The Tombstones And The Barbed Wires

Chapter 1. Washed Ashore

“Last night the so-overpraised Night Shift found another corpse on the embankment near the Castellane Bridge. Features: Earth Pony, young mare, prostitute. Cause of death was not stated, but it was said that it matched, without a doubt, the Lone Traveler’s modus operandi. Victim n°33.

Where is the police? The real one, that is.”

The Morning, 23.07+1027

_____________

The city stood in all its ominousness.

The sun had passed its celestial reign to a blemished and foggy moon. Hidden between a never-ending black sky, it poured its chiaroscuro bite onto the megalopolis ancient spires and buildings. Street lights flickered over the city’s arteries with a dirty orange glow, casting shadows onto the walls of this decrepit urban world. Monsters from my imagination inhabited the stained windows and gutter-like passageways.

A massive clock tower loomed the city centre, spearing out of a hill one could mistake with an underground creature’s overgrown vertebra. Its dark presence crawled over like the uncaring stare of a mother glaring at her undesired children from afar. It struck at me how dangerously bent and crooked it was, an antique product of an ill mind that threatened to fall at any time… And still, it remained, unbreakable, standing against the cursed work of time. Its large and wide, white dial was a zit in the overwhelming city’s darkness. Its wicked hand was going forth in fit and starts, creaking. It struck noon and its bells yanked, roaring their ripping, high-pitched, and discordant cries across the lands. My bones shook at the eerie view and sounds.

The ship I was travelling on passed under a hundred-foot high bridge. This architectural monster cast in rusting brass marked the harbour entry with its open mouth. Despite its overwhelming size, it allowed newcomers to take a peek at the commercial hub of the sprawling city. It was buzzing with life, agitated, rushing and sweaty with all the ponies, griffins, and many others species wandering around the boulevards the place had. Each living thing there had a destination in mind and goals that I couldn’t fathom yet.

The city, this urban monster, was a pony-sized ant hill that had stretched to a gargantuan extend. It reeked a dull perfume of anonymity as hundreds of thousands, if not millions lived here; all meant to be born and to die there, in the belly of that ogre of brickwork and shadow games. It was a living machine, slowly growing over miles and further across the region: a bay carved out of a series of high, snow-less mountains. The sky glowed for a glimpse of a second. A loud rumble quickly followed as the far cry havoc of thunder cracked open in my ears. Dark, acidic sludge started to fall down. Heavy, it stunk as it soaked me through my robe. The downpour was dragging down the filth dumped by factories that etched the horizons with their dark silhouettes. The black drops forced down the carried aloft trash. The whole world was being smashed onto my hooded robe with such a strength that I couldn’t move. I felt like anvils were being riveted to my limbs.

The boat neared the end of its fare, the docks, that was just twenty feet away. Its chimney cracked a loud whine that came with an excruciating, lung-tearing, black steam that retched my insides. I coughed, tears in my eyes, gagging as I raised my hoof to my muzzle. The paddle steamer’s wheels sloshing up and down stopped right in their track, bringing the harbour’s murky waters up onto the wooden deck. Horrid stench splattered everywhere.

Despite the rain, the docks swarmed with the crews of many docked boats discharging of their content. Nopony cared that those ships threatened to sink at any moment. They waited to be emptied and filled again, idle in the creeping darkness. Some swashers rested between broke-open crates that urchins had looted or were still looting. Rats hopped between the clattering hooves or claws. Soldiers watched over that endless waltz of broken backs.

The sewers drained an atrocious stirring mix down the roads, gurgling out their content right into the shores. Despite this hellish sight, a few old bucks were fishing with long nets down a small embankment bordering the West end of the port.

I looked North, and felt minuscule. Every habitation creaked on its foundations, three storeys-high at minimum. The walls trickled with darkness, giving to the red-bricks that shaped the city a gutted look. The rain formed tears under the windows, and the light that still weaved below the locked-up doors formed as many rueful smiles as the tears that the sky shed. The street lights dimly blazed over the whole play, reflecting in many, tired, wandering eyes.

This creature, infant of a thousand years of architecture stacked one upon the others, worked to twist my perception of reality and geometry. I felt lost.

“Welcome to Warclaw!” the captain screamed to reach us over the ambient noise. “Terminus, everypony out of my boat!”

