Eigengrau Zwei: Die Welt ist Grau Geworden

by kudzuhaiku

Rating: mature
Tags: Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance, Sex, Dark
Length: 318784

The definition of morality: morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life—and being successful.

The definition of morality: morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life—and being successful.

For Dim, the world has gone grey. Morally bankrupt, having lost everything, having achieved perfection, he flees from his sanctuary that is the tropical island where pirates come to port.

The journey home will be a long one, longer than he knows.

An experimental entry in the Weedverse.

Dim Dark

Published 2017-07-02 22:00:06 UTC
Last updated 2019-03-11 18:39:37 UTC

Departure

Dim knew a flying deathtrap when he saw one, and he was looking at one right now. Blackbird’s ship, if it could even be called that, was a cobbled-together flying trash heap of random junk that had been smashed together. He stood on the dock, uncertain if such a ship should even fly, even with magic making such a thing possible. Going aboard would take courage, and he took a long pull on the bottle of rum he had with him.

The ship had started life as a wooden gypsy vardo, with ornate scrollwork and carvings. It was a good sized one by the looks of it, big enough for a family of ponies or just one hippogriff. The wheels and axles had been removed, and now there was a mess of cloth, wood, and rope beneath the ship, a mess for which he could not figure out the purpose. The nacelle above—long, thin, and cigar shaped—was far too small for the ship. From the sides of the vardo itself, there were two propellers that were not attached to any engines, just pulleys and belts. These too, confused him a great deal.

In the front of the craft, there was a place for somepony to be harnessed, in this case, Blackbird, meaning that the hobbled together airship was pulled, not powered. Dim heaved a sigh and when he turned, he found Blackbird looking at him with a proud expression upon her face. It vexed him, that she was so proud of this somehow floating trash heap, but he kept his scornful words to himself.

“I made her myself from scrap and salvage,” Blackbird said as she turned to look at her ship.

“How does it even fly?” Dim asked, uncertain if he could trust his eyes.

“Well, it takes a bit more electricity than usual.” Blackbird pointed with her talons at the propellers on the sides. “When I start to pull it, those props spin and generate electricity. The electricity activates the Celestium gas and it lifts. It becomes super light once I get enough speed. I have a big bank of batteries that I have to keep cranked to maintain the initial lift so she can stay off of the ground.”

The science checked out, at least. Dim scowled, fearing that science had low standards. A word needed to be had with science, with the hopes of straightening it out.

“I rigged up a sail too! It folds out from beneath, so if there is a helpful wind blowing in the direction I am going, I can unfurl the sail and just ride the air currents.” Blackbird was smiling and her green eyes glittered with glee. “I didn’t quite get a polytechnic education, but I grew up practical!”

“Indeed.” Dim wasn’t sure what he was more annoyed by; the fact that this ship flew or Blackbird’s grating enthusiasm. He guzzled down more alcohol to steel his nerves, but no matter how much he drank, he could not quell or quench his terror. Of all of the things he had done, of all the dangers he had faced, of all of the situations, this was the worst.

He was going to die if he stepped aboard, of this he was certain.

“Blackbird… just the little bird I was looking for!” the voice was booming, and held a disturbing happiness, a faux-happiness. “I’ve come to collect what is owed, Blackbird.”

While Dim was turning about, Blackbird had this to say: “I don’t owe you anything, so get lost, Grenadine.” Behind him was one of the largest minotaurs that he had ever seen, a big, somewhat reddish creature. Muscles bulged beneath his ruddy, rusty hide, and there was an enormous hand cannon protruding from a holster.

“Look, I paid you for a lead, and you gave me nothing. So I took my money back.”

“That’s not how it works, Little Bird.” The massive minotaur hooked his thumbs into his belt and smiled down at Blackbird. “No one takes money from me. Ever.”

“So you’re saying I was the first? That I popped your cherry? Now I feel accomplished.”

The minotaur’s broad grin vanished, and Dim felt his muscles tense.

“You pull that hand cannon,” Dim said in a low voice, “and I will boil you in your own semen.”

The minotaur raised one enormous, ruddy, calloused hand. “I have no fight with you. Whatever she is paying you, I can double it. How much is she paying you, anyhow?”

Dim did not know this minotaur, and hadn’t ever seen him before. Perhaps he came from another nearby island. He did, however, know one thing. He didn’t like the bovine creature, not at all. He suspected that his reputation wasn’t going to help him here, and he wasn’t sure if this conflict could be resolved in a peaceful manner.

“So far, she hasn’t paid me a single coin.” Dim’s words were soft, almost hissy.

“Good.” The minotaur nodded. “Walk away, before you get hurt, so I can take what I’m owed out of Little Bird’s ass… one good cherry pop deserves another.”

“There is a shortage of fine, perfect asses in the world,” Dim began, and he pushed his hat back from his face, revealing his goggled eyes.. “The idea of you defiling one with your disgusting tube steak sickens me.”

“I have a perfect ass?” Distracted, Blackbird tucked her head around, trying to have a better look.

The minotaur too, was distracted, and he opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came forth. Without warning, Grenadine was suddenly on fire, his flesh melting like wax and his fat rendering into combustible oils that dribbled down, further fueling the flames. Bystanders began screaming, so too did Blackbird, who lept away with a flap of her wings.

For Dim, this was a mostly-normal Tuesday.

“You set him on fire!” Blackbird screamed out in alarm; she seemed quite surprised by this turn of events.

“A very astute observation.” Dim took a few steps backwards, away from the flailing, flaming bull-creature. There was a loud bang, which made all of his muscles pull taut, and it only took a second to realise that the hand cannon had gone off. The minotaur pitched over, his leg almost shot clean off, and he fell into the filthy, sewage-filled water of the harbour. “I hope you haven’t eaten recently,” Dim remarked. “To suddenly have cramps while swimming would be a cruel fate indeed.”

Now, the ocean was on fire, lurid blue-green flames danced along the water’s surface, and Dim clucked his tongue, having not anticipated this outcome. The entire city of Tortoise-Tuga might burn down because of one careless fire that set the ocean ablaze. Concerned for his own safety, he turned to look at Blackbird, who was now standing in open-mouthed shock.

“We should be going, before your ship catches on fire.”

Blackbird had large, powerful wings by any creature’s standard, and her wingspan was about three pegasus ponies’ wingspans wide… on each wing. With each flap, the ship picked up speed while gaining buoyancy. Behind her, the harbour of Tortoise-Tuga was burning, and the fire had spread out into a vast area of the ocean.

Dim wasn’t sad to see it go. The gypsy vardo, now an airship, leveled out a bit in flight, and he took stock of his surroundings. Inside of the wagon, there was only one ‘room.’ There were fold-down bunks against the wall, two of them, and he guessed that Blackbird had created the second bunk for when she found her mother. There was a front window, offering a magnificent view of Blackbird’s muscular backside, and the rear window was a compact, round picture frame around the spectacular sight of Tortoise-Tuga burning.

It was difficult to figure out what he wanted to look at.

The shakes settled in, dreadful tremours, and Dim had to brace his hooves against the floor to keep from falling over. He could feel the side of his face convulsing, and the spasming muscles tugged his ear, pulling it down, while also causing the corner of his eye to contort. Murmuring, he tried to reassure himself that one more life—a few more lives—didn’t matter. He was still alive, he had survived Tortoise-Tuga.

The world had gone greyer for him, everything he had once known, everything he believed in, it was passing away, falling away from him, fleeing from his reach. In the past few months, whatever bits of black and white that had once remained were now blurred beyond all recognition. There was only one good: survival, and only one evil: weakness. He was purging his weaknesses, his addictions, each one of his failings had been examined with a critical eye, and then he had done his best to cut them away, to excise them.

“That magnificent cock of yours is still a weakness,” Darling Dark’s voice whispered, causing his ear to twitch in syncopation against his facial tics. Her mocking laughter filled the inside of his head, echoing against the inside of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if the pink voice might save him.

Alas, for now, the pink voice was silent.

He pulled his goggles off and what little daylight shone inside of the vardo pierced his eyes like needles. The sudden pain cleared his head while also making his swimmy-headedness even worse. Blinking, he tried to force his eyes to remain open, to let the light in, and the agony pushed the mocking laughter of his dead half-sister out of his mind.

Sweating, he reached out with his telekinesis, pulled down the lower bunk, shed his gear, his saddlebags, and fell into it, not noticing the many black hairs and bits of black feathers. Gasping, he struggled to breathe, and his many addictions came back in force. One little moment of conflict had almost undone him. His tongue shriveled, longing for coca-laced salts or opium-laced salts, he could not tell. All over, his skin stung as his pores yawned to spill out salty sweat.

Shivering in bed, he pulled his bottle of rum to him, clutching it like an infant in his forelegs, and then he began to gibber when he allowed his eyes to close. Darling’s laughter was gone, but now, something far worse had replaced it; his mother’s humming. His ears pivoted and perked when he heard Desire’s lullabyes, and his fevered brain recalled her sweet songs. How beautiful she had sang to him while holding him close.

“Mother, I am sorry…” His words trailed off while his teeth began to chatter together. Moments before, he had been burning up, but the profuse sweating had left him chilled. His head did not rest upon a pillow, but against the thin mattress, and he rubbed his cheek against the rough blanket.

After a few more whimpers, he went still.

The blessed cool of night filled the vardo, and when Dim opened his eyes, he found Blackbird staring at him with her strange, slitted green eyes. Feline eyes. For a moment, while he struggled to wake, he wondered what being a mouse felt like. There was a dreadful, dull ache in his guts, his skin itched as though there were bugs crawling beneath it, and there was a ringing sound in his ears.

