Sleep Well, My Knight
Written by Spaslan
Pre-read by epreeses1
Sunlight shone through the window, completely ignoring the light grey curtains. It was bleak, dreary, yet it shone brightly nonetheless. Opposite the window was a bed, small but comfortable. In it lay a small body, one of a colt, a young one. The body was still save for the slight movement of his chest, rising as his lungs filled with air, sweet oxygen being released into his bloodstream. Fatigue still crippled his body, his limbs still aching slightly. But he knew that he had to go to school. Despite what the other colts at school thought, a week in bed hadn’t been one of the most fantastic things ever. It had been horrible. Everything kept feeling worse and worse. His joints ached more by the hour, his head kept spinning from the slightest of movements, he was increasingly nauseous, and he had to go to the toilet all the time.
He wanted to stay in bed, yet he still pushed himself out of it, rolling onto the floor with a small thud. He rolled onto his hooves and stood with a slight wobble. Steadying himself, he walked to his table, packed his saddlebags, and went downstairs. The wooden stairs creaked softly underneath him, but he tried to make as little noise as possible. He didn’t know whether his parents were asleep or not, or even if they were home. They probably weren’t. They never were.
He made his way into the kitchen. The table towered over him, as if trying to block his path to the breakfast he wanted, even in his blurred state of mind. The table, however, hadn’t thought of filling the holes between its legs, giving the colt a far easier way of passing. Or he could have just walked around it. Frankly, he didn’t care that much, as he just wanted his breakfast. He pushed one of the chairs over to the kitchen counters, jumped up on it, and started rummaging through the various cabinets, searching for something to eat. When he had found what he was looking for – a box of his favourite brand of cereal “Celesti-O’s!” – he found a bowl and a spoon, poured himself a healthy amount of cereal, and quickly chowed down his breakfast, completely forgetting the milk.
New energy bursting through his system, he hurried up the stairs and into the bathroom, properly preparing himself for another day of school. He liked going to school, even if the other children didn’t talk to him much. It didn’t matter. As long as he was being taught something, he liked going to school. Quickly taking a bath and brushing his teeth, he went to his room and threw on his saddlebags. He went downstairs, out of the front door, yelled a goodbye for good measure, and went to school. Any semblance of sickness was gone from the colt’s face.
He didn’t have much time left. He had to get a move on.
But something slowed him down.
He didn’t really know just what it was. It was tall, heck, it might’ve been nearly twice his dad’s height. And his dad was a tall fellow. But the weird about this thing wasn’t how tall it was. The colt had seen minotaurs before, so he knew how their general stature was. But this thing? It had the same general stature, but it was smaller than a minotaur, and the horns were too small and nubby and odd, and it just looked so weird, but then again, most of its body was obscured by the slightly tattered, grey cloak it wore. Still, the creature looked wrong and out of place. Like it was some kind of mutant. It scared the colt, yet intrigued him as well. So he walked towards it.
The creature stared at the colt, its face obscured by the hood of its cloak. It just stood there, silently observing the colt as he moved towards it. It was still as a statue, even as the colt came closer and closer. Suddenly, the creature grabbed the colt, whispered into his ear, and threw the colt away. He got a glimpse of its face. Then, just like that, it disappeared. There was a flash.
The colt rubbed his eyes. What was he thinking about again? Something had disappeared. Or had there? No, that didn’t make sense. There hadn’t been anything there. Shrugging, he continued on his path to school.
The teacher droned on about some subject they already had been taught. It was the very basics of multiplication. They learned it weeks ago. It was just all pure repetition, nothing new. He couldn’t wait for this to be over. The clock went tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
The bell rang. Freedom awaited.
No one noticed him when he had arrived.
It was a bit odd. Normally, a small handful would at least acknowledge his existence, including the teacher. She was nice, he guessed, but she could be incredibly strict at times. He didn’t mind that all that much. In a way, he kind of liked it. What he did mind, however, was that she hadn’t even given him the time of the day. Today, even the teacher had ignored him.
So when recess came, he walked on home.
He had never done this before. The mere thought of leaving before the day was over made him angry. It was disrespectful towards not only the teacher and your parents, but towards society as a whole. Here was knowledge being readily distributed, so that you could become whatever you wished for. So choosing to not take this chance seemed moronic to the young colt. Yet here he was, doing exactly that. Although no one paid him any attention as he ditched school, he couldn’t help but feel regret as he left one of the buildings he held most dear.
But he went on his way home.
No one noticed him when he left.
The streets were deathly still. There were no one except him out on the streets, not even the occasional street-vendor, and there were usually plenty of those. Their empty booths seemed unnatural to the young colt. He even looked around now and then, trying to find someone – anyone – out on the streets with him, but all he got was another empty street – another empty alleyway. Just as he thought he saw someone, his eyes would start hurting, and he would forget about what he had seen. If he had seen anything.
Without seeing any other pony on his way, he finally came to his home. Light poured through the windows. The door opened creakily as he pushed it. Funny, it hadn’t sounded like that when he left this morning. He reminded himself to tell his father that the hinges needed some oil. The door opening cast light into the house, breaking shadows the colt hadn’t thought would be there. The curtains were drawn. He called into the house and readied an excuse for not being in school, but he got no reply. It seemed his parents were at work then. He grabbed a bit to eat and moved to the stairs. Yet, as he reached the stairs, something felt off. He went to one of the windows and removed the curtains. There was nothing there, but he swore that he saw a glimpse of grey. There were no one out in the streets, yet it felt like someone was watching him. Shrugging, he went back to the stairs.
