Light in our Souls

“Hey...Wake up!!!”

I opened my eyes and rolled over to see a girl with short red hair with black highlights and hazel eyes, who I recognized as my sister, standing over me.

“Come on Kyle, we need to go!” she said frantically.

“What’s wrong, Alice?”

“There’s no time, we need to go now!"

“Alright, I’m getting up,” I said, wiping the sleep out of eyes.

“Take this with you,” she said, grabbing my sword out of the chest near my door and tossing it to me. “We’re gonna need it.”

Standing up, I strapped the sword onto my back and followed my sister outdoors.

Upon exiting the house, I saw my neighbors being attacked by monsters. They looked human, except for the fact that their skin was greyish and their eyes were blood red. Some looked deformed, having an overly long and thick arm, or claws where their fingertips should be.

“Alice! Kyle!”

Alice and I both looked over to see our mother, running towards us.

“You two need to get out of here!” our mother yelled at us.

“What about the others? We can’t leave them behind!” Alice shouted.

“Don’t worry about them! Kyle, take your sister and head to the castle. You need to warn them!”

“I’m not leaving you—” I began to protest.

“LOOK OUT!” my sister shouted at me.

Looking up, I saw one of the more normal-looking monsters coming at me with a sword drawn. Extracting my own, I pushed his blade to the side as he began attempting to stab me in the stomach. Spinning around, I flipped my blade so the hilt would face upward in my hand, and stabbed him in the back.

Withdrawing and sheathing my sword, I looked over to my mother.

“Kyle, please, I’ve already had to watch so many people die today. Don’t make me watch my own children be slaughtered. Take this letter to the castle. They’ll know what to do,” my mother said as she handed me a letter.

Looking over to my sister, I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.

My sister nodded and we began to run through the forest near our village. After running for what seemed like forever, we sat down to catch our breath.

“Mind telling me what was happening back there?” I asked.

“I don’t really know what happened exactly. All I know is some people came into our village and started murdering everyone at random,” Alice said.

“Oh, it wasn’t random.”

Alice and I got up and looked around.

“Who said that?” I shouted.

“We just wanted something to eat.” A cloud of smoke blew towards us and began to take the form of a human.

“Why didn’t you just ask? We would have gladly given you some food,” Alice asked.

“I suppose I should have been more specific. When I said something...I meant someone, though we actually wanted to find the one who smelled the sweetest, as they tend to be the more tasty of the bunch.” He sniffed the air and chuckled.

My eyes widened and I looked at Alice. “Run.”

“But—” Alice began to protest.

“GO!”

Alice turned around, took a quick glance at me, and ran away.

“You sure you don’t want to go with her? Because I doubt you’ll ever see her again.”

I drew my sword. “Honestly, I don’t care. I’ll gladly die if it keeps her safe.”

The monster grinned at me. “I’ll hold you to that.”

He charged at me after drawing his own blade out of nowhere, slightly taking me by surprise. But I regained my composure, blocking his first few strikes, while attempting to land my own.

“Hmm, very interesting. I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long. But I suppose I should stop playing with my food.”

He began to strike faster, making it difficult for me to find an opening. I parried one of his blows, throwing him off balance. Seeing an opportunity, I slashed at him, but much to my confusion, the blade went through him, as if it had gone through water. He kicked me into a nearby tree, causing my weapon fell out my hand. My attacker rushed over to me with godlike speed and stabbed me right in the chest.

“Such a disappointment. I had such high hopes for you, now that I get a closer look, you almost look like an older version of him,” he said as he pulled his sword out of me, causing me to collapse.

As he began to walk away, I grabbed onto his leg with what little strength I had.

“Still got a bit of strength left?”

He kicked my face and sliced off my left arm.

“AH! YOU MOTHER FUCKER!!” I screamed in pain.

The demon grinned. “Watch your tongue.”

He began to start to walk away again.

“Aren’t you going to eat me?” I asked.

“I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. If you survive this, I’ll be impressed.” With that, he vanished in a puff of black smoke.

“Kyle!”

I looked over to where I heard the voice to see Alice running back towards me.

“Alice...what the hell...Fuck.” I winced from the pain. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to run.”

“I couldn’t just abandon you back here. Now, come on, we have to get you some medical attention!” Alice said, trying to lift me up by good arm, placing it around her shoulder and putting hers around my waist.

“From where? The only place we could go is home and we don’t know if those things are still…” I winced again. “…there. And even if I somehow managed to get out of the forest and not bleed out, I doubt we would make it to any of the nearby towns.”

“You’re going to make it out of this. I’m not going to let you die.”

Alice began to walk me back the way we came from the village. About halfway home, I began to feel weak and collapsed onto a nearby tree.

“Kyle! We’re almost there. You can make it.”

Taking the letter I received from Mom, I handed it to Alice.

“Let’s face it, Alice...I’m not walking away from this one… Looks like you’ll have to finish the job Mother gave to us...You need to take this letter to the castle...tell them what happened here...Prevent this from happening to anyone else…” I said, as I began to cough up blood.

Looking at the letter, my sister took it and kneeled beside me. I could see tears forming in her eyes.

“What are you…” I coughed up more blood. “doing?”

“I don’t want you to be alone.”

My vision began to blur and darken, “Hey...Remember when we used to spar?”

Alice smiled. “Yeah, you never lost a single fight. Why?”

I looked at her. “I’m sorry if I ever hurt you.”

“I know you wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. And besides, Mom wanted us to start sparring for my sake. She just wanted the both of us to learn to defend ourse-Kyle? Kyle!”

My vision clouded and I began to feel death’s cold embrace.

“Sun? Is everything okay in there?”

I woke up in the bed I fell into last night.