The steamer hissed a loud complaint, kicking me out of the shocked reverie. My eyes settled back on what and who was surrounding me. Crates stacked upon the others and overcrowded ponies waiting for the pontoon to finally be set between the earth and the boat. Whispers, cries and hopes mixed around me in one unimaginable cacophony of feelings. Too eager to finally step back on the ground after that forty-one day of travel from the South, we started to buzz. We were many there, at the end of a long travel to reach that place: Warclaw, the last standing city of this cursed world.

The rain burnt and froze me at the same time. My brain just shut and as soon as large wooden ramps were set, I just let myself be carried away by the crowd. Soldiers shouted over the clatters of hooves and the screams of the families trying to reunite. I feared for my belongings. Jostlers were so easy to stumble upon and pass by carelessly.

A thunderbolt slashed through the sky over my head with a hurting brightness. The dock trembled. A baby foal broke into a cry. I wished to away from here. I was too tired, too broken. My hooves hurt from standing up, my eyes ached from restless nights, my belly growled with hunger, and my mouth retched with thirst. Some soldier wearing a rusty iron armour with a second-hand helmet, shoved me aside back in a line: the mare line.

“Each immigrant has to go into his or her own line, one per gender, one per race!” another higher-graded military barked, standing on a pedestal made of scavenged empty crates. His armour was a makeshift of metal pieces pasted together. It was still more pristine than the common armed folks that forced us into specific lines. “Foals go with their mother! Wait your turn! Don’t make a mess of yourself or we’ll have to use force.”

I saw swords, halberds, and spears, rusty and trickling with the downpour. I also caught the glimmers of one or two of those new weapons, subject of many heated conversation in the bars: black-powdered fire engines of death. The soldiers kept those precious tools hidden behind their holed and rotting black capes. My line was already stretching from the end of the dock to the bowels of the boat. The navigator that had yelled at us to leave his ship was throwing orders around at his crew. He was an old, cream white earth pony with a dark grey mane. As always no cutie mark. He was guiding around hurried ponies, already scrapping the content of the boat’s hold. Business, as always. I narrowed my eyes, he had stopped a group of ponies from stepping outside the boat. A family that hadn’t paid yet. The father stared at his gaolers with widened eyes. I saw a plea I couldn’t hear over the din forming on his lips. I looked away.

I looked away, indeed, back to the plot of the mare before me, also waiting for her turn. Her indigo hooves shivered and her brown tail was swinging sideways. She was whimpering, holding her belly, a pitiful bag of bones, with her left forehoof. I saw blood squirting on her fur. Stabbed. In the confusion, somepony had left a gushing jab on her side. I hadn’t seen anything. I… The wound was not too deep at least. But here, in the filth and agitation, gangrene was the enemy, not the knife. I looked around, searching for the assaulter, but I kept silent.

“Next!” a voice cracked five-pony lengths in front of me.

Focusing back, I fell in line, took a step forward, and waited.

When it came to the mare before me to turn up, her hoof and chest were soaked in dark red, dripping down on the wood and scrapped pavement. Ghoulish, she struggled to step forth and stand. She stumbled before two ponies, a military and a unicorn stallion wearing what seemed to be a filthy chirurgic suit… or was it a butcher attire? I couldn’t really tell in the darkness. I couldn’t really tell; he had been splattered in the mare’s fall. She couldn’t raise her eyes, moaning in pain, curling over her wound. Her state, of course, didn’t slip through the two ponies’ attention. Yet, they did nothing but asking two simple questions.

“Name? Reason of immigration?”

“Dan- Dandelion,” she whispered, gagging on her tongue as breathing was putting her in a painful and stressful plight. “Working.”

“You can’t work. You’re not fit.” the doctor pony said, mustering all the neutrality of the world in that very four words. He turned toward two guards who nodded back at him. “Take her away to the infirmary, make sure she has no fleas.”

She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She let them both carry her away, her limp hindquarters scrapping their kneecaps on the ground. I raised my hoof, willing to say something, but… I focused back on the two ponies. They stared back at me. The military chef yelled, “Next!”

I did as ordered. I stepped in front of them, head hung low.

“Strip off,” the captain yelled. “Now.”

