Good Intentions
Chapter 1:
“Stay back!” my father demanded, the tremor in his voice barely audible over the pounding of his own heart in his ears. He defensively swung the torch for which he had been named, an old family heirloom that until now I had never seen lit. The flames danced on the end of the ancient branch as he waved the makeshift weapon in the darkness, a solemn promise of what would happen to...It... if It came any closer. “I’m warning you! Get out! Leave this house! Leave my family alone!”
A low, reverberating chuckle seemed to emanate from the darkness itself. The black nothingness suddenly congealed and strode forward into the light, neither dispersing nor dwindling. Vaguely equine in shape, wisps of shadow drifted off the corporeal darkness as it defied the light.
“Stay back!” my father roared, though he had by now backed up to the closet door that hid the rest of my family from this...Thing. He could hear the whimpers of my little sister and the cooing shushes of my mother, both terrified in their own way, more for him than of the actual monster itself.
...Torchwood...
My father froze, but only for an instant. The message seemed to have skipped his ears entirely and sunk itself straight into his skull. Shaking, he shouted “Get out of my head!”
...Torchwood... the Creature whispered again, once more refusing to obey the way words were naturally meant to be conveyed. ...Torchwood, I have come for you...
“Daddy!” shrieked Matchsticks, my little sister. I could hear her struggling in my mother’s forelegs, beating against the closet door. “Don’t let it get you!”
“Daddy’s going to be fine, Matchy,” my father promised. He gulped, but the fire in his eyes was no longer entirely the reflection of the old torch. With renewed vigor, he planted his hooves firmly. Pawing at the carpeted floor, he snorted angrily, snarling “How dare you frighten my daughter like that?! GET OUT!”
With a resounding battlecry, he galloped forward and met the shadow-monster head-on. The torch burnt its way into the Creature’s flesh like dry kindling, setting the darkness alight. It writhed and whinnied in agony, melting into a pool of blackness on the floor even as the flames petered out, taking the Thing with them.
All that remained of the monster were a few dark splotches on the carpet. It was almost as if It had never been there.
My father was breathing heavily now, almost biting clean through the torch. After he’d caught his breath, an enormous wave of relief washed over him, and he smiled wearily.
“It’s alright,” he called to the rest of my family. “You can come out now. It’s gone.”
“Daddy!” Matchsticks cried, bursting out of the closet and rushing over to my father. She clasped herself to his forelegs, sobbing against him. Setting the family’s now-extinguished torch down, he scooped her up and nuzzled her. My mother, Candlewick, was quick to join her daughter.
“What was that thing?” she asked in a hoarse, relieved whisper as she returned my father’s embrace.
“I don’t know, but I plan on finding out,” he said. “I’m sending you two to stay with Neverwas in Canterlot. I’m getting to the bottom of this—I don’t care how much I mess up the Experiment. If I find out it’s their fault, I’ll take this straight to Princess Celestia if I have to!”
“No!” my mother protested. “Come with us, please. Neither of us will be able to live with ourselves if something happened to you.”
“And I won’t be able to live with myself if something happened to you two,” he said. “But I can’t let something like that get the best of somepony else. I’m the Sheriff of Hollow Shades, Candlewick. I can’t let some other family suffer what we just went through—or worse.”
My mother looked like she was about to protest again, but seeing the determination in my father’s eyes, she simply smiled weakly.
“I know you have to do this,” she sighed. “That’s why I love you so much. You always have to look out for others, don’t you? That’s where Neverwas gets it from.”
He simply nuzzled her in return before returning his attention to my little sister.
“You be a good little mare and take care of your mother for me, okay?” he instructed her playfully. “And give your big sister an extra-big hug for me...what’s wrong, Matchy?”
My little sister was looking past my father, her eyes wide, fear reflected in them in more ways that one. My father turned around to see what she was looking at, his heart not even getting a chance to quicken before he saw It.
The dark stains on the carpet had slithered towards the darkness and reformed, taking more of the black nothingness into themselves. The shadow-monster, spawned anew, trotted once more out of the dark womb.
“Daddy!” Matchsticks screamed as my father pushed her and my mother back, right before the shadow-monster lunged forward and enveloped him in a fold of darkness. He struggled to break free, but the Creature simply drew more shadow stuff from the surrounding gloom until It covered him completely.
The dark mass sank into the floor, becoming nothing more than a squirming black shadow, before that too shrunk in on Itself and disappeared.