“Sun, can you hear me?” I heard Twilight talking from behind the door.

“Yeah, I can hear you,” I said, still tired from last night events.

“Do you mind if I come in?’

“It’s your house.”

Twilight opened the door and walked over to me, with a look of concern on her face.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You were talking in your sleep and it sounded like you were crying.”

I was?

“Yeah. Just a weird dream, I guess,” I replied, feeling the tears on still of my face.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really…”

“Well...Okay...Breakfast is cooking downstairs, if you’re hungry.”

I nodded, as Twilight walked back out of the room. I looked at the clock on the bedside table.

10:30…Wow, I really slept in.

I decided to head downstairs as well. I walked out of the room and down the stairs. I went into what I assumed was the kitchen, as it was the only room I hadn’t seen the previous day. And I smelled the scent of food coming from that general direction.

“Hey,” Twilight greeted me as I entered the kitchen.

“Hey.”

“Hungry?” she asked.

My stomach growled.

Twilight chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

She gave me a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. I stared at it with suspicion.

“This is going to make me sick, is it? Because the last time I ate something that you cooked, I ended up being in the hospital for almost a week from food poisoning,” I asked nervously, looking between the food and Twilight.

“You won’t get food poisoning from this, I promise.”

“I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

Reluctantly, I took a bite of the egg.

It’s...good.

I wolfed down the food hungrily.

“I’ll take it you liked it?” She chuckled.

“Yeah, it was really good...I’m impressed.”

“And what do you know? You didn’t die,” she said jokingly, poking me in the side.

“Yeah.”

“So what have you been doing since the last time I saw you?” Twilight asked.

Rubbing the back of my head, I responded, “Not much. I did a tour in Saddle Arabia about a year ago.”

“I heard about what happened there. You weren’t dreaming about what happened, were you?” Twilight said, with a look of concern in her eyes.

“No, it was…” I said, shaking my head and then sighing. “Remember those mythology books we used to read for school? The ones about the humans?”

“Vaguely, why?”

“Well…” I told her about my dream and what I saw.

“Hmmmm. I wouldn’t think anything of it. It’s probably just, as you said, a weird dream.”

I nodded.

“Was there anything in particular you wanted to do today?” Twilight asked.

I thought about it for a moment.

I guess I should get a job. It’ll give me something to do during the day, as well as getting to know the town and its people better.

“I’d like to find a job if possible,” I said. “It’ll give me something to do other than sit on my ass.”

“Hmmm, let me think.” Twilight looked as though she was thinking rather hard. “AJ could always use some help on her family’s apple farm, and I think Rainbow has a spot on the weather team you could fill,. Those are the only things I can think of at the moment.”

“I’d like to try AJ’s first.”

Twilight nodded. “Alright. We’ll go to Sweet Apple Acres first.”

-Timeskip-

“I don’t know, Twi. Are ya sure he will be able to keep up?”

“I’m sure. And just last week, you said you needed help on the farm.”

Applejack sighed. “All right. I want to see he can buck a tree hard enough before I let him work fer my family.” Pointing to a random apple tree, she said. “Buck that one as hard as you can, Sun.”

"Okay."

I walked over to the tree that Applejack pointed at.

Looks sturdy enough, I thought, looking up and down at the tree.

I turned around and gave the tree a good hard buck, causing apples to rain down into buckets that we placed underneath.

"All right. I reckon you'll do. Come on, I'll introduce you to my family," Applejack said, looking slightly impressed.

"I'm going to head back to the library, Sun. I'll see you later," Twilight said before turning around and walking away.

“Yeah. See ya later, Twi.”

I followed AJ through the orchard to a house next to a red barn, when something rammed into me with great speed, causing me to go back a few steps.

“Oh, sorry, mister. Are you okay?” I heard a filly say.

“Apple Bloom! What have I said about runnin’ out the house?” Applejack scolded the little filly.

“Sorry, sis.” The little filly hung her head.

"Hey, it's all right, no harm done. I'm Sun. I take it you're Applebloom?" I wheezed, coughing from the amount of force of the filly had rammed into me.

The filly cheered up a bit. "Yep."

"So, what's got you in such a hurry?"

Applebloom's eyes widened. "Oh,no...I'm late!"

The filly ran off again.

Applejack sighed. "Come on, I'll introduce you to the rest of my family."

I followed Applejack into the house, and was greeted by the sight of an unusually large stallion.

"You going out, Big Mac?

The large pony replied with a simple, ”Eeyup.”

“You’ll stay safe?”

“Eeyup.”

As the pony walked out the door, Applejack noticed my look of confusion.

“That’s my older brother, Big Macintosh. He helps with the applebuckin’ as well as pulling the carts we use to haul the apples,” Applejack explained. “Now we gotta find my gran.”

I follow AJ to the living room where an elderly pony was sleeping in a rocking chair.

“Hey, I recognize her.”

Applejack look slightly shocked. “You’ve met my gran?”

“I helped her with some groceries a few years ago.”

AJ’s eyes widened in realization. “So that’s why I thought you looked familiar. I never did get yer name and yer mane was shorter at the time.”

“Yeah, I came to Ponyville at the time to help with the Summer Sun Celebration and I saw somepony who needed some help.”

“Well, thank ya kindly fer helpin’ her get home. She can be a little...forgetful.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, when do you want to start working?” AJ asked.

“Would tomorrow be a good time to start?” I inquired, eager to start as soon as possible.

AJ thought about it, then smiled and nodded. “Yep. Just be aware, we get up at around 4 in the morning to start applebuckin’.”

“I’m usually up at that time, anyway.”

“Alright, I’ll see ya tomorrow morning then!” Applejack waved me off as I started to leave Sweet Apple Acres and head home to Twilight’s.