“Are you sick?” Blackbird asked.

“I am withdrawing,” Dim replied, deciding to be honest and straightforward.

“Oh.” Blackbird’s word was breathed out in a soft huff and her eyes filled with concern. “My dad, he told me stories about how he helped my mother dry out. It was a very difficult time for her.” She paused for a moment, her eyes lingering on Dim, and when she spoke again, it was a muted whisper. “I’d imagine that it is quite difficult. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Dim did not reply, not with words, but he did respond, flinching from the display of kindness, and his whole body jerked. An awful taste was in his mouth, something coppery, and with the painful throbbing that filled his head, he suspected that he had been grinding his teeth in his sleep.

“You set Grenadine on fire,” Blackbird said while shaking her head. “I don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, I need a rough and ready sort to help me, because I keep running into creatures like Grenadine, but you… you… you just set him on fire. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I don’t know,” Dim replied, still being truthful. “I am more bothered by the adrenaline jitters after the fight, I think. He threatened my interests, and he had to be dealt with. An example had to be made.”

“Well, thank you for saving me, I suppose, but I’d really appreciate it if you kept the firestarting to a minimum.” Blackbird blinked, her almost luminous green eyes vanishing for a moment behind her eyelids, and her talon-fingers twitched. “I think I’m going to have nightmares about what I saw. I’ve never seen anypony die like that before. Right now, I can’t even deal with it, and I think I’m in shock.”

“Your father helped your mother?” Dim asked, changing the subject.

Blackbird laughed, a nervous sound. “He did.” She nodded. “My mother captured him and was going to eat him. She wasn’t very nice back in those days. Being what she was, she played with her food a bit, because, really, who can help from doing that, and my father used his magic on her—”

“Magic?” Dim’s eyes narrowed, as magic of any sort got his attention.

“The Scold.” Blackbird grinned, reminiscing, and her eyes were merry. “Some kind of earth pony juju. I ended up with a touch of it myself.” Reaching out, she brushed Dim’s mane away from his face, revealing his mismatched eyes. “He damn near scolded her feathers off, the way my mother tells it, and then proceeds to lecture her almost to death. My mother did the only thing she could do in that situation.”

“And what was that?” Dim found himself wanting to know.

“Why, she fell in love with him.” Blackbird laughed, a strange avian-feline-equine sound.

“How… odd.”

“You’re telling me.” Blackbird pulled her talons away from Dim’s face, and she began to scratch her neck. “My mother was the meanest, most vile, most rootinest, most tootinest gunslinger that ever picked up a revolver. She left a trail of bodies in her wake everywhere she went. Most would think of her as an irredeemable creature, but not my father, Stinkberry.”

Dim said nothing.

“After he scolds her into submission, he starts trying to get her better. She dries out and becomes a lot less mean. After a bit, she and my dad become friends, and then more than friends, and the other earth ponies started to trust her too.” Blackbird’s face became wistful and sad, but still also happy somehow. “She became the protector… she went from being a raider and a bandit to being a protector. It took a while, but she had acceptance, a tough thing for a hippogriff to have. Griffons don’t want you and neither do ponies. But my father scolded anypony that had something mean to say.”

“I am guessing that something happened.”

“Yeah.” Blackbird nodded. “It did.” She shifted the bulk of her weight, which caused the flying vardo to lurch a bit. “A couple years back, my father, he’s off doing his deliveries… he delivered milk and cheeses for the farmer that he worked for. He’s off on his route, and he’s robbed by bandits. Not just any bandits, either, but the really bad kind. The kind that my mother used to be.”

Hearing this, Dim understood, or at least he thought he did.

“When the constables found my father’s body, there wasn’t much left. His wagon had been used for firewood.” Blackbird sniffled a bit, but did an admirable job of holding herself together. “After getting the news, my mother, she starts drinking again, a lot. She pulls her guns out from their hiding place behind the loose stone on the mantel, and she tells me that she’s going hunting. Nothing else, no other words, no goodbyes, no nothing. She’s just going hunting.”

Closing his eyes, Dim let out a sigh.

“I waited, for almost a year, living with the farmer that my father worked for. I worked for him too. I kept myself busy, waiting for my mom to come home, and I tried to deal with my grief, because my father, he got real upset if I started acting sad. After a year, I decided to go looking for my mother, Starling, so I started to prepare and I set off one day to find her. So… here I am.”

A meaningful silence settled in, and when Dim opened up his eyes once more, he found that Blackbird was staring at him in a most peculiar way. He was thirsty, he realised, and was in need of something to drink. A cool breeze wafted along his ribs, making his sides quiver, and he wondered how long he had been sleeping.

“You know, you’re starting to look good enough to eat,” Blackbird remarked while she reached out and tweaked Dim’s snoot with her talon. “I’d better get busy and fix us something to eat.”

For the first time, Dim had a sincere interest in knowing a fellow creature, and he found himself wanting to know more. He didn’t ask, he didn’t pry, but figured that more of her story would happen in time. She was beautiful, in an exotic sort of way, even if she was big enough to be intimidating. She was as large as a lioness and then some. For whatever reason, he was not the least bit bothered that she had just made a joke about eating him, but the thought did linger in his mind.

While turning herself around in the cramped space of the vardo, Blackbird gave Dim a teasing warning. “Oh, and if I think you are staring at my kitty slitty while I am cooking, I’m gonna claw out your eyes, Mister I-Set-Stuff-On-Fire. See if I don’t.”

Author's Note

Here we go again... please, leave a comment below, if you don’t mind. I’d like to have an idea of who is reading... and why. Thank you.

Getting clean

Icy cold sweat trickled down Dim’s side beneath his sodden, already soaked light cloak. This town reminded him far too much of another, the memories were far too fresh, far to vivid, leaving his mouth aching with a thirst that water could not, and would not quench. Shepherd’s Shore was a thin, fragile scab, with the merest thought capable of causing the diseased blood to trickle forth. Dim’s mind had done its best to protect him, to convince him that his hallucination had been real, and that many bandits had died that day. His mind had a desperate need to enforce the notion that those had in fact, been bandits, and that he had not been the cause of the civil war that had broken out, sundering the Grittish Isles, tearing them in twain.

His thin legs—almost pipe cleaner thin given his current state—trembled so much that it was a wonder that he remained upright. The stench of his own sweat was sour, unpleasant, and he itched in every crusted crevice. The weight of the half-filled rum bottle in his grasp was like what he imagined raising the moon had to have been like—an impossible task indeed—and he struggled not to drop it.

The roads here were not cobbled, not even graveled, they were just packed dirt. The buildings were framed with heavy beams, and then finished off with wattle and daub. The roofs were thatched and most of the windows had glass in them, indicating a certain level of prosperity. There was no electricity here, no sign of any sort of modernisation, and the town’s wells were picturesque opportunities for tourists.

There were griffons here, with a majority of ponies. Dim hoped that the relationship between them was amicable—protection rackets were a thing—and he held onto a sincere hope that things would not take a turn for the worse during his stay here. In a rickety looking wooden watchtower near the town’s gate, two griffon fusiliers kept watch, clinging to two fusils that appeared to be from the age of antiquity. They had let him and Blackbird through the gate without question.

A foolish mistake? Only time would tell.

“You’re taking a bath, Mister.” The tone of Blackbird’s voice left no room for argument, no bargaining, no negotiation. Being a good bit larger than Dim, she used her bulk to be intimidating, and her feathers fluffed out, further enhancing the effect. “The vardo is a mighty small space to be sharing, and you… you’ve got a stink that could bring a tear to a glass eye.”

“That might be pleasant?” Dim did not mind the suggestion, in fact, he welcomed it. He longed to wash the stench of Tortoise-Tuga off of him. Maybe a good trim might be nice as well, but the idea of somepony snipping away with scissors too close to his ears made the corner of his mouth begin twitching.

“There’s a laundry here, and a general goods store. I wonder what they sell. I am running low on shot and powder.” Blackbird’s ears pivoted around, and for the first time, Dim noticed that they were tufted at the tips, very much like those of the nocturnal pegasus ponies.

Dim didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was staring at Blackbird. She was the blackest black creature that he had ever seen, a deep, rich, glossy black. Every inch of her was black as black could be, save for her hind hooves and her claws, which were a dark matte grey. Even the avian scales on her front legs that led down to her talons, those were an inky, hypnotic shade of black. Her mane was like strands of midnight, and the way they clung to her face and neck made Dim think poetic thoughts.

“With Grenadine… you had the chance to turn on me… you could have taken his money, walked away, and left me to my fate.” Blackbird shook her head, and her somewhat curled forelock slid over her left eye, then came to rest against her temple while she held her head cocked off to one side to stare at Dim. “I mean, I haven’t paid you a thing. Why?”

“I would very much like to have carnal relations with you,” Dim blurted out in response. “I wish to probe the depths of your darkness.” Stunned, he wondered what had just made him say that, and behind the dark glass of his goggles, his eyes were wide with sudden terror. Blackbird could wring his neck, and no doubt, he would let her. He might even enjoy it.

“Well, I can’t fault you for being honest.” Her head leveled out and her lips drew taut, revealing bulges caused by long, pointed canine teeth. “A reminder… no means no, and don’t you dare betray my trust. You have to sleep sometime, and that’s when I’ll drop you overboard.”

