The Forgemaster awoke to the sound of stone being shifted. He was a bit groggy and didn't know where he was. But then the events of the previous day and nights came to him in a storm. They were finally getting him out of his prison after who knows how long! As a few more stones were moved out of the way, he suddenly broke out the rest of the way under his own power, showering 8 nearby ponies with rocks. He looked at them and saw 6 familiar ponies and 2 much larger ponies with both wings and horns. One of the new ponies looked like a smaller, bluer version of Nightmare Moon; the other was a very large, white pony. He looked at the group of ponies and noticed that the 6 he was accustomed to seeing had necklaces on, and Twilight had on a crown. As he stood there, brushing the stone dust off of his body, Twilight Sparkle came up to his legs and started to give him the closest thing to a hug the ponies could do. He froze at the touch and looked down at her. Twilight noticed the wound he received from the manticore and gasped, but he just waved her off. Twilight then looked towards the 2 new ponies. She then started to speak.

"I would like to introduce you to Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria." Twilight indicated the larger of the 2 newcomers. She was as tall as he was, with a white coat and a multi-colored mane that moved on its own without there being a breeze.

In response, he simple looked at the Princess.

"It's nice to meet you creature. I heard how you saved my little ponies' lives, and I wanted to thank you. But, I've never seen anypony who looks like you. Can you tell me who and what you are?" This was Princess Celestia speaking to The Forgemaster.

Now, The Forgemaster was known for disliking royalty, mostly because they assumed their power, not earned it. It was due to this natural fact about The Forgemaster and the fact that he didn't speak much which led to his next response.

He continued to look at her, neither reacting nor responding.

Princess Celestia frowned, and then tried again, "Hello, can you understand me? I asked you what you were and what your name was. I know you can speak, the intelligence in your eyes is obvious, respond!"

More staring.

"Look creature, I can see it in your eyes. You are intelligent. Surely you must find some discomfort in being called a creature?" Celestia calmly stated.

No response.

"If you don't respond, then I cannot help you. An unknown and possibly dangerous variable in my land won't be tolerated."

At this, he got upset. He could remain in a prison forever, seeing as he was immortal, but that didn't mean he liked it. So he ejected the claws from their housings on his gauntlets, a clear and threatening sign of displeasure, and continued to stare her down.

With this, Celestia turned to Twilight and said, "My faithful student, do you know anything about this creature, its name or if it understands us?"

Twilight frowned at The Forgemaster then recounted the entire tale since they met, leaving out basically nothing, "…. And so to answer your questions, Princess, I don't know if it can understand us. I mean it never reacts when we speak, it only looks at whoever is speaking, but that could be explained with the fact that the creature has ears! Just look at it, it stood there the entire time while we talked about it. Not to mention we keep calling it: it or the creature! I don't even know if it can speak or if it is intelligent, you said you could see intelligence in its eyes, but I can't. But it never responds to us, so maybe it just can't speak our language."

Princess Celestia listened to her student, not interrupting her once. At the end she looked at The Forgemaster, she looked him up and down, studying him; she then looked into his eyes with just a hint of a smile on her lips. She turned to the group of ponies and spoke.

"No, he definitely knows what we're saying... and he seems to be uncomfortable. Tell me something, my little ponies. Have any of you determined this creature's gender?"

With that said, all the ponies shook their heads: no. All except Fluttershy who nodded: yes. The Forgemaster thought he knew what Celestia was getting at, and steeled himself.

"Fluttershy, what gender is this creature?"

Inaudible to all but Applejack, who was standing next to her, Fluttershy squeaked out, "Male."

Applejack was kind enough to relay that information to everypony else.

Celestia smiled, then played her trump card, "Fluttershy, how were you able to find out this creature's gender?"

Fluttershy turned a shade of red and tightened herself into a ball on the floor. The Forgemaster was right about what Celestia was doing, and steeled his emotions and poker-face even more to resist what was sure to come.

After a moment or 2 on the floor, Fluttershy managed to speak loudly enough for Applejack to hear, who then relayed the information once more.

"She said, 'We had tah cross ah river, but tha critter had tah swim, when 'e got out of tha water, he didn't have that mud on 'im. She looked over and saw his... er…'" She just waved at the creature, too embarrassed to continue.

Although, Applejack was far too embarrassed to finish her sentence, everypony present understood her. They all involuntarily looked back at him, looked between his legs, blushed, and then averted their gaze. All except Princess Celestia, who continually looked into The Forgemaster's eyes, searching for a reaction.

He gave none.

His earlier preparations were the only thing that didn't make him instinctively cover himself. If he hadn't known what Celestia had been getting at, his poker-face would have failed, his ruse would have failed, and he would have to explain his previous actions... It's annoying having your junk stared at by a bunch of tiny ponies. Unfortunately, he dodged one trap to land smack-dab in another.

“Don't think I didn't see that, you're hiding something. You want us to believe you aren't a sentient creature, don't you?" Celestia had hit the nail on the head, as it were, getting everything about what he was doing correctly.

However, The Forgemaster didn't feel the need to speak. In fact, he didn't even feel the need to stay there! And so, in the presence of the Elements, he turned around and walked away from the questions of the most powerful being in Equestria and its ruler.

The ponies seemed to b shocked at what he was doing. They had probably never seen their leader so obviously disrespected. With the shock delaying the ponies' actions, he managed to make it just in front of the door before it had slammed shut in his face. He then turned around to see an irate princess about 3 inches from him.

"Creature, you are staying here until you answer my questions."