A scream came from upstairs. It sounded like his mother.
The colt rushed up the stairs, running as fast as he could. The stairs, however, weren’t his friends. They stretched on forever, his mother’s shriek haunting him all the while. For each step he took, another would appear at the top of the stairs. Slowly, the walls turned orange in colour, then red, blue, and at last a bright, hot white. He couldn’t stop to think about it, couldn’t focus on it with the screaming coming from above. A wooden plank fell from above. He jumped away from it and hit the wall. It burned. Then it struck him.
The house was on fire.
Suddenly, flames he hadn’t noticed before licked the walls with the intensity of a lover, burning, charring the outer layer of wooden panels. The scream still sounded from upstairs. He sprinted up the stairs, and finally reached the top. There were flames everywhere, save for a small path he could follow. The fire was charring the various paintings his mother had made, the many photographs his father had taken. A family photo was fully engulfed in flames, the glass cracked from the immense heat. Little by little the glass fell away, and soon his parents’ faces had been burned away on the photograph.
He followed the path in front of him, the only place the flames didn’t dare to touch. The further he went, the clearer the air became, though the fires kept burning as intensely as ever. He could see his mother staring into a room – his room – with a mixture of horror and grief painted upon her face, the scream emanating from her. The colt tried talking to her, but she paid him no mind, ignoring him completely. He tried again and again, wanting to find reason in this chaotic world he had entered. He found none. He chose to pass her instead, enter the room. The screaming stopped when he did. His mother stood completely still, mouth locked.
Inside his room stood the form of a stallion – his father – watching something he couldn’t quite see. It was too far away, shrouded in darkness that not even the flames could remove. He walked closer and closer to both his father and the blackness. A heavy feeling of dread hung in the air. Even as the colt stood at his father’s side, the darkness in front of him would not relent. So he turned his gaze to his father. The stallion’s face was contorted into a mask of grief and shock, his mouth twisted in the form of an everlasting scream of horror and fear.
An orange light erupted to the left of the colt. A fiery light.
He turned to face it.
He screamed at what he saw.
There, amidst the flames, was a bed with the still form of a young colt. A colt he knew far too well.
It was himself.
The flames licked fervently at his still body, doing their best to devour his lifeless body and erase it from existence. The colt ran up to the bed, trying to stomp out the flames, trying to kill it before his body disappeared. Yet for every stomp, for every ember he killed, two more would spring forth, burning brighter than the ones he extinguished. His screaming carried on, ricocheting off the walls and echoing through the endless hallways he had put behind. That was when he realised it. He hadn’t heard the cacophony of his mother’s screaming.
It had been his own.
He turned around.
His parents stood in front of him, the flesh melting off their bones, hair and skin burning brightly. He stared at them in horror, and as they noticed his fearful gaze, they shrieked loudly at him. They charged. Their burning hooves came crashing down upon him, smashing into his body again and again. He could do naught but take the brunt of their attacks and scream in horror as he did. He remembered the strange creature and the two words it had whispered to him.
Wake up.
The colt woke in a cold sweat. The darkness was everywhere and the stench of soot and fire was still caught in his nose, though that had been years ago. His surroundings were foreign, twisted, but as the minutes ticked by, he remembered where he was. At the Blessed Sisters’ Orphanage in Manehatten. That dreaded place. But it was better than the streets.
The memories came flooding back. It had just been a regular day at school, there had been nothing out of the ordinary. Except for when he came home. The house was ablaze, fire spilling out of every window. He hadn’t been the first to notice. A large crowd and firefighters were already at the scene when he came, but the fire was too strong for them to handle. The colt had searched everywhere for his parents, but they were nowhere to be found. He asked around in the crowd, but they answered either with lack of knowledge or a pitying look. He understood them not. He had to find his parents. In the end, he chose to run into the house. The firefighters tried to stop him, but he snaked out of their grasp and charged into the house. The flames were everywhere, the smoke forming a ceiling of clouds over his head. He searched high and low for his parents, and after much frantic searching he finally found them.
They were holding each other as their corpses burned in the immense heat from the flames.
Next thing he knew, the colt woke up at the hospital. He had passed out from a lack of oxygen. If not for the bravery of one of the firefighters, the young colt would surely have died in the burning house. He cursed the stallion’s bravery. When he had fully recovered at the hospital, the colt had been transferred to the Blessed Sisters’ Orphanage. Hell on Earth. Now and then, he snippets of what could have caused the fire, but he never truly knew what had taken his parents from him.
And here he was. Crying. Bawling like a babe. The memories of his long-dead parents had brought forth neglected sorrow of many a year, and with it an immense rage. A flame burned within him; a flame that would not be easily extinguished. That night, the colt vowed to never be weak again.
And he never would.
Outside a window at the Blessed Sisters’ Orphanage stood a tall creature draped in a tattered, grey cloak. A twisted smile danced across its foreign features. The seeds had been planted. The Knight had been found, though his realm was still to be found. That, however, would come with time. As quickly as the creature had appeared, as quickly did it disappear, the cloaked creature seemingly being sucked into a vortex.
There was nothing outside the orphanage, just as there hadn’t been anything the last many hours.
Author's Note
Please do point out any errors you find. It would help me very much.
Rawr,
Spaslan.