A Crow in Shining Armor

Suddenly there was a tapping. A quiet, distant tapping, like a whisper from beyond. The sound of something sharp tapping against what sounded like a hard surface. It was an unnatural sound, one that wasn’t supposed to be. A forbidden sound, unwanted by the ears that heard it. Yet it was there, tapping ever so slightly.

Sounds weren’t supposed to exist, nor the ears that heard them.

There was supposed to be nothing at all, not even darkness and shadows, just a vast nothingness of the dead. Yet this tapping broke through and filled it to the brim, making it a reality. If the sound could be heard, it had to mean that somepony heard it, but that was not a possibility. For a pair of ears to hear, something needs to control them.

A brain has to be alive to register the waves. A heart needs to pump blood in order to keep said brain alive. That heart and brain died a long time ago, withered away, slowly buried in the sands of time. The tapping grew louder. The ears heard it, and twitched slightly. A movement that should never exist in this emptiness, yet it was there together with the sound. None of this was supposed to ever happen, yet it did.

Shining Armor opened his eyes.

His initial reaction was panic. Trapped within nothing but darkness, he could feel the walls getting closer, pressing into his shoulders. The ceiling bore down upon him, trying to crush his every bone and throw him back into the silent vortex of death. It was so cold, both his body and everything around him, it felt like ice pressing into his flesh. Sharp like blades.

A crack echoed within his ears as the ceiling above him broke. He pressed his face upwards, up against the splintered wood that had served as lid on his coffin. Sharp edges of the splinters slid across his face, and he felt a sharp pain dig into the sides of his foreheads. The further up he pushed, the longer the pain felt, moving down over his eyes.

He stopped pushing, realizing what he was doing. He was dead. Murdered together with… he was dead, but here he was trying to crawl out of his own grave. It wasn’t natural, not a reality, but not a dream. A dead prince wakes from the dead. He tried to crawl back down, force himself into the coffin and hopefully fall asleep yet again.

The prince didn’t want to be alive anymore, not after what had happened, which still burned his newly awakened memory. Shining slid his head down through the splinters, but stopped suddenly. There wasn’t much in the ways of pain, but he could still feel every little thing that happened, and right now, the splinters tore into his eye sockets.

They sliced around his eyes as he tried to squirm free from them, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t go any further down, as if they knew what he was trying to do and tried to stop him from doing it. He had no choice but the press up. When he did, the splinters instantly moved away, instead slicing down under his eyes, over his face. Granting him free passage from the land of the dead.

Once his head became free of the confines of his casket, he unconsciously drew in a deep breath, but no air filled his lungs. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t breathe properly, and he begun panicking once again, kicking and flailing to get loose, to get the air his lungs craved. The wood cracked loudly as his body slowly tore its way out, and the splinters created deep cuts in his skin.

Shining’s front legs slammed against the concrete walls surrounding his casket, and he felt his hooves crack slightly from the force bearing down upon them, but there still wasn’t any pain, only panic and the will to breathe. His hind legs kicked wildly, still lodged within the casket, eventually breaking free as it splintered. He pressed himself up towards the cold ceiling, hoping to move the massive heavy lid out of the way.

It proved impossible, as it seemed to weigh a ton, and his body was too weak to move it. He fell down on the floor, half his body resting above the broken lid of the casket where he was supposed to rest for all eternity. He wanted to just die all over again, get away from this hellhole. Something still tapped above his head, someone knocking.

A few seconds passed by. The seconds turned into a minute. Several minutes. Shining Armor finally realized that he didn’t even feel the need to breathe anymore; the lack of oxygen didn’t affect him at all. Because he wasn’t even breathing, his initial reaction of fear subsided, replaced by feelings of sorrow and anger. He just wanted to rest.

He wasn’t supposed to be here, not like this. Not without Cadenza. Not without Skyla. He didn’t know if he was alive or not, but he knew that no matter what, he didn’t have a life to return to. There was nothing left for him in this world except pain and misery, and he just wanted out. Didn’t want to face the world again.

Finally sick of it all and coming to the realization that he had no other choice, he fired up his magic and directed it towards the ceiling. With a roar, he arched his back against it while pushing with his magic as well. It worked, and the thick lid gave way ever so slightly, a small gap opening at the side.

Filthy water instantly poured over him.

The prince pushed harder, screaming louder as he strained his body to the max. the lid moved, raising itself high enough from the ground for him to climb out. Seeing no other way, he quickly reached up and heaved himself out. The lid slammed shut hard behind him with a deafening roar, and his face splashed into grass and mud almost drenched in water.

His body ached and it felt like his horn was about to break, but he forced himself to roll over on his back. Water dropped into his face, rain pouring down from the skies above. As he twisted his head slightly, he could see the lid that he had just lifted, and a gravestone at the edge of it bearing his name.

On top of it, sitting perched on the side, was a black figure. A big bird watching him in silence, occasionally jerking its head to smash its beak against the stone. Tapping, tapping upon his grave in which he would rest never more.

Reluctantly, Shining moved his head to opposite way, and felt himself break as he saw two other graves, looking exactly the same way as the one he crawled out of. The names Cadenza and Skyla had been etched into the mirror polished marble surface with golden letters.

Trying to move from the ground, he found himself stuck as if something held him back. He looked down, seeing the black cloth of a cloak beneath him being pressed down by his body weight. The funeral cloak he knew all too well. A cloak that dead royalties wore in their graves. Closing his eyes to shut out the image of the black cloth, he slowly raised a hoof up to his chest, shaking from fear as to what he would feel.

There was no heartbeat inside his chest.

It dawned on him. The truth came slithering up his spine slowly, making his skin crawl. It nestled itself down at the back of his neck before it travelled to the edges of his throat. He touched it, feeling a line break his skin. He instantly recoiled and unintentionally fell back on the ground. The truth wrapped around his throat, forced him to accept it.

Shining Armor was dead. He knew it now. His body was cold, there was no heartbeat, and he didn’t feel any pain. And his throat had really been slit. He was dead and buried, yet he’d awoken once again. That also meant that his wife and daughter was gone as well. The small hope he had that it had all just been a nightmare died away and left him in the mud, shaking as tears streamed from his scarred eyes.

His screams of agony tore through the night sky, loud enough to wake the dead.