as he watched Luna yell and bear over the painted pegasus, he realized something disastrous.

"No!" he bellowed, his eyes locked on the stallion as he resolutely rode out the Princess’s tirade. "No! No! No! You've ruined everything, you idiot!" His popcorn bucket impacted the screen and sunk into the glass as if both were made from gelatin. "He's too young! He couldn't have-" he cut himself off with a scream of rage and snatched his jaguar from the top of the television with his claw.

He jabbed the large cat's face toward the screen, the image frozen. "That is not a pony! And if those cretins I sent ahead of us cannot take care of the Elements, then you will kill them, the Elements, and that thing!" Her face slammed against the glass, pressed against the jittering image.

She mewled in pain but did not deny him. The television grew long legs and scuttled away in fear.

"I need this to work perfectly, any delay will destroy our chances of success," he mumbled to himself as he tossed the jaguar aside like a toy he had become bored with. She scrambled away as her chains turned to jelly and crouched beside the walls of the hive.

"Entropy, disorder. These are mine, even in this world. I command them, and they will not alter this!"

That night Coalback went missing from his room again.

That night something killed a deer in the gardens, but the body was gone. All the Guards found was a set of dismembered hooves and the shattered bits of bones that were not eaten.

That night Coalback made a promise sealed with magic.

Author's Notes:

Alright, another one for you guys! I'm surprised with myself, now that I am writing on my phone I seem to be putting out chapters as fast as I can write them. I may be able to choke out ten more chapters before I have to slow down.

Also, if you'd like to know: I've begun to formulate my own sort of interpretation of how a true castle/palace/capitol city would be planned if it were constraiNed in the way Canterlot is. From the way I see it, and ignoring the absolutely Olympian task of creating a cantilever to hold an entire city onto the side of a mountain because MAGIC, Canterlot is as much a fortress as it is a booming capitol city or industrial center. The upper portion of Canterlot is what we see in the show, and the way I've planeed it is that the palace sits on the highest platform and from there terraces were built in a flower petal sort of pattern to create the different districts. Because Canterlot's entire building area is fabricated, real estate is extremely expensive thus the reason why only the most prominent and or rich ponies can afford to live or own plots of "land" there. This results in a pretty feudal system with store owners and factory workers renting land from the rich in order to live in Canterlot. This brings me to lower Canterlot, which may not really be addressed in the story until far in the future but is there nonetheless. We've all seen the airship that Rarity christens in her episode in Canterlot, my thought was that as well as being the home of the Princesses, Canterlot was also a booming trade center and one of the main provider of gems for export and domestic sale. Lower Canterlot literally clings to the underside of Upper Canterlot. Here the structures that hold Canterlot to the Canterhorn (mountain Canterlot is on) are housed, and all the airship docks and factories exist. This is essentilly a huge industrial and shipping district, which is where a lot of Canterlot's money comes from.

The palace is another story: situated on the upper most tiers of Canterlot it has the perfect view and the high ground of any forces that might manage to reach the city. The palace doubles as a keep in that the gardens include a moat that ponies must cross to get in from the main gate. The two castle wings spread out within and in some places above the gardens, while the shared throne room, which doubles as a place for historical events to be recorded as well as a courtroom and Royal court room, is cantilevered from the palace in the middle of the two wings. I've been tryin to make an effort to make the palace the actual tower structure that the Princesses live in just that, as a castle is more like a fortress but Canterlot is clearly home to a PALACE.

Tell me all your opinions and criticisms in the comments, PLEASE! I love reading them so much!