The last thing I experienced from my family’s house were the sounds of my mother and little sister screaming for my father, and the sound of sirens blaring to life outside. There was a bright flash through the windows, like day had come instantly, though this light was tinged with a dark pink.
The world went black, but the nightmare was not over. I could still hear my father breathing as he struggled against the all-encompassing darkness, calling for his family and cursing the monster that had taken him.
...Torchwood... It whispered. ...I have come for you...
“What do you want from me?!” he demanded.
...I have come to deliver grim tidings...Hollow Shades has fallen, and soon, so too shall all reality...There is but one Thing missing before we can break free...Your eldest daughter must return to the Dark City...She is the key to the apocalypse...
“What the Tartarus are you talking about?” my father laughed madly. “Neverwas isn’t going to help you! She’d never come back to Hollow Shades anyway, not after what happened!”
...She will come to save you... It disagreed. ...She has seen your capture... She is listening to us even now... She knows it not, but she can never sever herself from the Darkness...and she shall set us free...
Though the darkness was everywhere, I could somehow feel It turn Its attention to me.
...Isn’t that right, Neverwas...?
“Neverwas!” my father shouted. “If you can hear me, don’t come to Hollow Shades! Stay away! Stay—”
. . .
I woke up screaming, cold sweat flinging off my brow as I all but leapt up in bed. My chest was heaving, and I tasted bile at the back of my mouth. Chills wracked my small frame.
Instantly, I spread my bat-like wings, flinging the bed sheets aside. One wing scooped up the spell phone on my bedside table. Raising my wing, I sent the phone sliding down towards me, snatching it with my hooves.
I was about to speed dial my parents as fast as physically possible, but at the last moment, I froze.
I had been dreaming. It had been a horrifically realistic nightmare, to be sure, but what proof did I have that any of that had actually happened? Then again, all I would need to do to make sure was call...
I nearly did just that. However, if it wasn’t true, then I really didn’t want to wake mom and dad up in the middle of the night. Again. As much as I hated to admit it, this wasn’t exactly the first time something like this had happened...
I glanced over at my nightstand, where the list of breathing exercises and scheduled appointments my therapist had written for me rested against my alarm clock. I could see the digital numbers shining through the paper, reading almost three in the morning.
I really didn’t want to wake them up again without cause. Truth be told, the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it became. Did I really think that my family had been attacked by some sort of monster made out of shadows?
“It’s just your night terrors again, Neverwas,” I whisper-scolded myself. “You should go back to sleep.”
Sleep. Yeah, right. Like this would be any different than all the other nights I’d woken up screaming.
It wasn’t always the same. In fact, it was rarely ever the same. Thankfully, I hardly ever dreamed about my family in peril, but I still had haunting memories of all sorts of other nasty things shuffling in the shadows, performing unspeakable acts at the back of my subconscious.
None of them had ever felt this real though...
“No,” I asserted to myself. I laid my head back on my pillow and sighed. “But if I’m not going to call them, what else am I going to do till classes start?”
I winced as I imagined myself trotting, half-asleep and dead-eyed, into Advanced Historical Studies. It would far from be the first time. Why oh why did my night terrors have to be served with a side of insomnia after the fact?!
Furthermore, why did this have to happen on the day of Final Exams?!
After a heavy harumph, I supposed I could always mess around on my spell phone till morning. I would have studied, but I’d spent the past month cramming for hours at a time, to the point where I was starting to spend more time in the campus library than the tenured librarians. Studying anymore would be overkill, and I wasn’t sure my brain could take it.
Or, I could take something to make me sleep. Glancing over at the nightstand again, I saw the plastic bottle of anti-stress pills my therapist had also given me. I rarely took them, and for good reason. First of all, I didn’t want to become dependent on them. Secondly, they made my mind all foggy.
I did not want that sort of effect to linger into my test-taking time. However, I also didn’t want to walk into class half brain-dead from lack of sleep. Sighing in defeat, I unscrewed the top of the bottle and poured out a single capsule before popping it in my mouth. I had to resist the urge to chomp down on the thing with my tiny fangs, instead working it around in my mouth with my tongue while I waited for the pill to start fizzing.
At last, I swallowed, and almost instantly a haze began falling over my mind. I didn’t have my exams until late in the afternoon, so one eight-hour pill shouldn’t affect my final scores, right? I certainly hoped not.
The last thing I remembered before drifting off to sleep again was the buzzing ring of my spell phone. Had my parents decided to call me instead?
