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// Chapter 3: The Prisoner and the Slave// Story: Sunshine and Fire// by BornIn1142//------------------------------//

Chapter 3: The Prisoner and the Slave

Prison was not something Brainy Bright had any experience with. The only crime he could consciously remember committing in his entire life was stealing a toy dragon from his kindergarten classmate, and he hadn't even gotten caught for that. High treason and assault on the person of Princess Celestia herself was a pretty big leap up from that, but he had known from the start that he wouldn't walk away from it. Equestria didn't practice capital punishment, so being jailed for the rest of his life was the most likely outcome for Bright – assuming, of course, that he survived the attempt. While he was plotting, he'd spent long hours pondering about what it might be like, losing his freedom.

This wasn't exactly what he'd expected.

The most galling thing about his imprisonment was how irrelevant it was. Fifty years, give or take some, had been a price Bright was willing to pay, because his cause, while bizarre and incomprehensible to some, had meaning. Some things were worth going to jail for. Being out in the street at the wrong time by sheer chance was not one of them. He had expected to be punished for something, not for nothing. 

Not that it wasn't appropriate though. Bright didn't believe in destiny, or karma. What happened to him had simply been a very fair coincidence. He deserved to be in prison, whether in Equestia or some strange alternate universe. He would accept his fate without complaint, he'd already decided that.

He had been put in some sort of dungeon. It wasn't a terribly frightening dungeon, but more on the utilitarian side. The walls were smooth and the chambers all had rounded corners, which were tell-tale signs of a building crafted by magic. The lighting must have been magic as well, since there were no windows or torches anywhere in sight. They were below-ground. It was warm down there, but not uncomfortably so. The thing that really bothered Bright was the complete lack of rhythm. The lights were always on, so time seemed to be at a standstill. Ponies just slept whenever they saw fit and even their meals were brought to them seemingly at random. It was hard to tell, but Bright estimated that he'd been there for about three days.

There were forty of them in that dungeon, and a few more came every day. The cell they all shared was an oubliette, which amounted to being thrown inside a giant hole. The walls around them were almost two stories high, too high to climb. There seemed to be no way for any of them to get out on their own. Whenever the guards came to check up on them or bring them food, a unicorn gaoler would use magic to raise up a long, sloping walkway from the floor. The staff of the prison seemed to be composed exclusively of unicorns, while every one of the prisoners was an earth pony. This was no coincidence. Bright was surprised how dispassionate he felt when he made note of it. He still remembered what the two pegasi had called him when they'd arrested him. The words sounded like slurs. 

As far as Bright could tell, all the ponies there had been taken in more or less at random. There had been some kind of incident in the city – Everfree City, it was called – and the culprits had gotten away. The authorities had arrested anypony they had the slightest excuse to arrest in the hopes of taking in the runaways while they were making their escape. The problem was that they didn't have the slightest idea who they were looking for. Bright worried that they didn't much care. One of the prisoners was a young colt that didn't even have a cutie mark. How could he be guilty of anything? All of them were being held there without trial, or without any kind of formal charges. In Bright's world, that would have been a gross miscarriage of justice. Here, it seemed to be normal. 

“You know what I hate, my friend?” he asked the large red stallion, “Fascism. I really hate fascism.”

The large red stallion said nothing. Bright soon regretted his choice of words. It was a little presumptuous to address someone whose name he didn't even know as a friend. His comment hadn't even been especially funny.

Bright bent his neck down and slurped up the last of the gruel in his bowl. The prisoners were kept decently fed, but the sporadic schedule of the meals made him nervous, so he tried to make the most of his portions by drawing them out for hours. It seemed like the clever thing to do. Realistically speaking, he couldn't be sure when his next meal would come – and pragmatism aside, it tasted awful and he didn't have the stomach for it.

“I wonder what they put in this,” he said out loud, “It tastes like dark bread in liquid form.”

A shrug was the large red stallion's only reply. In truth, he hadn't uttered a single word in the couple of days since they'd met, but he didn't seem to mind Bright's attempts at conversation either, and it was good to have some companionship. Neither of them mingled much with the others. Bright had learned a few things from listening in on their quiet conversations, but he didn't have a clue about what to do if anypony asked him about his origins. Staying with the mute seemed safer. 

“I don't much like dark bread.”

The large red stallion had no comment. He'd eaten his own gruel quickly and easily, but there wasn't much of it, hardly enough to keep a big fellow like him from going hungry. Bright wondered whether he shouldn't have offered him some of his own portion. He also wondered whether that sort of sentiment wasn't rather stupid in his current predicament. He wondered about a lot of things.

“I wonder what they're waiting for.”

