Book 1: Snow

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Introduction

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Beneath layers of dirt and heavy lengths of chain I stood within my iron cage, forgotten. I am a unicorn, and while many believe themselves to know what a unicorn looks like they are all wrong; I am a creature of poetry and of dreams, of wishes and unattainable hopes. I am the passion of a thunderstorm and the isolation of a star. During better times my slender body was white as clouds and possessed the lissome, athletic elegance found only in deer and gazelle. With cloven hooves, a spiraling ivory horn, and a lion-like tufted tail, I was and am like the woven tapestries telling of my myth and yet not like them; I am to horses what angels are to men. Yet all my majesty was robbed from me in the harsh lights of the auction house pens, my grace left to rot in the reeking banality of a stock yard.

 

Those stock yards of the auction house were the first thing most new arrivals to the Nexus ever saw. The market itself was buried into the outer flesh of the world as if it were some ancient and diseased tick, filled with the terrified stink of ignorant creatures abducted from their homes. I could hear many of them wail to their gods, demanding to know why such things had befallen them. To my grim amusement they were never given an answer. For many this was their first time meeting other sentient life forms, forcing upon them the awareness that they were not alone in the universe after all. What should have been a cosmic moment of enlightenment was reduced to nothing more than base terror. We were all in a market in which we were the products being bought and sold; we had all the misfortune of arriving at the Nexus as slaves.

 

It might be a good time to explain about this new environment in which I'd found myself. The Nexus is an interstitial planar construct made of five concentric, enormous rings orbiting a small star. It was created to promote communication and trade between the connected universes. The Nexus always had been and always would be a pulsing heart, circulating the needs and voices of countless realms filled with hundreds of worlds. One could invest in a product and become wealthy within a day, perfectly set to live his or her life in the embrace of unadulterated avarice. Unfortunately for myself and my fellow slaves, the largest demand shared between the universes was also the simplest to procure: living, sentient creatures.

 

No realm, not even a single world, had ever attained interstellar travel without a dependency on the labor of slaves at some point in their history. While some cultures would eventually outlaw the practice as abhorrent, others would continue to embrace it as a vital and celebrated part of their economy. Thus there was a simple axiom provided to all slaves within the market: be useful or die. If sentient property could provide no other useful quality in life, they would at least provide amusement in the throes of their death. Bloodsport was the second most lucrative market within the Nexus.

 

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I had no way of knowing any of this at the time. No one had bothered to speak to me after I'd been collared in the hunt; it was my punishment, perhaps, for indulging in one of the worst decisions I've ever made. Ignorant of what the humans had meant to do with me once caught, I had thought that they'd sought me out for a game. A game for me, that is. Like as not they intended to catch me with their horses and hounds and to boast of their hunter's prowess once it was all over. Such droll human desires I'd seen from afar many times, and I might have disappeared into my woods if I hadn't noticed the bait they'd used. I had never seen a more beautiful human being than that particular maiden in all my life, and though I was and am a unicorn (even if I no longer resemble one now) I am always a slave to beauty. Oh, how I wish you had seen her! With long, unbound hair the color of a passionate sunset and a voice like chiming bells, the maiden's innocence had drawn me to her like a siren's song. The huntsmen had gathered close, watching in amazement as I, this indomitable myth, had lain my head in her lap like a docile lamb. For a moment it had seemed a sweet adornment to slip a golden bridle onto my head - but only for a moment, and no more.

 

The chase had ended before it had even begun. The golden bridle had been woven around iron chain and leather straps, and a discrete rope tied it to the tree against which the maiden had been sitting. The dogs were on me in an instant and the men were not far behind with their spears. I hardly fought in my shame and surprise; thinking back on my passivity I am shamed still more. In no time I had been bound and loaded onto a wagon, the countryside passing by as I watched from the back pallet. I could have spoken at any time but I hadn't the desire to say a word. What should I have said to them? The question of how I had been such a poor judge of character consumed me, and I replayed my failure over and over again. The only luck I can boast of is that I never saw the maiden again. Money changed hands, and soon enough I was packed into an iron cage and loaded onto a strange metal ship.

