The Winter

Chapters

Chapter 2: Earth Pony Magic
Chapter 3: Where We Find Strength
Chapter 4: Light in the Darkness
Chapter 5: Ghosts of the Past
Chapter 1: The Importance of Curtains

Chapter 2: Earth Pony Magic

When the world was young, the gods walked the Earth, at least according to the old stories. In the time before mortals, everything that lived, and everything that did not, was a grand and terrible creature too magnificent to describe. They were forces. They were concepts. They were outsiders and beyond time and space and good and evil. These were the old gods, and the eons they spent on our plane were but an eyeblink in their long lives.

In time, they would turn against one another, waging bloody war across the stars. They would fall, and their bodies would rot and become one with the universe. My father always told us that we are but parasites, festering in the corpse of a once-beautiful goddess. The earth beneath our hooves is what remains of her flesh, the rocks are her bones, and the magic that makes life possible is the cast-off from her brilliant soul, decaying along with the rest of her.

"Mourn for Epona, for she was stolen from this world," he would say.

I don't believe the old story myself, but I find it a haunting metaphor. I do feel like a parasite sometimes, in how I drain this forest dry just so that I can subsist. I hunt its animals, and I chop down its trees, slowly extinguishing what little life still remains here in the winter. If I live long enough, one day there won't be a forest here. It's fortunate, in that respect, that I shall die soon. At least, I expect to die soon.

I dreamed of Epona last night. As my eyes flicker open and I return to the waking world, I try to remember that dream. Her smiling face, her beautiful flowing mane, her soft coat and magnificent wings... she reminded me of another mare I once knew. And with that thought, I feel an aching pain in my heart, and have to close my eyes again and take a deep breath.

I climb out of bed and inspect the curtains, as I do every morning. No damage. They're holding. The window is still cracked from the previous day, but there's little I can do about that. I sneer at the thing and throw the curtains back over it. Filthy vermin out there, all of them. But the damage is done, and I shall have to live with it. I don't have any spare glass panes left out here, nor do I have the resources to make my own, and I wouldn't know how to, even if I did. By my age, I've picked up a lot of skills, but glassblowing was never one of them.

Sewing, however, is. Being okay for firewood for the moment, and not needing to go out for food today, I determine that I will spend this day repairing things. The button on my coat is the priority for now. I cannot go without even a single button. The looser my coat, the more places the wind has to get in. I refuse to let the cold kill me.

For the moment, I just move from room to room and check all the other curtains and windows. None of them have any problems either. I maintained those well enough to not have any of the same issues. Letting my bedroom curtain deteriorate so much was a rare act of monumental stupidity that I won't be repeating again.

Once done, I head to the kitchen and make myself a coffee. I have no milk, so I am forced to take it black. I don't like it black. I don't even like coffee, for that matter. But I also ran out of teabags. The next time I go to Barnsley, I will have a lot to buy. It will be expensive. I'll need a lot of firewood to sell to cover it all; it's not like I have anything else out here worth trading.

My coffee prepared, I sit myself down at the table by my unlit fireplace, where my coat, button and sewing equipment are all laid out for me.

"Right..." I croak. "Let's see if I remember this..."

Many hours later, I wake with a start, still sitting in my chair. My coat with the resewn button rests in front of me, my needle and thread off to the side. A cold cup of coffee lays on the other side of the table. I must've fallen asleep after I finished the job. One of the many problems of old age is that one stops sleeping entirely by night. I have to take short naps in the daytime. It can't be helped; I haven't got a choice in the matter. But it's not usually this cold when I wake up.

I glance sideways out the window and see that night has fallen. I take a deep breath, and hold it. I usually have the fire lit by this time of night; no wonder it's so cold. But if it's already dark outside, then I must have been asleep for a very long time. Almost the whole day.

My chair topples over as I scramble for the window, drawing the curtains as quickly as possible. I run from room to room, drawing the rest of them too. The kitchen, the bathroom, my bedroom, and the other bedroom. Once I am done, I gallop back into the main room and over to the fireplace. My hoof slams down on the handle of the poker, flipping it up into the air. I catch the handle in my mouth and whirl around to see if anything is behind me. I turn again. Then I back up against the wall and scan with my eyes. There's nothing in here.

I move from room to room a second time, this time also visiting all the rooms without windows, like the cellar, the pantry, and the office. Each time, I keep looking over my shoulder, making sure that my back is never exposed, and I do not move on until I am absolutely sure that each room is clear. As soon as I'm satisfied that there is nothing in my home, I return to the main room and start piling some logs into the fireplace.

I glance back at the table where my coat and sewing equipment still lie. I frown at them. Why did I sleep for so long?

It's already late when I wake up the following day. I groan and turn over in bed. Last night was terrible. The usual knocks at the windows never came. Paranoia overcame me. I spent the night moving from room to room, inspecting them again and again, so completely certain that they were already inside. Why else wouldn't they try to break in like they usually did? I was up too late. It must have been the early hours of the morning when I finally couldn't go on anymore and had to collapse into bed.

And now, I don't want to leave it.

Those things were toying with me last night. I'm sure of it. They saw that the curtains were open, but they didn't take their opportunity, or maybe they missed it, and so they decided to back off and let me think that they were already inside. They wanted me to sit in here and be terrified, and they were probably out there the whole time, laughing at me.

I kick my covers off and try to force myself up. I almost can't. I have to roll out of bed. I really don't want to get up again today. I want to just stay in bed, and not have to go out there and face the horrid winter. But I can't. I have things I need to do. I need more firewood. It doesn't last long at all in this cabin. I burn through it fast, and it goes twice as quickly on the days I spend inside.

I head over to the window and draw the curtains back. The crack is still there. The curtains remain undamaged. I think I see movement outside, and my eyes dart towards the side. Something just out of view. Could've been a wild animal.

It probably wasn't.

It's actively snowing outside as I trudge along the path to my latest clearing. Not quite a blizzard just yet, but I can still feel the ice forming on my nose. The air almost hurts to breathe, but still I take big gulps of it, because otherwise I feel like I'm suffocating. I think something is wrong with my lungs... My eyes sting and start watering. I feel a tickling in my throat.

I can't help it. I collapse against the closest tree, my axe dropping out and landing in the snow with a thump. I bring a hoof up to cover my mouth and cough. It's a loud, dry, hacking cough, and it just keeps going. I am there for several minutes, stuck in fits of coughing that leave me even more breathless. I fall over and lay in the snow, spasming with each subsequent cough. My coat gets soaking wet from the snow, and my sides are freezing, but I barely notice.

Finally, it seems to subside. I roll over onto my back and stare at the sky. Snow still falls on me. A layer of snow sticks to my coat and has already melted through. My face is also wet, but from my watering eyes rather than the snow. I let out a groan and try to pick myself up. I slip and fall again. This time I don't try to get up again. I close my eyes.

"Celestia... please..."

I wake up screaming and in terrible pain. My whole body is burning and stiff. Is this frostbite? I look down and see a furred and muzzled creature with sharp fangs biting into my hind leg. It looks up at me with yellow eyes and growls. I try to kick at it, but my legs are like wooden posts now. I'm not moving a limb so much as swinging a bat. I kick the beast in the face with the leg it was trying to eat, and knock it back.

As I climb to my hooves, it starts advancing on me.

"Stay back!" I yell, leaning against the nearby tree for support. "I'm warning you!"

