The Storm Cloud Castle

The sound of an alarm clock brought the stallion out of his dreary sleep. He didn't know why he had an alarm clock, he never had anything to do. With a fair bit of grunting he managed to wriggle himself out of the heavy covers. As he left the protection of the sheets, a chill overcame him, it had certainly not been this cold when he went to bed the night prior. If his memory was correct it had been fairly hot when he went to bed last night, even though the sun had already gone down.

Blurry-eyed but nonetheless awake, he walked himself out of his bedroom and down a flight of stairs to a large room almost completely devoid of furniture excluding a chair, a rug, and several larger pieces that were covered with cream-colored furniture covers, each with their own growing piles of dust in the creases. Across the room there was a window, small and simple, meant more for light than for a view. The stallion looked out of his window, down on the town below him.

It was large, and white... and dull. The whole town was covered with a layer of snow, making it hard to look at directly in the sun. The buildings themselves were all red brick but with the snow covering so much of them they appeared as only red lines from above. He had never been to a town with so much snow before and he took a moment to lament how untraveled he was.

"Pup, where are we?"

Nothing, not a peep from anywhere. His words reverberated in the large room but no response came.

"Pup?" That was odd, normally the little dog was at least willing to give a response... not usually a positive one but beggars couldn't be choosers. It was unusual for Pup to actually get the initiative to go anywhere else in the castle. The stallion was unsure if this new-found mobile Pup was a good thing or a bad thing. Aware of the many rooms housing dangerously stacked furniture, he decided to find Pup before anything bad happened.

He checked the dining room but only found dust forming a second sheet over the large cover across the table. He tried each of the towers but there wasn't so much as a fly, he was ashamed that not even vermin wished to reside in his house. He searched high and low but was unable to find a single hair of his Pup. He only had one place he hadn't checked, the basement, but he didn't like to go down there, it was gloomy and dark and there was always something to bump or trip on. He didn't even know what was kept down there, he never remembered doing anything down there but it was somehow full of things regardless.

Still, he needed to find Pup. Pup wasn't exactly a loyal dog, nor was he particularly cute or humorous. His fur was thin and graying and even missing on one of his ears and one of his legs was bad, causing him to have to slowly drag it behind his three remaining limbs. He had an apathetic demeanor and was commonly snippy at the slightest disturbance, be it food or attention. So Pup wasn't perfect... or great... or good... but he was still all this castle had.

Nervously, he pushed open the door to the basement. The lock hadn't been set so all he had to do was push, that meant Pup could have wandered down there. The stairs were thin and awkwardly short, making his descent slow and unsteady. Before long he had reached the basement and his hooves met with the cold stone floor. The stairs had been cloud, like everything else in the castle save the basement, causing the transition to make him flinch. "Pup?" he asked, much less sure of his decision than he had been a moment ago.

"Rrrr." Came the reply, surly and frustrated.

"Pup? Where are you?" He looked around the basement but he didn't see his little dog.

"Rrr rah!" Came the snarl he knew well. He followed the noise and found Pup trapped beneath a table, one of the legs had apparently broken while he was under it. Atop the table there were several broken bottles which he assumed had previously been whole.

"Oh Pup, how did this happen?" He lifted the corner of the table and Pup slithered out from under it. "You shouldn't go places like the basement, you can't see down here." He had noticed Pup's failing vision a long time ago but the dog seemed unaware of his own limitations.

When he reached out a hand to stroke Pup, the dog attempted to bite him before starting his trek up the stairs.

"Ungrateful hound." he muttered to himself quietly as he dragged the table over to a nearby box which he used to prop-up the sagging corner. He briefly looked over the table but soon his eye was caught by something else. The contents of the bottles had mixed, resulting in an odd gray mixture. The outside of the puddle was a light gray while the inside was a much darker color, nearly black but not quite. He looked over the ingredients that had been in the vials. They were each slightly rare but nothing expensive, not that it mattered to him since he certainly wouldn't be using them. None of the ingredients were dangerous however so, judging the puddle safe enough, he picked up a small stirring stick which had rolled onto the floor and dragged it through the small puddle.

