On the whole, we ponies are a fairly peaceful race. Sure, we've had our share of problems here and there, occasionally with each other, and sometimes with other creatures that seem to want something of ours, but normally we go our own way, and have a fairly general "live and let live" policy. That's why, about a thousand years ago, it was such a huge shock when one of the royal pony sisters lost herself to darkness and chaos, and let evil into her heart. It took bitterness, jealously and despair that had built over an entire lifetime to bring about Equestria's first ever attempted sororicide, as Princess Luna, or as she was then known, Nightmare Moon, tried to pop the first metaphorical cap in her sister, Celestia.
As I looked through the small window at my brother's withered, babbling, deranged form, I suddenly felt a huge bout of sympathy and empathic understanding... for freaking Nightmare Moon. To say I hated my brother would be putting too kind a spin on things. I loathed him. I loathed him with every bit of me that was capable of actually feeling loathing. Because of my brother's lies, I'd helped him shred our younger sister White Squall's psyche, when I had thought we were protecting her. Because of his manipulations, I believed that our mother, who had gone crazy and become a Shadowborne herself, was going to attempt to assassinate a few key political figures to throw everything into chaos. The only difference between the two incidents is that my younger sister is still alive.
Oh, a Shadowborne is a pony that has given themselves over to darkness, and let chaos and evil into their hearts. Kind of like Nightmare Moon, but on a less epic and terrifying scale, since most Shadowborne are Earth Ponies and Pegasi, with a sprinkling of Unicorns thrown in. Generally speaking, they're stronger, faster, have more powerful magic, and are tougher, to boot. Only downside it that the darkness itself makes thinking difficult, and I should know.
Yes, I'm a Shadowborne as well. The only difference between me and the others is that when the darkness was taking over my mind, I was brought back from the edge of the cliffs of no return by my father, Whopper. I can still feel it, like some sort of cold weight in the pit of my stomach, waiting to uncoil and strike as soon as I let my guard down. Hell, it already had a way in; and that was my emotions. The very same emotions I use to fuel my magic, the darkness uses to fuel itself.
Well, maybe fuel itself isn't really the right wording here. It's more like, the stronger the emotions I'm having, the stronger it becomes. It uses that strength to try to take over my mind and manifest. It has its own ideas about revenge. When it took hold the last time, it put my brother into the state he’s in now. Once it was done with him, it made me feel like it would be a really good idea to kill my own father, and my best friend, Ink Flash.
I turned my head away from the window, not wanting to actually look at Stormbreaker anymore. The sight of him was enough to make me feel like ripping him apart, and the moment; I could feel a cold power seeping up through me along with the anger and hatred. It was enough to make me feel a little ill, so I took another deep breath and tried to calm down. It’s hard to do that in hospitals, you know. Calm down, I mean. Well, it is for me, anyway. I hate hospitals. They have this sort of drab, quiet desperation about them that, when combined with the smell of cleaning supplies and the cold white sterile quality to everything, just comes across as really, really creepy.
I heard hoof beats approaching me from the left, and instinctively knew who it was. His strong, baritone voice and slightly limping gait were a dead giveaway. “Hey, hoss.”
“Hello again, dad.” I couldn’t help but let a bit of my frustration seep into my voice. But then I looked over at him, and had to catch my breath. He was already different. When I’d seen him, only earlier this morning, hooked up to a life support machine and on the brink of death, he’d looked he was on the brink of death. His mane had been wispy and white, and patches of his dark brown coat were starting to come off. His eyes had been milky white, and he looked nearly blind, in addition to being skinny enough to qualify for some kind of severe eating disorder.
The stallion in front of me now, only marginally resembled the one from earlier. He looked a bit less thin, as though the muscle had spontaneously begun growing on his bones. His eyes were once again that deep ocean blue I remembered from my youth, and his mane was already darkening back to the charcoal black it had once been. I could even see hair starting to grow back in over the missing patches.
