As much as he wished to be separated from any and all ponies, Amissus was closely watched by Rainbow Dash when they left the hospital to find him a place to sleep for the night. It wouldn't have been hard to convince Amissus to sleep in any one particular place; he was already nodding off as they walked through the town and his eyes became heavier as the search dragged on. He didn't know how long it would be until he could find sanctuary, but he just hoped his long awaited sanctuary had the added benefit of solitude. He grew uncomfortable with a persistent companion at his side, especially this particular mare, seemingly so full of her own ego and confidence. She was also becoming irritable: the last few inns they had visited refused them a room because of Amissus's publicity.

With the moon nowhere in sight and the sun long gone beyond the horizon, the darkness was suffocating. Being outside the town made it difficult for Amissus to tread these unfamiliar roads, but Rainbow had walked these roads before. He wanted to know where exactly she knew a place that would accept him this far away from Ponyville.

"Where are we going this far out of town, Rainbow?" Amissus inquired of his guide, almost tripping in a hole on the dirt road.

"Since you've ran out of options for the night, I'm taking you home with me."

"I…I'm not really comfortable with that idea." He told her. He had put it in the back of his mind his concerns about these mares, but this was the first time that it occurred to him the idea of going home with one of them. Twilight he considered an exception: She lived in a public building to begin with and he never went up to her personal quarters in the library.

"So what? Look at where we are. Where're you going to find a bed around here if you don't follow me?" He was thinking that she was using some kind of leverage to have him follow her. She noticed how he looked at her with a disturbed gaze and she decided to explain to calm him. "It's not what you think. I'm just doing it so Twilight won't get mad at me. The last time I forgot to do something she asked, it was a week before she spoke to me again."

What would she assume I'd think? I just need sleep; I don't need any more of her or any of her friends.

"I'll just come back in the morning…nopony has to know you didn't find me a place to sleep. They'll all just think you did."

"Oh no, you'll just try to run away." She eyed him as she said it.

Frustrated that he wasn't allowed his freedom from these accursed ponies, he told her "All of you can't kee-"

"Shush." She cut him off, wanting to add "It's not just Twilight, Amissus: I don't want to go back to an empty house."

He hadn't realized that she was the only one that lived completely alone. Fluttershy had her animals, Twilight had Spike, Rarity and Applejack told him about their families, and Pinky lived with the Cakes at the bakery. She never told him about herself. Worse yet, he didn't care to listen. A lump of pity for the pegasus had choked Amissus for a moment, but he swallowed it into his chest: It was a sad thing he had just found out about Rainbow, but it wasn't enough to make him come out of his coldhearted shell. He still wanted solitude, and he would go through this pony at almost any cost to get it.

"Then get a smaller house. I don't need to follow any of you anywhere. I'm going to find somewhere on my own." He began to walk away, back the way they had come, but she grabbed his tail with her mouth, refusing to let him go and thereby not doing as her friend had asked of her. "Rainbow Dash let me go." He began with a slight remark, but she didn't heed him. "I don't want to go with you, I don't need you!" He began to brim his anger. He started to yank his tail, not doing much good. Rainbow had a lockjaw on him. "Go away! I don't need you! I don't need any of you!" It took several more tugs and he finally ripped himself free, losing brown and blue hairs from his tail. Rainbow had fallen back on her hind legs, spitting both curses and a "I hope you freeze out here!" as he started to gallop away into the forest around them.

He knew he could escape for a while, but he still wondered to what extent she would look for him. He galloped faster into a run and he continued this for about a minute before his casts started to lock up on his body. He saw a small fox hole at the base of a tree leading underneath. It looked smaller than he could fit into, so he dug more out and slipped through the cramping hole. He put the excess dirt in the entrance so that it covered his trail and he also left a hole for air. As he balled up in an almost contortionist-like position, he could hear hoofsteps coming from afar. He made his breathing shallow and waited the searching pony out. He could hear her calling his name along with apologies, and she continued for a few minutes, stopping every few times, and went past his hole. She continued for another few minutes until he heard hoofsteps coming back.

"Amissus, I'm sorry for being so crazy. Come back!" She stopped to mumble to herself. "Why's it matter now? I've already lost him." She sighed and concluded "Amissus! If you can hear me, I'll leave my door open for you! I live up the road if you decide to come back! Come with me, please, it's freezing out here!"

Amissus's hole had conserved his body heat; he never noticed a temperature drop outside. He closed his eyes as the hoofsteps faded away, relaxing best he could in such a tight squeeze. Constant pressure on his casts had cracked them and his wing splint had snapped getting into the hole but he was no worse than when he had started. He took what comforts his cozy little nook in the ground, using his forelegs as pillows and letting the falling dirt cover his body as a blanket. He didn't need her hospitality, he had made his own. He had made a sad, condemnable excuse for a bed. As his body started to fall asleep and become numb before he did, Rainbow's offer seemed more and more appealing, but the dreams came before he could finalize any decisions.

…

Rainbow walked up the road, angry with herself that she let Amissus tear away from her custody.

What was I thinking? 'I don't want to go back to an empty house?' Psh…it may be true, but it just sounds pathetic. Twilight's going to be really angry. I may have lost a book last time, but I lost an entire pony…

She flapped up to her cloud-made house. Landing in and opening the front door at the same time. She made no efforts to bring some light into her home; she instead hurriedly went up the stairs and into her bedroom. She flopped down into her bed. Something launched upwards and fell next to her. She reached over to her pet tortoise and laid him on her chest. He poked his head out, eyes shimmering from the starlight, and greeted his long awaited friend.