However, as I turned my progressively fuzzier vision on the lit screen, I didn’t see the telltale picture of my family. Instead, the screen was pitch black—no caller ID, no usual readings, not even an ‘unknown name, unknown number.’
It might have been my imagination, or dreams already taking over, but the last thing I saw before I drifted off into subconscious oblivion was a pair of tiny, beady red eyes opening in the darkness within the screen.
. . .
I never dreamed when I had taken a sleeping pill, or at least, I never remembered any dreams when I awoke. Instead, morning greeted me like sunlight underwater—slow and quiet. As I carefully forced my largely unresponsive body to sit up, I yawned at a high-pitched frequency that could probably only be heard by other batponies.
I often lapsed into my native pitch when I wasn’t paying attention, and it had caused some awkward situations during my freshman year at Canterlot University. Whenever a professor called on me to speak in class, I was usually so nervous that I spoke babbled, rushed batpony jargon. None of the other ponies could hear it, of course; to them, I was just moving my mouth while a barely audible screech tickled their ears at the height of their hearing range.
Over the years I’d gotten better, and this past senior year had seen almost no mishaps. It still happened occasionally, of course, but most of my classmates had gotten used to it by now.
Looking over at the clock through my hazy vision, I saw that it was almost eleven. Those pills sure performed as advertised.
I still had a good number of hours before Final Exams, but wasn’t there something else I was supposed to do today as well? After my eyes unfocused blearily for a moment, I saw the note from my therapist again—as well as the latest appointment.
“Oh, yeah,” I remarked lazily. “I have to say goodbye to Miss Sundancer.”
It was a frightening prospect, even as much as it was a good sign. Miss Sundancer, the school’s shrink, had been my therapist practically since I moved into the dorms on campus. Over the years, I’d seen her less and less, which of course was a good thing. Even so, when I graduated I wouldn’t have her as a safety net anymore. If I cracked again, or had another...episode...then I’d have to find somepony else. It was hard enough letting Miss Sundancer in; I wasn’t looking forward to going through that process all over again with a therapist who you had to pay to listen.
“But that’s not going to happen,” I insisted to myself as I slid out of bed, the lackadaisical numbness in my limbs almost completely dissipated now. I’d made, as Miss Sundancer always said, significant progress. It would take a major event or mnemonic stimuli to trigger a relapse or a traumatizing memory...and I had promised myself long ago that I was never going back to Hollow Shades.
Stretching and yawning once more, I stepped in front of the large mirror that came with the dorm I had secured for senior year. I definitely didn’t look like most of the students who attended Canterlot University. I remembered how self-conscious I’d been of my slitted, yellow, cat-like eyes, tufted ears, and bat wings when I’d first enrolled. Nowadays, most students were as used to them as they were to my occasionally inaudible screeches. Even my dark blue coat and lighter, almost electric-blue mane and tail were a little off; they were sleeker, almost as if they were constantly slightly wet.
Speaking of which, I was just about to grab my showering necessities and head for the dorm’s locker rooms when I remembered my spell phone. Hadn’t it begun ringing last night? Right before I drifted off to sleep? It was so hazy I could hardly remember. There was something about a night terror as well, the details of which I would rather not try to remember. That had to have been why I woke up with pill-induced wooziness this morning.
Trotting over to my nightstand, I scooped up the spell phone and flipped it open with the claws on the arches of my wings. Scanning through the missed messages, I saw that I had an unread text from Penumbra—who was very likely the only pony I was comfortable calling my friend—and a missed call.
Strangely enough, there was no number for the missed call...or at least, not in any characters that I recognized. Next to the ‘missed call’ icon was what looked like a string of runes, like the kind unicorns would use in spell books. They looked vaguely familiar, almost like something from my Advanced Historical Studies class, but they didn’t quite match up with any ancient writing I’d ever read about.
“That’s...odd...” I remarked, noting to myself the ridiculousness of such an understatement. What was this? Some kind of unicorn prank call? If that was so, I didn’t want to listen to a recorded message from the caller just to have some spell turn my ears inside out. I’d never heard of magic going through a spell phone connection, but I thought I’d better save that until I could show the runes to a professor who might recognize them.
Scrolling back to the text message, I opened it up to read
“Dear Neverwas,
Can I meet you before Finals today?
Sincerely,
Penumbra.”
Leave it to Penumbra to treat a text message like an old-fashioned letter. I smiled, thinking he probably wanted to have a chance to say goodbye in person.