 

The hunt had occurred many days previous to my arrival in the Nexus. Portals from place to place were only as predictable as cats and every bit as fickle. One could squirm through space and time, lost forever, and thus those engineers who knew how to tempt a stable breach were always in demand. Any who knew how to construct their own private portals had all the power in this new world, though I would only learn that much later. Having been acquired last, I was added to a menagerie of other oddities that had been picked up across my world. None, of course, were as wondrous as I was, though perhaps that is conceit talking. We were all placed on a vessel piloted by a crew who knew well how to make the passage through Hinterspace properly, and they did so without incident. That was my first experience jumping from one universe to another, but it wouldn't be the last.

 

All of the oddities that had been acquired lay seething in cages near to me at the auction stock yards. Panthers, lions, a white bear, slathering wolves, and even a minotaur counted amongst their number. The beasts were destined for markets unappreciative of sentience: zoos, hunting grounds, arenas, butcher shops, and even private collections. The minotaur and I were caged nearest to each other, and it seemed to my eyes that the monster beside me shrank in size as the days passed. Like as not this was because of his despair, but it was still a strange sight. Had I a mirror I would have surely seen the same phenomenon in myself.  Occasionally I'd try to make eye contact with the bullman, but he would only look away and avoid my gaze until at last he grew incensed, where he struck at the bars of his cage in an effort to scare me. The first time he succeeded and I panicked, crashing into the bars at the far side of my own cage and making myself look like a fool. Eventually I stood my ground against these assaults and kept staring at him, which would send him back into self-pitying sorrow. I admit that I took a cruel pleasure in deepening his suffering – it was the only control I had.

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At the time of this tale's beginning my cage was opened and I was driven into a pen. Four stout humans – or creatures that at least looked human to me – entered it. At first I tried to escape from them, dancing lightly away on my impossibly fine legs. Within those few days of bitter confinement my body had lost its condition, but even so it was easy to ignore the weight of my chains. After a time, however, even I knew the effort was pointless. The guards weren't convinced by my false vigor and so I submitted to their will and was led out of the pen as tame as a child's pony – a disgusting analogy for a disgusting feeling.

 

During my time caged in the market I had seen the division of sentient and non-sentient creatures; beasts and lesser creatures were led to the barns while humans and other thinking beings were led toward stockades. Once out of my pen I found myself being led shockingly toward the barns. With a disbelieving bleat and a sharp snort I pulled back on my chains; did they truly think me a mindless beast? Did they not know unicorns?

 

They were about to know me.

 

The scuffle that ensued almost brought the auction to a complete halt. The four guards leading me to the barn were hard pressed to keep hold of my chains as my horn lanced at them like a streak of starlight. I was no fool then, not even starved and desperate – I didn't want to harm anyone; I only wished to provoke fear. Blood trickled down the mother-of-pearl spire jutting from my brow, my ears folded back, my delicate split hooves slammed on the ground and my tail lashed angrily behind me as I resisted. I was furious and filthy and tired of being treated like an animal. The grime from confinement in a cage full of creosote had left my mane and tail stained black, while my struggles with the guards added streams of crimson blood to the few locks left unblemished.

 

I didn't cease in my frenzied struggles until one of the more impetuous guards fired a gun. An agonized bellow drew my eyes to the minotaur as he slumped against the bars of his cage. I stared in disbelief, my thrashings abandoned. He had died instantly only because the shooter had missed; his bullet had gone astray from me, its intended target, and hit the minotaur instead by accident. The handgun had more kick than the guard had expected and he had no chance to shoot at me again, I made sure of it. With a cry, I rushed at him and knocked him to the ground. A savage kick at the man's hand sent the weapon away, and my head dipped to stab the tip of my horn with surgical precision into his left eye.

 

I pulled back quickly and flicked the orb away before I glared at the growing audience. I couldn't take it anymore: I spoke at last. “You fools...” Surely the other humanoid creatures there thought it odd to hear words come from my delicate, cervine mouth, and I hope it unnerved them then to see my blue eyes dark with rage. “...you utter fools! I am no base creature to be butchered or tasked to labor!” Despite the typical bell-like quality of my voice I managed to infuse all of my anger, frustration, and bitterness into a growl that heated that proclamation from within.

