I could feel the pressure swelling beneath my cheeks as I took a deep breath in through my stuffy nose. As I rested my face against my dampened knee, I dangled my leg below, letting my foot almost touch the surface of the still water. Evening was beginning to settle in as the day's bitterness still loomed over me. A memory flashed back to me with its painful sting of venom poisoning my mind. I closed my eyes tightly, adding to the river of tears that already veined my face.

​

I could see all the regime suited up, myself included, as we all buzzed with excitement for what lay ahead. We had hiked for weeks into the enchanted forest after years of training, and this was the moment we had all been waiting for. I had dreamed of this moment since I was a child. I envisioned the white horses with their pearlescent wings glimmering in the sunlight and their twisted iridescent horns like glass sprouting from their brows. They were the things of magic. They were what made it all worth it.

​

It was said that we would each get one, a unicorn, that we would be bound to for life. The horses always chose their riders and never had a rider hiked up the mountain and come back without their match. That was… until today. Until me.

​

I hopped down from the low-limbed tree branch that seemed as somber as I was and landed on a rock that peeked out just over the lake’s blackened waters. Not a soul knew where I was, and I could never show my face there again. I could see their worried brows and faces of pity towering over me, even still, making me feel as small as ever. As I leaned down to let the cold water rush into my cupped hands, something stopped me. I hadn’t placed my hands into the lake, and yet ripples of water pulsated towards me. As my eyes traced to the root of their rings, my eyes widened at the sight before me.

​

Hot air forced itself out of flared nostrils down at me as my gaze met with eyes of crimson silk. I felt my body stiffen as I recognized what stood before me. Its heavy wings could not be mistaken for those of a unicorn, no. They shined like oil and moved with a sinister slink. Nothing like that of a unicorn's grace. It raised its wings high above its head and leaned back on its hind legs before letting out an ear-piercing neigh.

​

I braced myself as it slammed back down in front of me, but to my surprise… the beast did not harm me. Instead, it lowered its head in a bow. It bowed as I had seen the unicorns bow as they found their way to their bonded riders only this morning. I looked at the dark pegasus as it waited for me to bind our connection. Never did a rider leave the mountain without its match. Never had a rider bonded to a pegasus.

 

* * *

 

We had spent three days together after we had bound our connection by the lake that day. Every day was a struggle for me to understand this unfamiliar beast. I couldn’t understand why it chose to bond with me to begin with or why I felt the calling to oblige. Never in the history of the regime had there ever been a bond between a pegasus and rider. I had studied the ways of unicorns for as long as I could remember. I felt as though, after all these years, I knew them better than I knew myself.

​

I had been the only rider who was left unchosen at the bonding ceremony that day. I could still feel the panic growing in my chest as I watched everyone pair off one by one. People’s whispers began to flutter on the wind as it became clear that I was the only one left alone. As I looked at my pegasus now, the words of the Captain rang through my head. A rider never leaves the mountain without its match. 

​

I felt a change happen within me as soon as I formed the bond with the pegasus. I placed my hand on its forehead as it bowed in front of me, just as I had read about in the bonding ritual of the unicorns. Heat began to palpitate in my palm before surging through my entire body. I felt a heightening of my senses, though my blood suddenly felt like fire coursing through my veins. My breathing started to quicken like the panic that rattled me during the bonding ceremony, and I felt myself fall to the ground. I clung to the Earth’s dew-covered grass, feeling the dirt slide beneath my fingernails before succumbing to my fading vision, the darkness my last sight.

​

A vision came to me that night, a prophecy of great peril. On the next lunar eclipse, the centuries-long slumber of a blind centipede king would come to its end. In his wake, he would unleash a darkness on the world unlike that ever seen. The centipede king’s army of cloaked creatures would claw their way through Earth’s surface and infiltrate the twelve kingdoms. The desolation they would leave in their path would enter the world into its first age of darkness. Unicorns and their riders would be vastly outnumbered, food scarce, and illness abound. 

​

Within this peril, I could see the silhouette of a lone warrior with a blade of red fire. This warrior sat upon a horse as dark as night as they walked among the chaos of the centipede king’s kingdom. As I moved closer to this rider, I could see their eyes glowing red like the horse they rode upon. I sensed a fierceness from them that they were there to destroy the king. Suddenly, the horse leaned back with a loud neigh, and just before the horse’s hooves came down on me, I jolted from my sleep, and the vision dissipated.