He shivered, and then pulled some of his magic to him to help keep warm so he could continue thinking. The other change that he didn't like was his eyes. They saw all the same colors, same shaped, but at times they seemed to feel others strengths, or weaknesses, or any number of other things that his old ones couldn't see.
"This it the most dangerous time for our kind," said Forest, "since there isn't anything to eat, we have to use our magic to sustain us, instead of defend ourselves."
He looked up at her. She had been teaching him the more important things about what he now was. Mostly she told him what she knew about magic, which she admitted wasn't much, or dangers, or how things worked for the foals who didn't have their magic yet.
She had told him to practice using his magic, and to try different things. It was more difficult then it seemed it would be to try and learn without any help. He had spent the months they were traveling practicing whenever they stopped, and only how to make a web like wall that could stop someone or just tell if they were coming. Now that they were resting in the clearing, he decided that he would start with that.
He closed his eyes and imagined a web in the shape of a ball around him. He felt it surround him, and then imagined it expanding to encircle the entire clearing. When he opened his eye, he could feel the presence of the web, and tried sending more of his magic out to it. She felt the web gather more strands, and tried to make them surround any trespasser so that they wouldn't be able to move.
The web had another effect he didn't think about, the snow couldn't get through it. Not seeing any snow reminded him to shake the snow off of his back, then he pulled more magic to warm him up a little more.
He was about to try lifting a pebble off the ground when he felt something other then snow hit his web. He looked where the feeling came from, and saw another unicorn, a bay colored on, trapped in mid-stride by his web. Forest saw that too.
"Solaris, let her go."
He winced at the sound of his new name, he still wasn't used to it, but relaxed the web so that the new unicorn could get out of it. She stumbled forward a few steps when the spell suddenly relaxed. She took a few steps more into the clearing, and glared at him, before going over to Forest.
"Forest and who is he?" she asked harshly.
Forest looked at the other unicorn with surprise, and said, "Amnesty, I'm surprised at you. You used to be so much nicer then this."
Amnesty looked genuinely hurt, and answered quietly, "I was just worried about you Forest, and when I found out you were coming back I came to meet you, but when I get here I get trapped by someone I don't know. I'm sorry, I really am."
Solaris was about to say something, but Forest was already talking, "I understand," she turned to him, "Solaris, this is Amnesty. She's one of my friends."
Amnesty looked him over and said, "I don't think I've seen a black unicorn before."
"I've never seen any color other then white."
Amnesty frowned, and asked, "How did you manage to get away with that?"
Solaris looked up at her and considered telling a disturbing lie, but decided that the truth would be much more fun. "I died before I got a chance to," he said before turning and going to the stream in the clearing to get a drink before she could answer.
As he walked toward the stream he could hear Forest trying to explain to Amnesty what he had said. She was talking about how his magic had gone out of control, and how an old wizard and crazy lady had given him a new body. All that while trying to avoid that his old body was a human one. She wasn't very successful.
He was lowering his head when he felt it. His web shattered. When he looked around he saw nothing unusual, but he felt something watching him from what seemed like every direction. He knew something was wrong, the spell didn't shatter when something went through it; it only let him know that something was coming.
He looked around, but still couldn't see it. Then he thought he heard something move in-between the trees. He looked where the sound came from and saw its eyes. He subconsciously backed slowly away from the eyes as they looked intently upon him. Then it floated down to the surface of the water, while it's skin changed to match what was behind it.
He was on almost to the other side of the clearing when it reached the shore. In the back of his mind he heard someone asking him a question, but everything else was committed to watching the thing. The thing stopped and looked around the clearing, then crouched low to the ground. Before Solaris had time to do anything else it had closed the gap between them.
The creature slashed at him, and missed only because Solaris stumbled the second before. The thing leapt to another spot to the left, rebounded off a tree, and somehow ended up to his left. The second slash didn't miss, and left four red lines down his flank.
The cuts sent an intense cold through his body, and seemed to paralyze him, but his magic leapt to his defense. It sent a wall of air at the thing that was so thick it looked different from the air around it. The wall hit the creature's torso and ripped into four pieces that were sent in different directions.
Solaris was suddenly exhausted. The magic had sapped all of his strength. He slowly lowered himself to the ground. He hadn't realized how cold the snow was until now. He tried pulling a little bit of magic to him, and was surprised to find that he still had a thread of magic left in him. He felt the pain in his side ease, and didn't question it.
"Solaris, are you alright?" he heard in some distant place, but didn't pay any attention to it, and fell asleep.
Warm. That was the first thing that he was aware of, he was warm. The second thing he noticed was he didn't feel as weak as he did before, and could feel his magic again. Then he heard the voice.
"Solaris, get up," he heard. It was Forest.
He opened his eyes and squinted into the light. Realizing that he was looking into the sun, he turned to his right and saw a pathway ripped through the trees. It looked like some giant had gotten mad and ripped the woods apart. Forest was lying down just a few feet away.
"How did you do that?" he heard Amnesty ask.
"You mean knock down all the trees?"
"Not just that, you got across the clearing in less then a second, and killed one of our balances," she said.
He was confused, "What do you mean, it took me more then a minute to get across the clearing. What do you mean 'our balances'?"
Amnesty gave him a questioning look, "You don't know about our balance?" He shook his head. "They keep us from overcrowding the world. Since were immortal, something needs to keep us from sort of taking over. Everything has a balance, dragons have clutches rarely, and we have something that hunts us."
"So?"
"Never once has anyone killed our balance. Even groups haven't been able to," Forest said.
He tried to get up, but his muscles were cramped from being cold all night and it took longer then he would have liked it to. Most of what was said didn't make much sense to him, and he wondered why no one had ever killed one of the balances. It didn't seem to be that hard.
Amnesty looked over to Forest and frowned. "He should already know this. Why doesn't he?"
"He hasn't ever had to worry about it before," Forest said, and then walked over to the stream.
Solaris looked around and noticed that there were several inches of snow covering everything. He wondered why he wasn't cold, and decided that Forest or Amnesty must have put a spell around him.
The clearing didn't feel as safe since the thing had come, the balance. He wasn't quite as confused by the idea of a balance as he had been before. The only question he had left about the balance was about how it changed colors so quickly.
He walked over to one of the pieces of the balance. It was a sick gray color now, and even though it was frozen, the smell was overpowering. For a moment he wondered what it would smell like if it wasn't frozen, but the mere thought of it nauseated him.
Suddenly he didn't feel very good about the clearing. He felt exposed in the clearing, and wanted to go into the woods where the trees could hide him and provide cover. Even the thorny thicket off by the stream seemed a better place then out here, waiting for someone to find him.
"Can we leave now?" he asked.
He heard Forest lift her head, "Why do you want to leave so soon? What's wrong?"
He quickly searched his mind for an excuse to leave. "The smell from this thing is going to carry for miles, and I don't want to be here when the wrong thing investigates." No one argued.
He stood on top of the ridge watching the three walking to the rest of the herd. Everyone had received Amnesty's message from the day before. For a moment it gave then both a small amount of hope, but then remembered that she was prone to over exaggerate. They would have to see this new one for them selves.