 

My point was made, so to speak, and I offered no further resistance as I was seized once more. I watched with impassive, blue eyes as the mewling, half-blinded guard was dragged away. The minotaur's body was purchased by a grocer and the caravaners were paid a standard rate for their loss of stock. I was led towards the stockades, head lifted. Proud. I might not have been able to help being a captive. But I wouldn't be mistaken for a beast.

 

 

 

 

 

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File Name : White Mare

Entry dated 14:03, SP-Cycle M2 D21, 5012 AGF

Personal Log Entry Begins:

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A new batch of slaves was brought out today at the auction market, and one caused quite a stir. I paid little attention for the most part, allowing the guards and petty slavers their moment to shine as is their wont, but amongst the typical creatures they bring there was something that caught even my eye. Not the minotaur, of course, nor the various humanoid forms. I cannot truly identify what I was looking at, and knew only that it was lovely - or that it could be, in the right conditions. I thought it a horse, in truth; it had the proper quadruped stance, the typically equine features, a mane, and a tail. Yet it could not be something so common. No horse has the power to speak, nor does it have cloven hooves or a spiraled single horn. It, she, I think, was infuriated not by her situation but by the guards' lack of recognition of what she was. It's almost as if she already knows her value.

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I will be keeping an eye on this one if they do not destroy her. If she remains as aloof and seemingly unattainable as she makes herself out to be, she will require a firmer and steadier hand than most can provide. If she proves worthy of my further attentions, I have little doubt that it will be my hand alone that will provide the necessary guidance.

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Entry Ends

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Chapter 1

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My punishment was in keeping with the justice of the Auction House - swift and severe. Yet before I could technically be used for such brutality I had to first be purchased by the Auction House directly. This was my first exchange of hands for money in the Nexus itself, and very little since has made me feel more like an object. The transaction was conducted behind closed doors, and I only realized what had happened when I was taken by the Auction House guards and led to a different area of the stock yards altogether. While the Nexus plays fast and loose with many versions of morality, it lives and dies on its rules.

 

Looking back on it now, the form of my punishment likely had everything to do with deflecting any seeming ineptitude on the Auction House's part and very little to do with how I had behaved. My punishment was a spectacle first and discipline second; I was tied between two stout posts, one ahead of me and one behind. My legs were shackled and I was repeatedly struck with a bullwhip. The pain was unbelievable, but what's worse was that it grated on my ego – a unicorn's is enormous and easily bruised – but I bore it all in stoic silence.  I was determined to set an example for these people. Clearly they didn't know what unicorns were, and I wasn't about to let them think that we were craven or weak. Truly no one could have blamed me for crying out in pain and fear. I'd never been physically hurt so badly in all my life. Whether or not I wept, bleated, struggled, or begged was immaterial in that instance. I was a slave; my reaction regarding my use shouldn't have mattered to anyone.

 

But it did.

 

The beating itself had drawn a crowd. No one in the Nexus had seen a creature that looked like me before. My beauty, hidden under a crust of black and red filth, still radiated outward like a sun even as I was so cruelly bound. Such bondage prohibited movement. All of the straps had to be cinched to the last setting to remain tight upon my delicate legs. The chains keeping my head up had to be adjusted for my lesser height. The entire setup made me feel as if I was too small. It was not a feeling I'd ever experienced before.

 

Even if my captors hadn't found a way to re-size my bindings, I still wouldn't have moved. This was my punishment as they had decided, but I would decide how I would bear it. My eyes roamed the audience even while I was being struck. The crowd didn't count on my blue gaze to be at all knowing, but I could tell the precise moment when each of them knew me to be intelligent, when they knew me to be like them. Shame dilated their pupils and then constricted them to points before they glanced away for a moment. A flicker of realization pierced them before some other mental process justified their sadistic voyeurism. My own gaze was cruel, judging each watcher with extreme contempt all the way down the length of my long and tapered skull. If a glorious creature like me could be brought so low, then what did fate have in store for them? Those base and common maggots, they thought themselves better than I was. Each strike of the whip jarred my body and cut into my skin and muscle. Even when drops of blood began to drip into the sand by my hooves I remained silent and still. Pathetic wretches – I would not give in to them.