The liquid was disturbed but the coloration remained in the exact same pattern. When he lifted the stick out, the small amount of mixture still on it slid off faster than mercury and quickly disappeared into the rest of the puddle, causing a small splash which was still unable to disturb the color. He spied a small dropper which had managed to remain on the table and took a small sample of the puddle. Unsure of what might happen, he decided to prepare a bowl of water, in case it was toxic. He had heard many stories about secret potions and their wondrous effects in his youth, although from who he was completely unaware.

Wondrous effects or not, he was no idiot, he wasn't going to go drinking or touching anything just because the ingredients were safe. He quickly retreated upstairs and grabbed a small potted plant, one of a few in the castle, before returning to the basement and setting in on the table. He plucked a leaf from it and placed it on the table. Steadily, he raised the dropper and let a single drop fall onto the leaf.

The leaf stiffened, it's weak stem seemingly filled with renewed life as a healthy green color spread across the surface of the leaf. After a few seconds the leaf looked alive again, after a minute it looked like it had come from another plant entirely.

The stallion was speechless, he looked at the leaf from every angle, bending and prodding the various parts until he was assured that nothing was awry. "Completely rejuvenated." he muttered to himself as he held the leaf up to a candle to look through the soft green epidermis. He found his hoof drawn back toward the stopper, this time with a different goal in mind.

Clenching his teeth, the stallion lifted a hoof and held the dropper over it, letting a single drop fall onto his fur.

For a moment he didn't feel any change. There was a

but then another chill came upon him, one much different from the kind he had experienced when he had woken up. A violent, bitter, unnatural coldness that pierced his body. He felt his lungs tighten and his heart beat erratically. He nearly fell to the ground but managed to stay up with a hoof gripping the table. For a few moments he stood completely still, he had discovered he was breathing erratically and quickly regained some semblance of composure.

He stared at the puddle with both wonder and terror in his eyes as the cold continued to pierce him. There was no mistake, this was that same exact chill. Cold could not cause it, nor get anywhere near it, and grief could guide you to it but would rarely make you stay. No, this was the chill of isolation, of loneliness. This was the chill he felt when he had first realized that nobody in the world would know him, much less his name, and wouldn't care a speck if he disappeared. This was the chill he felt when he realized that Pup truly despised him, the one living connection he could possibly have, deemed too troublesome to foster by a mere mutt. Most of all, this was the chill he had felt when he realized that he couldn't remember how long he had resided in this cursed castle, the realization that his life had been so gray and lifeless that it had begun vanishing from his living memory, not important enough to be cataloged in his mind. All of these memories flooded his mind, nearly driving him to tears before the cold suddenly stopped, leaving him sweating in his basement, alone.

He set the dropper down, afraid. This was impossible to explain. He had certainly not imagined it, that would be impossible. In many ways that feeling was more his true companion than Pup ever was, he was not likely to mistake it. He was sure he had not, for that cold was not something that the mind could create on a whim, it had to have proper conditions. He picked up the dropper again, much more scared than he had ever been at the thought of entering the basement. He found himself taken by some desire to know more about the mixture, no matter what. He set his hoof on the table, lifted the dropper, and let a single drop fall. He watched closely, making sure to note everything. What he found astounded him.

The drop passed through his hoof, not disturbing so much as a hair. A few seconds later he felt it, the piercing feeling of loneliness coursed through him, filling every vain of his body with ice. His throat closed and his eyes burned but he endured it, this was only a short pain, not the real thing. He steadied himself and looked at the table, hoping to find the drop. Instead, he found a small stone.

It was half the size of a pencil eraser. It's exterior was glass-like in the way it reflected light. The edges were similar to a gem, all smooth rectangular cuts which sloped the stone into the shape of a water droplet suspended in flight. As he touched it, he felt it's cold, the same cold. It sucked at the warmth he had in his hoof hungrily, seeming to demand more and more of his heat than he could give.

He did not understand what this was, the mixture, the stone, any of it. He had never heard of any mixture like this before, and the thought excited him. He wondered at the stone's character. It was firm yet appeared ready to break at any moment.

He wondered what felt so familiar about the stone, something about it's shape perhaps... that was it! He rushed upstairs, needing to know if he was correct, if he could understand the stone. In his haste, he spilled a few droplets of the mixture onto a paper on the floor. The paper sagged under the mixture, the dark mark spreading across the page. The paper was a map of Equestria. The stain continued to spread, drawing closer to the nearest name on the page.

Stalliongrad, the eastern frontier.