The wolf does not care. It pounces and knocks me back over, leaving me on my back in a snowdrift. It's on top of me in moments, and I'm trying to hold it back and push it off with my forelegs, even as I can barely move them. If I were born anything but an earth pony, I might've already died.

With great effort, I roll us both over, sending the wolf sprawling back onto the path. I feel something lumpy and solid on my back. Rolling over again, I see my axe beneath me, and I pick it up with my teeth. It's cold to the touch, but I barely even think about it. The wolf charges. I swing, and connect with its skull.

As the red splashes over me, suddenly I'm not so cold anymore.

I cry.

Thirty minutes later, and I'm making my way home with a wolf skin pelt and firewood in tow, still drenched in blood. I will need to clean my coat now. It is filthy. But I haven't that many cleaning supplies. It's not something that I usually bother with; I live alone, and I've grown accustomed to my own smell.

And besides, it's normally a great help to smell like this. The animals of Skydark Forest know the smell of well-washed ponies, and they always come searching for them. Those encounters usually end in bloodshed. It's been many years since any but myself have been this way, but... I have seen it happen. I've seen ponies torn apart right before my eyes by the things that live out here. Twice, in fact. And both times it happened, it was the single most horrible thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I'm almost to the door of my cabin when I stop in place. I gently set down my firewood and the pelt. My injured hindleg still stings, but my other is still going. I lean on that one and spin in place a hundred and eighty degrees. The path behind me is empty.

A bush rustles a few feet away from me. My eyes snap to it.

"Oh, no you don't!"

I limp over to the nearest tree. The blood on my coat is still fresh, so I smear my forehoof in it and then begin painting the tree in the familiar shapes and symbols.

I close my eyes and chant.

"Arc-muund, shev horsa icks beleren hel facilio!"

The language comes to my lips as easily as if it were my native tongue. The symbols on the tree are completed, and they glow a bright red. My breath is stolen from me, and I nearly fall over, but I brace myself against the tree. I hear a distant screeching and a pained wailing. The bush rustles again, but nothing emerges.

I limp over to another tree on the other side of the path. I have enough blood to paint a dozen more trees, and I fully intend to.

I paint the next tree using the same symbols and the same chant. It, too, glows brightly amongst the forest, and a shimmering red barrier grows between it and the other tree. This time, I really do collapse in the snow from weakness, but I pull myself up and keep moving in a ring around my cabin.

"I can do this all day!" I shout.

It's a lie. I can't do this all day. I'd have to be an idiot if to think I could get through even three more trees, let alone anything near a dozen. My soul is too weak; I'd burn myself up. But the sounds of pain coming from Skydark Forest would almost make it worth it.

The third tree lights up, and I feel like I'm having a heart attack. As I lie in the snow, trying to catch my breath, I can see something in the corner of my eye. When I focus on it, it vanishes, but I see it there again when my vision focuses elsewhere.

"I see you. I see you. Go back where you belong and rot there!"

The fourth tree will have to be my last. I don't go for the nearest one. Instead, I gallop all the way around to the back of my cabin. I'll have to settle for a rough triangle instead of a ring. Once I reach the fourth tree, paint it, say the words, and subsequently have another near-death experience, the wailing noise begins to ease. The sound dies away. Soon, the forest is quiet again.

I haul myself up and limp around to the front of the cabin, passing through the red barrier twice to reach my front door; the placement of the trees I marked caused the barrier to go slightly through the walls of my cabin instead of entirely around it. I pick up my firewood and my wolf pelt, and I take in the sight of the forest around me. All is calm. All is peaceful.

I open the door, step inside my cabin, and drop everything on the floor. I don't both sorting it out or storing it anywhere. I strip off my coat and toss it aside, along with everything else. I'm soaking wet, freezing, and stiff as a board. I should be dead. Hope kept me alive through that misery. Hope that I could win. This is why I don't like hope. It makes me endure this horrible life.

I draw all the curtains, stumble into my bedroom, and lie down to go to sleep. There, I dream of dead gods and fallen kings.

Spring cannot come soon enough.

Chapter 3: Where We Find Strength

It is not until two weeks after I was nearly devoured that I dare to leave the safety of my cabin again. The ordeal left me weakened, and I had to spend some time recovering. I remained in my cabin for that time, eating and drinking the bare minimum to conserve supplies, getting plenty of bedrest, and spending my every waking moment doing the appropriate mental exercises to restore my magic.

Most ponies don't have to do what I do to keep going. For most ponies, there is never any risk of running out of magic. We are a social species. We keep together in our towns and cities, or in old times, in our herds, and we let our friendship and love for one another feed our magic. Emotion is magic. Or at least, it is potential magic. Friendship and love willingly shared is great magic indeed.

I have no friends. I have no love. I live alone out in this desolate place. So when I tax myself too heavily and my magic begins to run dry, as it often does, only my own emotions can prevent me from burning myself out. I must force myself to feel every extreme, and then I must internalise it all, else it might escape into the environment where it is no use to me. It's a trick that I picked up from a book which once belonged to my wife. It has saved me more times than I can count.

It is as I leave my study after one such session of magic-building that I throw on my coat and prepare to go out into the forest once again. I am not fully recovered, but I can walk on my leg again, and I am not at any risk of burning out my magic now. I foresee no need to perform any more blood magic in the near future. The wards I created in a hurry two weeks ago are still holding, and I don't usually need the extra wards in any case. Normally, the ones on my curtains do the bulk of the work.

I sigh as I push the front door open and step outside. I can only imagine how much easier my current life would be if I had only been born a unicorn. Unicorns don't have to perform elaborate rituals with material components to do magic. Not for simple spells, anyway. If I were a unicorn, everything would be easy.

Or at least, if I were a unicorn, these Celestia-forsaken beasts probably wouldn't think of me as such an easy target.

I return to the cabin later in the day with far more firewood than I usually bother to collect, and I stack it high in a pile around the side. Like I said before, firewood is the only thing I have worth trading. I can't grow anything out here, and town ponies aren't interested in meat or hides. I know that griffons trade in such things, but I've never seen a griffon in Barnsley. Come to that, I haven't seen a griffon anywhere since... I can't even remember. Certainly, I was a very young stallion back then, whenever "then" was...

It'll take at least a week of non-stop work to get enough firewood to be worth trading, but I have no other options. My supplies are low, and I'd rather not move on to a carnivorous diet. Meat is edible, but it is foul, both in how it is obtained and in taste.

As I settle in for the night and lie in front of the fireplace, I hear a tapping on the window.

"Go away!" I scream. "Go away!"

There is silence.

I smoulder to myself a while, glaring at the window which the sound came through. Intense as it is, not even my gaze can pierce the curtains covering it, but nonetheless I try.

"Hmph."

As I turn away and back to the fire, the tapping comes again. I feel my eye twitch.

"You monsters just don't know when to quit, do you?"

I climb to my hooves and grab the fire poker in my mouth. Quiet as can be, I creep across the cabin and over to my front door. The window being tapped on is right next to the door. I don't know what it is about this particular night, of all nights, which makes me want to go outside and physically confront the creature. I haven't even contemplated such a thing in years. I do not have the fortitude to fight one of them, nor the proper equipment, but for some reason, tonight, my blood is boiling. That this is an act of foolishness and that I will probably die somehow does not even enter my mind.

However, as I lay my hoof on the door and get ready to leap outside, a thought strikes me.

How are they by my window in the first place?