The Forgemaster took this as a dare. He ran over to the nearby window, broke it, and was about to climb out before Celestia could kill him when Twilight Sparkle spoke up.

"Won't you please stay and answer the questions? We all want to get to know you. Please don't go, you're our friend!"

He was facing the window when these words were uttered. He knew that behind him were 6 adorable ponies with puppy-dog eyes looking at him. He sighed, mentally, and turned around to see exactly what he had known he was going to see: 6 of the cutest little ponies he had ever seen, all giving him puppy-dog eyes. As he saw this, he knew he was beat, so he turned to Celestia to answer her questions. He would have to speak for the first time in years, just to satisfy the curiosity of 6 ponies he thought were cute.

The Princess and he looked at each other for a long moment before Celestia had the bright idea to start first.

"What are you then?"

With a much deeper voice, and much more hesitation, than anypony expected, he replied, "Human."

"What is your name, human?"

"The Forgemaster."

"That sounds more like a title, human."

At this, he shrugged.

"What is a human?"

"Bipedal, omnivorous, relatively hyper-intelligent, apex-predator, tool users, dominant species" He said the last with just a hint of mirth before continuing with, "maybe."

"So you eat meat?" Celestia said with disgust. He looked to the other ponies to find they had the same face.

He replied, "I can eat meat." She shuddered once before going back to her questions.

"And what do you mean; dominant species, maybe?"

"Haven't seen another human, therefore not dominant here."

"Where are you from and what are you doing here?"

"Azodious, to visit an old friend."

"Where is Azodius, and who is this old friend?"

"Don't know in relation to here, King Haydrian."

"Why are you naked?"

"Don't know, why are they?" He indicated the other ponies.

"They have coats to cover their bodies, they don't need clothes. I suppose we are going to have to get clothes for you. Do you have any questions for me?"

"3."

“…..And they are?"

"Clothes. Shelter. Task."

"What do you mean?"

"Naked, nowhere to go, bored."

"Oh, I understand," she turned to the 6 ponies and said, "He needs clothes Rarity. He also needs someplace to stay, Twilight." She looked back to the Forgemaster and said, "What are you good at?"

He shrugged, "Title says."

"That's obvious really, you're a smith?"

He nodded.

"Before I let you leave here, I must ask you something. Give me your honest and true description of a Man."

He snorted then spoke, "Basically good, capable of great evil, capable of great good. Impossible to describe without sufficient knowledge."

Princess Celestia looked upset at the part where he said evil, so The Forgemaster immediately added, "I am not evil. I have lived too long for that."

"So how long have you lived?"

"Many centuries."

"Do all humans live so long?"

"No, I'm different."

“How so?”

“I'm immortal.”

"What! You're immortal! How?"

He looked at her, shrugged, and then said, "Too stubborn to die."

"There is only one thing I could do that would allow me to fully trust you, another immortal."

He looked at her as though he knew what was coming.

"I am going to have to go through you memories."

And with that request, he smiled, mentally. He was a learned magus himself. Few knew that you could silently resist a memory search without alerting the searcher by directing the flow of your memories. There was also the chance of learning of the other individual during the spell.

A thought came to him, a quote from a book on mind spells, 'If your mind is being violated by another's, whether willingly or unwillingly, remember that the other is extremely vulnerable to a mind search of their own. So if you're getting your mind searched, direct their mind away from important things and direct your mind against the current of the spell to find their mind. Once there, the caster of the spell will be too focused on your mind to notice you rifling through theirs.'

With a plan in place and his mind prepared, he nodded at Celestia to begin the spell. As her horn lit up, he felt another presence access his mind. He dropped his mental shields and directed this presence towards what it wanted. Or at least what it thought it wanted. He checked to see that Celestia would be well occupied with useless memories for several minutes, saw that she was, and then leapt across the metaphoric gap between minds and landed in Celestia's head. He could have done what Celestia did; look through his memories while in his mind, but that wasn't fast enough and tie was of the essence. So what he did was basically copy her entire brain and placed it under lock and key at the back of his head. It wouldn't do to have a sudden overflow of Celestia's memories while Celestia was in his head: it would alert her to what he did. So with his booty secure, he 'sat back' and watched as Celestia went through his memories… and smiled when she found nothing of value.

Celestia eventually got tired of looking through memories of him sleeping, walking, watching others in a king's court, and endlessly forging; basically the more positive and neutral aspects of his life, for that was all The Forgemaster allowed her to see, she tried to look around his mind more but still got the same memories. It was like, whenever she moved, he moved the memories to follow her through his mind. But that was impossible! Only a hugely powerful magic-user could deflect her probe, but she didn't sense any magic in him at all. However, there was one memory that intrigued her. A recent memory of him getting a letter, walking out of a room, into a city, then finally a forest where he set down to rest. When the memory got to where he woke up, the forest was different.

Celestia came to a realization: 'This human really didn't know how he got there! And apparently there was an entire town of humans in the Everfree forest. But that was impossible; there were no clearings in the Everfree large enough to house the town she saw in his memories. So that left one possibility: he was from someplace else and arrived here with the aid of magic!'

Celestia withdrew from his mind. As she regained control of her body once more, she looked at the human to see that he had a small, almost unnoticeable smile on his lips. Celestia wondered what made the human so happy, for if his earlier performance was anything to judge by; it took some extreme emotion to break through his emotionless face.

With that, Celestia said,"Alright, I will let you stay in my realm, human. Come everypony, we must get back to Ponyville."