The waking world stirs in a blurry mess of dark blues and grays.

Fingers - more than likely yours - reach up to your eyes and break them free from the accumulated gunk of an extended sleep. Your body cries out against the decidedly simple motion, soreness and pain rocketing down your arm as you lower it from your face. The surface you’re lying on is cloth, but whatever lies underneath is horrendously solid. It does no favors for your back, which is just as sore as the rest of you. Your vision unblurred, you’re met with a stone ceiling, blue light from somewhere in front of you casting shadows into every crack and crevice.

Odd. You don’t remember having a stone ceiling or blue house lamps.

Or the worst bed in the world, for that matter.

A frown overtakes your features as the events from earlier come back to you in perfect detail. You shoot up from wherever it is you’re laying, wincing in pain as your body decries your sudden actions.

The cell you’re in is decidedly cramped; obviously, it wasn’t built for a being of your stature. Cold gray cobblestone closes you in from all directions, the only exception being a miniscule window to the outside, frosted over and barred by iron so that you can’t see through it. The dim light it casts is drowned out by the much stronger cyan light from the hallway, which you can now see is cast by wall-mounted torches emitting similarly colored fire.

You heard Twilight mention those once. Something about magical catalysts, but right now, you’re a bit more worried about the predicament in front of you.

That being the jail cell you’re in.

The sight of an iron cell door a few inches from your feet makes your stomach drop from its perch in your midsection. The bars scream something out at you, something only you can hear: You’re in deep shit, Anon.

Slowly, you rise to your feet, unaccustomed to the aches and pains cavorting throughout your body. You stumble over to the barred door, rattling it a bit as you wrap your hands around the ice cold iron and lean your head against it to see the rest of the room. A long hallway stretches out in either direction, lined with cells much like your own. In most, you can see occupants pressed up against the bars, looking around with the same breathless confusion that you harbor. A quiet murmur lilts through the dank passageway, trembling voices decorated with the occasional flicker of the torchlight.

“Hey!” a male voice whisper-yells from somewhere close, accompanied with the telltale rattling of weight against an iron door. “Hey, you! Big guy!”

You keep quiet. If he’s this friendly, he’s probably not talking to-

“Aw, come on, I know ya can hear me. Saw ‘em draggin ya in, lookin all fancy and whatnot.”

…Is that a Bostonian accent?

You catch yourself as you’re about to reply - his demeanor is oddly alluring, more than likely a side effect of the dire straits you’ve found yourself in.

Stay silent, Anon. He could be a plant, trying to make you talk or-

“Alright, alright, fine, I get it. Stoic silent type and all that. I tried that, too, ya know. Got real boring after the first few months here.”

“For you, maybe.” The sass passes your lips before you can register the words in your head.

Fucking Canterlot reflex.

A gasp rings out.

“So ya do speak! An’ here I thought I’d be bored.”

His bellowing laughter is weighed down by the oppressively cold, dank air.

“Could still happen.”

“I highly doubt that now,” he replies almost cheerily, not put off at all by your brevity. “What’s your name?”

Yeah, no thanks. You’ve seen a version of this with some of your former coworkers; some guy acts all friendly, gets all the info he needs, and then boom, you’re up shit creek without a paddle.

“Look, if you’re some kinda informant for the people that did this, this isn’t gonna go the way you think it is,” you warn sternly.

“You really think they’d stick one-a their own in these nasty ass cells?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly - ya don’t know. For your information, they’d sooner have a roll in the hay with a manticore.”

Definitely not something you wanted to imagine.

“Why?”

“They think they’re from some ‘holy lineage’ or whatever,” he explains, exasperated. “Head honcho refuses to talk to anybody but her highest ranking officers most a’ the time. S’buncha garbage, if ya ask me.”

“So they’re a cult?”

“They’d prefer ‘organized religion,’ but yeah.”

So you’ve been captured by religious fanatics. Wonderful.

You remove your hands from the frigid bars of your cell and stumble to the side, slamming your back up against the wall and sliding downward. Propping your elbows up on your knees, you hold your head in your hands and shut your eyes. The gravity of the situation slips its icy grasp around your throat. You take a few moments to have your inner panic surge before rubbing your temples.

No use dwelling on it; that won’t help you at all. Sure, this isn’t exactly crunch time at the office, but it’s not difficult to apply the same three-step stress management principles.

Focus. You breathe deep, and gather your mind; you feel the hot breath leaving your nostrils and cascading over your clothes. When your thoughts reach stillness, you open your eyes once more, the chill of the cell stinging them slightly.

Plan. You look around the cell for any kind of opportunity that might’ve been hidden to you before; a sharp stone, a crack in the wall, an improvised weapon… unfortunately, the only thing you can take stock of is the dirty sheet on the floor. You’re no survivalist by any stretch of the word, but you can easily see how a plain sheet could be handy in some situations. In the relative quiet of these desolate cells, given enough time, you might be able to think of-

“You, uh… you good, big guy?” your neighbor asks, unwilling to let the air be clear for more than five seconds. “Gettin’ kinda quiet all of a sudden.”