This one, singular thought is what stops me from throwing my life away. It forces me to stop and think. If something is at my window, then two possibilities lie before me: either the barriers have finally failed after two weeks of protection and relatively peaceful nights, which would be unusual, as they should have lasted a lot longer than that, or this creature tapping on my window right now is not one of the usual suspects, and thus was not repelled by the barriers. The former is more likely, but if it is the latter, then I could be about to rush into a fight with a new, unknown horror that I cannot possibly be prepared for.

I back away from the door.

It is frustrating, but since I have no way of checking the barrier's integrity without opening the curtains and looking outside, exposing myself to attack, I have no choice but to slink back over to the fireplace and to attempt to ignore the tapping.

I curl up into a ball in front of the fire and stare into the flames. Before the tapping began, I was preparing to reread one of my books. Now my heart is no longer in it.

The tapping on the window resumes.

Investigations this morning revealed that the barriers had, indeed, failed not long after I got inside the previous night. As I chop down my eleventh tree of the day, I contemplate what could've caused their early failure. Blood magic is powerful. There is a reason that putting up the barrier nearly killed me; I quite literally poured most of my soul into those spells. They burned me up from inside out because I used almost all of my power on them. Such a ward should have lasted a month more, at least.

For those creatures to have broken through the barriers after a mere two weeks, they must have been laying siege to them constantly throughout the nights. The thought that most frightens me is the idea that they have always been able to muster that much strength. If they could bring to bear enough force to shatter the barrier in two weeks, then surely they must be able to break through the wards on my curtains as well. In fact, they should be able to destroy my curtains faster than I am able to replace them.

I think back to the curtain in my bedroom, and how degraded it was when I had to replace it recently. I recall that I had, at the time, assumed that my own foolishness had allowed it to fall into such a state. But thinking back... was it truly me who was at fault there? Or had the creatures merely thrown more force at them that night?

Are...

I shake my head. It does not bear thinking about.

But I cannot stop the thought from crossing my mind.

...Are they getting stronger?

I miss a swing of my axe and lose balance. I have to lean on the tree. I take a deep breath.

No. They cannot be getting stronger. I'm not sure how they even could get stronger; I am their only food source out here, and they have not had any opportunity to feed from me.

Have they?

It's tempting to go back to how I was during my two weeks of recovery. I want nothing more than to barricade myself inside my home, set up as many wards as possible, and see if I can survive until the end of the winter on only the contents of my larder and my own body heat. However, I know that such an endeavour is doomed to failure unless I resort to self-cannibalism, and that is not a line I am willing to cross.

My third day out of the cabin is spent just as the last two were – gathering an excessive amount of firewood. I throw myself into the work today, determined to cut down the entire forest by myself. Already I have created a substantial clearing in the area I set aside for today's logging. This particular location is quite close to the edge of Skydark Forest. From this clearing, I can see out onto the Oldfield Moors.

When I am done cutting my logs for the day, I take a walk towards the forest's edge. Immediately the wind worsens as the wall of trees no longer protects me. My scarf billows behind me, but I push forward and out into the open. I did not lie when I said that I hate the moors for how windy they are, but as of late, the forest has felt even more oppressive than usual. I relish the brief escape.

Darkness is already setting on the land, and I cannot see far across the moors in the low light. Still, I survery the landscape as best I can. My eyesight is not what it was, but I try to pick out a few familiar items. I see the rock I once climbed upon to proclaim myself king of the hill. I see the small ditch where I once hid a tin of cigars to keep them from those who wanted me to quit. I see the pathway that I once walked as a young stallion on my way to see the cabin for the first time.

My gaze is drawn to the west, in the direction of Grimrise Hills. I feel eyes on me. Something's watching in the hills. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the weather, and I slowly walk backwards towards the treeline again, never taking my eyes off those hills. Whatever horror might lurk behind me now, I know that what's ahead is worse.

I dream of the moors that night. I dream that it is not winter any more, and that in the light of a springtime sun, I gallop across them and enjoy the freedom. I dream that I run as my earth pony ancestors did, in a wild herd that knows nothing of magic or tools. I gallop across the moors against the bracing wind, I meet the challenges of the day with the herd, and when the predators come, there is nothing that can save us. We fight, we die, we are eaten. And I awaken again reminded that ponies are a prey species, and that I am a decrepit old stallion who would be the first to be abandoned in a wild herd.

Sometimes I wonder why I cannot even let myself be happy in my dreams. Perhaps it is indicative of some deeper issue. Survivor's guilt, maybe? I do not feel like I hate myself. But then again, I'm not exactly proud of who I am, either.

I grumble and climb out of bed. Another day of chopping wood lies ahead of me. No use putting it off. I'll do what I did yesterday and work as hard and as long as I can today. Maybe if I keep doing that for long enough, I might not even need to spend the whole week chopping. I could take the seventh day off and have a rest, unless some new catastrophe strikes between now and then.

I throw back the curtains and look at the reverse side. My eyes widen, my blood goes cold, and my mouth hangs open at the sight of their condition.

They are getting stronger.

Chapter 4: Light in the Darkness

When I was younger and I first came to this forest, timberwolves roamed these parts of Skydark. They were a constant nuisance, and attacked anypony they saw. I myself nearly fell victim to them several times over the years. At first, I did not bother with them. I was naive. I thought that I could set traps to scare them off, and that they wouldn't keep attacking us so long as we proved that we weren't to be bullied.

I was wrong. They kept coming. A lone timberwolf does not fear death, you see. It is not a living animal, like ponies are. It is a magical construct, one of many bodies which carries out the will of a single entity, an ancient parasite known as a screaming tree.

Once, the screaming trees were like the entfolk. They too were once woodchildren, blessed by the Woodfather with legs to walk with and minds to think. Yet they were perverted by dark magic, and became slavish, bestial things. Their minds grew dim, their limbs rotted away, and they took root in the ground once more, never to rise again. But they still had souls, and so there was still magic in them, and a will to control it.

They made bodies out of wood so that they could still experience the world, but it burned their magic too fast. Unlike myself, they could not restore it with meditation, since they now lacked the capacity for higher thought. So they began to suck the forests dry, taking magic from other plants, and devouring the souls of the forest animals and their fellow woodchildren. And in time, they took the essence of those souls into themselves. That is why a timberwolf hunts and kills. It is not because it needs to eat. It is because the screaming trees consumed the souls of so many wolves that many of them now kill out of some distant, instinctive memory. The wolves within them yearn to run and hunt again as they once did.

My knowledge of magic really began there. Those timberwolves assailed us constantly, and one day, they crossed a line that they shouldn't have. I gathered all the reading materials in the cabin, and found what I needed, a tome of woodland lore written by one of the first pony forest wardens. He wrote of his observations of the forest, and of all that he had learned from his mentors, the entfolk, who were the original forest wardens. He wrote of the screaming trees, and how to destroy them.

Armed with this knowledge, I ventured deep into Skydark Forest, the deepest I ever went, and I took my axe with me. I am a woodcutter; my enemy was a tree. What happened next was inevitable. In a grove, deep in the forest, surrounded by dead trees and the skeletons of animals, I found the screaming tree. I do not know if it called for help from its timberwolves, but if it did, they never came in time. I cut down that accursed tree, uprooted its stump, and then I burned it all. From then on, there were no more timberwolves in Skydark Forest.

I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake that day. Maybe the screaming tree was the only thing holding back the other monsters.