 

Of all the eyes there I noted one pair that were different - crimson eyes, though the bearer seemed otherwise human in appearance. She was a redheaded woman dressed in a black and seamless bodysuit that clung to her form like a raindrop clinging to glass. The woman's gaze seemed non-committal at first as she briefly stopped to watch. Her attention was bestowed on what I guessed to be a whim that might have lasted mere seconds. My attention focused on her utter arrogance of being. I could tell that she was sure that I was worth precisely nothing.

 

This was unforgivable. Even within the tight bondage of a chain halter on my head I lifted my chin and I locked eyes with her. I demanded that she look at me for more than an idle second. I commanded it. My own arrogance was a match for her own, and as she leveled her gaze on me fully I could see that her red eyes had vertically slit pupils as a cat might have. Her brows slowly lowered as her gaze pierced into me, and I snorted and remained as I was. The bullwhip's fire on my sides couldn't make me tremble, and neither could her attention. Even then my limits were pushed far afield by my pride, making me unwilling to give in to anything. I remember that she was the only one who never had that flicker of shamed recognition of my intelligence – it was as if such things had been expected from the first and had nothing to do with her perception of my value. It felt as if this one person, and this one person only, had never mistaken me for a dumb animal.

 

It was only when one of the slavers decided to grab my head halter that the gaze was broken. In that split second of being denied eye contact with that woman I became furious, and that was when I broke my silence and shrieked at my abusers. I strained a moment longer, trying to look back into the crowd, but the woman had gone.

 

It took a few days for the Auction House to make a decision about me. After the beating, they'd locked me inside a small iron cage in one of the many shadow-infested underground warehouses beneath the market. There were many cages there in that huge, dark room, though mine was the only one occupied at the time. The top bars of my pen were too low to allow me to stand fully upright and stretch my legs, and very soon the straw beneath me grew foul. I was hosed down with cold water twice a day and expected to lick the runoff to stay hydrated. There was no food provided, my handlers thinking that my attitude might improve with strict confinement and starvation. As far as they were concerned it worked like a charm.

 

When my handlers finally let me out I was weak, hardly able stand on my numb legs, and almost delirious. I was chained and questioned, and my obedient answers were rewarded with food while a 'poor attitude' was rewarded me with the sting of a crop against my neck and face. My keepers seemed to think that particular tool amusing to use on me. The conversation, as one might expect, was almost immediately quite civil. When they asked for a name I provided them with 'Snow'. It wasn't my real name, not quite, but it was one I would answer to. The only questions that earned me inevitable bites from the crop were those pertaining to my sexual exploits.  That a human being would ask me that, or be at all interested, felt dirty and demented to my mind. At that time I would as soon have include humans within my romantic preference as I would have included chickens or clouds – it was nonsense. My answers weren't forthcoming because I also had no idea why I was even being asked, or even how to word such responses.

 

Even with that hiccup in the process, eventually my stomach was full, the circulation in my legs restored, and my hurting wounds tended to by medical professionals. The Auction House decided to try and sell me off, but they knew the chances of moving a piece of sentient merchandise that looked like a beast would be more than difficult, even as a curio. Their buyers tended to require certain characteristics in these sale items – a familiar body like their own, hands capable of work, and the general assurance that the sale item didn't have the power to gore them. To put it simply I was far too intimidating as I was to bring in any kind of profit.

 

Their solution was carried out in the middle of the night while I slept. I remember this fact as being the only instance of kindness shown to me during my entire relationship with the Auction House. At dawn the next day every living sale item and buyer at the market knew the precise moment when I had awoken.  My howling scream of anguish lanced through the large open spaces even from my new cage in the cellar warehouse two stories down.  Like a flock of startled bats my sorrow took wing from the deep darkness of my confinement, crawling up, racing and rattling through the air vents as if the very lungs of the building were coughing up my despair.

