The Life of Dominus Vitam Mortem

Chapter 2: Mortem

“Sed ambulantes umbra vitae, pauper ludius, quod graditur super theatro et frets hora eius, et audietur ultra illud est fabula narrat idiota, plenum sonum excitantis, nihil significans.”

Dominus woke up before the misty sky had even begun to hint at lighting up to get to work at the mine. The work was tiring, difficult, boring and repetitive. He rarely found anything, but mining was all he knew how to do, every book in the house was on mining, mining theory, mining journals, even a miner’s songbook.

After a breakfast of cold leftover oatmeal, he left towards the mine. Dominus looked at the sky, like he did every day.

“Yep, gray as usual.” Dominus muttered under his breath

Two years. Two years since his father had told him to work in the mines, that means one year since Chip’s wife, Jade from the rock farm, had her first foal, and three months since Chip had died in a cave-in. Even after all that time, he still didn’t have his cutie mark, his flank was as bare as a newborn foal’s.

Dominus yawned as he neared the mine entrance. His mother had started working in the mines since Chip had died, and Dominus was getting tired of eating cold oatmeal for breakfast. He wished his father would just hire a new worker for the mine so they could eat an actual breakfast for once in a long time. While Dominus was thinking of carrot stew and sweet apple pie, he heard a bird call, a thump, and a loud rumble all at once.

The ground shook underneath his feet, then he fell. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was seeing the mine’s entrance door falling on him, the brass doorknob hitting him between the eyes.

He woke up, barely able to tell what was happening.

“Ma!, Pa! Are you okay!?” Dominus screamed.

That’s when he realized he was lying in a bed, with a cold washcloth on his forehead. He looked around, he wasn’t in his room, that was for sure. The walls were striped pink and white, there was a large mirror adorning one wall and a small nightstand with a few books stood next to the bed. He realized that he was in Jade’s guest room at the rock farm.

He tried to talk, but his throat was too dry. After about half an hour of laying in the green sheets, he tried to get up. He was sore all over his body. He walked over to where Jade stood.

“Ugh, what happened” Dominus said.

“There was an earthquake, and it caused a cave-in at the mine, I have no idea what happened to your parents, the rest of the Rock family is searching the rubble right now.” Jade said in a soft, far-off tone.

“I need to see them.” Dominus said in his dry cracked voice.

“Dom, you can’t leave in the condition you’re in, you need rest and some water.”

“No, I need to see my parents!” Dominus’ voice cracked in the middle of his sentence, making it lose it’s assertive effect.

That, is of course, the point when he passed out from dehydration and his concussion.

Waking up several hours later, Dominus felt far better, but a little worried.

As he walked into the kitchen, he smelled something he hadn’t smelled in a long time, warm oatmeal.

“Well you seem to be feeling better, Dom.”

Jade’s voice startled Dominus, he had been so focused on the smell of the oatmeal.

“Yeah, thanks.” Dominus said in his dry voice. “Do you have any water, though?”

“Yes.” Jade replied, pointing toward a long table with a large barrel of water place next to it.

Dominus limped over to the barrel and drank what felt like all of the water.

“Well, you were thirsty.” Jade said staring blankly at the oatmeal

After about five minutes of silence Dominus asked “Has there been any news about the mine?”

“I was afraid you’d ask.” Jade said, flinging her black and jade green mane out of her eyes.

“They’re dead aren’t they.” Dominus said solemnly.

“Yes.” said Jade in the same tone.

Dominus didn’t know what to think.

‘My own path’ Dominus thought. So many emotions shot through him, anger, grief, pain and some sort of sick, twisted happiness.  The only thing he could think about was what his father had said to him two years ago. In some insane way it seemed to make sense, and things seemed to resemble a coherent whole.

“I’m going into town.” Dominus said, assertively.

“If you must.” Jade said as though she had not really heard him.

Dominus limped out the door and followed the dusty road toward the center of town.

Town itself consisted of a general store, a farmer’s market and the burial ground.

Dominus went to the general store first and bought a map of the surrounding areas, a compass and a traveler’s cloak.Then, he visited his home for the last time, only to grab some essential supplies and his mother’s jewelry box. As he headed west toward the hills he glanced back at his hometown, realizing that he would most likely never return.