My cabin doesn't have much in the way of siege defences. The wards on my curtains are basically it. They're extremely complex pieces of spellcraft that are difficult to penetrate for an outside force. A unicorn with a special talent in enchanting wrote the book that I used to create them with, but he neglected to explain how to use his spells without a horn. As an earth pony, channelling my magic through a ritual is already a laborious process, but it gets exponentially more difficult when dealing with higher-level spells.

My wife was a unicorn, and she was very much into magic and the occult. She once explained to me the workings of unicorn magic, describing it as being mostly thought exercise. Magic is directed by the mind, and channelled through the horn, where the effect it takes then depends on the picture that one holds within the mind's eye. More complex spells require more abstract thought.

Of course, an earth pony cannot enjoy anything so simple. While I must also engage in abstract thought and draw these complex mental diagrams, I cannot channel magic through a horn. An earth pony channels magic through their muscle, and they direct it into that which they touch. For me, spellwork requires earthly materials as well. It is tied more greatly to the physical world. I must find the right words, use the right materials, arrange it in the right pattern... All of it is a great hassle.

As I pace back and forth in my cabin, my breathing becomes quick, and my mind is racing. All I know of magic, rituals, and the soul, and it's done me no good. It only gives me the insight to say for certain that I am well and truly dead. The creatures have already won, and my efforts will all be for nothing. I can only delay the inevitable at this point. Granted, that was always what I was doing, but my doom seems that much closer now. If they can sustain an attack pattern of this strength and frequency, then they will quickly outpace me. I cannot create magical wards faster than they can destroy them. I simply don't have the power.

I stop, sigh, and tilt my head back, staring straight up at the ceiling. I am not a great sorcerer. I am not powerful, or smart, or even particularly good at this. She would have been able to endure. She was always so much better than me. So much cleverer. So much stronger. I don't know why I deluded myself into thinking that I could do what she did. How does a stallion like me stand against creatures like those? It's hopeless. It had been hopeless since the day she died.

The faintest hint of a smile tugs at my lips, and I lower my gaze to the cabin floor. I resume pacing. There's a certain liberty in hopelessness. I think I know now what my final fate will be. This can only end in death. This will be my last winter, without a shadow of a doubt. I will die here in this cold. But now that I know what the inevitable conclusion is, I have the power to decide how I reach it.

Burning down my cabin had been my original go-to plan for when I knew that death was certain. I enjoy fire. But thinking on it more, I don't think I'd like to burn alive. After such a long winter, the idea of dying in extreme heat may seem appealing, but burning to death is also painful. I still wish to die on my own terms, but I need a new method of suicide.

I stare into my unlit fireplace, contemplating my options. I could use the fire-poker, positioning it under my throat and forcing it in. I could also try drowning myself; my cabin does have a water tank and a bathtub. I'd need to heat it first, though. No matter what, I don't want to die cold. Dying warm is also something I could do in bed, now that I think of it. Self-suffocation may be an option. But... I can't keep holding a pillow over my own face once I lose consciousness... Hmm.

This is a conundrum, alright.

Finally, I hit upon the one thought I haven't considered. What if I go down fighting? It hits me like a thunderbolt. It's mad. It's scary. Dying in battle with the creatures? That is the outcome that all the other methods are intended to help me avoid. Those things will suck me dry and leave me a husk. There cannot possibly be a more agonising way to go.

As well, if I die in a magically weakened state, drained of my very soul like I was for those two weeks of rest, I will be guaranteed a very dark fate indeed. Some ponies believe in an afterlife, but even they agree that it is a pony's soul that passes on. It is their magic that continues into the next life. If I die to those things, there will definitely be no next life for me. I will cease to exist altogether, or else be consigned to the black oblivion of the Great Abyss, if the old legends are true.

And yet, the idea is intoxicating. Imagine the damage I could do if I fought them head-on. To think of how much suffering I could cause them if I was truly unconcerned with the concept of death. In hopelessness, when death is a certainty, I am free. I could fight like I've never fought before. In the end, could there be any greater death? One final blaze of glory, in a very different sense to the suicide by fire I was planning before.

In this moment, I make my decision. I know what I wish to die for now. I will die for revenge. I will die for my hatred, and my spite. I will die with disgust and loathing for this forest in my heart, and I will relish the pain I cause those creatures. And I will die laughing, just as I always imagined.

I grin and go over to grab my coat. I'm heading outside. Just a few more days. That's all I need. I must make preparations.

It is late in the night when I reach the last of my traps and recover the final few animal carcasses. My traps are most often used when I need meat or furs for survival purposes. My last few catches, I'm afraid to say, died for a much less noble end. Truthfully, I do feel some measure of regret for that, but my disdain for this cursed forest is greater. I require several things for my plan to work, and none of them are pleasant to obtain.

As I heft the sack of dead creatures over my shoulder, I consider my surroundings. I placed the last of my traps near the northern end of the territory around my cabin, and I now find myself quite close to the forest's edge again. The Oldfield Moors are not a long walk from here at all. For a moment, I stand still and internally debate whether to go out and see them again.

I know not what purpose it would serve. I only know that I wish to look upon them.

I come to a decision, and head up towards the forest's edge. The winds of winter whip at my coat, which flutters behind me as I stand before the moors. Already the moon has risen, its baleful glow the only thing illuminating the land. In the darkness, I can't see much, but still I let myself sink into my memories, like old stallions do.

Then, in the distance, a light. I frown, tilting my head. It shines out from across the moors, bright white and small as a pinprick against the dark canvas ahead. It's like a little star broke off from the night sky and fell to Earth. Every few seconds, it flickers, its light waxing and waning to no discernable pattern. I take a cautious step backwards, turning my head either side and behind me to check that no other lights are coming my way. My eyes linger for longest on Grimrise Hills, but the silent watchers have nothing to add.

What is this? Something new?

This I do not need right now. Every night, the creatures assail my home. Skydark Forest is also crawling with feral beasts and animals that wish me harm on top of that. And Grimrise Hills and the Barrows are a whole other problem. That's already far too much for me to deal with. Now there are mysterious lights over the moors as well. I dearly hope that they are just another manifestation of the threats I already face every day, and not some new abomination crawling out of the woodwork. I've heard many tales of the dark things that supposedly dwell in these parts, but even in all my time here, not every old legend has been proven true yet. Some of them I still cling to hope are falsehoods.

There is that hope again. I detest it so.

"Hmph," I say, sneering. "Fine then. I will face what may come."

Hours later, and the inside of my cabin has been painted red. Animal blood is smeared on every wall, arranged in patterns to form peculiar runes that I only partially understand. Every room is filled with them. Some of them already glow softly. Others I have yet to activate. I will need time to build enough magic for them all. Either way, I have turned this place into a deathtrap for the monsters that hound me. Now I need to deal with the rest of the forest.

I sit on a small wooden chair facing the door, staring unblinkingly at the window next to it. I hold up a wooden walking cane in front of me. With a knife in hoof, I absently sharpen the bottom as I maintain watch. Under my breath, I mutter an old hymn, a song sung by Equestria's hunters in the time known as the Age of Blood.

"Silver sings a song of sunlight, lasts us through until the dawn. Silver rings the screams of dark ones; a hunter's vow we've sworn."