 

It lasted for almost two hours. The market, from what I've been told, was unusually somber until my screams died away, my new throat too raw to continue. My handlers were instructed not to interfere with me. The noises heard from the vents were drawing huge numbers of people. That day would be the day I was put out for auction, and my self-loathing had drawn them in like vultures to a carcass.

 

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Chapter 2

 

It was a record turn out that day at the market. The regular auctioneer's corral, capable of seating nearly 150 people of human dimension, wouldn't have been nearly large enough to hold the crowd that had gathered for me. In its stead an open-air amphitheater was chosen that was capable of seating 2,000 spectators, and still there were viewers that could only attend by standing in the stairwells or sitting on fences and walls. The space was a construction of stone and wood, designed to look antiquated but without the skill to make it look anything other than farcical.  Fifteen tiers rose up three hundred and sixty degrees around a central pit lined in sand that measured some fifty feet in diameter. At the center, forming a square plinth some thirty feet to a side and rising ten feet from the ground, was a raised stage made of roughhewn wood. Stone steps led up to the platform, their centers crafted to look dipped with use and wear so that one might feel a false sense of tradition as one's life was sold to the highest bidder.

 

When my lot number was announced the crowd rippled with an expectant hum, all eyes turning towards an iron gate set into the raised walls of the central ring. The portcullis dropped down into a slot in the ground, the metal grinding and the gears churning to tickle at the audience's anticipation. Hired muscle, six of them, led the way in the procession that emerged from the darkness. Each of the six men, dressed in the Auction House's typical livery of gray and gold, were holding long poles with pointed metal hooks at the end. They held positions at the front, sides, and rear of the line. Included in the emerging retinue's armed guard were trolls, two of them, each standing a head above the other hired muscle and dressed in stout leather-plated armor. Such precautions generated rumors and whispers in the audience, their excitement growing by the second.

 

In the center of the procession was a heavily-chained, naked girl; this was what I had been transformed into.

 

My blue eyes were still red-rimmed from my hysterics earlier in the day, shamefully hidden beneath the fall of my hair. No longer were those tresses naturally white. No, those in charge of my alteration had decided that they'd liked the look of my hair streaked in gore and filth. The color scheme had remained – jet black with streaks of crimson red – even if the grime had been washed away. My skin, hairless now, was the smoothest white to ever be seen. An unnatural sort of pallor expected of the dead but suffused with a blushing vitality that made my flesh clearly quite alive and responsive. 

 

Where once my face had been tapered and almost cervine, now my features were like that of a young human or elven maiden. As I'd seen in the polished bars of my cage, my eyes were almond-shaped orbs with irises of sky blue flecked with silver, my nose was straight and delicate, and my lips were full and bittersweet. The teeth beyond were white, perfect and inoffensive, and my tongue was a pastel little slip that hid demurely behind the rest. From the sides of my dark tresses stood my tapered ears, one of the few remnants of my old self. My jailers had thought it amusing to make it clear how inhuman I still was. My mother-of-pearl horn had also been left to me; a straight spire (somewhat shortened from the original) still projected from my forehead slightly above the cross of my brow line and nasal bridge. At the juncture of my horn and my skull was a diamond of cream a shade darker than my pale white skin. It contrasted with my dark eyebrows and my full, black eyelashes.

 

The rest of my body was a juxtaposition of human elegance marred, seemingly, by bestial traits.  My body was set to that stage of human maturity where girls have just blossomed into women. My waist was set low and flowed down into slim hips and long, slender legs. From the base of my spine grew a tail, though it wasn't the tail I used to have. No, I had been punished with a horse's tail in the same color scheme as my hair, jet and crimson. The full, silken waves caressed their tips against my calves as I clumsily walked on delicate and bruised human feet. Indeed, from the knees down I bore cuts and purple welts, and my human hands were raw from having fallen to the ground multiple times on the way through the Auction House corridors towards the amphitheater. No one had offered me help or supported me along the way. I was forced to continually humiliate myself with my own inelegance, a thing that hurt far worse than any bruise or scrape.