“W…wow. You look, a lot better, father.” I got ahold of myself. It wouldn’t do to have him see me looking so shocked, so I did what came naturally. I hid behind smartflankery. “What’s your secret? Yoga? Pilates? Billy Flanks’ tae bo?”
The grin he gave me was nearly luminous. “Actually, my secret is you. Once you raised that greater circle around ‘Breaker in there…” He motioned loosely to the room behind me with a hoof. “The curse he’d had on me got broke. He was doin’ more than puttin’ a squeeze on my heart, hoss. He was keepin’ me too weak to fight back. But,” he let out a small sigh. “That’s not why I’m here. I got some… unfortunate news for you.”
“Somehow bad news doesn’t feel all that surprising. After today I’ll be lucky if I’m allowed to set foot in Canterlot ever again after earlier.”
“Funny you should say that, hoss. Turns out the Princess caught wind of what you did in the park. Not too happy about it, neither. You're, uh... actually not, allowed back in Canterlot ever again. She's told the guard to give you until mornin'."
Even though the words were spoken calmly, they felt like a physical blow. I wasn't surprised. We had pretty much destroyed Canterlot's Central Gardens. That greater circle I'd created while under the effects of that cold power had removed the very essence of life from everything within. That had included my brother. My father's words snapped me out of it before the circle killed him, but the plant life, the flowers and the grass, may take months, even possibly years to recover. My brother, even longer.
I sighed and looked back at my brother's withered form through the window again. I fought down a surge of anger and loathing as I looked at him. In a way, his plan to ruin my life had worked. I couldn't stay in Canterlot with my father while he recovered. I couldn't go back to Ponyville, and risk seeing my friends. Or rather, my friend. My best friend. My closest friend, Ink. I couldn't go to my cabin for more than a few minutes, because the memories there were too strong, the emotions tied to them just as powerful.
The shadow would use that to take over. I couldn't let that happen around Ponyville. I couldn't let that happen around Ink. I just... couldn't let it happen, period. I needed to go somewhere else. Somewhere I knew nopony. Somewhere I could get lost in a crowd and be unnoticed.
I laughed a bit at that thought. I was a freakishly tall unicorn, standing a bit more than a head taller than anypony else I'd met. I had a scar across my left eye, as well as a scar over my heart. It really wouldn't matter where I went, I was bound to stick out like a sore thumb.
But, maybe not. Maybe there was one place I could go. Somewhere I could get lost in a crowd, and nopony would give me a second look. Somewhere I could blend in with everypony because nopony cared about much of anything other than what they were doing. I could set up shop as a P.I. there. Get an office. Stay in the shadows and do my job. Live a life helping people without getting involved.
I knew where I would go. I smiled, both bitterly and wryly. My father must have seen the look on my face, because I felt his hoof on my shoulder. I looked over at him, and he offered me a small, pained smile. "Where ya gonna go, hoss?"
I glanced back through the window one more time, then turned and started down the hall. "Manehattan."
As I stepped off the train when it finally arrived to Ponyville, I was overcome once again by the feeling of its small-town charms. Even the station was lively with activity; stallions and mares rushing to meet each other on the platform, elated at being reunited with loved ones. Others were offering tearful goodbyes as family and friends boarded the train, which was set to leave again in another half an hour.
It struck me as I looked around just how alone it all made me feel. Everypony here had someone they loved, and who loved them. Someone who was happy to see them again, or sad to see them go. I didn't have either of those things. The closest I had was my friend, Ink Flash, but we weren't exactly like that with each other. Sure, we were close, closer than most ponies are in friendships, but close is nothing compared to what she seemed to have with her coltfriend, a stallion named Digger.
Digger didn't like me very much. I can't say I blamed him, I blew into his marefriend's life, protecting her from her father, looking all cool with my dangerous missions and my scars, and Ink and I were already closer than most friends would be. What Digger didn't seem to realize is that Ink actually did love him, regardless of how spineless he came across most of the time. Now, I'm not saying that he was a coward, I'm just saying that was how it seemed.