A hundred years ago, they say there used to be vampires, and other such beasts, remnants of the army of a demonic usurper who rebelled against her sister. In the shadow of an all-powerful church, hunters did battle with these monsters, until they were all destroyed, and the Age of Blood came to a close. Now the hunters are gone, and the old church as well, and even the usurper's true name faded from popular history. But us scholars of obscure lore never forgot Luna.

"The black and dark and traitor's hearts, the night is where they dwell. With fang and claw and bloody maws, they know us by our smell."

Sometimes I wonder if saintly Celestia wanted that part of history remembered the way it is. Did she intend for Luna to be forgotten, but for Nightmare Moon to live on in infamy? Surely, that was a cruel fate for a sister that she presumably once loved. But then again, maybe it was a just response. The sting of such a betrayal must have been great indeed. In such circumstances, revenge is only natural. Yet, how could a princess famed for her mercy be so vindictive?

"The Traitor Moon, she sees us hunt, burns red with seething hate. By hunter's creed, her beasts will bleed, as is the hunted's fate."

But maybe, such things aren't in the hooves of Celestia to control. Maybe what became of Luna's legend is just fate. After all, how could history ever remember Luna as anything other than a monster, when it was her follies that created places like the Barrows? Churches may crumble, nations may collapse, armies may fail and die and be buried in unmarked graves in murky lands, but some things are remembered forever.

I wonder if I'll ever be remembered when I'm gone?

Who is there left to remember me?

The knocking comes at the door. I look up, rise from my seat, and ready my sharpened cane.

Chapter 5: Ghosts of the Past

I fling the door open and lunge outside, giving a primal roar as I grapple with the beast that came to my doorstep. It cries out and struggles, but I pull it over the threshold and throw it across the room, pausing my assault only long enough to buck the door closed behind me. I advance on it with my sharpened cane clutched between my teeth. My old heart is racing, my eyes wide and manic. In my enthusiasm, it takes me a moment to realise that my visitor is a unicorn, a light pink stallion with a two-tone mane of deep reds.

He whimpers, holding up his hooves in front of him in a gesture of surrender. But I'm not falling it. I pin him down with one forehoof and use the other to hold my cane, positioning the sharp end directly under his throat. I need my mouth free to interrogate him.

"Who are you?" I demand in a voice scratchy and dry from years of disuse. "Who do you serve? Is this a trick? Some kind of trap? I'm wise to you things! You won't get me the same way twice!"

The stallion squeezes his eyes shut and makes a pitiful squeaking noise.

"I-I'm nopony!" he protests. "I'm just a traveller! I didn't know I was trespassing! I'm sorry!"

I press the cane harder into his throat, drawing blood and making him wince. "Don't lie to me! I can smell a liar, and you reek!"

He breaks down crying. "I swear, this is all a mistake!"

I growl and back off, removing my cane from near his throat but continuing to point it in his general direction as he clambers to his hooves.

"M-My name is Jars," he says, massaging his throat with a hoof. "But I mostly go by Jasper... Oh, Celestia..."

He looks around the room, mouth agape as he stares at all the glowing red sigils drawn in blood on the walls. I eye him warily, and gesture over to a nearby chair. Neither of us speak as he sits down where I pointed, and I take a seat opposite and glare silently at him for a bit. He squirms uncomfortably under my gaze as I consider him. I don't know quite what to make of him yet, but I can tell that he's hiding something from me.

"I-I..." The stallion looks at the floor in an effort to avoid my glare. "I'm just a... just a traveller... a tourist, really... I came up from... from Barnsley, and wanted to... see the Barrows, in Grimrise Hills. For their historical significance!"

"Enough," I say, rising from my chair.

He's lying. I know he's lying. It's exactly what he's lying about that eludes me.

"If that is truly your motive, then you should leave. Skydark is no place for tourists, the Barrows even less so. You have absolutely no idea what lurks in these woods."

"I-I'm not afraid of monsters," he says, meeting my eyes at last. "I've encountered monsters before."

"Not monsters like these, you haven't."

Unless he has.

"W-Well... surely, if it's so dangerous outside, you can't expect me to go back now, in the dead of a winter's night?"

I level a furious glare at him.

"...Yes, that's true. I can't. But I also don't trust you, stranger. You come here of all places, now of all times, stinking of treachery and deception. How do I know you're not going to cut my throat while I sleep? Hmm?"

I look around the interior of my cabin, eyes darting about wildly. It just now occurs to me that the monsters are not pounding at the walls anymore. The cabin has gone quiet. The sigils are yet incomplete. And I am a lone elderly earth stallion, recently depleted of my magic, trapped in a room with a young, fit unicorn who probably has magic to spare; I might already be caught in their trap. If it comes down to a fight, I can only hope that I'm still strong enough to hold onto my cane if he tries to steal it from me... and strong enough to kill him with it.

"Sir... listen," Jasper says quietly, keeping his voice steady despite his heavy breathing. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you. If you're uncomfortable with my presence, I can leave."

"You're not going anywhere," I growl, raising my cane.

Jasper falls backwards off his chair, and scrambles away as I advance on him. He backs up all the way to the far wall, cowering on the floor as I point the sharpened end at his face.

"Please..." he whimpers, burying his face in his hooves. "Please don't..."

I flip my cane around, pointing the handle at him instead of the tip, and smack him across the muzzle with it. The pink pony tumbles over, crying out in pain.

"I am in no mood for your lies!" I shout. "Cease your charade, creature!"

Jasper flips onto his back, holding out a hoof in front of him as if to stop me. His wide eyes are filled with false fear, and a slight trickle of blood runs down from his mouth where I struck him.

"Please, no! I am telling you, I am no creature!"

"LIES!"

I strike him in his exposed stomach this time, driving all the wind from him. He cries out and gasps for breath, rolling around on my floor in pantomimed agony.

"I don't know what your designs are, but I won't be deceived by the likes of you!" I give another crack of my cane across his cheek, jerking his head to the side. "Speak, monster! Or take your secrets to your grave!"

With a bloody muzzle, false tears in his eyes, and a feigned shortness of breath, the stallion looks up to meet my gaze.

"I swear to Celestia! I swear by all the stars in the sky, by my mother and my birth name, by any god you care to name or any oath you wish to hear, I swear I am just a pony in search of the Barrows, and that's it!"

I snarl, and feel an old fire rising in me again, such as I haven't felt in years. With a youthful vigour and savagery I thought I'd long since outgrown, I strike the lying wretch again, and again, and again. Over and over I beat the bloodied stallion lying on my floor, striking ribs and legs and flanks and face, anywhere I can think of to make him hurt more, until he's a bruised and broken mess. By the time I'm done, he's curled up in a tiny ball, crying into the floor, pink coat now marred by streaks of red and splotches of black and blue.

"The truth, this time," I hiss, sticking the sharpened end of the cane into his ear. "Or I spear it through your brain."

The stallion's whimpering abates as he slowly rolls over. He takes a deep breath, seeming to compose himself, and opens his cold grey eyes to look at me. Tears still stain his face, but his gaze is steady, and I see a change come over him. A steely determination replaces the fear I saw before, and Jasper takes another deep breath before speaking.

"You are a paranoid one," he says, voice much deeper than before.

I knew it.

"Who are you, really?" I ask, jamming my cane further into his ear.

He only winces slightly, before composing himself and meeting my threat with a grim smile.

"I am as I said, a simple pony in search of history. Skydark is an old land. There are many secrets buried here. Secrets that I would unearth, in my own search for greatness."