I shivered, and slightly dunked my head between my shoulders, shocked at the bluntness of the request.

“Strip off, or I make sure one of my pony does it for you,” he slurred at me.

I gulped and untied my robe, threw the hood back on my shoulders and let the whole thing slip off my hide onto the ground. I winced as my attire started to suck in the content of a murky puddle below my hooves. The rain smashed onto my hide and ran through my thin fur as if had had been shaved naked. The numbing coldness in the air washed over my flesh. Tremors slithered across my body. My eyelids started to close by themselves.

I wasn’t in the prime of my youth anymore. I knew that. I wasn’t a beautiful mare anymore. I knew that too. However, the way they glanced at me still stung. I knew myself enough to know the first thing they’d peer at: not at the bleached blue-coated mare in her late forties, wrinkles under her dark-ringed, blue eyes, not at her dishevelled and badly cut emerald mane with white streaks that stretched down her neck, not at the apple green bandana that held it from falling before my eyes. None of this mattered in their hawking eyes.

My neck was the subject of all their attention, where an all circular mark bore at my skin. A reminder of a painful past I wanted to forget so direly imprinted into my flesh. My fur had never grown back there, tracing a complete round furrow into my flesh. A rope had had burnt away my skin, leaving a deep trace like the bite of some savage animal. I closed my eyes, trying to cast away the memories… wiggling around a noose… gagging. The rope was not here anymore but… its embrace would forever remain there. It was always lurking down to my most terrifying nightmares. I froze, shivers trickling down my spine like cold sweat.

“You,” the doctor called at somepony outside my vision. “Strip her off. Check on her. Vermines. Parasites. Complete check-up.”

Somepony shoved my robe away. I stiffened. Hooves rubbed on my coat, unclipped a small bag I had forgotten I had. It flopped down on the wet tiles in a splotch. The hooves stretched my fur apart, seeking for insects and other vessels of illness. He inspected some samples of my mane he’d plucked out. Then, his hooves went further down where it shouldn’t have. I whimpered, trembled, and swallowed up. It will be over soon. Don’t move. Don’t say a word. It will be over. Soon. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine. Just. Fine.

I was crying when the inspector pushed me forward with the same level of caring. My legs wiggled horribly. The unforgiving world reeled around my head. I barely kept myself from vomiting.

“She’s clean,” the stallion behind me notified. I did not even have the courage to look back at him.

“You can go,” the doctor said, pointing at my stuff so that I get it off the line.

“Go to the next line,” the captain added.

There was another line?

Not just one. I went through a few checkpoints, each time, they asked the same questions meddled with some new ones. Origin. Name. Age. Race. Gender… if it was not blatant enough. Repetitive and unbearable. At the end of the ultimate line, ponies had to go through a tent. Every time, a flash cracked inside and two minutes later the pony was leaving by the other side of the tent, free to go.

When my turn came up, I slipped in and faced a grey mare, a bun of white mane sitting on top of her head. Next to her stood an indigo stallion. He glanced at me, scanning me from tip of tail to top of ears, and readjusted a large contraption: a box camera.

“Take off your hood. Readjust your mane. No smile. Look at the objective,” the mare said mechanically.

There was a large sheet of immaculate white paper stretched in the back of the tent. I walked up to it, looked at the photograph and his apparel. My hood slipped off my shoulder. I tried to push back a lock of wet mane off my face, but it kept falling back.

“Three, two, one,” the stallion announced.

The flash blinded me. As I rubbed my eyes, the mare started a last check.

“Name’s Carat?”

I nodded, grunting at the pain in my eyes.

“No surname?”

I shook my head.

“Forty-seven years old?”

“Yes,” I moaned.

“Origin’s…” She paused, surprised, looked at her partner with an expression mixing wonder and shock. Then she resumed, “Equestria?”

“Yes.”

Awkward silence ensured.

“Place to stay?”

Her pinprick eyes hawked down at me. I gulped.

“I’m fit. I can take care of myself until I find a job,” I explained as my guts were wrenching with fear.

She smiled and turned over her stallion photograph. “Ready?”

“Just give me two more seconds and… it’s done,” he announced, tired.

How many had they seen tonight? How many remained to be seen yet?