Ink, on the other hand, well, she's somepony special. I knew it from the moment we met, nearly a year and a half before. I had been out for a walk in Canterlot on one of my weekends off from the weather factory; I'm not sure why I'd gone to Canterlot, but it was probably just to torture myself. I ended up overhearing something, a stallion yelling. Well, I think screaming might be a better word for it. I might also include ranting. The anger in his voice was nearly palpable, and something about it felt, I dunno. Powerful. Authoritative. Like he was the kind of pony who was used to speaking and it simply being a fact of life that others were going to listen to him.
Being the naturally inquisitive dumbflank I've always been, I went to see what was going on. It was, in fact, a pegasus stallion, screaming at what could only have been his daughter, by the look of their coloration. There were tears in her eyes, and there was a bit of a crowd that had stopped to stare. I sighed. He could have just as easily done that behind closed doors, but he'd decided to do it out here. Public humiliation.
Something you should know about me. I hate it when bad things happen to mares. I know it's sexist or macho or retrograde social evolution or whatever, and it's not like I don't hate it when bad things happen to anypony, but when it happens to a mare, I just, well, it's just wrong. Just really wrong. Mares are beautiful creatures, and seeing one in trouble wakes up my inner cavepony. I tend to react to it with a sort of bone-deep anger that would earn the respect of even the oldest dragons.
So, I decided to do something about it. I walked over and just, stepped between them. The look on the guy's face, you... you just... oh stars and stones you have to trust me when I say it was a look of priceless surprise. "Alright, that's enough of that," I said, quietly and calmly, my voice not showing a hint of either the anxiety I was feeling nor the repressed laughter at his reaction. I was actually rather proud of myself for keeping that out of my voice.
"This is a private, family matter, young colt." He spat the last word at me like a curse, somehow attempting to make my age into an insult. It was everything I could do not to laugh in his face. "You'd best mind your own business."
"Actually," I said, thoughtfully, "You made it my business when you decided to make this little humiliation game of yours a public matter. If you didn't want somepony getting in your business, maybe you should have picked your battleground a little better."
Something in his demeanor shifted, and he suddenly became a lot more imposing. I couldn't put my hoof on exactly why, but the way he shifted his stance and the look in his eyes told me that violence was a lot closer to the surface than I was comfortable with. This stallion was dangerous. He was a predator; and the one thing I know about predators is that you never let them see you as prey. So I just closed my eyes and just shook my head at him, waiting. He didn't say anything, he just punched me. Just, outright, punched me.
I don't know if it had been some sort of test, or if I'd misjudged his ability, or even if it had been something as simple as him just having an off day, but when he punched me, it only moved my head. My shoulder's didn't move, and body stayed firmly fixed to the ground. I decided to play it up a bit, spitting out a little bit of blood and looked him right in the eye.
"That all you got?" I asked in the loudest whisper I possibly could, throwing a tiny bit of a growl into my voice.
He blinked at me and took a step back, clearly surprised. Then, he looked past me at the mare and said "I'll deal with you later," before he left.
That was when I turned to look at her fully for the first time. She was cute. Well, no, more than that. She was beautiful, and she still had the tears in her ice blue eyes, which somehow made them look even larger. It probably didn't help that she was staring straight at me, and it made me feel a little bit self-conscious.
"Um, are... are you okay, miss?" Great. Great first line, Storm. Really memorable.
She just nodded at me a bit bleakly, and I decided that I'd embarrassed the poor girl enough by staring at her so openly. "Um, yeah. Good luck with the.... " I motioned vaguely in the direction the stallion had gone. "The thing. With the guy. I'm staying at the Hoofton a few blocks over, so if you need anything... um... yeah."