“Being dropped overboard would hurt my plans of gaining your trust.” Dim couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth, the sincerity, the honesty, the vulnerability. “Trust is important, should a pony choose to lie down with a lioness.”

“Hmm, I suppose it is.” Blackbird’s expression became thoughtful. “My mother, she had claws that could rake grooves into steel plating. She was a big, burly, powerful creature, and she did a lot of the heavy lifting on the various farms she watched over. Yeah, yeah”—an enthusiastic nod made her head bob up and down—“I can see what you are saying.”

Dim sighed with relief.

“My mom, she once lifted a steam powered tractor up out of the mud. I mean, she had some help, but what few pegasus ponies we had around couldn’t have done that without her. Now I’m thinking… my mother really did have to work hard to gain their trust. How does one let a creature that big, that powerful live around them and not be just a little bit afraid? Huh… I guess that explains why little ponies are so slow to accept me. Maybe I just took my home situation for granted.”

“I know all about taking things for granted…”

“I bet you do.” Blackbird’s face had a cloud of concern pass over it. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up, I’m tired of stinking.”

The water stung, but in a good way. It was hot, almost too hot, and it soaked into filthy, crusted-over places. The pain in his dock was almost unbearable, and beside him, Dim could hear Blackbird hissing while she tried to settle into her copper basin tub. She was, of course, far too big, and it was like trying to stuff a pony into a bucket. Dim reasoned that he could stuff a pony into a bucket, but it would be messy. There would be a great deal of squishing.

With much caution, Dim pulled off his goggles. The room was darkened, the blinds drawn, and the oil burning lamps were low. He had smothered the light a bit, leaving the room at tolerable levels, and after blinking a few times, his eyes adjusted to the unwanted, unwelcomed light. Above him were a mess of pipes, all of which led to a coal-burning copper boiler that glowed with a faint orange in the corner.

“On Tortoise-Tuga, there was a shortage of clean, fresh water,” Dim said, trying to start a conversation with small talk. “Baths were available, but they cost a king’s ransom. You could buy used bathwater though, or really used bathwater, if you were almost broke.”

“Ugh!” There was a splash as Blackbird struggled to get more of herself into her tub.

“Having troubles?” Dim asked, and he was thankful that the shadows hid his smile.

“Yes! How am I supposed to clean the clitty litter from my kitty slitty in this tiny little teacup I find myself in?” There was more splashing, and then a string of expletives streamed from Blackbird’s mouth, like refugees fleeing a war.

“You don’t talk like other mares I know.” Dim reached up and with one wet foreleg, he rubbed his eyes, trying to clean away the grit and grime. The hot water felt great when it soaked into his face, and it stung his eyes in a not so pleasant way.

“I grew up on a farm with ponies who had bright red sunburned necks.” There was a creak of metal, followed by the sound of metal scraping against the wooden floor. “We didn’t mince words, and you were considered educated by how vulgar you could be. You had to be creative, see, if you hoped to make a pony laugh. You had to be even more creative to leave a pony disgusted.”

“So you went to school?” Dim asked.

“Not at first… when I was little, I was still bigger than everypony else my age… and the schoolmarm was worried about that. It got my mother heated, and she made things worse, but my dad, he finally sorted things out by being patient and calm. I was a good student, and Mrs. Clover was glad to have me.”

“Can I ask you a more personal question?” These words were slow to be said, as Dim feared rejection.

“Why not… I mean, we’re in the getting to know and trust one another phase. Go right ahead.”

“What’s it like being a crossbreed? A hippogriff?”

“You know, the only reason I am going to answer you is because you don’t seem offended by my very existence.” There was pain in Blackbird’s voice, bitterness, and all of her cheerfulness vanished. “Griffons are chimerae, crossbreeds, but they have become stable, harmonious crossbreeds. We hippogriffs however…” her words trailed off and she went silent.

The silence persisted and Dim wondered if she would continue. The pain in her voice was palpable, it could not be ignored, and the feeling that he had made a mistake had settled into the back of his mind. He wished that he could take the question back, but there was no undoing what had been done. All that could be done was hope that she didn’t resent him.

“We hippogriffs are a disharmonious chimerae. We’re a slapdash creation, thrown together by magic, and the magic tries to make all of the different parts work. Because of this, we tend to be chaotic… we can be violent, dangerous, and unpredictable. My dad… I’d like to think that he scolded the chaos right out of me, but I still have my moments. There is a reason why ponies and griffons both don’t trust hippogriffs in general, and why we’re feared.”

“Griffons too, can be violent, dangerous, and unpredictable.” Confused, Dim was at a loss to understand what had been said, and his keen mind shoved aside everything else to begin trying to sort out the issue.

“They can, but griffons can also make for fine soldiers. They have a proud, noble, martial history, full of discipline and honour, or they did before the decline.” There was a soft sigh, and the hard edge in Blackbird’s voice was softened when she spoke again. “We hippogriffs, we don’t have a good history. Look, I’m sorry, I gave you your answer, and I do not wish to keep talking about it.”

“I understand.” Dim did, in fact, understand, and when he lapsed into silence, he thought long and hard about his own history, and that of the House of Dark.

Dim felt like a new pony. Sleek, gleaming, well brushed, groomed, he almost felt like showing off. His grullo pelt now had a near-mirror finish. With all of his clothing in the laundry, including his vizard hats, he had braved the sun just long enough to duck into the one and only cafe in the town, an eatery that shared space with the inn.

Still wearing his goggles, he sat in a dark, shadowy corner, reading a newspaper, and drinking a cup of coffee. His cigarette holder protruded from his lips, (it doubled as a wand in emergencies) and a clove and cannabis cigarette released a haze of blue smoke that curled upwards in lazy loops. A bowl of corn and potato chowder was cooling in front of him, and he would get to that soon enough.

“You clean up well, I’ll confess,” Blackbird said while she filed away with a fresh emery board that made scritchy-scritchy sounds while it honed and sharpened her claws. She worked with swift movements that were precise, quick, and nimble for a creature of her size. “You help me find my mother, and I’ll be mighty grateful.”

Dim’s newspaper rumpled a bit, but he did not reveal his face.

“I reckon that once I find her, I’ll need to help her get sober again. I’m not looking forwards to that, but it is a job like any other. Once I get her sorted out, then, maybe, perhaps… you can ask her permission to take me on a date. Until then, I’m off limits.”

This time, he did lower his newspaper, and then squinted through his goggles.

“With my father gone, you have to get permission from somebirdy…”

Author's Note

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”

―Terry Pratchett

Of classes...

Their next destination was a town called Cloppenburg, a town about fifty miles inland, located at a fork in a river in the middle of a vast, primeval wood. It was a rough place, an independent city-state that lived by its own rules, laws, customs, and traditions. From what little Blackbird had told him, Dim gleaned that his skills would be needed there, perhaps. It was starting to make sense why she needed a competent, professional killer… a vizard.

While Blackbird flew, Dim was at work making the vardo better. He repaired a few things—a task easy enough for him to do—magicked away the corrosion starting to form on the battery terminals, and he had laid the foundation for the first of many protective spells. Blackbird had a never ending fear of her vardo being stolen, and Dim aimed to fix that. Unwanted, unwelcomed guests would suffer… consequences.

Just like anypony reaching into his saddlebags would find themselves pulling out a fleshless skeletal nub...

Already, Dim didn’t like what he was seeing, and this place had a feeling to it. Dim, of course, didn’t like this feeling, this hunch. Pulling out a clove and cannabis cigarette, he inserted it into the open end of his long, ornamental silver holder, placed that in the corner of his mouth, and then lit his smoke with a careless flick of fire magic.

“I have a good feeling about this,” Blackbird said to her now smoking companion.

“You do?” Dim was incredulous, but willing to hear her out.

“You know, Dim… ponies play this role playing game where they pretend to be adventurers. You know, gunslingers, knights, wizards, rogues and the like. They roll dice and have papers with foundations for mathematical formulae to help them determine if their actions are successful, like hitting something with a sword or casting a spell. In short, they pretend to be like you… and I suppose, in a lesser degree, like me.”

“What?” Dim, confused, puffed away on the nail in his holder. “Why is this being brought up now?”

“Well, my last companion, he knew a lot about the game, and I think it bled over into real life for him. He was always shouting about dice rolls, and saving throws, and he kept demanding that I make saving throws against his charisma checks, and he kept shouting, ‘I put on my robe and wizard hat!’ and he was surprised when fights didn’t quite go as planned, and in the end, when he became unbearable, and would not take the hint that no meant no, I had to drop him out of the wagon and into the sea. I hope he made his saving throw.”

“The fuck is this?” Dim demanded, now irritated beyond reason, and unable to explain why. The cigarette bobbed up and down at the end of its long holder. “I don’t roll dice, I roll heads!”

“I, uh, don’t doubt that.” Blackbird nodded in an amicable manner to pacify her companion. “You have already proven that you are far, far more capable than any of my other companions, so don’t be upset.”

“Also, one quick thing before we go,” Dim began, and he gave Blackbird a stern glare through his goggles. “Don’t hire a killer and complain when he does his job. I’m not like those other nattering, incompetent dice rolling boobs you found. I have worked in a professional capacity for a while now. If you want a nice clean operation, hire a maid, or get yourself a butler. I make messes.”

“You really are a killer, aren’t you?” Blackbird’s voice dropped down low, almost to a whisper, and there was sadness now in her eyes. “Lots of ponies… lots of creatures say it… some of my previous companions have said it, but travel experience proved them liars. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling hopeful. Come on, Dim… let’s go and do our business in this awful place, and then let us be gone from here.”