Penumbra was going on a trip to Prance for the summer. He’d asked me to come with him—several times, in fact—but I’d made it clear that I wasn’t comfortable in airships. I know, I know, the irony of a pegasus who’s afraid of flying and all that, but I was perfectly fine with flying...on my own. It was flying across the ocean in a big metal deathtrap propelled by magical dash engines that got me worried.
I texted him back “Sure, meet you at the Fountain at noon?”
His reply was almost instantaneous.
“Dear Neverwas,
See you there, and please bring your spell phone.
Sincerely,
Penumbra.”
Huh? Why did he... oh, never mind. He probably just wanted to show me a new article on the Internet he thought I’d find interesting. Then again, though, he had his own spell phone for that, and it was far fancier (and expensive) than mine.
Did this have something to do with... no, it couldn’t, right? Besides, Penumbra was a batpony as well, the only other one at the school. He couldn’t have sent me a cursed prank call. Besides, that definitely didn’t fit his character.
Shrugging and filing it away for later, I gathered my supplies and headed to the showers.
. . .
“Miss Neverwas?” called the receptionist, making me jump. I took a calming breath and lifted my nose from the book I had been reading. Although it was one of my textbooks for Advanced Historical Studies, I wasn’t using it to study. Those runes on my spell phone had been nagging me ever since my shower, and I’d been hoping to find an answer somewhere in the recorded glyphics, but I had no such luck. Perhaps I couldn’t recognize them not because they were ancient, but because they were new? Maybe somepony had just invented them? Or perhaps they were all just gibberish?
Whatever the case, I turned my attention to the receptionist, who smiled kindly and waved me into Miss Sundancer’s office.
“Neverwas!” Miss Sundancer greeted me cheerily. The middle-aged, sunny-yellow unicorn mare was already sitting in her signature overstuffed easy chair, but rose to give me a hug as I stepped in. I returned it before sitting on the identical chair across from her own. I’d spent countless hours in this chair over my years at the university, not all of them pleasant. Nevertheless, this room had always been a place of refuge for me, a place where I could escape my own mind, if only temporarily. “This is a bit of a bittersweet moment, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” I agreed. “I’m really going to miss you.”
“And I’ll miss you too, dear,” Miss Sundancer said. “We won’t be completely out of touch—there’s always email if you want to catch up—but of course, you know after today I can’t officially offer you my therapy.”
“I know,” I sighed.
“However, I’m confident that you won’t need it,” she said encouragingly.
“I know that too,” I agreed, giving a small smile. “It’s just... I don’t want to have another episode when I don’t have you to help me out of it.”
“Just remember your breathing exercises and you’ll be fine,” she promised warmly. “We’ve gotten out of the woods. If I do say so myself, you’ve come along way since my first session with you. You’re not the young mare frightened of her own shadow anymore.”
“Thanks to you,” I agreed again. “I wanted to thank you for that. If I didn’t have your help through all of that... I think I might have really snapped. Permanently. I have to admit, sometimes I’m still afraid that’ll happen, someday...”
“Neverwas,” Miss Sundancer sighed heavily, almost in disapproval, making me wince. “You’re a lot stronger than you give yourself credit. I know that whatever you do after Canterlot U, you’ll make a major difference. I just wish you’d realize that.”
“That’s the problem,” I chuckled humorlessly, feeling my insides squirm. This wasn’t a subject I brought up often, even in the presence of Miss Sundancer. I hadn’t done so in months, not since my last episode, the first one in a full year. “I don’t want to make a difference in a bad way. What if I...go out...again, and there’s nopony around who knows how to stop me?”
“Have you felt yourself slipping again?” she asked, sounding concerned. “Do you think we should extend your prescription?”
“No, thankfully I haven’t felt myself slipping at all,” I told her quickly, both glad and proud of that fact. “I’m just worried about if it happens, no matter how unlikely.”
“It won’t, Neverwas,” Miss Sundancer spoke calmly and evenly, giving me a reassuring smile. “But it’s up to you to make sure of that. It won’t happen unless you let it, or unless you—”
“I’m never going back!” I almost shouted. Miss Sundancer froze, a shadow of fear flickering across her eyes. I only ever saw her like that when an episode was coming on.
“...I know, dear,” she said. “I’m quite glad you have no desire to return to Hollow Shades.”
I nodded firmly.
A loud beeping suddenly made me jump again, but I relaxed when Miss Sundancer simply raised her foreleg to glance at her watch.