Then I walked off. She showed up at my the hotel the the next day, and we ended up spending the day together. She finally introduced herself, told me her name was Ink Flash, and thanked me for what I did, then chided me a bit for running off before she could thank me the day before, but she did it with a smile. We talked for a good long while, spending time just getting to know each other.
The funny thing was, it didn't feel like we were meeting for the first time. We just kind of clicked. It was like we were two old friends who'd finally caught up to each other after years apart. We were just comfortable with each other. It was a nice feeling, given the only other real friend I had was somepony who'd worked for me at the weather factory.
We had a lot in common; we both did stupid things for a living. I was a unicorn who lived and worked in Cloudsdale, and I'd never been good at enchantments, so my cloudwalking spell was shaky on the best of days. She never outright told me, but I could tell from her stance, the way she moved, and the way her eyes never seemed to rest in any one spot, what she was.
An apprentice assassin. Suddenly, the exchange with her father the day before felt a lot more idiotic than it had at the time.
And, as it turned out, idiocy was something I was good at. Once I'd retreated to Ponyville and opened up shop as a private investigator, one of my first cases had landed me some seriously badflank enemies. As a result, the cabin that had been my home just outside town had been torched. I figured out later that one of those enemies had been my own brother, but hindsight is 20/20. Fortunately, it wasn't a huge loss, since I didn't actually own much. I lost a bed and a few books, but nothing super important.
However, Ink had opened her home to me when she found out. She'd moved to Ponyville not too long before, and had found a nice sized house that she bought with her coltfriend. She and Digger had a spare bedroom, and she all but insisted I stay with them while I was rebuilding. She'd told me to be careful when I left a few days previous, when I'd been on my way to Canterlot to see my father at the hospital. She'd given me a hug, and closed the door behind me.
I stood in front of that door again now. I knew that neither she nor Digger would be there, so I used that to my advantage. If I saw either of them again, I may have lost control of my already ragged and raw emotions, and subsequently have lost myself.
I let myself in with the small key she'd given me, closing the door behind me carefully. I hung the key on the little hook beside the door, then walked to my room. If I'd barely had anything before the fire, what I owned now made me long for the riches of poverty.
The entirety of my belongings was a medium-sized saddlebag, an envelope with 1800 bits, seperated into six fifty bit bills and twelve 100 bit bills; it was the payment for my last case. Okay, maybe the "riches of poverty'" is a bit of an exaggeration, but at the time, it really was all I had.
There were also a few candles, a stick of chalk, a small stuffed dragon, a small stuffed pony, and a lump of clay. My broken reading glasses lay in the bottom of the bag, the left lens missing and the frame bent and twisted. It made the scar over my eye twinge with a phantom pain, and I winced. They'd been broken at the same time that I'd gotten the scar.
I sighed and closed the saddlebag, surrounding it in the pale silver glow of my magic and fixing it to my side, slinging the rope over and around my opposite foreleg. I walked out to the kitchen, poking through the drawers until I found a small sheet of paper, a quill, and an inkwell. Considering Ink was in her name, I guessed she would have writing materials around. She'd told me that her passions ran in the direction of writing and photography, and given that her name was Ink Flash, that wasn't really a surprise.
I dipped the quill in the inkwell and wrote her a note. It was a plain note, and a simple one.
"Ink,
Thank you for everything you've done for me, it's meant more than I could ever properly explain. It pains me to write this, but I'm afraid that this is goodbye. Some things have happened, Ink. Very Bad Things. I'm more than likely not going to be coming back to Ponyville. I'm sorry I can't say goodbye in person, but right now it's just too dangerous. I wish you the best of luck with your chosen path as a guardian, and I hope that your future is filled with happiness."
Because I don't think mine will be, I thought bitterly to myself as I signed it.
As an afterthought, I slipped the six fifty-bit bills out of the envelope and slipped them into the small letter, folding it into thirds. I scrawled her name quickly across the outside and set the letter on the counter. After a quick double check that my saddlebag was secure, I stepped to the door and through it for the last time, making sure it was locked behind me, and made way for the train station.