“Remain very close to me, Blackbird. I cannot do my job if you go wandering off, or if you stray away from me. Whatever it is you want from here, I can help you get it. But only if you let me do what I do best.” Dim puffed a few times, filling his lungs with soothing, calming smoke. Feeling lightheaded, he felt better than he had in a long time, but he knew that this peaceful feeling would end the moment there was any sort of conflict or violence.

Then, the shakes would set in, along with the need for some coca-laced salts. And when the jitters proved to be too much, or the pain became unbearable, the need for the opium-laced salts would no doubt prove to be too much to bear, and his suffering would begin in earnest. The trouble with calm, Dim realised, was that it was far too fragile a thing. He puffed away a bit more and his gums began to grow numb from the cloves. His throat, too, was feeling better, and the dreadful ache in his lungs began to subside.

“Who are we looking for?” Dim asked while he prepared his mind to cast a few protective spells.

“A pony named Grimy.” For a moment, it almost seemed as though Blackbird might laugh, but it passed. “It isn’t much of a lead, but I heard he hired my mother for a job and as payment, he gave her a name and a location. He’s supposed to be here, running some of the lumber camps.”

“We shall have to locate this Grimy, and hope that he is generous with what he knows.” Dim sighed, sucking in and releasing a huff from his clove and cannabis cigarette. “He might try and pressgang us into work. Come, let us begin our task.”

Sawdust, like dirty brown-black snowflakes, covered every available surface. They came down from the sky, drifting, falling in a slow, meandering, unpredictable dance made possible by the wind and rising hot air. Coal powered boilers belched out clouds of acrid, choking black smoke and ash. The streets were packed with sapients of all types.

In Equestria, and to a lesser extent, the Grittish Isles, one ran into equines. Ponies were the dominant species. In other places, such as this one, one encountered sapients. Creatures with self awareness, intelligence, and the means to communicate. In Equestria, and to a lesser extent, the Grittish Isles, one encountered a lot of freedom, and free creatures. Individuality was respected, for the most part, except for when it wasn’t.

This was not the case, here, in this place. Teams of shackled earth ponies pulled logs and wagons while whips cracked. Pimps of all kinds, all species, hawked their male and female flesh to any customer that had both a need and coin. Here, like Tortoise-Tuga, the strong remained free while the weak lived in bondage.

Such was the way of the world, and so it would remain until something was done about it.

Dim was tempted to do something about it, as something about all of this bothered him, just as it did in Tortoise-Tuga. He kept his thoughts and his feelings to himself though, and was mindful of his urges. He was here to do a job—keep his companion safe—and even though he wasn’t being paid, there was his pride to think of. His pride demanded that he do his job to the best of his ability.

He was a vizard for hire, even if he wasn’t Harsh Winter any longer. For a time, he had tried to be Harsh Winter, a persona, somepony new, an attempt at starting over, but that had failed. Now, he didn’t know who or what he was any longer. After hitting rock bottom, trying to maintain Harsh Winter’s existence had lost meaning.

Perhaps Harsh Winter was just one more pony that he had killed.

The disgusting primitives lived with no fear of consequences here, there were no nobles, no rulers, there was no princess to keep them in line. These were peasants, serfs, and the common rabble without proper hierarchy, this was the life commoners created when left to their own devices. It sickened Dim, it turned his stomach, and reminded him of the need for social order. Never was a place more in need of proper, well-meaning nobles and a few knights.

As much as he had been twisted, as much as his mother—his family—had corrupted him, as cynical, bitter, and jaded as the world had left him, Dim was still of a fine, royal bloodline: Princess Luna’s. Messed up though he might be, deep within him—unbeknownst to him—there was still a tiny fragment of his core that remained untouched, unsullied by everything that had happened.

In Tortoise-Tuga, that tiny fragment had opened one eye. Now, in Cloppenburg, it yawned. It yawned, having awoke after a long slumber, and it struggled to regain its senses. Under ideal circumstances, this tiny fragment awoke in perfect vessels, ponies raised from birth to do right, to do good, to serve the realm, to obey the bidding of the alicorn authority, to defend the cause of harmony. This tiny fragment awoke in the noble offspring of the ponies who had the ways and the means, the resources and the drive to do great good in the world. In ideal ponies, under ideal conditions, under ideal circumstances, these tiny fragments, these minute slivers of ancient alicorn souls did magnificent things.

This one found itself in Dim, and it was very, very confused as it awoke.

“Hey, you… how much for the cunt?” A grating voice asked. “She looks exotic. Is she for sale? I’m surprised you don’t have that cunt hobbled. Is her wings clipped?”

Dim paused and felt his spine stiffen as all emotion fled from him. Turning his head, he peered up at a greasy looking diamond dog who was puffing away on a pipe. There was a bandoleer around his girth, one visible pistol, and no visible coin purse. “Well, that would depend,” Dim began, and he hoped that Blackbird trusted him. “How much do you have?”

“On me, not much. But I has access to quite a treasury, so I do.” The diamond dog now had a hopeful expression, and there was keen shrewdness in his eyes. “I went all legitimate and such, and now I has me a corporation backing me for my purchases. Keeps the workers happy. It’s still cheaper than raising their wages, I guess.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” Dim smiled, and it was no doubt, a terrible sight. Not only was it cheaper than raising wages, but slaves could be sold later, for other purposes. Dim peered at the diamond dog through his goggles, and decided that he wasn’t looking at a killer, but a merchant. “I am positive that we can negotiate a fair price. Come, let us discuss business.”

“But Massah, I don’t wanna be sold,” Blackbird whined in a shrill voice. “Massah issa good Massah ‘cuz he likes dem little colts and not my tight little twat.”

“Silence… cunt. Know your place.” Dim was relieved, but he did nothing to show it, to betray himself. “One more outburst from you and I will cut your tongue out so I can use it as toilet tissue.”

“She’s a bit mouthy,” the diamond dog said, looking concerned.

“Some will pay more for such amusement.” With all of this absurdity, it was a struggle for Dim not to laugh. He watched as the diamond dog considered his statement, and after a moment, the greasy dog nodded.

“Yeah, some would. More fun to break in.” The diamond dog—puffing away at his pipe—began to rub his jowls, and he looked down at Dim with a thoughtful expression.

“I’ve made her very obedient. As you can see, no need for hobbles or wing clipping. Nothing to sully her fine, perfect flesh.” Dim gestured at his companion, and Blackbird was now doing her best to look as meek as possible.

“Massah, please, I like doin’ your laundry and bein’ your maid. I like sewin’ your clothes!”

“Can she cook?” the diamond dog asked.

“She can cook, clean, sew, and perform all domestic duties.” Dim now had an inkling of just how shrewd Blackbird was, how clever. She was passing herself off as too good of a deal to pass up, even making the subtle implication that she was… intact. Blackbird might have been no killer, and Dim stood by his initial assessment of her when he first laid eyes on her, but she was smart. If he was the vizard, was she the rogue? He began to remember their conversation from earlier, but now was not a time to be distracted.

“I think we can work out a deal,” the diamond dog said, sounding eager. “Follow me.”

Author's Note

Next chapter... bad things getting what they deserve.

Unforgivable sins

The room was, by any standard, dark and dirty. The windows—yellowed and opaque from nicotine—had spiderwebs of cracks and holes in the glass. The walls and ceiling had a yellow film as well, and it was doubtful that the floor had ever been mopped. Dim pitied Blackbird for having to dirty her talons on the floor when she walked. The stench inside was indescribable, the smell of sour beer, spoiled food, rancid tobacco, and semen encrusted sheets baked hard by the radiator.

It was the smell of depravity, and Dim knew it well, having lived in Tortoise-Tuga.

The appalling lack of housekeeping was all the reason Dim needed to kill every creature present. There was a unicorn behind a desk in the corner with reading glasses in dire need of polishing. A minotaur half-dozed in a chair leaned back against the wall, and his hooves rested upon a filthy table. There was one door, no doubt leading to a back room or two, and Dim kept a spare eye upon it.

“Massah, I hassa bad feelin’ about this, I shore ‘nuff do,” Blackbird said to Dim.

When he turned to look at her, to scowl at her, to give her the most degrading look he could muster, he noticed that her hand cannon was missing. The massive, almost comically huge revolver of hers, it was nowhere to be seen. Damn, he thought to himself, she’s good. It occurred to him that he wasn’t the only professional in the room. Having to explain the hand cannon would be difficult, but not impossible, if he even explained it at all.

“Hey, Zinc, I think I done found us a fine bit of property,” the greasy diamond dog said to the unicorn sitting behind the desk.

The unicorn, Zinc, lifted his head and peered over the top of his glasses at Blackbird. Dim studied him, watching his eyes, his face, his ears, and Dim’s breathing became shallow when the unicorn’s horn ignited. The wait was long and painful—a few seconds stretching into an eternity—and he was relieved when a drawer on the desk opened with a metallic clink. It was the sound of coin, of precious metal, a sound that Dim was familiar with.

“Zinc, she’s skilled. Domestic. Untouched. Real obedient by the looks of it.”

“Yes…” the unicorn had a soft lisp due to a somewhat deformed lip. “This is just what I’ve been looking for. We can put her to work cleaning up this place, and keep me company as well.” While the unicorn spoke, he began counting and stacking coins on the desk.

“Massah, please, I help catch those colts for you—”

“Quiet, cunt.” The words that came out were said with so much cruelty that Zinc cringed.

When the unicorn behind the desk recovered, however, he asked, “She is good at enticing foals?”