Satisfied, I remove my cane from his ear and step back, allowing him to stand. He nurses his rib and groans as he climbs back to his hooves and settles in his chair again.

"The townsfolk spoke of you." Jasper sighs, glaring at me through a black eye as he leans back in the chair. "The mad old stallion of the woods, they called you. I was told to be careful, that you were suspicious and untrusting by nature. I paid little mind to their warnings. I thought them exaggerations. Now I see, if anything, they were understating how cautious you are."

My lips pull into a thin line as I take the other seat again, keeping a grip on my cane as I do.

"You are not one of the creatures," I say, plainly. "But creatures, still, there are. Skydark is infested with them. I don't know what dark purpose draws you here, stranger, or why you wear the masks you do, but take my advice. Leave. And don't come back. No good can come of meddling with the forces that dwell in these lands."

Jasper raises a hoof and wipes the blood from his muzzle.

"I appreciate your concern," he says dryly. "But I cannot turn back now. I have walked this path too far, sacrificed too much to get here. Before I go, I must see the Barrows."

I take a sharp breath and lean forward in my chair, balancing on my cane. "What is it you seek in the Barrows, boy?"

"A dead god." Jasper smiles, bearing his teeth. "The dead god."

He must have anticipated my answer, or else noticed the look of recognition upon my face, because his grin widens before I give my response.

"...Duroc," I grumble. "You seek the tomb of Duroc."

The kettle whistles upon my stove, and I sullenly pour the water out into a pair of cups as my guest waits at the kitchen table. It's been many years since I've had another in my home. The feeling of preparing a second cup is almost alien to me after so long.

"Once, there was a great and terrible demon who ravaged this world with chaos," I say as I place the kettle down and begin stirring. "Nopony could stop him, or slow him. He couldn't be bargained or reasoned with. He couldn't even be hurt. But one pony came close. A great wizard, whose talent gave him command over time itself, supposedly trapped this demon in a loop of endless time, and himself along with him."

"You speak of Discord, and Star Swirl the Bearded," says Jasper. "I see you are also a scholar of history."

I approach the table and place his cup down alongside mine.

"Yes," I say, taking a seat beside him. "But not even that was sufficient to hold the demon. He broke free of his prison, and when he did, he was furious with the wizard. So furious, in fact, that he cursed him and his bloodline, marking them with a brand that would attract tragedy and misfortune wherever they went, so that Star Swirl's descendents would remember his folly for always and eternity, and forever scorn him for it."

Jasper smiles slightly, lifting his cup into the air with a silvery glow and taking a satisfied sip.

"The Mark of Chaos, yes. I know the legend."

I turn and pull my mane aside to show him the back of my neck, and his eyes go wide.

"It is no legend." I run my hoof down to feel the spiral-shaped mark there, which singes as I touch it. "Chaos and tragedy follow me, as they have followed everypony of Star Swirl's line since the days of antiquity. Those who bear this mark are cursed, and the cursed lead short lives. My father bore this mark, and he was murdered. My son also bore it, and he too... was taken from me. I have survived this far, but the things in this forest thirst for my blood. I hear them at my windows every night. This mark draws them to me."

I settle into my chair and lift the coffee to my lips, staring into the darkness of the steaming liquid for a moment before I take a drink.

"What are these creatures, then?" Jasper asks blithely. "Some demons of chaos? Restless ghosts from the Barrows?"

"In truth, I do not know," I answer. "But they are not of the Barrows. The things in Grimrise Hills are... different. But... I think them related. Not just to me, but to your quest as well."

Jasper gulps down most of his coffee at once, and sets the cup aside. Leaning over the table, he fixes me with a serious look.

"So tell me of them. What do you know of the Barrows, and of Duroc?"

I sigh and set down my own cup.

"I do not know much. I can only tell you what you likely already know. The Barrows were the graves of the dishonoured dead, rebels who fought with Nightmare Moon against Equestria's forces at the Battle of Oldfield. Their spirits surely still linger in these lands, and you can feel them, out on the moors. You can feel the hills watching you, with silent anger and loathing. They envy the living. Even the barely alive..."

Jasper nods quietly. I surmise that he knows what I'm talking about. The lights I saw across the moors earlier were doubtless him making his approach; he must have felt their presence on his way over.

"...I have... encountered the restless dead before," I continue, shifting in my seat. "In my younger years, I made a foolish mistake, one which angered them, and they saw fit to torment me for it with visions."

"What kinds of visions?" Jasper asks.

"Visions," I say, darkly. "Personal things, which I shall not share. But in time, I learned to block them. When I first came to this cabin, it had quite a substantial library, left by one of the previous occupants. Books, scrolls, journals, notes... all detailing everything their owner knew about the occult. My wife studied them first; she was more a scholar than I ever was. After she died, I took up the craft myself, to ward off the nightmares imparted by the spirits. I haven't had a vision from them in years. But... that's also how I know that the things in the forest are something different. My wards keep the ghosts far away. The things scratching at my walls at night, whatever they are... they are not ghosts."

"Something related to Duroc?"

"Possibly."

I take another quiet sip and contemplate the monsters. The cabin is unusually quiet now. All this time I've been speaking of the creatures, they haven't made a peep. I find it deeply unsettling. I can only hope that they were merely scared away by all the new wards I've been setting up, even if only temporarily. I don't want to consider what other games they might be playing.

"This library of yours..." says Jasper. "May I see it?"

I stand in the doorway, balancing on my cane as I watch the pink stallion poring through my wife's old books. He sits hunched over at the reading desk, a stack of books on one side, a lit candle on the other, staring intently at the pages in front of him.

"Fascinating..." he mutters. "These wards... If I'm not mistaken, some of them look as if they were designed specifically for a being like Duroc."

"How does a mortal create a ward to fend off a god?" I ask sardonically.

"With great care and precision..." Jasper lovingly strokes the pages of the book. "Duroc was said to be a god of death. To fight off his influence, one builds their wards with the essence of life."

I think back to all the animals I've slaughtered over the years in my quest to secure my home. It was always their blood I needed most. The essence of life, indeed. Quite ironic that I needed to kill them to obtain it.

"Who was it that owned this cabin before you?" asks Jasper, flipping to the next page.

"It was abandoned when we moved in."

"Hrrm... Whoever they were, they were obviously quite knowledgeable. No mere forest warden would need tomes like these. I do wonder... if this cabin's previous inhabitant might have had something to do with Duroc. Perhaps they were a worshipper? Or perhaps they were the one to slay him. Either way, somepony would have had to bury him."

"But what could kill a god of death?" I ask, pacing across the study.

"What indeed? But something must have, else his grave would not be here. Perhaps your mysterious creatures were responsible?"

I frown as I consider the wards again. Blood wards. Some designed to hold off the power of the god of death. Some effective against ghosts. Some effective against the creatures of Skydark. What is the connection?

"Hmm... I shall need to study these tomes further upon the morn." Jasper closes the book and stands. "And I must see the Barrows as well, preferably in daylight hours."

I snort.

"Study all you wish. As long as you do not interfere with my own plans, I care not one whit for what you do. But I have supplies enough for only one. If you plan to stay here while you work towards whatever dark designs drive you, I insist that you make use of yourself."

Jasper sits in the middle of the room, fixing me with a steady, neutral expression.

"Name your terms, old one."

"Your back, to carry my firewood. Your horn, to defend this cabin. Your blood, to strengthen these wards. And your compliance, for my peace of mind."