Walking through the barren desert wasteland towards the purple mountains that the fabled civilization lay beyond, Dominus thought. He thought about how gray the sky was, he thought about how thirsty he was, but, most of all, he thought about magic. What magic was, what it did, and how it interacted with the world around him. Back at the mine, magic was only used to break rocks, or to clean them to see if they contained gemstones or gold, very rarely to melt gold and refine it. But Chip had told him of ponies who could do other things with their magic, like turn things invisible, or kill other ponies with a single thought. Dominus had always thought these were foolish foal’s tales, told during a late-night campfire.

After about three days of traveling, Dominus encountered his first signs of civilization, a smoldering campfire and some empty food tins. He saw a few hoofprints heading in a vaguely westerly direction and decided to follow them. After following the hoofprints for a few hours, they just vanished, as though the pony who had left them had disappeared.

“Or flown away” Dominus muttered under his breath, wondering if flying was some sort of unicorn magic.

After three more eventful days of traveling through uninhabited, barren land, he stumbled across a small encampment of three earth ponies, huddled around a flickering orange campfire, one telling the other about a huge metropolis inhabited by unicorns and earth ponies alike.

Dominus decided to stick to the shadows and listening to the tales the ponies told. The first continued his tale of the metropolis, which he said lay on a large mountain beyond the hills that they were camped on. Dominus thought that could be the settlement he was headed for.

“That’s nonsense Dusty, and you know it.” said a tan mare seated across from beige mustachioed stallion called Dusty.

“I’m tellin’ ya I saw it with mah own two eyes!” Dusty said, trying to make a convincing argument. It didn’t seem to be working very well.

“Dusty, everypony knows that earth ponies and unicorns haven’t done anything but fight for over a hundred years.”

“Aw, shut up Darin’” Dusty said to the brown mare.

That’s the point when a huge black figure swooped down from the sky, set fire to everything at the camp,and left, shaking the ground as it took off. Dominus hightailed it out of there, about an hour’s gallop away Dominus set up camp, but he still feared that whatever it was that killed the camp of earth ponies would come back and kill him in his sleep.

After having walked for an hour after breaking camp, Dominus realized what it was that had torched the earth pony camp: a dragon. Dragons were only myths to Dominus, but he had heard stories of what dragons did, they flew (check), the were huge (double check), they had scales (check again) and they breathed fire (check on that one for sure). Dominus was scared now.

“What if the dragon comes after me?” he thought aloud, sounding like a colt talking to his mother after he had seen something scary.

“Well, that’s when I kill it.”  Dominus said, in a deep, gruff stallion’s voice.

“Oh, rejoice the day is saved, Dominus is here to slay the terrible dragon!” Dominus mock-cheered, trying to sound like a large crowd of ponies.

“I’m going insane aren’t I?” Dominus said to the barren hills, half expecting an answer.

“Guess it’s just sleep deprivation and loneliness, then.”

Dominus continued to talk to himself throughout the day, whether it was loneliness, insanity, or to stave off the threateningly familiar silence, he continued. He talked about food, he talked about the ground, he talked about how annoying it was that he had kept talking to himself. He talked and talked and talked, until, once the gray had darkened slightly to show that night was coming, he stopped. He didn’t think of stopping, he had just… stopped. inexplicably, and deafeningly stopped. He wondered if he was sane again, then, he passed out.

When Dominus awoke, he was no longer on the dusty, barren hill he had been walking on. He was in some sort of room, there were no windows, the only light in the room came from a torch held in a bracket on the wall. The walls were stone and had some sort of moss growing on them. Having observed this, Dominus decided it was time to see what he was laying on.

He looked. It didn’t make him feel any better.

He was bound by rope to a metal sheet that was raised above the ground by about four feet. Dominus tried to free himself from his binds and found that he couldn’t. This was the first time in his life that Dominus couldn’t use telekinesis, and it made him worried. He looked up, his horn was still there, thank goodness, but he still couldn’t use telekinesis. Dominus tried using one of the melting spells that they used in the mines to refine gold on the rope. Nothing. Dominus went back to trying telekinesis, even though that hadn’t worked before.