The large red stallion looked at him and cocked an eyebrow.

“Why aren't they interrogating us? Why aren't they investigating anything? They're just letting us stew here, and I don't see what the point of that is.”

Bright was operating under the assumption that this was only an arrest cell. It was also possible that they'd all already been sentenced without knowing it and that none of them would ever leave. 

His musing was interrupted by a sound very much like a loud, echoing groan. The floor was rising. Forty heads turned to see who was coming. 

Two guardsponies were moving down the walkway, accompanying an officer – a fleshy mare with a teal coat whom Bright thought was in entirely too good a mood, as always. A light smile was never far from her lips. She treated the prisoners with vapid courtesy and behaved more as if she was at a vacation resort rather than a jail. He could well imagine her going home in the evening, perhaps to a husband and children, without taking anything from the prison with her. 

“Oh no. They're coming right this way.”

The large red stallion hardly seemed to hear him. He was carefully observing the coming unicorns. Suddenly, he scowled and broke off from Bright. He smoothly headed for the far side of the cell without giving him a second glance. Their brief acquaintance vanished in an instant. Bright was confused, until he realized the large red stallion seemed genuinely surprised when the chipper officer ignored him and trotted straight over to Bright. 

“Please come with us, earth pony!” said the chipper officer. 

Bright frowned, but obeyed. He didn't have a choice. There were few good things to be said about the prison, but one of them was the fact that the guards mostly didn't bother with the captives. They were quick enough to punish anypony that did anything to displease them – and Bright had painfully learned that asking questions displeased them – but they made no extra effort to be cruel. They weren't bloodhounds like the two that had arrested him. If he tried to argue his rights though...

The other prisoners were watching as the guards led Bright away. They were wondering who he was and what he had done. They were wondering why the officer had picked him. It couldn't be just chance, could it?

The chipper officer started humming as they walked back up. It was a sore test of Bright's frayed nerves. He glanced around while trying to look like he wasn't glancing around. The guards were looking much more malicious all of a sudden. The gaoler closed up the walkway behind them, and the chipper officer led Bright into a corridor. They walked for several minutes, weaving around in the complex, heading deeper underground. He was taken to an interrogation room.

Bright wasn't certain what kind of terrible inquisitor he'd been expecting, but the pony sitting behind a small desk fell short. This one wasn't dressed in uniform like the others in the prison, but he was wearing a light orange cape, fastened around his neck by a brooch resembling a sunburst. He was pudgy, with a faint silvery coat so light it looked almost white, but no mane or tail. His cutie mark was a black wheel with eight spokes. Only when Bright had been seated down opposite him did he realize the pale pony was a unicorn as well. The horn on his forehead was only a small stub. Somepony had cut off most of it.

The guards left the room, but the chipper officer remained and took up a position behind Bright. Bright kept his back straight and his ears up and looked directly at the pony opposite him, trying not to stare at his horn. The situation called for a certain wary humility, but he wasn't going to bow and scrape either. That kind of behavior wouldn't keep them from beating him. Weakness and insecurity only ever earned scorn, never respect. This was true even in the academia. 

The pale unicorn seemed profoundly uninterested in Bright. There were some papers laid out on the desk in front of him, and he was paying more attention to them than to him. He sat almost motionless, looking calm and bored in equal measure.

“What is your name, earth pony?” he asked in a soft, high-pitched voice.
“I am Brainy Bright.” He had decided not to use an alias. 
“And where are you from?”
“Canterlot.”

This caused the pale unicorn to look up and regard him silently. The heat didn't seem to bother him, while Bright was acutely aware of the trickle of sweat on his own forehead. He had the vague impression that he'd blundered somehow, but there weren't exactly a whole lot of options available to him. 

“How long have you been living in Everfree, Brainy Bright?” 
“I- I was only visiting.” 
“Why?”
“Why?” All the stories, lies and excuses he'd previously run through his head in the hopes that they'd get him out of there were utterly gone. Deception had never been his forte. “I just... felt like it.”
“Where are you staying? When did you arrive? From whence did you come? Why did you break the curfew?”

The questions came as hard and fast as a series of kicks. Bright was at a loss, unable to conjure up even a single answer. He gritted his teeth together, not daring to breathe. 

“Where were you from 17 to 21 o'clock on Tuesday?”
There was nothing for him to say. “I... don't know. I wasn't anywhere.”

“Shall we execute him, milord?” asked the chipper officer, “He's definitely one of them. Isn't he?” Bright felt queasy with fear, but the inquisitor silenced the speaker with but a glance. 