“Looks like it’s time to say goodbye to my next graduate,” she noted. “I wish you the best of luck, Neverwas. You will be fine, and you will make a difference—for the better. I’m sure of it.”
“Thank you, Miss Sundancer.” I smiled, my eyes moist. We hugged one last time.
“Now, if you have any last thing you want to ask me, now’s the time to do so,” she said. My mind flashed back to the night terror of just a few hours ago. It was probably nothing, but it had felt more real than any other nightmare I’d had in ages...
“I... had another night terror last night,” I told her. “It was more...real this time. I saw my father get eaten by some kind of monster made of darkness.”
“Would you like me to analyze it for you, briefly?” she asked kindly. “For old times’ sake? I’m sure my other graduates wouldn’t mind waiting a few more minutes.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” I said, nodding.
I closed my eyes and she tapped her horn to my forehead. With a sunny spark, I felt her enter my mind. She’d done this countless times before to get a better look at my nightmares and a better feel for my condition. I could already feel her slipping into my subconscious, feeling around for the dream, and—
The connection abruptly severed with a painful pop. My eyes opened, and Miss Sundancer dropped to the floor, limp as a ragdoll.
“Miss Sundancer!” I gasped, dropping down beside her. “W-what happened? Miss Sundancer? Miss Sundancer!”
Her eyes were open, but they weren’t moving. They looked cold, and...
No! I thought frantically.
“Miss Sundancer, wake up!” I shouted, nudging her with my hoof. Then, hesitantly, I placed a hoof to her neck. I couldn’t feel a pulse. My blood ran cold. “Please, wake up!”
“What’s wrong?” asked a new voice. I turned to see the receptionist walking in the door, her eyes widening as she saw my therapist on the floor. “Sundancer?”
“Something’s wrong!” I pleaded. “She fell down, and then—”
I stopped when I saw the receptionist’s eyes widen even further. Something reflected in her eyes was moving.
I turned back to see Miss Sundancer rising from the floor, though her limbs were still limp. Her eyes were still cold and...no, I refuse to say that word!...but her mouth was opening as well.
She screamed. She screamed with the anguished wails of an army of tortured souls, the windows and every glass surface in the room cracking before shattering entirely.
Miss Sundancer fell to the floor once more, before picking herself up of her own accord. Her legs were actually moving again, but her eyes were still...dead, there I said it!...and her chest wasn’t moving.
“...k...ki...kill...her...” rasped a voice from Miss Sundancer’s lips, though the voice did not belong to Miss Sundancer. “...Death...will bring...her to us...”
I was breathing heavily now, darkness dancing at the back of my mind as chills wracked my body. It was just like the last time I’d had an episode. It was cold, it hurt, and I could feel it coming on stronger and stronger despite my best attempts to stop it.
Miss Sundancer, or whatever was speaking through her voice, leapt at me. Her already cold hooves—impossibly cold, cold as ice—wrapped around my neck. She raised her head while a magical aura that was the opposite of her usual sunny yellow glow enveloped her horn. She formed it into a translucent point before bringing her now needle-sharp horn straight down at me.
At the same moment, I lost control, and the episode was in full force.
“NO!” I shouted, though I wasn’t sure which distressed me more. I struck out with my hooves, breaking free of the body’s grasp and pushing her back before her horn could slice into me. Before she had time to get up again, I was on my own hooves, shaking violently. I could feel it coming, about to make me act instead of just feel. The anger. The rage. The hate. “Miss... Sundancer... I’m sorry!”
But I couldn’t help myself anymore. The hate filled me, and as much as I didn’t want to hurt my therapist, I urged to destroy her even more. I leapt into the air, not having enough space in the small room to actually use my wings, but enough to bring my hooves crashing down on her head. I landed in full force on her skull, and proceeded to stomp on it with my forelegs while my hind legs did the same to her torso.
She struggled against me, whacking me with her own hooves. However, Miss Sundancer was a middle-aged mare, and no matter how small I may have looked, I was in my prime.
My hoof-blows were starting to draw blood when she finally managed to recharge her spiked-horn spell, using it to cut my foreleg. I moved it before she could sever it completely, but still the blood spattered out.
The hate bubbled deep inside me, and I calmed, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
“You should not have done that,” I said, my voice dripping with acid. I wish I could say that it wasn’t my voice that had said it, but it was. I was doing this. The hate was making me, but it was still I who delivered the blows. “You should not have done that at all.”