“Well look who’s awake!” said a voice in the shadows. I was bubbly

“You were quite the catch, little unicorn.” the voice continued, in its bubbly, ecstatic tone.

“What do you mean catch?” Dominus said, confused.

“Well, you walked into my insanity trap without realizing something was happening, most ponies realize something’s wrong when they start talking to themselves.”

“Insanity trap?” Dominus asked.

“Yes, a little homemade magic I use to lure my prey into my web.” the voice said.

“Why would you do that?” Dominus said, now he was getting scared.

“So I can dissect them, of course! Don’t ask such silly questions!” the voice said keeping up with the ecstaticism, but now with a sharp edge, like a knife.

Then the source of the voice stepped out of the shadows. It was a beige unicorn with a bloody knife cutie mark. Now that Dominus looked at him more closely, he realized that the unicorn’s horn was pink, which didn’t match his coat. Then it dawned on Dominus that he must have cut it off of a unicorn. Then Dominus noticed his necklace was made of unicorn horns. His skin was covered in a cloak made of other pony’s cutie marks. Some of the parts of its cloak were still bloody. Dominus shuddered to think of what had happened to the bodies that those cutie marks belonged to. One of the most distinguished thing that he had were his scars, lines cut from the edges of his mouth all they way up to his ears, in the shape of a smile. This ‘pony’ brought new meaning to ‘ear to ear grin’. Dominus gulped.

“Couldn’t we just talk this out?” Dominus squealed, now truly afraid of the ‘pony’ before him.

“Now why would we want to do that?” the butcher-pony said, its voice sounding truly confused.

“Well...uhmm..ah… well you see…” Dominus said, trying to come up with a reason as he watched the pony pick knives off of a wall, both magically with the transplanted horn, and with its mouth.

“Oh stop whining, silly, I’m just going to cut your lungs out,  you can keep everything else.”

“The thing is, I need my lungs.” Dominus replied timidly.

“No you don’t, you have plenty of other organs to do… organ-y things.” The butcher-pony said.

He was convinced he was going to die. He was going to die because of an earth pony with a severed unicorn’s horn sewn onto his head. He was going to die because some monster wanted his lungs for its personal collection.

“Why can’t I use my magic?” Dominus said, his tone emotionless and blank.

“Because I put a dampening amulet on your horn, stupid.” the butcher-pony said, with a malice in its voice, any trace of his ecstatic tone gone.

Well that made sense, but what was an amulet?

Dominus tried to squirm out of his binds, this time getting somewhere.

“Hey, stop that!” the butcher-pony screamed, its voice turning into a pitch that made Dominus’s ears bleed, it was magically augmented.

Dominus nearly had his right hoof out of the binds, but now the butcher-pony was galloping toward him.

Dominus nearly had his hoof free… YES! it was out! Then the butcher-pony was right next to him, a large knife held in his mouth, so Dominus did the logical thing, he punched the butcher-pony in the face, knocking it out cold.

Dominus picked the golden ring off of his horn, he instantly felt better, like he had just had a good night’s sleep.

After he had cut himself free, Dominus wondered what to do with the butcher-pony, then it woke up. The butcher-pony was quick to the draw, picking a cleaver off of it’s knife wall with it’s morbidly attached horn. Running towards Dominus with the cleaver in front of it, prepared to cut Dominus into tiny pieces. Dominus again did the logical thing, he telekinetically picked up the knife he had use to escape and used it to stab the butcher-pony in the gut.

Dominus was shocked and also exhilarated, stabbing this… thing, had given him some sort of sick, twisted pleasure.

He withdrew the knife from the butcher-pony’s gut and stabbed it in the ribs,  piercing a lung. The butcher-pony screamed bloody murder, begging for mercy. The butcher-pony’s gruesome cloak fell off of it’s writhing body.

Dominus stabbed the butcher-pony in the eye. The butcher-pony screamed and writhed, then moved no more.

Dominus stepped back, realizing what he had just done.

“He’s dead.” Dominus said numbly

“He’s dead.” Dominus repeated to himself, this time with some understanding in his voice.