The pale unicorn was so inanimate that Bright felt like he was talking to a corpse. He seemed weak and fragile somehow, as if a strong wind would break him up like a house of cards. Perhaps he was sick or disabled? His movements were languid, even though he was quite young, not even middle-aged. Did his condition have anything to do with his missing horn? Bright had seen some vague snippets relating to horn removal in historical texts. It had been used as a severe form of punishment, but the practice had been abolished half an eternity ago, at least in the Equestria he knew. There existed no record of what something like that might do to a unicorn – though the obvious guess was that it would remove or seriously hamper their ability to do magic.

Bright had to remind himself to stay focused. This was not the time or place to lose himself in idle musings and pointless theorizing, no matter how comforting they might have been. He swallowed and forced himself to speak.

“Say it plain. This isn't about breaking some curfew. What am I accused of?” 
“Treason,” said the pale unicorn, “as well as plotting the deposition of Her Holiness Queen Celestia. However, I do not think you are guilty of those particular crimes.”

Bright was lucky not to burst into hysterical laughter. He broke eye contact and tried his best not to look as flabbergasted as he felt. The irony was bitter.

“I find your cutie mark interesting, Brainy Bright. What is your calling?”
Bright licked his lips. He wondered if the pale unicorn knew the symbol's meaning. “Magical research,” he said, very quietly.
“Is that so? Involvement in the area of magic is rather unusual for a pony in your position, do you realize?”

Bright didn't respond, for fear of saying something that would get him in trouble. This was a subject that often made him testy. The pale unicorn, on his part, was content to let the matter go.

“Would you like to tell me your story?” 
“My story?”
“How you came to be here. You were not at all reticent to tell it to the sergeant in charge at the time of your arrest.”
“I was, mm, quite drunk. I don't even really remember what I was saying.”

Bright couldn't think of anything else to cover up his mistake, but this was a weak excuse. The pale unicorn must have thought so too. Bright caught a glimpse of disdain in his expression before he looked back down at his papers. 

“You claimed innocence. You claimed ignorance. You claimed the laws did not apply to you because you were from another world.” He paused only long enough to gauge Bright's reaction. “You lavished everypony involved with your tale of how you had come from another universe, and how twisted and wrong everything here is. According to the sergeant, it was impossible to get you to shut up. I believe the word he used was 'raving.'”
“I... must have been very drunk indeed.”
“How amusing,” said the pale unicorn in a voice that suggested he couldn't possibly have found things any less amusing. “So none of it was true then. You are not an alien pony thrown into this world by a magical accident.”
It wasn't an accident, Bright almost said, but caught himself at the last moment. “No, of course not. I went to a tavern for some salt water and drank in excess. I was foolish, I stayed too late and wandered out into the streets inebriated during the curfew. That's my story.”
“Is that all you have to say to me?”

The question was dangerous. For a moment, Bright hesitated and wondered if it wouldn't really be best to give everything up. He didn't see any real harm in it, except the possibility that they would think him mad, or a liar, or a mad liar. What was the worst that could happen? Bright didn't know. But he knew he didn't trust the inquisitor. The more he found out about the world he'd gotten lost in and the regime that held him, the more chilled he felt. Refusing his captors may well have had dire consequences – but it still felt like the safer choice.

“That's all I have to say.”

Bright expected some kind of threats at least, an ultimatum, a beating, anything. He wasn't foolish enough to think this would be the end of it. The pale unicorn had neither an angry scowl nor a disappointed sigh to offer him. He looked entirely unaffected by Bright's refusal. He slowly rose to his hooves and paused to ponder.

“Do you know who I am?” He didn't seem to be asking to boast.
“No,” said Bright hesitantly, “I don't.”
And suddenly, the pale unicorn's mouth twisted into a sickly toothless smile. “You do not seem to know much anything. I did not think there were any in our realm who had not heard of me. I am called Gelding. I am the Prime Minister of Equestria.” The smile faded away like water seeping into the ground. “And you are a liar, Brainy Bright.”

His eyes flickered over to the chipper officer.

“Separate this one from the rest. Put him in an out-of-the-way cell and keep the filly's henchponies away from him for the time being. It would be best if she did not learn of him at all. Also get word to Growing Violet and Doorstopper to inform me as soon as she returns to the city.”
“Yes, milord!” said the chipper officer, “It will be done.”

Gelding stared down at Bright with his dead eyes. Bright tensed up, but tried to look back with as much defiance as he could muster. He wondered who the filly was they were talking about. More to the point, he wondered just how screwed he was.

“And one more thing,” said Gelding, “Don't feed him until he's ready to tell me everything.”


Notes:

- The original characters introduced so far have all been serious in a kind of repetitive way. This is just a coincidence, I assure you.


Next chapter: Apple Underground.