Quicker than Miss Sundancer could react, me wings shot out and I spiraled to the side, slashing her dead eyes with my claws. She cried out as she brought her hooves to her bleeding eyes, giving me just enough time to launch back into another barrage of breaking her with my hooves. I heard a crack, and she screamed.
With a final blow to her head and shoulder, I opened my mouth wide.
My fangs were usually tiny needles, but in the sight of the sweet scarlet dripping from her bashed flesh, they slid out to their full extent. I drove them home, sinking my teeth into her neck.
Most teeth are just that—teeth. Batpony fangs, however, are more like siphons, and mine were sucking Miss Sundancer’s blood. As the sweet, sweet scarlet flowed into my own veins, I shuddered with satisfaction.
Rising at last, my mouth dripping blood and my chest heaving, I felt a cold wave wash over me. My eyes shrank to pinpricks as the hate ebbed away and died, leaving me alone to face...to face...
I’d killed her. She was dead. Right there. On the floor. Her corpse. Her blood... her sweet, sweet blood...
“NO!” I wailed. “Nonononononononononono!!”
What had I done?! I’d killed my therapist! I’d killed my friend! I’d killed another pony!
“You... you...” whispered a voice from behind me.
I turned to see the receptionist, still in the doorway, frozen in fear. She’d seen it happen.
“You...” she whispered again. What was she going to call me? Murderer? Monster? “Vampire!”
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell to the floor. Thankfully, though, her chest continued to rise and fall.
Vampire?
I’d heard the name plenty of times, of course. Whispered behind my back freshman year, read in my ancient history textbooks, scrawled on the bathroom walls where I would see it. I’d known what it meant. It was a derogatory term many ponies applied to batponies. It used to be cause for burning ponies at the stake after the first Nightmare Moon debacle until Celestia stopped it. Nowadays, it was merely something ignorant youths would use to try and cause a scene, or just to spite you for the fun of it.
Never, however, had I expected it to come from the receptionist who I had passed every time I had come to see Miss Sundancer.
I looked back at the first fallen pony, now truly dead, if she hadn’t been so already. What had caused that, though?! She hadn’t just suddenly decided to kill me. I’d felt her pulse, or rather, lack thereof.
She was already dead, I realized. I killed a corpse.
But how? What had killed her? Reading my mind? It was the last thing she’d done before everything had happened. But how could that possibly kill her and then...un-kill her?
She’d been feeling around for my nightmare. Had that nightmare somehow caused it? If so, then that meant...
If possible, my eyes shrunk even further. Whatever had caused this was in my head...and it might have all been true.
I jumped at a sudden sound, but it was only Miss Sundancer’s watch beeping again. I looked at the clock mounted on the wall. It was almost noon, and she had said another student was coming by.
Noon. Penumbra! If anypony could make sense of this, it was him! I had to find him, before I had another episode, or somepony...
I glanced at Miss Sundancer’s bloodied corpse. Instinctively, I took the tissue box she kept on her desk and used the majority of its contents to wipe away the crimson on my coat. A few band-aids she kept in a bottom drawer were all I had to cover my wound, but thankfully it didn’t look too deep.
Taking one last look at the pony I’d killed twice, I galloped out of the building.
. . .
“Penumbra!” I called, instinctively shrieking at batpony-pitch as I spotted my friend sitting on the Canterlot University Memorial Fountain.
The batpony stallion looked up from where he’d been reading, probably going over some lost epic nopony outside of a classical literature course had ever heard about. He’d always said his interest in classical literature was the one thing from his ‘previous education’ that he’d been happy to bring along, though like the rest of his past, he’d never gone into detail about what exactly ‘previous education’ meant. I’d always assumed he simply hadn’t liked his high school, which had to have been Hollow Shade’s private school, as I’d never seen him at the public school I had attended.
I knew I would have remembered him if he had attended Hollow Shades High. He would have stood out among the town’s other batponies almost as much as he stood out here, though for reasons completely the opposite of mine. Where most students simply saw me as what the spawn of a bat and pony might look like, Penumbra had a rather different problem.
“Penumbra, I really need to talk to you,” I shrieked breathlessly, thankful for once that he was the only other pony in miles who could possibly hear me. “I’m in trouble—I had another episode, and it was bad, oh, it was really,really bad this time—”
“Slow down, Neverwas,” Penumbra instructed at a normal frequency. His command was not unkind, and his eternally wan smile displayed a familiar comforting edge I’d never seen him use towards anypony else. “I’m right here. You’re going to make my ears bleed if you keep that up. Now, calmly, tell me what happened. Or, on second thought, wouldn’t it be better if you went to see Miss Sundancer?”
