The dense foliage surrounding the checkpoint swished gently as Phil, Rainbow Dash, and Starlight Glimmer watched from the shadows. Phil's body felt heavy, weighed down by the sham shackles around his hooves, but more so by the responsibility resting on his shoulders. Concealed within his hoof was the crystal shard—their only hope of rescuing the captive ponies.
Rainbow Dash, her eyes gleaming with determination, leaned in close, her voice a whisper on the wind. "Remember, Phil, you're a disrespectful prisoner, someone who dared to go against the Storm King's rule. Act helpless. They'll probably throw you into minimum security. From there, it's about keeping your head down, making friends, and finding Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie."
Her words, a mantra of the mission at hand, echoed in his head. Phil nodded, his throat too dry to speak. He could feel Starlight Glimmer's eyes on him, her gaze filled with a mix of worry and faith.
He didn't want to seem less than brave, not for her. Summoning his courage, he managed to give her a weak smile. "Don't worry, I've got this." He didn’t, or at least it didn’t feel like he did. But maybe if he could make her think so, he would start believing it too.
Starlight returned the smile. "Good luck, Phil," she said. "Of course, you don’t need it. You’re a mystical warrior from another world—the only one brave enough to go in there. This was the day we started winning."
Phil felt a rush of warmth spread through his body—hope in the face of the daunting task ahead. He nodded as confidently as he could, crouching low in the shadow of a ruined building. This checkpoint stood on the edge of an ancient, tumbled ruin, overgrown with weeds. Here, the weight of Equestria’s conquest hung heaviest, leaving little still standing but a few brick walls.
"I’ll cover you with magic," Starlight said, crouching just beside him. "Say when, and I’ll stun the guards. Just have to make it to the cage—"
"And you’ll teleport me inside," he said. They’d been over this part of the plan a dozen times by now. Maybe two—there wasn’t much else to do while they waited for the prisoner cart to reach them. But if they waited too much longer, the cart would keep rolling through, and continue to its destination without him. He had to be inside it if he had any hope of infiltrating the prison.
Phil’s heart pounded with adrenaline as he prepared for the most critical move of his life. He watched the worn wagon, its grim purpose painfully clear. Tension coiled in his legs as he crouched in the shadows of the dilapidated ruins.
Starlight’s horn flickered with a pale glow, ready to launch the stun spell at his command. The reassurances of the plan echoed in his mind, rehearsed tirelessly during their wait.
The hour had arrived, and with it, the beginning of the rescue mission. He gave Starlight a short nod, standing up and wincing as the shackles bit into his hooves. One more look at her and Rainbow, and he launched himself towards the checkpoint.
His strides were short and uneven, his hooves clinking against the cobblestone road. As he closed in on the checkpoint, Starlight’s horn flared, and a blast of magic shot forward, striking the unsuspecting ogres. They convulsed and dropped to the ground, frozen and lifeless. But they wouldn’t stay that way—he had to move quickly.
Using the distraction, Phil staggered up to the cart, gasping for breath. Starlight’s magic enveloped him, and in an instant, he was inside the cage, with a wide-eyed group of ponies gazing at him.
On their faces, he saw a mixture of hope and anxiety. The ponies stirred, their hooves clattering on the floor of the wagon. Some reared back in shock, while others crowded around him, filled with desperate hope.
"Are we being rescued?" one of them, a pink unicorn, asked. Her voice was barely a whisper, strained by years of heartbreak.
Phil glanced at the still-stunned ogres before looking back at the unicorn. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to speak calmly. "No. I'm infiltrating the prison. We have a plan to get everyone out."
The ponies stared at him in disbelief, their hope diminishing. "We have to play along," he added, looking at each of them, pleading with his eyes. "Can you do that?" This was the moment they would fail him. They would see his pony form was a false one and another creature lingered underneath. How could they not? "Please. Just pretend you didn’t see anything. Equestria depends on you."
A silence fell over the cage, the tension thick. Finally, the pink unicorn nodded. "Guess it doesn’t make a difference. What would they do if we ratted you out? Send you to prison?"
Somepony else laughed, their voice hollow and weak. These creatures hadn’t experienced genuine laughter in a long, long time.
Just as the last nod came, the ogres began to stir, their grunts of confusion echoing in the quiet air. They moved clumsily, scratching their heads, seemingly unaware of their new prisoner. Phil kept his head down, barely even daring to look up. It was true—he could get the manacles to release his hooves if he strained hard enough. But even if he did, and Starlight teleported him free again, it would mean that this mission was a failure.
I’m just a football player. I can’t believe I’m doing this! He could still call out for help—Rainbow and Starlight were close enough to hear him. He could give up!
Then the cart lurched forward, continuing its journey. The checkpoint, the ruins, and his friends all began to recede in the distance. He kept his silence, and the ogres made no sign that they had recognized the deception.
Starlight and Rainbow watched him from a distance, their faces filled with worry. They exchanged a brief, lingering look with Phil before they disappeared in a brilliant flash of magic, leaving him alone in the back of the wagon.
Phil let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. He glanced at his fellow captives one last time before turning his gaze forward.