"Hey Tank, sorry I was out for so long." He kept a blank stare. "I just lost a pony. Did you know that? An entire pony just left. He was my responsibility, and I botched it." Tank laid his head on her chest, the rest of him was still in his shell. Rainbow sighed grievingly. She had no idea where Amissus could be and she was talking to an animal that couldn't understand her.

If this is what Fluttershy feels like every day, I'm not impressed.

She set Tank on a pillow that had fallen off her bed and covered herself as she started to rest. She was cold even with the multiple covers and her home's heat. She worried in that moment that Amissus might not make it through the night without her. She worried the same for herself: That she may not make it through the night without him…

What are you thinking? You don't know him and he just ran away from you. She mentally scolded herself.

But I went back for him…

Why? You only did it out of loyalty for Twilight.

But there was something else besides that…what was it that really compelled me to go back?

She argued with herself and ended with a question. The comfort of the bed made it hard to continue an argument with herself.

…

Amissus had dreamed back, he didn't know to back when, but it was back, back to when he was a colt. He couldn't remember the general details, but he didn't have his father or his mother for comfort, he didn't have his father's Court for support. He was in a small village, not the great walled city of his father. He was hungry and cold most of the time, squatting in a corner of a forsaken, burned out shack. He watched the ponies go by on their daily business from his blackened hovel, and sometimes he would ask for food, water, even just cry "Help…" through his sobs. But they all turned away, he was a freak, a pony with both wings and a horn. Mothers covered their children's eyes, some of the younger ponies would taunt him, but they were always told to stop by the mares and stallions passing by. Not of concern for Amissus, but from concern that the fillies and colts would be seen with an abomination. A few times, some soldiers would chase him off his one piece of refuge at the request of a few passing ponies who thought themselves too good for the presence of the likes of him. Sometimes the soldiers did it for a laugh during a break from guard duty. Everypony had something against him in the town.

The many times Amissus faced these provokers, he would wait until the town was dead with sleep, often only a few hours until sunrise, and come back to his corner of the shack. He didn't consider the little pile of crumbling black wood to be his, only the corner where he slept was his to him. This cycle continued for upwards to three years.

Once he had made friends with a filly who he thought to be a year younger than he, although he was still a long way from getting out of his colthood. She had sometimes visited him when nopony was watching and share her afternoon snack and she would bring water if he was thirsty. They made a game of the things they built with the wooden scraps that fell from the collapsing walls around them. They had formed a new cycle, but one that would last for two weeks only.

He thought that having this new friend would free him from this torture he faced days upon days, until he woke up one morning with a crazed mare choking him. It was still dark and the town was waking to the horrible sound of this mare and her cries for justice along with Amissus and his weakening cries for mercy. He didn't know what he did wrong but his attacker was screaming about her daughter and how he indoctrinated her into becoming his slave. "She was a good girl! Until she stopped here every afternoon with you, little freak! I'll make you pay for it: I'll pop your head clean off your shoulders!"

Amissus looked around best he could as her hooves pressed down on his neck. He saw many ponies watching, but what disturbed him most were their expressions while beholding this sight. They didn't look with worry or horror. Most stood blank and others he could swear were smiling to see a colt being murdered. He looked to her and she was a mess of emotion. She was crying, but she was smiling, but her eyes fill with rage. He didn't know what end would come of it but he continuously hit her forelegs to get her to let go. Over and over he wanted to be free. He tried to raise his head up and when he did, the mother's hoof slipped and Amissus's forehead met with her chest.

The first instinct was to gulp in air that had been refused to him. A few breaths later, he heard a dripping of liquid. He was still breathing heavily when he choked on something that tasted metallic. He felt something thick and warm on his back. When a few other ponies screamed, he looked up but couldn't raise his head anymore.

His horn was fully lodged into the mare's chest.

She was still moving but grew limp on him as he rolled the body off. His eyes were being covered by the falling blood of his horn. He saw through the literal red haze to see a few stallions enclosing on him along with the soldiers. One grabbed him, he didn't know if it was a guard or not, but he spoke to him with nothing but disgust and resentment.

"You just killed one of us. You're dead now, y'know. Me and my friends here: We're going to finish what she started." He threw Amissus against the wall, causing some of the broken house fall to pieces. Amissus wasn't spared as he began to be victimized by blows to his face, sides, legs being crushed, and verbal out lash from the crowed as well as from his attackers. Amissus knew it was hopeless to escape from this attack. One of the stallions was smarter than the rest and hit Amissus with the falling boards. Even if they shattered as they slammed against his body, they were in constant supply.

When they decided he had enough of the beating, they retreated back through the door, along with the mare's body, to the crowd. The ponies refused to see it over so soon. They demanded that the house, the one piece of the world Amissus could have for comfort, be brought down on top of the barely alive colt. The more determined of them started to ram against the wall. One more joined…then another. They crashed against the house until it fell into itself, leaving an ashy pile, burying Amissus and putting him out of sight from them.

Even as Amissus bordered unconsciousness, he had realized that he was underneath a beam that had fallen just so that the rest of the wood and nails didn't onto him. It was this moment, after he had been beaten, bloodied, and buried, considered good as dead, he felt the safest he'd felt in his entire life. He twisted his face into a smile and his body tingled with a stabbing sensation so small that it seemed thousands of tiny pins had put themselves into his skin. He felt his horn's heat and the shock of what happened next.

He was in an uncultivated field, far from the town that was now burning the pile of already burnt wood they thought he was under. His horn had placed him away from danger. He was grateful to his bodily design. Knowing that he wouldn't be found, he slept unmoving.

He slept in the ball that he had been left in under the black rubble. He slept and didn't dream. But he had the future to look to…