My mouth suddenly refused to work, and my eyes welled up with tears. I was shaking again, though thankfully this time it didn’t have to do with hate.
His expression shifted to one of worry.
“Neverwas, what’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened?”
“I... I...” it was all I could manage, though I was still shrieking at batpony-pitch, even as I started to cry. “I... Miss Sundancer, she attacked me, but she wasn’t herself, and... and... I killed her!”
To his credit, Penumbra’s eyes didn’t widen. They simply grew cold and eerily calm, and for a split second I was afraid he was going to announce to whoever could hear, in plain pony-speak, what I had done.
“Follow me,” he instructed. “And be very, very clear. Tell me exactly what happened.”
He got down from the Fountain and began trotting, and though I didn’t know where, I followed. He could have been leading me straight to the campus police, but right now, he was my one lifeline. Maybe I belonged in the hooves of the law—what was I thinking, of course I did! I was a murderer! But, she had attacked me first, and she had been dead, somehow... why couldn’t this just make sense? Furthermore, why couldn’t this day have just gone like it was supposed to?! Why couldn’t I have just said a warm goodbye to my therapist, aced my Final Exams, and gone on to live a long and happy life?!
“I... was saying goodbye...to Miss Sundancer...” I managed to choke out between my muffled sobs. I don’t think I could have broken out of batpony-pitch right now even if I wanted to do so. “She was reading my mind, because I had another night terror last night, and then...then she died!”
“She died because she read your mind?” Penumbra asked, switching to batpony-pitch himself. He hardly ever used it; sometimes I think he thought it too unsophisticated for Canterlot. Penumbra not caring about looking sophisticated was just further proof how serious this all was. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes,” I answered. “But then...she came back. She attacked me, and there was some voice coming out of her that wasn’t hers, and then I... then I killed her again.”
Penumbra said nothing for a few moments, looking deep in thought. We walked on in silence. By now, we had reached one of the academic buildings. I’d been able to see Advanced Magical Studies inscribed above the door, and in the back of my mind I idly wondered why he’d brought us here. I’d never had a single class of Magical Studies, advanced or otherwise. As far as I knew, neither had Penumbra.
We turned and walked down a hallway, finally reaching a door reading ‘Office #107: Professor Nightlight.’ The door was open, and an elderly unicorn stallion I assumed was Professor Nightlight himself was sitting at a computer.
“Excuse us, Professor?” Penumbra said, just loudly enough to be heard.
“Hmm?” the wizened stallion turned in his swivel chair to face us, his old eyes lighting up when he saw us.
“Penumbra!” he exclaimed jovially. “Good to see you, lad. Come to say your goodbyes to an old fart before graduating?”
“Actually, Professor, there’s a matter a little more pressing at hoof,” Penumbra intoned gravely. “It’s very urgent. I would greatly appreciate it if you would scan my friend here for dark magic.”
Professor Nightlight looked confused, but seeing the urgency in Penumbra’s eyes, he simply nodded as his horn lit up. I felt the gentle warmth of magic envelop me for a brief moment, after which the elderly stallion’s eyes went wide.
“This is most unexpected,” he muttered to himself. His horn lit up again, levitating a large tome down from a shelf beside his desk. The book was unlike any I’d ever seen, bound in a strange brown material that almost looked like...no, that couldn’t be pony hide, could it? “I never thought I would encounter such magic again.”
“What is it, Professor?” Penumbra asked, worry cracking through his usual facade of calm. “What is that book?”
“Penumbra, I remember the first day you came to me,” Professor Nightlight said, seemingly ignoring my friend’s question. “Talking about such nonsense, claiming some kind of cult existed in Hollow Shades, that they were capable of dark magics despite being batponies without a unicorn in sight.”
“Professor,” Penumbra said quickly, glancing at me worriedly. “I asked you—”
“I told you it was all malarky,” the professor continued, leafing through the book with his magic. The paper was incredibly yellowed, and the writing all but faded. Even still, it had the oddest reddish quality to it. “Magic like that doesn’t exist. Anypony who believed otherwise was just a fool following ghost stories. I ought to know, oughtn’t I? I am the Professor of Dark Magical Studies, after all.”
Where was he going with this? Glancing at Penumbra, I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
“But I lied to you,” Nightlight continued, almost in a whisper. “I didn’t want you to worry. You’d made it clear that you didn’t want to have anything to do with such cults, and I thought it best if you didn’t have any reason to fraternize with them anyway, if you thought it really was all delusions and daydreams. But it’s not.
