Cracks in Reality - Book One

Darklight woke from unconsciousness, screamed in pain, his body convulsed, he threw up the blood leaking into his stomach from his internal injuries. The acrid stench of death and blood burned in the back of his throat, his blood slowly leaked from his body’s many external cuts joining the blood of the dead caribous. He grunted with effort and forced himself to get up on his uninjured knee. He smiled, pulled a dagger from one of the caribou’s throats and slit its edge across his wrist. Fresh, willingly given, blood dripped to the ground and he used it as ink to draw a simple rune. The plan so far had worked perfectly. He had successfully claimed the little filly for himself, saved her life and now he could forge her into a powerful weapon suited to his design, his purposes. He added the last line to the rune, immediately blue etherial flames erupted from every dead body, every drop of blood and began flowing like water into his body.

The necromantic energy from his dead enemies filled him with icy cold power, it flowed through his body rejuvenating the power of his runes, the cuts in his flesh slowly closed leaving nothing but pale scars. With each drop of necromantic energy he claimed, the dead bodies became drier, their flesh turned to dust, their bones nothing but small pebbles of rubble. Once he was done the only evidence of the battle he had been through was a massive dark brown stain of dried flaking blood.

Darklight stood. He didn’t even feel cramped.

“Little filly?” he called out. A splitting,, crippling pain suddenly shot through his head and he gasped with pain, falling to his knees. So much for everything going perfectly. The whole room distorted, warping into blurry shapes of impossibility. The marble floor cracked, he threw himself to the side just as a massive, larva filled chasm tore open the space he just been occupying. “Little filly?!” he called louder. He gritted his teeth and with incredible effort, ignored what his poisoned mind was trying to show him. The larva filled chasms were nothing but the effect of taking such a massive amount of warmweed. He hoped the madness wasn’t permanent, it was possible to cure himself, but it would take so much time, effort and magic. He didn’t have those luxuries now, not when he had so much work to do with the little filly.

“Little filly?” he called out once more, just as futilely as the first few times. He wanted nothing more then to lose himself to the mind numbing fogs of pleasure the warmweed offered, every moment he denied himself the drug was nauseating torture.
He navigated past the deep chasm of larva and made it to the end of the pool of dried blood, he saw small, dried, crimson footsteps leading to a door on the other side of the room. Ignoring the cracking ground beneath him filled with hot glowing lava he forced his body to move toward the door one painful step at a time.

Suddenly a massive burst of fiery lava erupted from the fissured ground. Just as it was about to fall over him, reality warped and twisted once more and gravestones began rising from the ground, countless corpses of ponies slowly pulled themselves from their graves, their eye sockets filled with electric blue flames. One of the corpses crawled forward, grasped his ankle with its icy cold, bone hand and looked up at him with blue flame filled eyes. Please the corpse said wordlessly. Darklight tilted his head and turned around to see a cloaked figure, himself, kneeling on the ground several hundred meters away, a circle of glowing runes surrounding him. Blood, shadows and blue necromantic flames poured from the cloaked figure and into the thousands of graves waking their dead to defend Equestria.

please, make the pain stop! Darklight glanced down at the corpse, only now the memory had changed and he was comfortingly cradling an old soldier he had once fought with, and even as he gave his friend, his comrade a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder he slid a knife through the side of his ribs stopping his heart, killing him instantly.

“So, you’re still alive?” Darklight looked up and in the middle of the moonlit field of grass, surrounded by corpses of friends and enemies alike was a black alicorn adorned with midnight blue armor, cleaning a blood stained sword on a dead pony’s mane. “Do you really think the little filly will ever trust you now, after seeing what you did to her?”

“You’re not real, Nightmare Moon.” Darklight muttered standing, continuing his journey through the grassy field following a mental map of the room he was really in. Nightmare Moon smirked and leaned against a nearby tree in the dark, shadowy forest Darklight now found himself in.
“I remember this,” Nightmare Moon said looking around their new environment. “Luna had just returned from a rescue mission to save a village being attacked by the caribou. She left by herself, but returned with somepony else...” Darklight caught sight of movement from his left and he turned just in time to see a light blue alicorn running through the forest with a bundle of sheets and blankets clasped protectively against her chest. The imaginary Luna came to a stop, hiding from her pursuers behind a large oak tree.

“We’re almost safe, little colt,” Luna whispered, comfortingly nuzzling into the bundle of sheets. A sheet shifted in the bundle and Darklight caught a brief glance of two pale blue eyes staring up at Luna. His old eyes.

“Little filly?” Darklight called out louder then before, ignoring his surroundings and focusing on the mental map of the room he was in. He closed his eyes and focused on the cold marble beneath his feet, the metallic smell of blood, and he was once more back in the library surrounded by the dead caribou’s few remains. Only now Nightmare Moon was standing over a small black shirt discarded next to a trail of the small crimson footsteps leading to the open door on the other side of the room. Taking a deep breath, forcing himself to ignore the pain of withdrawals, he walked to the other side of the room.

“You have to face me sometime.” Nightmare was now leaning against the doorframe sharpening a large knife. “But you can’t can you? Acknowledging my presence means the warmweed antidote only half worked and your mind is now permanently damaged.” Darklight ignored her as he walked silently down the stairs. “Little filly?” He stepped into a massive cave with a large, deep pool of water taking up most of the floor. Standing at the edge of the pool was Twilight staring at her reflection in its mirrorlike surface. “Do you really think she’s ready to see you?” Nightmare asked standing beside the unicorn.

“You no doubt have lots of questions you want to ask, little filly...” Darklight remained where he was at the foot of the steps giving Twilight her space. But he continued talking, explaining what was happening to her. “Two days ago you did the impossible and ripped through the walls of Equestria’s reality into this one.”

Twilight remained completely silent and still just staring at her scarred reflection in the water.

“The amount of magic coursing through your body at the time was enough to alert every creature in Tartarus of your presence. I tried to contain your magic, but... something went very wrong.” Darklight sat down. “Your heart was damaged beyond repair, and when your flameout ended you were clutching to life with the barest of grips.”

Twilight’s ears flicked in his direction, the only sign she gave she was listening.

“So, before you died, I used the secari ritual to kill you myself.”

“You, killed me?” Twilight asked in a soft whisper.

“Technically yes. But it was a death I could bring you back from. The secari ritual involves creating a rift in the realms between life and death. Everything living caught in this rift becomes a state of the undead. It took me three hours to carve out your heart, and another three hours to meticulously carve six sigils into its flesh. I put you back together, using shadowmancing to stitch everything back together, and when I took you out of the rift, I used my remaining strength and magic to heal your body properly. That was when the caribou ambushed me, took you, and I spent the next day and a half tracking the patrol and bringing you back here to safety.”

Twilight finally turned around to face him, her face oddly impassive, emotionless and detached. “What do we do now? I want to go home, back to my family. Back to Celestia.”

Darklight didn’t bother to offer her any kind of comfort, he only told her the cold hard truth. “You can’t go back. This is your home for the foreseeable future.”