explicitly stupid adventures of orange OC in the kingdom of darkness

I woke up at noon with the cape and skeleton still on top of me and I didn't want to go anywhere. This whole hunt thing seemed a little surreal anyway. Apparently all the resistance I put up against the memory spell only served to turn it into a mental episode. Rubbing the sunlight out of my eyes, I had a hard time believing these so-called hunters hadn't caught up with me in the middle of it.

So I had to go to Canterlot library or something. Why? I couldn't remember. I had to admit it was better than any other plans I could come up with, but I wouldn't get inside just like that. I needed contacts to get inside and that whole mess was completely out of my depth on an empty head.

How did one approach such a situation?

"Hello, I don't know who I am, but I'd like to become acquaintances in order to use your influence for the sake of gaining uncommon arcane knowledge so I could hopefully remember what the fuck is going on...maybe?"

Even as it was I could see that that wasn't a very weighty position to be coming from. In any case, the first step was getting there. Later on I could worry about fancy details, like having a name. What was my name, anyway?

For the first time since my recovery I realized that I had some weird scars on me. One of the ribs was out of shape, my teeth were a bit sideways, like someone smashed the side of my face with something at one point. Several others that weren't worth mentioning.

When the brightness became tolerable after a quarter hour of sitting around I looked over my best skeleton pal's belongings, hoping to find something to call myself that I wouldn't forget. Aside from the plain journal there was only the fancy cloak. The cloak had a small lightning bolt sewn into it in the middle with shiny threads, such that the pattern flashed when you turned it into the light just right.

Black bolt...

It sounded good to me. I had a feeling it might not sound legitimate to some of the Canterlot snobbery, but I knew I wouldn't forget it.

I downed the rest of the water flask and looked at the horizon towards the mountains and then I really didn't want to go anywhere. Instead, I turned diagonally towards the edge of the plains towards what looked like the edge of a forest with possibly a river running beside it. It was the only direction where I could hobble along out of the plains before nightfall this late in the day.

Brief similitude of forests with grey and brown stone cut temple ruins seeping with slabs of moss passed through my head. The mood of the ancient temples and the plains around me that stretched in every direction had little in common. I wasn't sure what to make of the occurrence, but I didn't want to delve deeper into it. Meanwhile the edge of the forest and the misty hills beyond it edged closer. I walked along slowly, ignoring the obvious threatening feeling coming from my pursuers. They were like a useless unlistenable noise trying to get into the back of my head. Like beacons of infernal buzzing that waited until nightfall and then would close in on my location from every direction.

Time was taking large bites out of my consciousness. One moment the forest was a haze of hills in the distance, the next I could start to make out the outlines of the edge of it. The day was starting to draw to a close. At the bottom of it all there was a heavy feeling of misery that I wasn't sure I could carry, and it all of it sounded a little too poetic for my liking.

I could make out a wide river or lake in the distance with trees on the other side when the shadows began to fall. By the time I set foot in the lake water the twilight was well on its way.

The first thing I did was find out if I could swim. Indeed, the strokes resembling something between a kicking frog and a floating log came the most naturally. I figured I could swim across the lake as a first test of my recovery, so I went for it. The progress was slow and tedious. I managed to shrug it off by floating on my back to catch my breath as much as possible. As the far shore got closer I swallowed a bit of water in my eagerness to get out of the ordeal. The sand on this edge of the water had lots of disgusting slimy seaweed in it. At the end of it all I emerged strangely exhausted on the other side, now knowing that I wasn't a very good swimmer, and sat down several trees into the forest trying to regain my stamina. Night had fallen.

When I caught my breath I turned around and looked at the far bank. There was plenty of moonlight yet again that night. On the beach I noticed the tiny shadowy figures of several ponies. One of them was running away, but then the head slipped off and the body collapsed into the sand, accompanied by a brief distant yell that broke off into a gurgling sound. The others followed after it in a bunch and closed around the corpse in a circular formation. I dropped lower into the grass and watched them closely, wondering if I could trust my eyes from this far away, or even my memory of what just happened.

I felt a strange feeling of disgust. Similar to the one of squashing a spider in your home, only a thousand times stronger, and a thousand times further away, across the lake on the beach somewhere. The evil buzzing of a scepter was strangely absent, however. I reasoned that it could be the water that absorbed its energy.

The ponies on the beach were discussing something. I could make out the shape of hoods on their heads. One of them separated from the group and trotted into the water, making for a swim. At that point I knew that I no longer had time to question the events that just happened and my fatigue slipped into the lower priorities.

