Strength to protect friends. Not light, nor darkness. (Broken worlds)

There he is!

Man with black and orange hair carefuly watched his prey, which was grey wolf-like animal. Human was tracking it an hour already and finally he found it´s lair.

Nervously squeezed handle of his dagger and sneaked towards the wolf. He planned on suprising it and killing it without a fight, but when he made a step, something broke and the noise alerted the prey.

Wolf quickly turned towards the source of noise and swung his paw towards the hunter. There was several meters long gap between them, so the wolf couldn´t possibly hit him, but that wasn´t what he wanted to do.

As his claws sliced through the air, black lines appeared and flew towards the man. Hunter tried to dodge it, but one of the magic blades scratched his side. And he could hear sound of magic waves cutting through the trees. He wasn´t seriously hurt, but enough to know that he had to kill that wolf as quickly as possible.

Human wasn´t suprised by mere wolf having magic powers. After Great Breaking, which unexpectedly merged Earth with Equestria, everything sank into darkness and chaos. Earth, as the hunter understood, wasn´t able to withstand all that magic and so, for some reason, which propably nobody knew, it gave it to animals and humans.

Or at least, as much as possible. The rest of it, and it wasn´t a small amout, remained and continued in breaking laws of physics. Everybody, no matter of race or gender were by pure force scattered across the world, breaking up all bounds they had between each other.

Pure madness, that what that was. Most of inteligent beings ended up insane from sudden losts, so nobody even tried to build up again any kind of society.

He was lucky enough to not have anybody to lost, in fact the Great Breaking gave him opportunity to find the one, who, he used to though, will stay only in his imagination.

But now he had to focus on the wolf, who wasn´t happy at all, that the hunter survived and was preparing for another magical attack.

Human was faster and threw his dagger which stabbed the beast into the neck. Animal choked and quickly started lose his balance and strenght, when the dark red liquid began to quickly leave his body. With it´s last growl it fell on the ground.

„Ts. Damn bugger.“ whispered hunter and gave a quick look to his wound. As he expected it wasn´t deep, but that didn´t mean that he couldn´t get an infection from it. He decided to take care of it, after he gets back to his momentary camp.

Hunter grabbed the wolf´s body, sliced his belly and ripped out all organs. They were eatable, or at least most of them, but he hadn´t time or equipment for it, so simple meat had to be enough.

He was about to throw them away, but then he noticed something hard in beats´s stomach. After he sliced it open, he discovered that it was medium-sized pouch and several bones.

It propably belonged to wolf´s last victim. When animals obtained magic after the Great Beaking, many of them became higly aggresive and didn´t hesitate for a second to eat a human, when they were hungry.

Hunter opened it and saw several pieces of variously colored crystals.

„Hmm, this might be useful, even though I can´t eat them.“ so he attached the pouch to his leather belt, picked up dead wolf and headed to his camp, which was basically just a flat place where he decided to spend night.

Night. Also something doubtful. The hunter didn´t see the sun since Great Breaking, three years ago. He and everything living had to get used to it. Fortunately the sun still existed and was just permamently hidden behind black clouds, so „day“ was just less dark „night“.

Along the way he got rid of all part from the wolf, which he didn´t planned on eating, for example

it´s head and fur and threw it into bushes. The animal wasn´t really as young as he hoped, which meant that it´s meat was going to be tough and hard to eat. But whatever, he needed to eat something and during those three years he had to eat much worse things then just tough meat.

Finally he arrived on the place, where he decided to sleep. It was just flat space in the forest, surrounded by bushes.

Hunter already prepared for himself small campfire and when he even had something to roast, he just had to ignite it.

So the hunter took out two sharp stones, from one of his many pouches and used them to create small sparkles, which then turned into small flames. After few blows the whole surroundings bathed in orange light.

There was no point in trying to do anything fancy with the meat, so the hunter just attached it to a stick and holded it over the fire. Then he remembered the wound on his side, which didn´t even hurt anymore, so he wedged the end of the stick between few rocks and took of his hard leather chestpiece and cloth shirt, which he weared under it. The chestpiece alone was incredibly uncomfortable, since he made it by himself, so besides being hard, so it gave him enough protection, it also was very rought and scratched like hell, when he weared it on the skin.

It worked great against physical threats, but against magic it was like being naked, but better something then nothing.

„Damn.“ slipped from his mouth, when he examined the scratch, which was now surrounded by dried blood.

From another pouch he took out small glass bottle with not nicely smelling ointment. It was disinfection, which he made by combining several kinds of herbs. It was the best he could make alone, without complicated equipment.

But that also meant that there wasn´t anything to prevent pain.

Hunter painfuly hissed, when he forced the ointment, into still wet living flesh and he could hear quited sounds of bacteries being burned by the mixture. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and took out not large coil of bandages, which he often found in ruins of cities, where he had to go on scavenger hunts.

After those three years, most of consumable things were already gone or expired, but it was something. Fortunately there wasn´t many of those, who would want things like that, since, when somebody suddenly lost his home, familly and friends, the last thing he desired was to stay alive.