“HE’S DEAD!” Dominus screamed, thoroughly disgusted at what he had  done.

Dominus galloped through a large wooden door near the butcher-pony’s knife collection. Dominus realized, after leaving the dungeon and checking his map and compass, that he was on the other side of the hills he had been crossing. The space before him was grassy, with a large waterfall coming down from a large, spire-like mountain, about a days trot from where he now stood.

While Dominus trotted at a leisurely pace through the grasslands towards the spirelike mountain where he expected the town to be, he saw alot of small woodland creatures, mostly rabbits.

The waterfall from the spirelike mountain emptied into a large lake, which fed the grasslands and meadows where Dominus now walked.

When it started to get dark, Dominus found himself already half way up the spirelike mountain, he decided camp on the road which had been roughly carved out of the mountain itself.

In the morning Dominus continued up the mountain, getting about three-quarters up before encountering any problems. THe one he did encounter was pretty awful as it was. Dragons. Two dragons to be exact. The first was about his size, easy enough to handle with some telekinesis, then the other dragon emerged, this one was at least the size of five full-grown stallions. the smaller dragon scuttled around, digging its claws into the steep rock of the mountain, the other simply stood in the middle of the roughly carved road. Dominus stared into the dragon’s eyes. The dragon stared back. Dominus took a step back, the  dragon took this as a sign of aggression and launched a jet of flame from his maw.

Without thinking, Dominus moved the jet of flame around him using basic telekinesis.The dragon stopped its onslaught, believing Dominus to surely be dead. When he saw that he wasn’t, the dragon was very perplexed. Dominus took this as a moment to start running. He didn’t get very far. The smaller dragon, which dominus had ignored, had stopped climbing up the mountain and had tried to sneak up behind him, The instant that Dominus had turned around he saw the dragon standing there, on two legs, with a claw outstretched, ready to chop his head off. Dominus used more telekinesis to move the dragon’s arm, intending to throw him into one of the many caves that dotted the walls. He overshot, ripping the dragon’s arm off, sending it deep into the heart of the mountain. The dragon howled in pain. Dominus stabbed it through the gut with his horn, and used a melting spell to turn the dragon into a puddle of melted flesh and scales, throwing it off of the mountain before it even singed his coat. Dominus galloped down the mountain, gaining speed. Adrenaline ran through his body like a river, making him jittery with excitement. He was running down the mountain, when he realized that he would never make it to the town if he ran away.

Running back up, Dominus thought of ways to kill the larger dragon. A more powerful melting spell might work, but the amount of time it would it would take to generate enough energy to melt something that size would be enough time for the dragon to eat him. Dominus was still considering the melting spell when he reached the point where the dragon still stood, now with a small dragon army behind it. Dominus decided a melting spell wouldn’t work.Telekinesis would be the only way then. He could use the larger dragon to smash the smaller ones, still, to pick it up would require quite a bit of concentration.

While Dominus was thinking about this, he didn’t notice the three small dragons, each about half his size, flying straight for his face. By the time he noticed them, they had already made at least six gashes across his torso. Dominus used telekinesis to throw them back. They flew backwards, hitting the side of the mountain with several resounding thuds. While Dominus was examining his wounds they flew back, now in greater numbers. Dominus curled into a ball while the dragons cut his skin. Then, the strangest thing happened, Dominus felt a sense of calm wash over him, and he started floating in the air. By the time he was at least half of his height above the ground, he could feel his horn burning with a massive amount of magical energy. He opened his eyes sleepily, noticing red magical energy that usually adorned his horn wavering in front of his eyes.

Dominus saw the dragons backing away fearfully. Then there was a release of magical energy, like when he used a melting spell, but on a much larger scale. It was a huge red burst of power that washed over the dragons like an ocean of blood.

Dominus felt as though he was channeling the power of millions of ponies through his head, he felt like he was using a magic older than civilization itself. The pure power of the spell made him want to cringe in fear, it made him want to hide in a cave for the rest of his life, it made him want to die. Then the spell ended, sounding like a crack of thunder, and Dominus fell to the ground, passing out before his head touched the rough stone road.