A crack of fire blasted in the background. Ponies screamed. Clatters of hooves echoed through the fabric of the tent. I heard muffled military orders. Armoured hooves and claws trooped past the tent outside. Another crack ripped the air and the panic was already tamed.

Calling me back to reality, the mare hoofed me a small green card, hot from being just covered with a shiny substance that had made it rigid. Along with my credentials, I could see my face, that same dishevelled basic green mane and the same light blue coat, the same exhausted eyes and features, covered with wrinkles. The snapshot had also caught a speck of my neck scar. I hated photos. I really did now.

Tired, I readjusted my hood, bid them an unheard farewell, and stood in the nether outside. The deluge hadn’t stopped. The sky was still as dark. I wanted out… Out of this retching basement of the world that was Warclaw. And still, we all knew, small and big, rags and rich, that here was the best we could ever have… that we would ever have.

I erred on the docks, levelling up until it reached the true entrance of the city. The sign said ‘South Gate’. At the top of this open gate made from blacked iron stood three massive words that struck deep at my soul.

‘Freedom through industry’, I read, and hung my head low.

Cold and dank, a draft of wind smashed my face, washing over the narrow street caged between two façades marred with slurring. A series of posters flapped over the walls. One ripped off its nails and flew up to my hooves. It was a general announcement, the paper was already wet and yellow. Its black and red ink had leaked under the rain, crooking the scripture in a chilling way.

‘To every inhabitant of Warclaw,

– Report any unordinary behaviour – Report any crime – Report any misdeed –

For the tenth consecutive month the plague has been taking its toll on our gorgeous city. Keep up the fight against the malady:

Report any strange symptoms to the CPS,

Burn your dead,

Burn their belongings,

Do not let it spread,

Stay safe,

The CPS is working on a cure.

– Report any unordinary behaviour – Report any crime – Report any misdeed –

**Committee of Public Safety.’

Between the text and the bottom of the paper had been printed a large stylised temple which three colonnades sported the same motto, ‘Work, Family, Fatherland’. Its pediment beamed the three capital letters of the Committee of Public Safety, enclosed in a griffon’s claw.

It had been mass-printed, stamped on every wall I could see… Repeated over and over again. Some had been defaced. Red, white, or whatever colour of pain had been used, the writings on the wall all bore the same messages: “They forgot us”, “Where is the cure?”, “The rock always hurtles down”, that one was weird… And… “Who will bury my children if I’m gone?”

My heart pinched only to turn to ice as I heard a sullen, aloft scream. Stay safe, the words had said. Stay safe.

I ran through the streets and paths streaking the city. I jumped over a hobo: a slender, drooling, and white-eyed griffon. His wings were missing, leaving two stumps of flesh wiggling lamely on his back. I hurtled down the streets as fast as I could and passed by groups of drunken sailors, sat down at the table of some pubs with obscure names. They sang words that escaped my flopped ears. I bumped into a mare, stumbled, and got back to running.

“Whore!” she shouted at me as I trailed away, sweating under the rain.

I kept going. I couldn’t cry, not now. I had finally arrived to the Eastern Bead. I shall be safe. Should…

A massive, slowly falling apart church cast its shadow onto me. It was built in the middle of a narrow paved esplanade and the lack of space had forced its architect to stretch the construction towards the sky. No bells rested in the hearth of its dull and crooked tower. The gargoyles and statues, either armoured ponies or griffins of war, trickled with tears of rain. Sculpted to swagger around, they had lost all idea of grandiose and were displayed so their heads bent and would look right at the passers-by. The erected ponies had wings and horns. Those alicorns made of stone were devouring me with their empty, shadowy sockets. A thunderbolt cracked and flashed over their features, reflecting into the dark rivers vomiting from the church’s many drains. Gusts of wind whistled through the holes in the steeple. I rushed to the door, ready to knock on it wildly, as the storm boomed brighter and louder above me.