“Well…” Dim drew out the word and then after a dramatic pause, he nodded. “She is quite maternal, you see. She has this knack to make the little ones trust her. I have certain… how shall we say… proclivities for colts. Young ones. She has been quite good at looking after my needs.”

“Oh my, she is a prize.” Zinc laid out a few more mismatched coins on the desk, and there was now a good sized pile. “So you can send her out to do work and trust her to return?”

Dim nodded. “I suppose I am an ideal master. I do not find her attractive, not in the slightest.” With every word he said, he hoped that his protections held. If this Zinc fellow was skilled, he would already know that he was being lied to, and that deception was ahoof. Right now, at this very moment, Zinc could be trying to draw everything out as long as possible to give his magic time to work, and Dim was all too aware of this fact.

There was no time to discern what sort of unicorn he might be dealing with, and Dim decided to make his opening move. Each second of delay increased the risk and there didn’t seem to be any surprises waiting. With ease, he powered up his horn and fired off a telekinetic bolt while hoping for the best. As it would turn out, Dim had no cause to worry. Zinc’s head popped like an eager cyst and his brains splattered on the wall behind him, forming a pattern that almost looked like a butterfly. A very bloody butterfly.

The minotaur awoke with a snort, but it was the diamond dog that reacted first. Before he could even turn around, Dim fired another telekinetic blast, which shattered the dog’s skull on impact. Reaching out with his mind, he grabbed the bull by the horns, and with a flick of telekinesis, he twisted the minotaur’s head around a full three-hundred and sixty degrees. There was a sickening crunch, and with a startled, half-awake, pained look upon his face, the minotaur fell out of his chair. He went down with a thud, hard enough to make the chair he had been sitting on bounce, and then he lay with his head jutting off at an unnatural angle.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Dim was thankful that this had gone off without a hitch. It was almost too easy, the unicorn behind the desk should have been more cautious, more aware, more paranoid. No protections whatsoever. No wards, not a one. The dead pony wasn’t much of a unicorn, perhaps, and Dim’s lip curled back into a sneer of contempt while he thought about this. In the great wide world, Dim had learned much, but one lesson stood out more than all of the others. There was only one good: survival, and only one evil: weakness. To be weak and to come to a place like this was a great evil done to one’s own self. This unicorn, this Zinc fellow, did he depend upon hired muscle for strength, while having very little of his own? That was never enough. Never, ever enough. Zinc had committed the unforgivable sin, and that put Dim’s mind at ease about what he had done.

The door did not open, which worried Dim. Was somebody behind it waiting in ambush? Hiding? Was some dim-witted dullard back there shitting himself in terror? While Dim kept an eye on it, Blackbird moved over to the desk, and began to pick up the coins stacked up on top of it. Zinc was slumped over in his chair and most of the upper portion of his skull was missing. No eyes were left in his head to watch as Blackbird took his coins. When the desk was cleared, she moved on to take the contents of his locked drawer.

“I see that you are okay with robbery,” Dim remarked while Blackbird dug coins out of the no longer locked drawer.

“This is not a robbery,” Blackbird retorted and then she snorted to punctuate her terse response. “I have enough money to pay you now. Half of this is yours.”

“That is quite generous.” Dim appreciated Blackbird’s munificence, and he found himself liking his new companion even more. He liked her so much that he felt fine about provoking her when he asked, “So, killing is wrong, but robbery is okay?”

“This isn’t robbery!” Blackbird clucked her tongue a few times, flapped her wings against her sides once, and her long, feather-tufted tail whipped from side to side. “This is repurposing. We’re taking this money to do good. We’re going to spend this money, give it to good, honest merchants, and be charitable in our givings. My mother’s life and seeing her home safely is worth more than this lot.”

“You used me to kill Grenadine.” Coming from Dim, this was not a question. “You knew he was coming for you so you came to find help.”

“Maybe.” This response from Blackbird was neither admittance nor denial. “You were the knight that came rushing to my rescue when I batted my eyelashes. There’s always one in a crowd, usually. Usually, they live long enough to allow me to get where I need to go, and then I have to find the next one. Something tells me those days are done and I’m stuck with you.”

“Oh… you’re good.” Behind his goggles, Dim’s eyes narrowed into slits, and he allowed himself to stare at Blackbird’s glorious hindquarters while her tail darted from side to side.

“Consider it a hiring test. If he would have had to fight you and kill you, I would have had time to escape, most likely. But instead—”

“I set him on fire.”

“Yeah.” Blackbird turned to look over her shoulder and changed the subject when she said to Dim, “We’re rich. There’s a lot of coins here of different type. Mostly gold and silver. Later, we’ll sort it out together. I don’t want you thinking that I’m cheating you now that we are equal partners.” She blinked once, then a second time, and then asked, “Are you staring at my ass? I’m pretty sure that you are.”

“Yes,” Dim replied, while shaking his head no.

“I don’t mind you looking, I suppose, but no touching. No means no.” With the drawer cleaned out, Blackbird turned her body around to face Dim. “So… do we search the place for valuable stuff or do we leave now before somepony shows up? We don’t know what is behind the door. What do we do, partner?”

With his mouth contorted into a violent scowl, Dim turned to stare at the door…

Their saddlebags were quite a bit heavier now and Dim now had the confidence that only came from acquiring quite a haul. He strutted a bit, without realising it, and enjoyed the feeling of having his saddlebags slap against his sides, at least for now. The buying office wasn’t much. A front room, a back room, and a dirty, cramped loft with a few beds. Dim had found a hidden cache in the floorboards upstairs, and that had been filled with a small fortune in Equestrian gold bits.

Equestrian bits ended up in a lot of strange places.

Blackbird had a plan to find Grimy, and it was a simple one. Grimy, being some kind of overboss or forepony, would no doubt have workers, and those workers would no doubt spend their pay somewhere. That somewhere would likely be some rough and rowdy bar, perhaps one that also served as a brothel. Already, Dim was feeling dirty again, and would need a bath once he left this vile infestation posing as a patch of civilisation.

“That looks like the sort of place we’re after,” Blackbird said to Dim while she pointed with her talons.

Cringing with disgust, Dim set his eyes upon an enormous hive of disgusting primitives. The building was five stories tall, had been carelessly clapped together out of wood planks, and appeared to have a slight lean to it. Frontier architecture was an unforgivable abomination in the eyes of Dim, and he was tempted to burn it down just to make himself feel better. Just one spark would do it, or even pulling out a single plank around what could only charitably be called a foundation if he didn’t wish to set the entire surrounding forest ablaze. Plinky piano music drifted out of the batwing doors in the front, and one of the front windows had been broken, leaving behind jagged shards that nothing had been done about.

“Something tells me that there is no way I could walk into this place alone and still come out as my daddy’s little girl,” Blackbird said in a low, almost murmuring voice.

“Are you trying to smooth talk me into being more protective?” Dim asked.

“No.” Blackbird shook her head. “When I walked into that place on Tortoise-Tuga, I was scared shitless. I was running out of luck and I knew it. I kept ending up in worse and worse places and I knew that sooner or later, it was going to come out of my own ass.” Tilting her head a bit to one side, she glanced at Dim out of the corner of her eye. “My mother ended up in some bad places in her travels. I don’t know how she did it. I’m not like her.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Dim said to his companion. “Stay close to me. I know that you can take care of yourself, but if you are close to me, I can fit my shield around you.”

Drawing in a deep breath, Blackbird prepared herself for the worst…

The inside of the saloon was an introvert’s nightmare. Every stool, every chair, there was meat in every seat. So many had to stand that there was a crush of bodies. Five steps into the establishment, and Dim knew that there was no way the sheets on the beds upstairs were being changed between clients. This place was full of lice, vermin, parasites… and that was just the clientele drinking the warm, sour beer.

Using his magic, he formed a telekinetic wedge and then plowed forwards towards the bar, ignoring the cries of protest from the creatures shoved out of his way. He offered no apologies, he just didn’t care, and with each step he had to fight the urge to set this place ablaze. Fire was the great cleanser, and cleaning up this filth would be doing the world a favour.

Upon reaching the bar, with Blackbird pressed up against his backside, Dim shouted at the barkeep to make himself be heard, “Hey, I am looking for a pony named Grimy!”

“Are you now?” a pony who was not the barkeep replied. A rough looking pegasus with one milky, ruined eye began to size Dim up. The pegasus had a rather thick Equestrian accent and the thick muscles that rippled beneath his scarred pelt indicated that he was a formidable brute. “I take it that you are here about the job… union busting… we can’t have that. Damnable ungrateful workers… they just can’t get enough. Greed is destroying the world, it is. I can only pound so many heads to make it stop. Once the damnable idea sets in, every worker thinks they are entitled.”

“Yes.” Dim gave a nod. “I am here about the job. The instructions on how to reach Grimy were unclear, however.”

“Sounds about right. He likes the resourceful types.” The pegasus snorted, then belched, releasing a foul smelling eggy miasma. “North of the town, near where the river forks, you’ll find Grimy Rich’s mansion. Mind the guards. Some of them have rifles.”

“Thank you,” Dim replied, and he offered a sincere, polite nod to the pegasus that had long since seen better days. Turning to face his companion, he said, “Come, let us be going so we can inquire about this job.”