Guy’s a real fucking chatterbox, isn’t he?

…

Still, he’s a voice to talk to, at least. You can’t imagine it would be a bad thing, having a friend in prison…

“I’m good,” you reply flatly, stifling an irritated sigh. “I mean, as good as I can be in cult-jail.”

You pick your head up, eyeing the opposite wall of your cell as if it were your new acquaintance.

“Good is relative here,” he says with a sigh, the first hint of downturn in his voice since he first started speaking. “I’m just glad I got someone to talk to now.”

That’s been confusing you.

“You seem pretty chipper, despite the circumstances.”

“One’a us down here’s gotta be. Ain’t much use to be a downer, ya know? I don’t wanna see the sunlight again without a big ass smile on my face. ”

You shift slightly.

“You have a plan to get out of here, then?”

The bars of his cell rattle ever so slightly.

“Nothin’ concrete yet,” he laments. “One of these days, though, something’ll give. I know it.”

“How long have you been in here?” you ask, surprised by his optimism in this hopeless circumstance.

“Truth be told?” he muses curiously. “I stopped counting after a week or two.”

“Ballpark it.”

“Gotta be at least half a year now, maybe more.”

Fuck’s sake, that’s a while. Way longer than you’re intent on staying, at least. For all you know, Cel and Lulu probably already have a squadron of guards on the way here as you sit and converse. Or better yet, a princess or two. Who knows?

Wishful thinking, perhaps, but taking a page from your new friend is helping keep you level.

“So… what’s got you so sure you’ll break outta here?”

“I’ve been eavesdroppin’,” he replies, a fair bit quieter than his usual tone. “Occasionally, I’ll hear some’a the guards chattin’ to themselves about what’s goin’ on outside. Earlier today, after they brought everybody in, I didn’t hear nearly as much as I usually do.”

“And?”

“And that means it’s tense right now. Guys like these, they get loose lips when everything’s goin’ smooth. They’d usually be hootin’ and hollerin’ about all the outsiders they snagged.”

…Oh, fuck, you didn’t even think about that. How many others were on the train with you? Families, innocent ponies, people just trying to get wherever they were going…

All plucked out of thin air and dropped into this shithole. You - dozens of times over.

Your sense of urgency rises into your throat.

“Fuck… How many did they get?”

“Dunno for sure, but they filled up a good bit o’ the cells.”

You rise to your feet again, taking a good look up and down the hallway through the bars. Sure enough, you can still hear the murmuring from earlier if you really focus - whispers on stale wind.

“Hey!” You call out to them, hoping one of them says something back. None of them do.

“‘Ey, keep it down!” your new friend whisper-shouts back at you. “You tryna get us all punished again or somethin’?”

You just barely stave off your need to keep yelling out.

“They’re fine, just shook up a bit. They were all chatty before ya woke up, but that yuppie new guy stopped it real quick.”

“What the fuck happened?”

Your answer comes in the form of a far-off door being opened, its metal hinges emitting an unbearable, grinding screech. Footsteps…

No, hoofsteps. Two sets of them.

Quiet sniffling, stifled sobs.

And… humming?

Two shadows are cast across the walls in front of your cage, broken up by the cell in front of you. As they approach, the shadows grow more and more misshapen.

“Be cool,” you hear from your left, naught more than a barely audible breath now.

Closer, still, draw the twin gaits. You back up from the bars a bit, content to stand in the middle of the cell as the strangers make their approach.

Two figures follow their silhouettes - one earth pony, one unicorn. The earth pony, with gray mane and burnt orange coat, is being led by a chain that the unicorn holds in his mana. He holds it far out in front of her, with much of the chain’s length bunched into his magical grasp, leaving almost none for the poor, sobbing mare. She makes no attempt to fight it, yet finds her neck strained by the force anyways. You glance back to her cutie mark - a roaring fire set within a red-brick chimney.

The unicorn leading her on is the source of the eerily chipper humming you heard as they approached. His light, blonde mane is styled into a tightly kept coif, standing out strongly against his light blue coat. Your eyes instinctively look for a cutie mark, but it’s obscured by dark purple ceremonial robes that reach all the way to his hind legs. The robes are adorned with gold trimmings and other such decorations, outwardly opulent even in the pale blue light.

It takes you a few seconds, but it finally hits you: this is the same unicorn that put you to sleep after the train derailment. He seems content - ecstatic, even - to be leading this battered and bruised mare to her cell.

Without even turning to look at you, he levitates a key out of a pocket in his robe. He slips it into the lock of the cell opposite to you, humming as he turns it and opens the door with an overpoweringly loud metallic screech. The earth pony is ushered in with an outstretched hoof, and she quickly obeys, robbed of any sense of defiance she might have previously had. As he closes the cell door behind her, your mind races to conclusions about what he might have done to her, none of them pleasant.