I ducked deeper into the shrubs and ran as quickly into the dark trees as I could manage. As luck would have it, the forest was sparse and mossy, with patches of ferns and only an occasional set of gnarled roots to trip over. I kept closely to the occasional patches of moonlight, trying to make my way into the less dense forest areas so I could run faster. I didn't care if i got lost at that point, there was always a valley that turned into a stream that turned into a river leading out of the woods.

As I ran I found myself wanting to know if I was an assassin. If I was gonna die soon I wanted to do it with the satisfaction of knowing that I was somepony cool.

A good way of testing it was probably trying one of those fancy flipping skills. When there was a clear patch of moon-lit moss up ahead I went for a front flip. I closed my eyes, spun low, and slammed my feet painfully into the ground.

Whatever assassin blood I had in my veins hadn't quite manifested that time.

At length the moon became covered by midnight clouds and the path became difficult. From then on I tried to look up at the sky while feeling the ground with my feet and moving slowly due to the darkness. Thunder cracked far away at first, and then closer as the night watch went along. A crane sounded somewhere behind me, sounding oddly similar to a pony shriek. I tried to quicken my pace.

Soon some lightning flashes began to appear and I stopped to rest from the tension for a few minutes before a boulder. More than once I'd slipped over a sudden hill or bumped my head into a tree trunk in the dark and my eyes were getting tired of the strain.

I stared back into the darkness between two trees when a flash of lightning lit up the sky, with the trees casting deep shadows over the forest floor. For a second I thought I saw a dark spot resembling a cloaked figure moving towards me. The next flash the spot became a silhouette with a sword, and a third quick lightning blink revealed a grin on his face.

I dashed into the forest, setting something between a 'there's a psychopath after me' and an 'I'm gonna crack my skull on a tree and kill myself in this dark' pace. In a moment I got my cloak caught in some bushes and slid over some roots. I landed on my side, and before I could get up I felt a sharp pain in my wrist.

The next flash there was a sword stabbed through my arm with the pursuer standing next to me, his cultist hood brushed to his shoulders by the wind. The grin was gone.

He drew the sword out slowly. I pulled my wrist back and put it under my arm pit, afraid to say anything or even move from where I was. The pain was already dulled by the trauma, but my heart was pumping fast and forcing a lot of blood out. I cringed at the wet gathering under my arm.

He circled around with his sword pointed at me to look at my face, completely unamused.

The lightning stopped for a second and I made one last desperate attempt to escape. Running as quickly through the pitch black woods as three limbs would carry me. I soon tripped over some elevated roots, taking a few more awkward steps before landing in a gnarled pile of them.

One more flash of lightning revealed the cultist falling down next to me. It seemed he hadn't been so lucky and ran face first into a branch in the dark, small gash over his nose. In his fall he still tried to stab at me, the sword going just over my head.

Instinctively, I grabbed at his wrist that was holding the sword and twisted as hard and fast as I could. The thunder and lightning crashed and flashed brightly.

He tried to jump over me, but I gave the sword one final push and managed to connect with the side of his chest. His weight pushed it into his ribs as he landed. I kicked at him and rolled away. The sword was now in my hooves.

The cultist put a hoof to his lung wound and looked at the blood.

"Fucking bullshit!" he exclaimed with a tone of frustration and disbelief as he looked at me.

He ripped a piece off his cloak, stuffed it into the wound, and charged back at me. I gripped the bloody sword tighter anticipating the attack. At the last moment he grabbed something off of the ground and flicked it at me. The rock passed close to my right eye and scratched the side of my face when I tried to dodge it, swinging awkwardly in defense. I opened a cut on his shoulder, but not before he landed a heavy punch on mine and leaped away with a clap of thunder following.

"Just leave! I don't care anymore!" I called to him, limping backwards into the trees.

"You're nothing." the stallion wheezed, streak of blood leaking out his mouth as the lightning flashed, "It's death or scorn for me losing to someone like you."

He charged again, attempting to vault off of a tree, but slipped against the mossy bark and went into a sideways flight. Seizing my opportunity, I closed the distance and drove the sword into his neck. We collapsed on the ground. The cultist tried to let loose a berserker yell that only ended with a bunch of blood sputtering into my face. He punched at my shoulder again, painfully at first, but growing weaker and weaker until I rolled him off and got away.

The voices all spoke to me at once. The disgust. The pain in the shoulder, with the slightly more horrifying 'there's nothing there' message from the stabbed wrist. The blood crying out from the sword with the growing fear of my pursuers, a faint buzzing of scepters in the distance. Some kind of strange fascination with the blood splatter over my face on top of that.

I went back to the cultist and rolled him over, his face was frozen in an agonized plea of injustice. I ripped a piece off his cloak and quickly wrapped my wound tight, then wiped the blood from the sword on the remaining cloth and took the scabbard. I felt nauseous, but there was no time to waste. Large drops of rain began to fall.