Author's Note

“No matter the species, the deadliest gender is always the female. Men will fight until they die. Women will take it to the grave and then find a way back.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon

Reversal

It was only a mansion if one squinted at it real hard and had an overactive imagination. Most of it wasn’t painted and some of the boards had started to turn grey. An open-air cupola rose up from the middle of the structure, located up high above the front door. Armed guards were visible in the cupola, and Dim watched them while they watched him. Not too far away, a lean-to covered a coal-fired boiler that no doubt provided both hot water and electricity for the ‘mansion.’

Dim was cautious now, some of these guns were not the low power black powder weapons, but high powered modern weaponry that he knew could punch right through his shields, though some of his more advanced wards might offer a tiny bit of protection. He held no advantage here, and as such, his mental bearings went from ‘aggressive’ to ‘diplomatic.’ Lording himself over others would accomplish nothing.

A pony stood on the veranda, watching them, and as they approached, he trotted down the somewhat crooked front steps. He then stood in the unmown grass, waiting, watching, and Dim could see a peculiar grin upon his face. The grin left him uncomfortable, though he could not say why, and the heat of the day left Dim feeling all the more irritated. It was too hot in this part of the world, far too warm, and he wished that he was farther north.

“Greetings,” the pony said when Dim and Blackbird were about twenty paces away. “My name is Grimy Rich, and I’ve been expecting you. I do hope that you will partake in my hospitality, so that we might get to know one another better.”

It was Blackbird who replied. “It’s strange that you know me but I do not know you.”

“I knew your mother.” Grimy’s voice was soft, cultured, and educated. “I was very fond of her, and in those moments she had good clarity of mind, she told me stories about you.” Lifting one hoof, the stallion gestured at the house behind him. “I would be most honoured if you would join me inside. I’ve had tea prepared, as well as a meal. There is coffee too. When I got wind of a big black hippogriff in town, I was almost beside myself with joy.”

“What do we do?” Blackbird asked her companion in a low whisper.

“For now,” Dim replied, “we play along. I’m positive that he’ll want something.”

“We’d love to have tea with you!” Blackbird’s voice rang out through the yard, startling several birds, which flew away with squawks of terror while their fear went squirting out from behind them. “I’m really quite relieved that you knew my mother. I’ve been worried about her, and I’m trying to find her.”

“Come… come inside and we’ll talk more. It is far too miserable to talk outside.”

Gritting his teeth, Dim prepared for the worst.

Stepping into the door, Dim was struck by a blast of almost cool air. It was moving air and it made the broad brim of his hat ripple. The perfumed scent of flowers was heavy in the breeze, and he could hear the whirring of electric fans. Why, it was almost pleasant in here, and Dim felt bad about how shabby he must have looked. While the outside looked awful, the inside was a little better, with hardwood floors, some rugs, and reasonably clean plaster on the walls.

He removed his hat, rolled it up, and stuffed it into his left saddlebag.

“Oh my, your companion is one of the Kathiawari... how exotic and delightful. Look at him… look at every beautiful inch of him. I bet there are several very beautiful inches of him that could be put on display…”

Dim realised two things straightaway. Somepony was inside of his equinal space, and Grimy Rich had fabulousity to spare. Dim was fine with that, and was relieved that he could serve as a distraction. He glanced at the earth pony out of the corner of his eye and knew that the stallion was quite taken; there was lust visible in his eyes.

“Interesting ponies, the Kathiawari. Natural mystics. Their magic is unique. Am I correct to assume that he is your… bodyguard? Or do you have a deeper relationship, perhaps?”

“Are you interested in a little ‘alone time’ with my companion?” Blackbird asked.

“Why yes I am,” Grimy Rich replied and then a lewd giggle escaped his lips. “What a magnificent specimen!”

“I would not be an honourable owner if I traded away my bondservant for favours.” Blackbird sounded apologetic and she bowed her head a little. “I need to be able to trust him—”

“Oh, of course I understand.” Grimy lifted one hoof, fanned himself for a moment, and then made a dismissive wave. “I need to go to Windia and do a little shopping! The collapse of Grittish interests there has made it a buyer’s market.”

“I trust that my companion will be welcome to join us for tea.” Blackbird’s voice now had a hard edge to it. “I would be quite upset if he was made to go and wait elsewhere while we talked. Again, it is a trust issue. I keep my bondservant happy.”

“Oh, not to worry… not to worry… if I can’t play with him, at least I can look at him!” Grimy pranced in place, his ears pivoting from excitement and his eyes glittering with pleasurable glee. “Come… join me… I’ve been dying to meet you ever since I heard stories about you and I simply must have some tea! Please, join me!”

In the entirety of her life, Blackbird had never felt more nervous. Even when meeting her current companion for the first time, she hadn’t felt like this. Her talons shook and it felt as though her whole body was having nervous fits. The chair was too small for her, the table was too low, but she managed, somehow. Beside her, Dim was still getting comfortable, and he didn’t look the least bit bothered by the fact that he had just ended the lives of three creatures not even an hour ago.

This made her feel squeamish, but she wasn’t about to turn away his help. He was the real deal, a vizard as he kept saying, and she knew that with his help, she had better odds of finding her mother, Starling. She also resented him a little at the moment, because at this fancy table, he knew what he was doing, while she didn’t. At the moment, she felt like a drunken minotaur in a porcelain shop.

“How did you meet my mother?” Blackbird asked, kicking off the first of many questions.

“Ah, the circumstances.” Grimy leaned forwards, rested his forelegs against the table, sighed, and his eyes took on a faraway look. “I had an overboss… a rough one… a mean one… he kept the workers in line. A griffon. Well disciplined. Claimed to have a background as a soldier, but I don’t know… anyhow. Apparently, he got wind of the fact that his past was coming back to haunt him. He knew your mother was coming, that she was looking for him. I don’t know how he knew, but he took off, he did. He stole a lot of my money and he split.”

“Smart.” Blackbird began to wonder what sort of horrible punishment her mother had thought of for this guy, and she shivered a bit. All of this was overwhelming, it left her jittery and she had trouble sitting still. She could not help but feel that she was getting close, close to finding her mother, and then all of them could go home. Even Dim.

“Starling came to me, looking for him. I told her, of course, and mentioned that he had taken off with a small fortune of mine. The bastard stole the acquisitions funds. She wasted no time and went after him. Honestly, I thought that would be the last time I’d ever see that magnificent creature.” For a moment, Grimy was almost weepy eyed, but he blinked it away. “She was a tortured soul, as I’d come to find out later.”

“She came back?” Blackbird found herself leaning forwards, eager to hear more.

“Much to my surprise, yes. She came back with most of the money that had been stolen and the severed head of my overboss. He had his own unmentionables stuffed into his beak. It was quite ghastly. I never expected to see that money ever again, but there it was. Now, I didn’t ask your mother to bring that back, not exactly, so I felt that I owed her some kind of payment. She asked if I could help her find some folk she knew… so I obliged her, of course.”

“It sounds like you really had a chance to get to know my mother though, so how?”

“Well, it took time, you see. I used corporate channels and resources. I figured that some of these unsavoury types she was looking for might be mercenaries for hire, and I was right. She stayed with me… as my guest. I helped nurse her back to health, she had a few gunshot wounds, and of course she had a broken heart. I’ve never seen a creature weep the way she did. She did it while she was sleeping, you see, but never when she was awake. I’d sit by her bedside at night, because I felt the need to do something.”

A leaden heaviness settled into Blackbird’s heart and she leaned back in her chair as Dim began serving them tea. This was unexpected, and she couldn’t tell if he was trying to be nice to her, to bring her some comfort, or if he was just playing his role as her bondservant. She focused on Grimy, who looked quite animated and maybe just a little bit sad.

“Sometimes, she’d tell me stories about you, your father, and I know what happened.” Grimy bowed his head a bit. “I’m sorry about that, for whatever it is worth.” The pony allowed for a pause to take place before he continued, “Your mother figured that you might come looking for her, and she left me a message to give to you.”

“And that is?” Blackbird asked, her head tilting off to one side while Dim poured a little milk into her teacup.

“Go home, Blackbird, and mind your father’s grave.”

An invisible noose tightened around her neck and Blackbird found that she could not respond. She fought back tears, but lost, and she hated herself when she felt them rolling down her cheeks. When at last she could say something, she did not recognise her own voice. “I can’t go home. My mother needs me. My father isn’t going anywhere, and his grave is being looked after by others that loved him.”

“Forgive my intrusion,” Dim said, sounding sophisticated and polite, “but it sounds as though you truly were her friend.”

Grimy laughed, but it sounded sad in Blackbird’s twitching ears. “Once Starling realised I was flamingly gay, she opened up to me. That happens, you know. The only thing I wanted from her was her conversation and her company.”

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, how does an earth pony like you manage to live in a place like this?” Dim’s question was soft spoken, charming, and disarming.

“Oh…” Grimy laughed again. “I am well protected. I am very, very valuable to the company I work for. They ensure my safety and spend a lot of money to protect me. It’s my talent, you see… I take one gold coin and turn it into two. It’s as easy as breathing.” He picked up his teacup and held it between his two front hooves while his eyes twinkled. “My talent doesn’t seem to work when I am being coerced, you see. It has to be something I want to do. Plus, I have a good head for business, so I am far, far more valuable to them when I am working from a position of power.”

“Yet, you are still a bird in a gilded cage.” There was a slurp from Dim and then silence.

“Well, of course I am. I’m not stupid. All of this comfort, all of this power, all of this”—he gestured at everything around him—“is just a means to keep me content and working for them. I’m still a slave, I just have much nicer shackles. Why would I want to leave all of this? Do you know what they do to earth ponies here in this part of the world? I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Turning her head from side to side—looking first at Dim and then at Grimy—Blackbird felt as though she had missed something, some part of the nuanced exchange. There was tension here now, she could sense it, something unpleasant. Turning to look at Dim again, she couldn’t see his peculiar eyes hidden behind his goggles. His face was a stoic mask, and his thin, tiny nostrils betrayed no sign of emotion.