Fuck being silent, you need answers and this little cunt is going to give them to you.

“What happened to her?” you interrogate. Your voice leaves you with a raspy overtone, and you fight the urge to clear your throat.

The cultist jumps, and it looks like it’s all he can do to keep from yelling out.

“Mother above!” he shouts, hushing himself immediately after.

“You sure are quiet for a creature of your size,” he comments, turning in your direction. His voice is light and airy, almost as if he’s pleased to be speaking with you.

Uh-uh, nope. He’s not deflecting you that easily.

“What the fuck did you do to her?”

“You misunderstand. She did this to herself, stranger.”

The carelessness of his smile catches you off guard; he really believes that. You bite back your scathing remarks for now, and focus on trying to get as much information as possible.

“Where the hell are we?”

His features lift into elation; other than his appearance, there’s no sign of the shit-scared waterboy you encountered earlier.

“We have the fortune of being in the Great Basin,” he says, almost vibrating with genuine joy. “The most sacred of lands, where the Holy Mother was brought forth into existence!”

…Alright, so you’re dealing with a fanatic. Great. Maybe try appealing to reason?

“Look, I don’t know why you people did what you did to the train, but I can bet that none of us are part of it. Please, I just want to go home.”

“Your presence may not have been intentional on our part,” he responds, “but the Holy Mother has guided your pilgrimage here regardless. You should be proud, stranger; few can claim that honor.”

Alright, so reason has flown out the window.

You can feel your temper knocking at your throat. You gesture to the cell in front of you, the earth pony within eyeing your exchange nervously.

“Doesn’t seem very fucking honorable to me.”

The unicorn, still jubilant, closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“I don’t expect you to understand right away,” he replies, a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “You are an outsider, after all.”

He adopts a more serious tone, his smile faltering a bit as he looks at you once more.

“Know this, stranger - our wish isn’t to harm any of you. We simply desire to see you find your true purpose under the Holy Mother.”

“Or else, right?”

Again, you gesture to the broken mare, who is now pressing herself firmly into the back corner of her cell. The unicorn seems pensive for a moment, as if pondering what to say next.

“You’ll see in time. I’ll be back for you when Her Grace is ready. All will be explained then.”

He turns to leave, but you’re not having it. You thrust your arms against the door to your cell, rattling it heavily.

“Uh-uh, we’re not done here.”

Your rage boils over as he starts walking back the way he came, humming the same tune from earlier to himself.

“You little fucking bastard! Get back here or-”

Untold amounts of colorful expletives are hurled his way, but not once does he turn back around. You only stop when you hear the faint sound of a metal door shutting over your frantic shit fit, the built-up anger slowly leaving you through each raggedy breath that passes from your chapped lips.

“Not what I meant by ‘be cool’,” your new friend chimes in.

You ignore his comment and fix your gaze upon the mare in the cell in front of you, taking a closer look at her injuries. Her bruising is so bad that you can see the discolored skin under her fur. What’s more, it’s all over - there’s not a spot on her body that doesn’t have at least a few. That you can see, that is. Dotted here and there are tiny lacerations as well. Far less numerous than her bruises, sure, but plenty all the same.

Tiny, strained sobs wrack her already shaking form, and if you squint, you can see tears running down her matted cheeks. For a few moments, you think about asking what happened to her, what that godless runt could have done to her to leave her like this. If she saw any exits or weapons anywhere.

Instead, the words form in your mouth, and die there. You silently observe her diminutive form melding into the corner, every sob dragging her further in. Her mouth hangs open in a cry that you can’t hear, snot and drool mixing as it drips from her snout.

“You, uh… you alright, miss?” your neighbor asks aloud, tone far gentler now.

She, however, is unresponsive; if anything, she shrinks further back into her prison.

“What…?”

You mean to ask what they did to her, but only the first word ever leaves your mouth in a croak. Thankfully, he understands what you meant to say.

“They call it ‘enlightenment'. It’s a punishment meant for the ‘specially defiant. First time’s, uh, always the worst. They don’t do anything weird or nothin’, but… it’s not pretty. ”

They beat her. You knew the world outside of Equestria wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and sure, it’s tame compared to home, but…

After a few silent moments, you finally manage to tear your eyes off of her, looking in the direction of your friend’s voice.

“We have to get them out of here.”

“Been tryin’. No luck yet, but ain’t nothin’ wrong with two skulls, ‘stead’a one.”

Despite the uncertainty of the future hanging over your head, you feel a faint relief that you aren’t alone in your efforts.

A few moments pass before he speaks up again.

“Name’s Pal. Short for Palatìn, if you care. You?”

You breathe deep, resting your back against the wall once more.

“Anon.”

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