Everything I did after leaving the house was mechanical. I retreated into my own mind and just let my body run on autopilot. The walk down Stirrup Street, the left past Sugarcube Corner, the approach to the station. Hell's bells, I don't even remember buying the ticket. I didn't really fully come back into myself until I realized that I was leaning against a lamp post.
I turned my head again, looking out over Ponyville, knowing it would be the last time I'd ever see the place. I felt a rising tide of loneliness, but fought it back and muttered darkly. "Stars and stones, get ahold of yourself, Stormbringer."
I heard the rasp of somepony behind me as they struggled to catch their breath. Was a mare, by the pitch. I heard her start speaking, and immediately froze, my entire body stiffening. "Do you really have to go, Storm?" asked Ink Flash.
"Yes, Ink, I do." It was all I could do to keep my voice calm. I couldn't look at her. I just knew it would be a bad idea right now.
I heard her take a few deep breaths again, trying to calm herself. It didn't work very well, as she still sounded a bit breathless. "I have no idea what you're going through, and I'm not going to pretend like I have even the slightest tendril of an idea." She stopped, taking a deep breath, finally calming herself. "But I know Will is one of the most powerful things we have." She punctuated her statement with a sad sigh. "Never forget who you are, where you came from, or where you are going. Never let anypony, anything, take away what is precious to you." She paused, and it felt like a two ton weight about to drop. I knew what was coming, and I didn't know if I was going to be prepared for it. "And above all else, Storm, I'll miss you."
The words hit me harder than even I had expected. They felt like a physical blow, and my head dipped down. I felt myself shaking as the sadness and pain at this goodbye welled up inside of me, that tendril of cold darkness snaking up with it. "Empty night," I muttered, "this is why I didn't... want to come back here..." I finally turned to face her, and everything was hazy. It felt like I was looking at her through a veil of shadows being blown by some ethereal wind.
I felt that compulsion to attack her spilling into my mind, the darkness's motivations seeping into my own. I swallowed once, trying to get ahold of myself, and spoke as calmly as possible. " Ink, the only pony I'm worried about taking away what's precious to me, is me. I won't be able to control this forever, and it will make me try to kill you, and anypony else I've ever cared about. I can't, Ink. I can't take that risk, I need to go..."
My words were halted as I saw her smile. It was warm, comforting, and unafraid. It was almost as if she knew something I didn't. She walked over to me, her eyes fixed on mine, and spoke quietly. "I will be waiting for the day we meet again, Storm." She lifted her head and kissed my cheek very gently. The simple action sent a pulse wave of emotion through me, my heart hammering in my chest.
"Ink, I..." was all I managed to stammer out. I felt the cold gripping my mind. I felt it seeping into my soul like a parasite. I needed to get her out of there, so I did the only thing I could; I pleaded with her. "I don't know if I... Run... run away..."
She didn't hesitate. I don't know what I looked like when I'd said it, but she turned, and galloped away at full speed. After only a few dozen feet, her wings unfurled, and she took to the sky, flying away faster than her legs would have been able to carry her.
My first reaction was confusing. It was a combination of part of my mind begging her not to go, and another part wanting to chase her down and slit her throat. Fortunately for me, and possibly also for her, the confusion stunned me into inaction. I sat staring at her dully for a moment, watching her retreating form. I took several deep breaths, trying to swallow my emotions again.
I don't know how long I stood there like that, trying to get ahold of myself. When I finally had, I heard the conductor calling out "All aboard!" in a very last chance sort of way. I double-checked that my saddlebag was still in place, and stepped aboard the train. It was nearly empty, so I picked a window seat, looking out over the platform.
I looked around at the platform until I caught sight of the spot where I'd spoken to Ink. I shivered at the sight, and had to fight back a wave of sadness and anger when I realized just how close I'd been to losing myself completely.
There was a ring of frost on the ground, right where I'd been standing.