“Do you know where my mother went?” Blackbird asked as the dreadful apprehension began to have its way with her. “Do you have any leads for me to follow? Directions I can go?”

There was a sigh from Grimy, who shook his head. “Is there no way I can convince you to go home?”

“Nope.” When she said this word, Blackbird’s heart began thudding against her ribs.

“East of Griffonstone, past the Worldwall Mountains, there is a little province called Pranceylvania. That was just one of the places your mother planned to go. One of those fellows she was hunting went there. Another went to Mareseilles, in Fancy. The third was also heading to Fancy, in a place called Gasconeigh. I don’t know where your mother went first, but I am certain that she has been to those places. She doesn’t strike me as the type that would quit… and I guess you take after her.”

Blackbird found herself blushing.

Feeling a little self-conscious, she began to eat, picking up treats from the various trays and platters around her on the table. Much to her surprise, she found shrimp toast, her mother’s favourite food, and just seeing it caused a flood of memories to manifest in her mind. Her father, Stinkberry, he had developed a taste for shrimp toast because of Starling’s insistence that he try it. Her father ended up loving shrimp toast, but it gave him terrible gas. Blackbird began to remember many fond meals together, and the affection that her parents shared.

“Your mother… she was very dear to me… I have many acquaintances, I have associates, and I have business partners… but her... she was my friend,” Grimy said in a wistful voice. “I wish her well. If you can find her, get her to go home. Do whatever you must. Could you do that for me?”

With her mouth full of shrimp toast, Blackbird nodded.

Author's Note

Dim has a secret...

Begin again

Dim couldn’t leave the hustle and bustle of this horrid place soon enough. This place was all the evidence he needed that disgusting primitives could not be trusted to rule, govern, or otherwise exist on their own. This place—along with Tortoise-Tuga—would always stand out in his mind as examples of the sort of anarchy that existed when commoners were left to self-rule.

Blackbird walked abreast of him and at the moment, he was doing his best to avoid looking at her. At the moment, things were complicated between them. She was happy, full of hope, she was jubilant about the news of her mother. Dim, on the other hoof, was not happy, nor full of hope, and he was enduring a most peculiar sensation right now. The reason for this was, Dim had a secret.

The shakes had settled in, nevermind why they had manifested, there were too many reasons to count, and now, the overwhelming desire to satisfy his urges were beginning to overtake him. At some point, some point he hadn’t noticed, coca and opium had ceased to be useful supplements to aid him, and had become cruel necessities. To fend off the coming jitters, he pulled out a thin silver case from the inside of his broad-brimmed hat, opened that, and pulled out a fresh clove and cannabis cigarette. The case was hidden back inside of his hat, vanishing away with a flash of magic.

It glistened somewhat, as it was, in fact, just a little bit moist. He jammed it into the end of his long, slender, silver holder, stuck that into the corner of his mouth, and lit it with a thought. After a few puffs, the horrible brain itch began to subside a little, and with this being a fresh smoke, the cloves were strong. Already, his tongue, gums, throat, and lungs began going numb. His body just never adapted well to physical exertion, like walking, and whatever problem his lungs had seemed to be getting worse.

At least the cloves were an effective painkiller.

“Where will we go first?” With just a tiny bit of magic, Dim punctuated his own question with a smoky question mark. It was a simple, but advanced trick, as he did not use ‘unicorn’ magic. No, this magic came from elsewhere, and should he harness it at full strength, firebreathing would be the result.

“I don’t know yet,” Blackbird replied, and she glanced at her companion out of the corner of her eye. “Any suggestions?”

“You’re asking me?” Dim continued puffing, and with each inhale, he felt his spasming muscles relaxing just a little bit. “What do you think your mother would have done?”

“I don’t know!” Blackbird snapped. “I didn’t think my mother would pull out her guns one day and go on a drunken rampage of revenge! I’m really upset and disappointed with her! Without my father around, she just sort of fell apart! She couldn’t hold herself together, not even for me, her daughter, and she had to go off on some killing spree! I really don’t know this part of her… it was hidden from me growing up.”

It was then that Dim heard it, a soft suggestion in his mind. The pink voice, once jarring, now almost seemed soothing. Don’t just stand there, say something nice Dim. Reconnect with your equinity.

Saying something nice proved far harder than Dim anticipated, and when pressured, his mind failed to deliver anything meaningful. After a few seconds of thoughtful puffing, he had this to say: “Sometimes, we don’t know our mothers as well as we think we do.”

“No…” Blackbird sighed out the word, shook her head from side to side, and then with no warning at all, she snatched away Dim’s cigarette holder. Ignoring his startled whinny, she took a few puffs, managed to inhale a bit, and then did her best not to sputter while she placed the silver holder back between Dim’s lips. “You’re right”—these words came out as smoke—“you’re absolutely right. And I’m so angry that I can’t think straight.”

He could feel something within his mind—the sliver—a piece of awareness within his own. After a long absence, the feeling was back, and the sensation unnerved him. There was intrusion in his thoughts, perhaps examining what he had done recently, and Dim came to a standstill when he could feel the shock and horror in his mind.

Dim! What did you do? Why? Why would you do this?

The pink voice knew. Of course she knew. With a somewhat heavy heart, Dim thought about his actions, what he had done, and how he had done it knowing that the pink voice in his mind would find out. Yes, his conscience would find out, and then moments like this one would happen. Almost stumbling, he forced himself to start walking again, and now, his movements almost seemed mechanical.

“He was too weak to free himself,” Dim muttered, not aware that his private conversation was being spoken aloud. “It was mercy that moved my hoof, not malice—”

Don’t lie to me, I can still feel the malice!

Scowling, Dim’s lip curled back into a snarl and his voice rose in volume. His face contorted with rage and smoke rose from his nostrils, forming blue-grey curlicues. “It was an attempt to be merciful! I’m not very good at it! I’m trying, okay?”

“Dim, are you alright?” Blackbird moved herself in front of Dim, getting into his field of vision, and she waved her talons in front of his face. “This argument you are having with yourself is worrying me. Is that voice in your head giving you problems?”

“Yes!” Dim snapped. “It is questioning my noble motivations! I did what needed to be done!”

Confess your actions to your companion, Dim, and you will suffer less.

“Shut up!” Dim barked, and he squeezed his eyes shut while his whole body began to tremble. “I did what was necessary! I will suffer nothing for doing the right thing!”

Dim, trust that she will remain your companion after you confess your misdeed.

“SILENCE!” Dim’s voice crackled like thunder, it gave a physical push to Blackbird, who was almost bowled over, and set off a stampede of panic in the streets. A few windows shattered and it seemed as though the surrounding area quivered in anticipation for anything else that he might have to say.

Ye Olden Canterlot Voice had quite an effect upon the just and the good, but it had a profound effect upon the vile and the wicked. The tiny fragment of goodness, his birthright, the gift of his bloodline, it was now awake, cranky, and demanding some sort of meaningful sustenance. It lurked like an itch within his soul, existing in a place where it could not be reached, and there was no means to scratch it.

Dim felt guilty, but then again, so did every other living soul around him in about a three hundred yard radius. Tail slashing, it took Blackbird several long seconds to recover, and when she did, she spread her wings and with a few flaps, she got herself airborne. With a bit of deft maneuvering, she flew over Dim, reached down, snatched him up with great care, and then flew off in the direction where the vardo had been moored.

The vardo was right where they had left it, and it appeared to be fine. Dim, after having been put down on the ground, sat in the grass while trying to sort himself out. The pink voice wasn’t saying anything to him at the moment, and he could feel that the source of the voice was disappointed.

A short distance away, Blackbird paced in the grass, looking worried, fearful, and apprehensive. When Dim lifted his head to look her in the eye, she did not look away, which further confused him, and left him feeling unsettled. She was beautiful, even now, without her even trying, without making an effort.

“What am I to you?” Dim asked, and he felt a cold prickle of fear as the words left his mouth. What did he fear? He wasn’t sure. Consequences? An honest answer? “Tell me, am I just a means to an end?” He wasn’t even sure how long they’d known one another. Already, time was becoming a blur. He needed a fix, a means to patch the leaking ship that was sinking into the abyssal black depths.

He was adrift now, lost in a sea of grey, with no moral compass to guide him. For him, Luna’s stars did not shine, allowing no navigation. Puffing on the remains of his cigarette, he thought about lighting another, but had trouble determining what it was he really wanted at this moment. Blackbird was still looking at him, but she had stopped pacing. He could see her claws flexing and digging into the ground.

“I was wrong for trying to use you,” Blackbird said, and her usual cheerful voice was gone. “I was so caught up in what I was trying to do, in what I was trying to accomplish… I really don’t have a good excuse. I’m sorry.” She sat down and her long tail wrapped itself around her. “To be honest, I thought about ditching you here… just flying away and leaving you here. You scare me… I’ve been around some bad, bad types, but you… you’re the worst. When you killed those three guys, I knew that if you really wanted to have a go at me that there would be nothing I could do to stop you. The thought’s been going through the back of my mind and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I am the worst,” Dim agreed. Some things could not be argued.

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that.” Blackbird’s expression became pleading. “Look, my mother wasn’t so great, but she came around. You scare me, and I’ll admit that, but here I am, still trying to talk to you, and I’m worried about you because all of a sudden you started having an argument and it wasn’t with me.”