The door cracked open under my sheer weight and I lamely stumbled in, head first. My chin hit the floor in a painful thump and I lay there for a long moment, my rear still peppered by the roaring rain outside. Lying there wasn’t a bad option in the end. I wanted the world to stop spinning so horribly. I hoped my legs would stop shaking. I yearned to curl up next to a fire. My belly ached so much I cramped my hooves around it, finally stretching away from the entrance. I think I cried, the numbness and cold bite on my cheeks sucking my senses away. One thing remained, though. Closing my reddened eyes, I could still feel those alien hooves rushing over me, plucking, stretching, scrutinizing…

After tens of minutes spent waiting for nothingness to swallow me, I realised I couldn’t stay like this. Marble beneath my cheek had warmed up to my own low body temperature. The belt buckle of my nearly undamaged bag strapped to my flank clattered on the ground with my quivers. It was definitely improper for a church… for any civilised place. I sat on my hindquarters, grunting under the strain put into my limbs. I pushed myself to stand up, though my hooves were shaking from exhaustion. My hood nearly slipped off my murky hide, a small bag of bruises, whines, and bones.

As I sighed, my voice echoed through the building. Suddenly flooded by the absence of choirs or walking ponies, struck at by the silence that adorned the church, I lifted my eyes and saw a barren nave. Mangled illuminations poured from a ceiling made of filthy transverse arches. The middle of ceiling showed a large, stained glass dome from which a lone and large candelabra carrying hundreds lit candles dangled its song. Days had clearly passed by this antique place and, left stranded above my head, the candle wax had trickled down into small heaps on the black and white tiled floor.

There was no bench for the scarce pilgrim to sit on. The aisles had no painting nor tapestry. Every wall was just a dull façade of crackled white pain. Sometimes a patch of black moss had settled around the humid cracks streaking the architecture. One of the shapeless, stained glasses that formed the bema’s wall even had fissures and holes. The scent of decay plagued the place, and I could hear the wind whistling through the holes in the walls and windows. As I walked up to the centre of the church, I stopped, head hung low at the sight. The light descending in flickers from the ceiling was cast onto a massive statue that stood alone in place of an altar. Chills crawled down my spine. My wet mane stood on edge with a mix of thrill, reverence, and fear. Awestruck, my mouth slowly dropped as I was facing the sculpted shapes of two intertwined, caregiving alicorns.

“Celestia, and… Luna… Oh, dear,” I whispered, shocked. It had been so long.

Hovering over a sun and a moon made of stone merged into one single chiselled orb, the statue was regal in its size, at least five times a pony’s height. The immaculate, simple block of marble had been carved out into two smiling beings I hadn’t seen for decades. Celestia had a motherly smile that ponykind had grown up with and forgotten only recently. Melting to a deep shade of grey at its base, the marble changed to a jet black colour on its other half. Deified, Luna bore many silver linings, showing a stern expression and, opposed to her older sister, carrying a complete, antique, and pompous armour straight from the old ages. Her helmet was missing, though. The sculptor had left their wings folded, which wasn’t a good artistic choice in my opinion. However, had they been spread out, the church wouldn’t have been big enough to contain the sculpture. I came to wonder if the church hadn’t been built around the statue. I chuckled at an invisible pony trying to figure out how to organise the mess the construction should have been.

My eyes drifted away from the massive statue, its cleanliness contrasting with the church itself, and fixed my eyes on its pedestal. Paper, piece of tissues and parchments dangled limply from dozen of metallic poles riveted inside the stone. Taped, glued, or hammered, they came by thousands, covering the mass of polished rock with a foot-thick of scribbled words. They were prayers, some recent, other already decayed by the work of time and the ambient humidity. The small and cold breeze washing over the bema made their tips flap slowly.

“Are ya ‘ere ta address a praya ta the princesses?” a foreign-sounding, male voice slipped into my left ear. I flipped over, squeaking loudly.

A hoof on my chest, heaving painfully, I found myself at the feet of a stallion at least ten years my cadet. His dull yellow mane was falling over his light brown face, half of it hidden behind a far too large black toga folding over his rachitic sides and his sunken face. His smile forced on the prominence of his cheekbones and barred his face with faint wrinkles. He gave me his febrile hoof.

“Never,” I hissed and groaned as he helped me get back on my hooves, “ever do that again.”

“What’s the craic, lady? Ya do look tired ta be on the lash outside.” He gave a gentle tired laugh, which I answered with a frown, trying to grasp the words his chuckling, thick accent was throwing at me. “Is not proper to a fine lad’ to get shagged off by the rain. Don’tcha come by me fire?”