He raises a single eyebrow.

"Compliance?"

I step back out into the main room briefly, and return shortly after with a coil of rope and a small metal ring, which I drop on the floor before him.

"For as long as you keep your distance and do not lie to me, I shall have no quarrel with you, but do not take that to mean I trust you, stranger. If we are to sleep under the same roof, I demand that you do so tied down to the bed and your horn restrained. I will not have you prowling in the night while I am defenceless."

Jasper stares down at the rope for a moment, looks up at me, and smirks.

"My, my, you are demanding." His horn lights, and he lifts the ring close as if to inspect it. "Very well. If those are your terms, then I accept. Do we have an accord?"

He holds out a hoof. I spit in mine and take his, as the smile slips from his face.

He will betray me. I know he shall. The only question is when.

Chapter 1: The Importance of Curtains

There's a certain liberty in hopelessness.

When I was a colt, I had one great fear, and that was my father discovering that I didn't actually want to be a farmer like him. That was because I knew it would make him angry, and when he got angry, he was like a wild timberwolf, snarling and vicious. I was terrified of what he'd do to me. When he found out anyway, suddenly I didn't have any problems anymore. He beat me, he failed to get me to change my mind, and after that, there was nothing more he could do to me.

Sure, the beatings never stopped until I left home, and he remained a horrible wretch of a pony until my mother finally suffocated him to death in his sleep, but what was important was that the worst had already happened, and nothing I could do could change that. Once my life became the most hellish it could possibly be, suddenly I wasn't afraid of whatever else he might find out. I got daring. I finally started living my life. When the consequences are the same either way, actions don't matter, so you may as well do what you want.

From that moment on, that was the philosophy I lived by. Sixty-three years, it's kept me going now. It's a strange idea for most ponies to comprehend, I know. For most ponies, their core ideals are rooted in friendship and harmony. When I tell ponies that mine are in hopelessness, I get these odd looks. I explain my story, tell them what it all means, and even if they claim to understand, I can tell they find it bizarre. After all, without hope, the world becomes a grim place, does it not?

To that I say, yes. I do find the world grim, because it is. I look out my window right now and I see a drab and dreary world. The forest is dead, the sky is cloudy and grey, and the ground is covered with snow. As far as my waning eyes can see, everything is bleak and miserable. Maybe a fresh-faced youth would look out and see a winter wonderland that brings to mind thoughts of Hearth's Warming Eve and snowball fights. But for me, I have only one thought.

It's going to be freezing out there.

I pull my boots over my hooves and wrap a scarf around my neck as best I can using only my mouth, and then I start trying to fit my ragged coat on. The top button falls off the old thing, and I grumble as I pick it up and throw it onto the wooden table in the corner. That's another job for me to do later: sewing that button back on. As I open the front door and the wind buffets me right away, I know that today will be nothing but pain.

I step over the threshold and out of the relative warmth of my log cabin, shutting the door behind me. Already my eyes begin watering and I have to keep my head bowed to move. I trudge through the snow and move around the side of the cabin, where my axe lies embedded in a tree stump. I wrench it out with my teeth and place it in a holder sewn onto the outside of my coat. My scarf comes a little loose, so I rein it back in and wrap it around my neck a few more times. It's cold, so I have to tuck it inside my coat and hope it'll get warmer.

It's as I begin fighting my way up the path from my cabin that I reflect on hopelessness. If I were certain that I would die tomorrow, no matter what I did here today, I'd have that sense of freedom again. I wouldn't be suffering out in this cold, enduring the horrible winter for no other reason than survival. I'd be burning my cabin down and laughing in manic joy, acting on impulse for the first time in years. Instead, I'm heading out into the woods yet again, because there exists that small glimmer of hope that if I can gather enough firewood, I can endure the darkness for a little longer.

Hope hurts. And I hope so very dearly for spring to come early this year...

I know this forest well. Living here as long as I have, I could navigate it blind. The beaten paths I take through the woods were beaten by me. I created all these dotted clearings of tree stumps that I'm passing by. Where snow has been cleared and piled up, that was my handiwork. It was all me. Nopony else lives nearby for miles in any direction, and so for decades, I've been responsible for maintaining the land. I had help once, but... that was a long time ago.

My axe meets the small, leafless tree I marked. I need to swing hard to make any kind of progress, and it doesn't take long for my neck to start aching from the motion. After a few minutes of hacking away, I determine that the tree is weak enough, so I put away my axe, turn around, and buck at the thing, toppling the rest. It saves having to cut it any more. Even in my old age, that earth pony strength sticks with me. I allow myself a small smile as I shuffle around and try to lift the fallen tree onto my back.

"Hurgh." It's heavier than it looked, but I can manage. "Mercy..."

It's not long before I'm back on the trail, trying to carry the monster with me. I know it's not good to exert myself like this, especially under these conditions, but I can't help it. I don't want to spend another minute out in the cold, and I just want to get back to the cabin as fast as possible. I know I'll still have to chop the wood outside, but at least I can go inside and take breaks if it starts snowing.

I feel a snowflake on my nose, and my eyes cross to look at it. More start falling. I turn my gaze skyward and sigh. I can see my breath in front of my face when I do so. Curse the winter. Curse this wretched season and all who enjoy it.

My pain ends only when I get back inside the cabin, carrying with me a few small logs. I toss them into the fireplace and light it up. Then I lay down on the nearby bearskin rug, or perhaps more accurately, collapse onto it. I've not even bothered to remove my coat and scarf yet. I don't want to. The winter this far north chills a pony to their very bones, and I am too old and weary to keep this up. I fear that I may not survive the winter this year. I truly do. But still I cling to hope that I'll see next spring. Oh that wretched hope, that won't let me just lie down and die here...

The wind's still howling outside. The snow on my coat has melted into the rug, and already I think I smell of wet bear fur. I never liked this rug. All else aside, I just find it macabre. I'd replace it if I could.

Climbing up, I strip off my coat, boots, and scarf at long last, and place them all on the stand by the door. I peer outside. The sky is darker now. Luna's night has fallen, and the things that live in the dark are no doubt already prowling. I reach out and draw the makeshift curtain hanging over the window. Then I move around the cabin, going from room to room and drawing all the remaining ones.

My last stop is the bedroom. Well, my bedroom. One of two. There's nought in here but a closet, a nightstand, and a queen-sized bed, but this room is my last refuge in case the worst should happen. I draw the curtain over the last window. This one is the tattiest of them all, more of a patchwork quilt than a curtain. I've sewn it up with old frilly garments, but it's on the verge of falling apart again, and I have no materials this time. I dread the day I lose it.

In the main room, the fire is crackling away, and I sit by it once more. The rug has dried slightly, but still feels damp where I lay on it previously. Perhaps I could cannibalise the rug for material to fix the curtain? Bah. No. Too much rug. I'd have a dismembered rug out here for who even knows how long until I find more things in need of patching up.

Speaking of patching up, I should really get to fixing that button that fell off earlier...

I hear a knocking on the window by the front door, a slamming, forceful noise. I slowly turn my head towards it. Two more knocks come in quick succession.

I snort.

Nice try. Nothing gets in here.