When he began to wrap the bandage around his side he heard noise in the bushes. He didn´t know what that was, so he just pretended to not notice it, so that in case it would be something dangerous, he could suprise it.

But as the source of the sound was coming closer it seemed less and less as any kind of danger. The one who was walking out there didn´t care at all about if somebody heard him or not. That wasn´t something that any kind of hunter or one of those cursed fiends would do.

As he waited for the intruder to come out of bushes, he grabbed the handle of his dagger. Just in case.

To his suprise, from the bushes came out grey pony with cape on his head and walked right by the hunter, to the fire, where he lied down and besides short glance towards him, he didn´t pay any attention to the human. Instead of that he just stared into the flames.

Hunter couldn´t really say if he was mare, stallion, or how did he exactly looked like. All of that because of his cape.

Since he didn´t seemed as much of a threat, hunter decided to get his attention.

“Do you need help?” asked carefuly. He couldn´t not notice that the pony was unicorn, so even if he didn´t seemed dangerous, he definetely had magic to use.

“Does it even matter? You help me and I will just suffer longer.” answered him quiet male voice, suprisingly young.

“Life isn´t suffering. It depends on how you will live it.”

“Naive. There is no hope in this raped world.”

“Think whatever you want. I have my goals, and I will accomplish them, no matter what condition the world is in.”

Pony still stared into the flames, but his voice sounded much more sadder then before.

“Naive.”

Hunter was interested by this pony. Most of survivors were so lost in themselves that they wouldn´t react even if somebody died directly in front of them. But this one was sane enough to have a conversation with him. That meant that there still was hope for him and the human always used opportunity to show it to somebody.

“Here, take this!” he grabbed the pouch, which he found in wolf´s stomach and threw it in pony´s direction. Few of the crystals fell out, but that was exactly what he wanted.

Grey pony looked at them and the hunter could hear quiet rumbling, coming out of pony´s belly.

“Why are you doing this? Why aren´t you broken as everybody else? What makes you continue?”

Hunter didn´t say anything for a while and focused on the meat above the fire.

“It´s not important to know why should you continue, but to know what made you want to begin in the first place.”

“And what was that?”

“I am searching for Ponyville to...” he couldn´t finish his sentence, because the grey pony suddenly stood up, so fast that his cape fell off and the hunter could see purple eyes angrily shining through black and purple mane, which´s streams were falling into his face.

“Don´t talk about Ponyville!” shouted the pony, but even though he was seemingly very mad, his horn did not shine.

“Why not?” the hunter was suprised by his sudden change of mood, but also was curious about his reasons.

“It reminds me how the world used to be! How beatiful it was until somebody destroyed everything!” he pauzed for few seconds. “What´s funny about that?” growled, when he noticed weak smile on man´s face.

“See? You are able to get mad. That means that there are things you care about.”

He raised his head and his simple light blue eyes met with those purple ones.

The grey pony freezed as he realized the meaning of his words.

“What are you...talking about?” his voice was shaking and weak, as he fought his inner battle.

“If you were as broken as you think you are, you wouldn´t feel anything. No hatred towards the one, who brought upon us the Great Breaking. Hell! You wouldn´t even talked to me.”

“I guess you are right. There are things worth living for. I just was...”

“Scared?” tried to help him.

“That as well. But mostly I was too focused on how everything changed and on my misery.”

The grey pony picked off the ground one crystal, that the hunter gave him and bitt off piece of it.

“So what are you going to do now? Revenge?”

“No. At the end, revenge would just destroy my life inti pieces. There is something different. As I said, I was too focused on the lack of hope in this world, so I didn´t even notice that I don´t have any memories on what I did before the Great Breaking. I know how the Equestria was, but that´s about everything.”

“So, you want to try discover your past?”

“Heh. I am not gonna try. I will do it. That lack of memories makes me feel, as if I had hole in my chest. And I want it to stop. You said that the most important thing is to remeber, why did I start. Well, I maybe don´t know that, but I surely know, why am I starting right now.”

His eyes shined with life, which hunter didn´t see for very long time. He was actually suprised, how quickly did this pony find a way to go in his life, but since he seemingly wasn´t insane and just wished to be, the realization wasn´t difficult. He just needed a little push.

“I am happy for you. Don´t you want to travel with me? I think that we both will feel more comfortable together, rather then alone.”

“Can I?” for the first time. The hunter heard some joy in pony´s voice.

“Sure. My name is Dust.”

“My name is...ehm...”

Unicorn´s face got all confused as he tried his best to remember, what he wanted to say.

Did he forgot his name too?

After a while, all the confusion dissapeared and pony sighed.

“Call me Shade. I fell like, whoever I was in the past, I am nothing more then his shadow, until I become whole again.”

Dust comfortably leaned against a tree, bitt off piece of wolf´s meat and watched Shade to chew hard pieces of crystals.

„You want to know where the Ponyville is, right?“