“Well, thanks, sir,” I replied, shaking myself from the rain soaking both my hide and clothes. Raising my eyes to the ceiling, I whispered, “What is that place…?”

He looked at me with a blank stare, then cracked a low and trailing giggle, “T’is nothin’ but a church, lady.”

He shook my hoof vividly, sending tremors up my leg and down my backbone.

“So…” I hesitated, speaking through my vibrating teeth. “Are you a sort of a priest?”

He paused and raised a hoof to his beardless chin. His narrowing eyes locked on something hovering above his head as if he tried to find an invisible idea hanging there.

“Of course,” he confirmed. “Name’s Ejit. I’m the monk of that fair brickwork.”

“Carat,” I gave back the courtesy.

“Like I said, dah! I’m the keepa of this place,” he rambled on. “Helpin’ ponies and such in their daily life. I’m so happy ta see people still coming by me.”

Still holding my hoof, he led the way behind the large and regal statues. There, a crackling hearth had been dug in the ground and filled with sizzling embers. The bright light washed warmth over my wrinkles. I caught a meek smile on Ejit’s tired face. The burning bite filled me with joy as the freezing sensation dwelling in my numbed limbs began to fade. For a couple of minutes, we stayed there, standing in front of the resting light, respecting a religious silent only broken by Ejit’s recurrent sighs.

“So, are you worshiping Celestia and Luna… as gods?” I asked meekly, trying not to offend him.

I had heard of cults growing in the gutters of the villages and shanty towns that still survived around the world. Ponies and other species were trying to nurture the last, remaining bonds they had with the grandeur of the past. He chuckled softly, swallowed and brought his hoof to his chest.

“Do ya ‘ave faith, m’lady?” he asked, his cheek over-stretched by a smile kept up for too long.

My mouth swung open a little as I folded my legs beneath me. Sitting in front of the soothing fire along with this strange and welcoming Ejit, I gave a quick glance at the statues. The question had struck me as bizarre. I wasn’t fond of metaphysical questions and, to be honest, I had simply pushed that mess under the rug.

“Faith? I wonder…” I let out a long breath as I looked up at the hidden faces of the two alicorns. “They aren’t… here anymore to guide us all, are they?”

I smiled a little, scrunching up my face, having a hard time to be convincing… That’s why nopony ever played poker with me.

Ejit shook his head disappointedly. I shouldn’t have said that, I knew it. Although, I still had said it. I had often caught myself whispering words to both Celestia and Luna. I knew it was stupid, but somehow, I… I needed it. I looked down dismissively, staring at my hooves as if I could set them on fire. Truth hurt. It always does.

“Would ya share a prayer with me?” he asked, the same overbearing smile on his face.

Not even waiting, he held my right hoof between his and intoned a long, sad tirade that slipped in my mind like a contagious illness. I could just listen to his whisper of lament.

“Dire needs call for coalescin’,

In dark times comin’,

When worlds shatter,

Lone souls wander.

When truth fades away,

Minds stray.

The vice,

That took a hold on our minds of ice,

It cannot mend a broken splice.”

I lowered my eyes as he closed his. His hooves gripped mine and I couldn’t let go of them. I just buried my snout beneath the hollow of my shoulder.

“Pony hates and Pony lies.

Though trust, he must grasp,

Has not price in a world goddesses despise.

Lost forever, askin’ for a path in the nether,

Mind crawls through the path of faint hopes,

And others’ vain words.

Searchin’ for will, wallowin’ in false virtues,

Unprepared to back the wishes under your sights,

Ponies search for a sign,

But to resolution they cannot resign.

Yet, we all keep searchin’ for your line.

Pony kills and Pony dies.

Under the blackened skies,

And goddesses he still defies.

Pony himself in violence exerts

And Pony hurts,

Unaware that the other,

In fact is his brother.

Selflessness,

Forgotten virtue,

Cannot fix the cursed city,

Where is much needed,

Your way of forgiveness.

Through the gates of Tartarus,

Making one way to greener lands,

Pony forgot how to feel.

Through the lands of the ill,

He buried his soul in the hills.

But, should we blame our mother, the War,

For our misled misdeeds?

Pointless, indeed.

Compassion is nothing but a need.