My nights are never peaceful. In my waking moments, everything is so noisy. The blizzard outside, the crackling fire inside, and the taps on the windows that never cease all come together to make a cacophany that makes sleep difficult. When sleep does come, as it always does when my body becomes too physically exhausted to continue, I dream of unpleasant things. I wouldn't call them all nightmares, but... I never have good dreams. My dreams are all of dark shapes, old ruins, and ponies who won't look at me.

Sometimes I dream of the forest. I dream that I'm out there at night instead of in here. I dream that I wander it safely, but even in my dreams I have constant companions, just in the corner of my eye. In those dreams, they always follow me to the hills. I wish they wouldn't. But sometimes, even if rarely, I dream of something bigger. I see glimpses of figures from the stories I was told in childhood, from old legends and folklore. When I return to the waking world, I always wonder what it means that I think of them so much now, so many years after I last heard those stories.

Today, I awaken with a vague impression that I dreamt of winter, but not much else. I force myself to climb up out of bed and look around my room. Everything appears normal. My curtain is still drawn. I shuffle over to it and peel it back.

The window is cracked, and a thin layer of ice has formed over the inside. I inhale sharply, and look at the other side of the curtain. The red scrawlings on it, the shapes and symbols, all appear intact. But the curtain itself looks damaged. It won't hold out another week, I should imagine. My lip quivers at the thought of it. I shall soon have no choice but to look for more material. I'll have to go out hunting.

I look through the window and out into the forest. I see nothing there. Just trees and snow.

"You're wasting your time," I mutter. "You're all wasting your time with me."

I find the forest to be the most tolerable of the areas around my home, but it is not the only one. My cabin is not situated in the middle of the woods, as one might expect from my isolated state. In truth, I live on the very edge of it. The northwest edge, to be precise. The true heart of Skydark Forest lies far southeast of me. The reason I am so isolated is not that I am surrounded by forest on all sides, but rather that I have forest on one side, and the endless Oldfield Moors on the other.

The moors are what I truly hate. The wind out there is relentless. Not like in the forest, where I at least have the trees to shield me sometimes. However bad the wind might be in Skydark, it is always worse out on the moors.

The other surrounding areas aren't much better. To the west, the Grimrise Hills keep constant watch over me. I don't go there often, but it is a haunting place. That's where the Barrows are, burial places for some legendary Equestrian heroes, long dead from a forgotten war. It's the sort of place that makes the skin crawl to just be there. Whenever I've been there before, I always felt... well, it's not that I felt watched; I always feel like I'm being watched. But in Grimrise, I feel like whatever is watching truly hates me.

I come to a small clearing full of wooden stumps. Another of my own. If this is the right one... my traps should be somewhere here... I start searching. Curse this snow.

Meanwhile, if one keeps walking far enough eastward, they'll eventually come to Traitor's Cliffs, overlooking the Sea of Ghosts, which is somehow even colder than here, even in the summer. That's just what the weather's like this far north, I suppose, but I can't help but feel these places didn't need such foreboding names to add to the feeling of misery that pervades the place.

This is all what keeps me so isolated. There is almost no civilization whatsoever out here. Skydark Forest is uninhabited, save for me. The Oldfield Moors are barren. Grimrise Hills and the Barrows are dead, in every sense of the term. And the east holds nothing but sea spray and jagged rocks.

The closest town when last I checked (and likely the only other place to hold intelligent life within a hundred miles of here) is Barnsley. It rests on the southeast corner of Skydark, along the coast somewhere, but I've never made passage through the woods to get there. It isn't safe. Sadly, whenever I need to go there for whatever reason, I have no choice but to go east and follow the path by Traitor's Cliffs southwards, passing by the old lighthouse by Gideon's Spine.

Barnsley supposedly manages the weather for this region. I don't know how. I honestly don't. The ways of pegasi are alien to me. In my childhood, I saw weather pegasi moving clouds above the farm to make it rain and feed the crops. But I haven't seen a weather pegasus in years. The clouds here just seem to... drift over the place from somewhere. I presume that Barnsley is responsible, but I don't know for sure. I can't think of who else it could be. Skydark is not meant to have wild weather, but sometimes it feels like it does.

I find the trap. It's at the bottom of a filled-in hole, but I dig it out. The wooden mechanism has broken under the weight of the fallen snow. There's nothing caught in it. I sigh. Wishful thinking, especially this time of year. I sincerely hoped that it wouldn't come to this, but it seems I will need to do some active hunting. Already I'm wincing as I imagine the back ache I will surely give myself.

I collect up the trap and pack it into my bags. I'll need to take it back to the cabin for repairs.

I've heard tale of volunteer forest wardens who build cottages, cabins, and tree-houses within the woodlands or at its edges to care for them. Such wardens protect the forest animals. They care for them when they fall sick, and they heal wounds. It keeps the prey species alive longer in the face of predators, and it keeps the predators from starving to death when they are unable to hunt.

Animals still kill each other, and nothing can be done about that. But a forest warden seeks to extend their lives anyway. They seek to ease pain and suffering even for those for whom it is inevitable. They understand the liberty in hopelessness, but they choose to face hopelessness by continuing to do the decent thing, even when it barely makes a difference. I think it shows great strength of character. The work of a forest warden is admirable, and if I ever met one, I think that I would have tremendous respect for them.

But I am no forest warden, even though I suspect my cabin once belonged to one (it has been here far longer than I have, after all). I am another animal in this forest. I am a part of the cycle. I hide from predators, sequestered away in my den, and by day I hunt as a predator myself. It's not something I enjoy, trust me.

Prowling through the forest, as I do, I take cover behind a fallen log. The wind rustles my coat, but I take out my binoculars and look through the trees. Nothing. I pick myself up and gallop towards my next stopping point. A small hillock gives me a slightly better vantage point, and I scan the distance again. Between the trees, I think I see something. Something that didn't bother to hide well enough.

I draw a bow, crudely constructed from carved wood and sinew, and load an arrow onto it. I close my eyes. Deep breaths. My heart feels a little jumpy. The air is cold. I open my eyes and pull back the string, aiming.

A minute later, I carry the bow by my side as I walk towards it. A trail of red across the snowy ground leads me to the fallen body. I try not to think about what I've just done. I try even harder not to think about what I'm about to do, and what I will do later tonight.

I draw my knife.

I hang up the new curtains slightly less than an hour before nightfall. They don't smell too bad after getting a decent scrubbing.

After such grim work, I scarcely want to even eat, but I don't dare risk going without nourishment. If I am to survive the winter, I must not let starvation take me. In my pantry, I find a few tins and jars, mostly filled with things I grew from my garden last summer. I am not yet running low. The winter is in its infancy yet. But I will start to run out soon. When that happens, I will have to find alternative food sources.

A trip to Barnsley might be in order. I could take the cart down there, sell some of my firewood, and get a few tins of baked beans or something. Just whatever will get me through the winter. But then again, I'm not entirely out of local options either. There are some edible plants that are hardy enough to grow through these conditions. Meat is not out of the question either, if things become truly desperate.

I know, I know. Some ponies would call me monstrous for such considerations. But whatever works, works. Ponies are omnivores too. We're just not obligate omnivores. Morality is what keeps us vegetarian for most of our lives. And while I won't say that one abandons all their morals when living in isolation, desperation has a way of making one reconsider their true value. When my morals are killing me, I choose to take a less self-destructive path.

At this moment, I still have food left. Today's hunt was not for meat. But it was driven by desperation, and I did cross that line. I can't ever be without curtains.

That would just be a disaster.

Author's Note

This story is a part of the Borderworld.