 

As I made my slow and painful way up the stairs to the stage the crowd simply fell silent, each voice dropping away into nothing. Everyone remained transfixed and silent as I shuffled my way to the center of the platform, directed there by my guards. As I stood there I felt like no one had seen a being like me before, nor did they expect to see one like me again. Those leading me did so in silence, keeping their distance without trying to make it obvious. I was burdened with a stout collar of old, flaking iron that rested too heavily on my neck and chafed it. Chains locked to rings at my nape and at the base of my throat. My wrists and ankles were shackled, each step clinking with the weight of metal and a clumsiness born out of my exhaustion and despair. Within bonds that were obviously too large, an illusion of even greater fragility was cast. Where once I was a storm of cirrus and blood I was now barely able to stand.

 

I looked out at the crowd as one of the trolls wrapped its enormous hands around my upper arms, keeping me upright and presentable. The grip that supported me easily could have snapped my bones and that thought made me shrink into myself. Yet even as I prayed that the monster behind me wouldn't think to make an example of my new frailty, I took that time to send my gaze to my audience. As when I had been whipped, many who watched began to shift, some looking down in shame. A few people left. All the while my blue eyes looked out upon the gathered multitude as my fear died away. I wasn't just trapped in there with them – they were trapped in here with my merciless judgment.

 

I might have kept them all in my thrall forever until the curled end of a handlers' staff hooked itself around my jaw and against my cheek. The spike's slim, cold spire pressed against my skin and turned my head to see the Auction House's owner himself. This human man had come to see me on multiple occasions, and he had made it perfectly clear that everything that had happened to me had been by his design. If he'd been intending to break that spell of conscience I'd been casting upon the audience, the man couldn't have planned it better.

 

My ears lowered and flattened instantly to the sides of my head as any furious animal's might, my eyes narrowing with contained rage. I hated him because he had done this to me. He'd watched while I'd been changed in my sleep, and he'd laughed at me as I had awoken into the horror of my new body.  He'd been my interrogator and my tormentor. He'd been the one in charge of my destiny. If I'd had the power then I would have killed him on the spot. Even so I surged towards him, my wrath confounded by the lazy grip of the monster behind me.

 

The man only smiled patronizingly at me as one might smile at a naughty child. The metal hook moved away from my face, the point singing as it dragged its sharp tip against my cheek to leave a cut an inch in length. The staff was a painful blur as he turned it and slammed the dull back curve against my stomach. Every bit of air was pushed from my lungs in a grunted cry, leaving me to sag and cough. At a nod from the manager, the troll released its grip on my arms to let me fall painfully to my hands and knees. The bony thud of my joints hitting the wood was a thing that immediately caused the crowd to erupt into cheering and shouting. They had been released from my control when they saw how easily I could be hurt and subdued. With the crimson trickle that slid down my cheek to the line of my jaw their blood sport had begun.

 

In the auction business the stock is never tampered with, generally speaking. Buyers aren't interested in purchasing used sale items, and especially not ruined ones. It was not so in my case. Each blow, each offense to my dignity only elated the crowd that much more. They seemed incapable of being sated by my humiliation and demanded more of it. After I had shamed them there was nothing that would mend what I'd tainted. I even tried to fight back and defend myself, clumsy as I was, but my new hands had little effect on the armor they wore. Every time I was struck I got back up, refusing to stay down. I could hear the Auction House master speaking to the crowd with delight, his voice magnified through speakers high above. He would cause them to laugh at me and to cheer when I was hit. Somehow he managed to still play the part of the salesman and make me seem like the most valuable possession in the world even as he furthered my wretchedness.

 

The rules of such a demonstration had been set by the owner himself, and while he was curiously devoted to seeing me suffer he was forced to abide by them. So when eventually a bidder finally cast in their offer the show had to stop, its purpose concluded. I breathed heavily, sickeningly relieved that I was being bid for. With a small whine I got up shakily from my hands and knees, wincing at the fresh pains that bit into my muscles and skin. Still I showed no sign of breaking down or giving in to the horror of my use. The reports would say that my spirit was indomitable. What had earned me such terrible punishment in the first place was now a thing which drove my price into the clouds.