In time of clashin’ wills and stronger crimes unleashed,

We ask for your guidance,

When our neighbour can’t share even a glance,

At those who lies around the shallow street.

Altruism, why Pony sees you as an enemy?

He asks for nothin’ to be done,

The pony only seeks a remedy,

Just happiness for all the aeons to come.”

He finished and hummed softly a lyric-less song that brought a tear to his eye, tear he rapidly wiped away.

“It’s not particularly uplifting,” I chuckled sadly, wiping a tear off my cheek.

“Should really a praya be happy?” he asked me, tilting his head on the side.

“Well,” I started… A louder thunderbolt cracked outside the cathedral

A loud crack burst in the bema, echoing on its decrepit walls and reaching my ears in a distort hear-splitting complaint. Dark purple, blue, green, and yellow bits slashed through my hide in a rainbow-coloured sharp rain, making me cry out in pain. As the bema’s stained glass dome came crashing down, something limp and foul-smelling fell along with it. With a sickening crack that grinded my teeth together, it bounced off the Celestia’s statue. Its head broke off and went shattering down on the tiled floor. Rain and wind invaded the bema in an uproar. The rumbling on the outside stormed the peaceful place and hushed the kiln I had sat before with its wet embrace.

“Oh, Dear. Oh, Dear!” I muttered, trembling, as I scrambled on my hooves.

Ejit lifted his starving carcass on his hooves and got round the decapitated statue. I saw his head drop a little, shaking as he sighed, “Not again.”

I shot him a bemused look and asked, “What do you mean, ‘not again’?”

He shrugged off my question, passed by me at an unbearably slow pace and walked to a remote alcove built in an aisle of the church. An intercom had been screwed to the wall. The wood and brass that made contraction had obtained that shininess only an antique and repeatedly used item could obtain. Ejit stuck his left ear into a receptacle. Ten times, he hit a range of black, polished keys built in the device.  The machine sparked twice, zoomed, and ringed. Then, he grabbed a miniaturised horn with his right hoof. His eyes low, stuck onto a paper nailed to the machine, he spoke with a dying, raspy voice.

“Ehm… Night Shift? Ya. It’s Ejit, church, I’ve got another dead.” He paused, a mare’s voice coming from the other side. “Na, haven’t touched it. I remember what y’all told me last time. Meh, suicide I think, th’ pone broke through ma dome. Though, he’s kinda seared… No repair handled by the mayor this time? Okay… Ye coming in a few? Alright. See y’all soon… Yeah, nopony leaves.”

He cast me a comprehensive glance, knowing I was listening. He was… tired. I swallowed as I understood I couldn’t bargain to leave. He knew my name. I turned my head to look behind the princesses’ statue where should be what… who had fallen. I walked around the paper-invaded pedestal, the rain drumming over the cold marble and ripping the rotten papers from their creaking pole. Watering myself under the heavy rain, I stood before the black shape at my hooves. I had seen death so often it had become a second nature to me. But, to be honest, even accustomed eyes could find weirdness, that small difference that can break our sense of reality. At the time, the offsetting truth had been so blatant it took me a dozen of seconds to understand. The body had broken in its reckless fall, now laying in a physically impossible position. Its skull had shattered, spreading a series of cracks on the tiles. But there was no blood apart from a slow, and murky stream of black crawling out of his hears. The legs were cracked and horribly bent. Rotten and stinking scabs that lay around its landing point. The droplets of rain hitting on its body steamed away in spite of the coldness of the church.

I looked above me, in the dead of the black-cloudy night, marred with countless acrid drops of greyish rain. It was a cold and dank evening. Looking down at my hooves, I saw that the dome above my head had been made of two inches thick stained glass. It looked like a bad accident. So why could nopony tell me why all this seemed so weird?

Then it struck me like an anvil on top of my head. Why had it seemed that this body had been cooked by a hellish fire… on a deluge day and dropped from enough height to break into the cathedral?

Nopony answered me. Looking at Ejit, he just lay, blank-eyed, his face buried between his trembling hooves. Mumbling incoherently, his torso was going back and forth in a slightly maddened waltz. I couldn’t hear his words. I only listened to the rain and the roaring storm outside. It was my little Warclaw’s kind welcome, with its shiny ‘happiness and dream-to-come true for all’.