“This book is an old relic I uncovered many, many years ago at an old archaeological dig in Hollow Shades, back before the Experiment turned your small town into a sprawling city,” he went on. “In fact, this was even before the mining company moved in and destroyed anything we might have dug up later. This book details everything you told me about that cult you’re so worried about, and it’s over a thousand years old. This book was written around the time Nightmare Moon first rose. It’s also tainted with the darkest magic I’ve ever felt...magic mirrored on your friend here.”
I was speechless. Dark magic? I had known something evil was going on, but where could such magic have come from? I certainly couldn’t have produced it, even if I’d wanted to, even during an episode. I was just a batpony.
“But how?” Penumbra asked, echoing my thoughts. “Where did it come from?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Professor Nightlight apologized. “But I do know this: something very, very dark is after her.”
“Can you get rid of it?” Penumbra asked, almost pleadingly. “Isn’t there some kind of counterspell?”
“If there is, it’d be written in here,” Nightlight said, turning to a page near the end of the book. He showed it to us, yellowed parchment covered in scrawled runes...runes that looked exactly like the ones in my spell phone. “Unfortunately, unlike the rest of the book, I’ve never been able to decode this last chapter.”
Ping.
Professor Nightlight glanced back at his computer, and over his shoulder I could see that he’d received a new email. He turned to open it, and suddenly my spell phone began ringing as well, as did Penumbra’s. Before I could take it out to answer, Professor Nightlight swiveled back around in his chair, his eyes grim.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he stated. “But I don’t think it’s your fault. Neither of you could have created dark magic of that caliber, and besides, I’ve known you long enough to trust you, Penumbra. However, I’ve just received a campus-wide message that the police are locking down the premises...due to a murder. I can only assume there’s a connection. You two better leave while you can.”
Before I could ask him about the runes in my spell phone and without another word, he shoved the book into Penumbra’s forelegs and ushered us out. Locking the door behind us, I could hear him pick up his office phone before saying “Yes, Dean? I’ve just received word that somepony suspicious was seen in the Aeroscience Lab.”
That was on the far side of campus. I silently thanked Professor Nightlight while Penumbra shoved the book into his school saddlebags, before taking off at a brisk trot. I followed close beside him.
“You swear you have no idea what caused this?” he asked as we exited the building. Thankfully, it was on on the edge of campus, and we trotted out into the city without anypony stopping us. Wherever the police where, they hadn’t reached this area yet. “You’ve been my friend for four years now, Neverwas, but I if I find out you’re a part of that Goddesses-forsaken cult I swear I’ll...I don’t know what I’ll do, but for both our sakes I’d rather not find out.”
“What cult?” I asked. “What was all that? There was a cult in Hollow Shades?”
“Thank Celestia,” he sighed with relief. I found that rather odd, considering I’d never known Penumbra to be particularly religious, especially towards the patron deity of the day. Princess Luna was the patron of the night, and by extension, we who lived in it. Or at least, we who used to live in it, before Equestria was industrialized and the night became so lit up with electric nights that it didn’t really matter what time we were awake. That’s what it always said in my textbooks on recent history, anyway. “I’ll explain on the way.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, thanking Luna that I had at least two ponies who trusted me. If they trusted me, then maybe I wasn’t so far gone that I deserved the madhouse or worse after all.
“Remember when you said you didn’t want to go to Prance with me?” he asked. I nodded, a sinking feeling in my gut telling me where this was going. “Well, I still have that extra ticket, so it looks like you’re coming along.”
“What about what Professor Nightlight said, though?” I asked nervously. As grateful as I was, I didn’t want other ponies to suffer because of me. Nopony would probably even catch Professor Nightlight’s fib, but if I really was in danger and I was sticking around Penumbra... “If something dark really is after me, I don’t want it to hurt you. I don’t want it to hurt anypony.”
“If something is coming after you, then it’ll have to go through me first,” he replied with a small, determined smile. “I knew you couldn’t have murdered somepony senselessly, Neverwas. I took you to Professor Nightlight because I felt a little of the familiar dark magic on you too. I wanted to make sure it was what I thought it was, and that you weren’t a part of that blasted cult after all, having hid it from me all these years.
“But you’re not,” he continued. “You’re the same friend I’ve always had, and I will never let anything happen to you if I can help it. Before whatever this is can find you, though, I think it can’t hurt to try running.”
. . .