His heart pounded in his chest, surging with the realization that he no longer had any easy path to escape. Now the only way out was the crystal shard he concealed, and Starlight’s powerful magic.
They rolled along that road for several grueling days. The ogres removed them from the wagon in turn, hitching two strong-looking ponies to the front and using them to pull their fellow prisoners.
The ponies all responded with similar dread as they were hitched to the front, and they were barely strong enough to drag the wagon forward. But where they were nearly starved, Phil was at full strength. He felt that strength flare in him each time the ogres whipped one of his fellow prisoners for moving too slow, or hurried them away from a river before they could fully satisfy their thirst.
More than once he nearly attacked them, ending the fight before the ponies could get hurt. But his mission was more important. If he could keep his head down long enough, he could do more than save a few.
The prison that awaited Phil at the end of that bumpy ride was a monstrous structure, a stain on an already bleak expanse of naked rock. Within a hundred meters of the prison walls, nothing grew, and the ground was scorched black. Watch towers rose over it all, with guards at their peaks, to catch and prevent any attempts at escaping.
An ogre guard yanked him out of the cart, his grip rough. Phil was herded with the other prisoners through a large iron gate that groaned under its own weight. The sky above was clouded, casting the prison yard in perpetual shadow.
The ogres marched them through a series of hallways and doors, each one heavier and more fortified than the last. He could hear the low murmur of voices as they passed by the cell blocks, each filled with ponies of every kind. Their eyes were hollow, their spirits seemingly crushed under the weight of their captors.
Finally, they reached the intake room. His shackles were removed, and he was poked and prodded by ogres wearing more frightening masks. Despite an apparent discrepancy with his paperwork, they didn’t seem terribly interested in figuring out the details. A few seconds checking him for concealed weapons, and he was through.
"Off you go, Pegasus," one of the guards growled, giving Phil a shove towards the door. "General population’s that way."
He nodded with false obedience, hurrying down the open hallway. With luck, they would see his behavior as eagerness to get away, and not rushing to escape before they could discover what he hid. The crystal shard still pressed painfully into the sensitive inner section of his hoof—what ponies called a “frog.” It was still there as he made his way down a stone ramp into the prison proper.
Stepping into the general population area, Phil was met with a wall of noise. The room was filled with the sounds of shuffling hooves, hushed whispers, and the occasional scuffle. The smell was rank, the stench of overcrowding and despair mixing in the stagnant air. After days of hard travel to get here, he couldn’t imagine he smelled much better.
The prisoners were all in a state of disarray—their manes and coats unkempt, their eyes devoid of life. They sat huddled in corners or lay on thin, ragged mats, completely defeated. Despite the intervening days, his memory of the photographs of his targets remained fresh in his mind: Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, those three were key to freeing Equestria.
And getting home again, of course. But seeing the suffering here, Phil’s personal need for returning to his human life seemed like a distant second place. If only the other players could see what Equestria had become, maybe they would be more forgiving of their kidnapping, too.
I have to find out where they’re being held. The sight of the downtrodden ponies around him weighed heavily. How could he possibly stand against this level of despair and cruelty? There was no parallel in his life, nothing to prepare him for these conditions.
He had to work quickly, before the stark brutality crushed him as badly as the other prisoners. So, he searched, moving through the prison’s general population as quickly as he could. By nightfall, he was confident that his targets weren’t there. It was just as Rainbow Dash feared—the important ponies were locked up deeper.
He had to figure out a way to infiltrate the maximum-security section. He found a frayed mat in a shadowy corner to sleep on his first night. His mind began to churn, rolling from one desperate plan to the next. If he could gain the trust of the other prisoners, maybe they could give him information. Some of them looked like they’d been confined here for months, maybe years.
He knew he had to tread carefully to avoid arousing suspicion among the guards. Too much energy, too much life, and they would smash him to pieces.
On the second day, he found someone willing to tell him about high security. The strange pony was another bat, with pale lavender in her mane and more energy than most. She must’ve been a recent prisoner, if the guards hadn't crushed her yet.
"Maximum security," she repeated, her expression hollow. "Not sure why you'd want to go there of all places, stallion."
"Because..." There was another reason this pony might seem healthier and more vibrant than the others—she could be a collaborator, mixed into the population to search out trouble. The Storm King would likely reward such behavior with milder treatment or maybe even a promise of escape one day.
She also might be genuine. "Because some friends of mine were thrown down there," he answered, noncommittally. "A few months ago. I want to see if they're okay."
"They're not," the bat said, without hesitation. "Might not even be alive."
What if they weren't? That grim possibility seemed too terrible to contemplate—not so much because Phil had any attachment to the missing mares, but because of how Starlight would react. And how critical they were to Equestria, for magical reasons still unclear to him.
"I need to know," he insisted. "Please. Is there a way, or not?"
She stuck out one hoof for a sudden, deliberate shake. "Name's Moire. What's yours?"
"Phil Adler." He took the offered hoof. That was short of proof of good intentions, but far better than the other ponies had given him so far. They had to start somewhere.
"Weird name," she said. "But it's a weird thing you want to do. Come on. Maybe there's a way. I'll take you."
tf-sential