“Yeah, but are you staying… are you keeping me around because I might still be of some use?” Dim squirmed in the grass, and wanted nothing more than to be in a cool, dark room. “If you wish to leave right now, I will not stop you. Nor will I hate you. Perhaps it would be for the best. We have assisted one another. I am away from that dreadful island and you, you have your leads. We both have something we wanted, so this has worked out.”

At the moment, none of his notions of knighthood seemed to matter much at all, his ideals held no meaning, and any sense of purpose that he might have once held, he felt it blowing away like motes of dust in the wind. Even being a wizard for hire didn’t seem so appealing, it held no sense of romance, it fulfilled no sense of duty. A vast, chasm of emptiness yawned open before him, and when Dim peered over the edge to have a look in, he saw himself peeking out.

With a few blinks, the hallucination vanished and the world returned to whatever passed as normal.

“Hi, my name is Blackbird Coffyn and—”

“What’s this?” Dim demanded.

“—I am looking for my mother. The world didn’t quite turn out to be the place I thought it was, and now, I’m stuck pretending to be something that I am not. I’ve done things that I’m not happy about me doing, and lately, I’ve been getting confused about who I really am. I was in over my head a long time ago, but I’ve come too far to turn back. I can’t keep going ahead on my own, I see that now, I can see it clear as day… but I just can’t quit.”

“What are you going on about, girl?” Dim squinted though his goggles and he felt a peculiar sensation in his mind.

“Things haven’t turned out the way I had hoped,” Blackbird continued. “I’ve compromised all of my values. I’ve done things I said I’d never do. Now, as I get more desperate, I’ve even started considering those awful things I swore to myself I’d never do, like selling my own ass, because it is just about the only asset I have left to offer, but it occurred to me that there are creatures that would just take it and keep it and I would lose all of myself in the process. I don’t want to degrade myself. I am ashamed to say that I even tried to lure you along with promises of what might be. And I feel awful… I do… so I’d like to start over.”

Dim too, had once started over. Having fled his home and gone abroad, he had started over. He remembered how he longed for the world to give him a chance, just one chance, so he could prove his worth. He had become Harsh Winters, and as Mister Winters, he had made a name for himself. It wasn’t his family name that had made him successful, Mister Winters had been a nopony.

Now, a little girl was out looking for her mother, it was just the sort of quest that the knights of old most certainly would have taken. It was a just cause, a worthy quest, it was just the sort of thing that a would-be knight needed to establish himself. No one could refute the goodness of restoring a daughter to her mother. Something within Dim’s barrel twitched, and his head jerked.

It was a chance to start over. Not as Harsh Winter, but as Dim Dark.

“My name is Dim Dark, and I will help you. Now let’s get going before the consequences of what I’ve done catch up to us—”

“What?” Blackbird began blinking in alarm.

“I have many sins to confess, but the most recent may pose a danger to us.”

Springing away with a yowl, Blackbird moved to get herself hitched to the vardo.

Author's Note

Casey joins the hollow sound of silent people walking down
The stairway to the subway in the shadows down below
Following their footsteps through the neon-darkened corridors
Of silent desperation, never speakin' to a soul
The poison air he's breathin' has the dirty smell of dying
'Cause it's never seen the sunshine and it's never felt the rain
But Casey minds the arrows and ignores the fatal echoes
Of the clickin' of the turnstiles and the rattle of his chains

"Oh!" she said, "Casey it's been so long since I've seen you!"
"Here" she said, "just a kiss to make a body smile!"
"See" she said, "I've put on new stockings just to please you!"
"Lord!" she said, "Casey can you only stay a while?"

Casey leaves the under-ground and stops inside the Golden Crown
For something wet to wipe away the chill that's on his bone
Seeing his reflection in the lives of all the lonely men
Who reach for any thing they can to keep from goin' home
Standin' in the corner Casey drinks his pint of bitter
Never glancing in the mirror at the people passing by
Then he stumbles as he's leaving and he wonders if the reason
Is the beer that's in his belly, or the tear that's in his eye

"Oh!" she said, "I suppose you seldom think about me
"Now" she said, "now that you've a fam'ly of your own"
"Still" she said, "it's so blessed good to feel your body!"
"Lord!" she said" "Casey it's a shame to be alone!"

Why yes, this old song does have relevance. Why do you ask?

A cat enters the birdhouse

Cloppenburg was now just another disaster behind him, just like his home, Canterlot, Equestria, The Grittish Isles, Shepherd’s Shore, and Tortoise-Tuga. The vardo, which soared like a hurled brick, wobbled as Blackbird extended the sail down below, and there was more than enough wind to carry them northward. As strange as it was, having the sail stick out from the bottom of the ship worked, and even made sense in a strange way, as a boat floating through the clouds, mirroring a seagoing vessel down below.

Dim found the bottle of rum, unstoppered it, and took a swallow. It burned something awful—this wasn’t good rum—but helped to ease the shakes that had control of his body. He had done something awful, just one more awful thing in a whole long line of awful things, and already, his mind was rushing to justify it.

The pink voice was silent, at least for now, but he had a keen awareness that the presence in his mind was active. He took another drink and relished the sensation of his lips going numb. The sugary-sweet scent of rum burned his sinuses and the fiery sensation crept up the back of his throat while working towards his brain.

When he blinked, his vision had gone grey, and there was no colour in the world. Panicking, he blinked again, and after several blinks, all he could see was a world illuminated in various shades of pink. Or maybe pinkish grey, he couldn’t tell. He stared at the pink world until his eyes began to burn and water, then blinked again. Now, the world looked normal again, as it should be seen through the thick, smoked glass of his goggles.

The vardo ceased being a vardo, and became a birdhouse, because Blackbird was coming in. She crawled her way inside through the back door, but only opened the top half, and not the lower. Being something of a big girl, she had to squirm, wiggle, and jiggle through the too-small opening, and she looked very much like a bird entering a birdhouse. Finally, she pulled herself through, and collapsed down upon the floor spread-eagled and in a heap.

“When I started this journey, I swear, that opening was bigger,” Blackbird muttered while she just sat there, huffing and puffing.

From this angle, from this position, Dim realised that not all of Blackbird was black. Part of her was a bright, vivid pink, and he took notice of this while he took a long drink from his bottle. He grimaced from the burn, shivered, shuddered, and then nodded. “The opening looks very small and tight to me.”

Scowling, Blackbird scissored her hind legs together with a muffled, fuzzy whump, and then she let out a wordless, indignant yowl. There was something feline in her anger, but also something quite equine. She lunged forward, but Dim did not flinch, and with a swipe of her talons, she snatched the bottle from his telekinetic grip.

Glowering at Dim, she took a long drink, then made disgusted, burny-alcohol faces. She held onto the bottle, which was now down to a quarter full, and then in clear defiance of Dim, she took another swallow, downing even more of the precious, limited resource. It was a brave move, a bold, brash, daring move, and Dim acknowledged it as such by giving her a faint nod.

Much had just been said without words, but whether or not an understanding had been reached remained to be seen. Blackbird recovered, and curled into a more dignified position as she passed the bottle back to Dim, who did nothing to stop staring at her. Without taking his eyes off of Blackbird, he lifted his hat, reached up into the shadowy depths, pulled a smoke from his hidden holder, and then, rather than put his hat back on, he set it down upon the floor.

He pressed one end into his holder, and, with a flick of fire magic, he set the other end of the brown paper cigarette ablaze. Taking a few deep puffs, he then exhaled and blew out little flying pegasus ponies that circled around his head. Not only was it relaxing for him, but it disarmed Blackbird, who ceased to scowl and was instead transfixed by the flying smoke-ponies.

“How do you do that?” Blackbird asked while she watched another smoky pegasus go flying out of Dim’s nose. “Your horn isn’t glowing, so how are you doing that magic?”

“I don’t know,” Dim replied, being honest. “I just started exploring my magic, all of it that I possessed, and this is the end result.” The honesty felt good, and Dim felt some of his tension bleed away from him. The shakes were still pretty bad, but manageable. Maybe. The need for a fix was still strong, still aching, and he wondered if, perhaps, further acts of honesty might help those. “I can breathe fire, but I do not understand the biological mechanics of how such an act is possible. There are ponies who can do it though, and I have read books about them.”

“So what did you do back there?” Blackbird asked, and it sounded as though she hadn’t wanted to actually put the question into words.

Sighing, Dim exhaled a cloud of smoke, which he did nothing to manipulate. “I grew up with tales of noble knights. Noble knights that rescued fair maidens. It was something that became entangled with my sexuality, but that is a long and complicated story indeed. Suffice to say, it became my sexual persona, and only by acting out these fantasies of rescue could I achieve a state of working arousal.”

“That’s… nice… I guess?” Blackbird’s hind legs clenched together a little tighter.

“I grew up in a place of unspeakable evil, and that is not something I say lightly.” Dim puffed away, trying to ignore the horrible itch in the back of his mind, his need for another form of release. “Those fantasies of knighthood were the only inspiration of goodness that I had. Looking back, they were the only source of light in my life. This is why I choose to help you.”

“That… makes a little sense, I suppose.” Talons flexing, she watched Dim, never taking her eyes off of him. In an almost shy manner, she reached out, and instead of taking, she asked, “Might I have a puff of that?”

Smiling, a terrible sight, Dim passed Blackbird his silver cigarette holder.

For the first time in her young life, Blackbird felt the fever of lust. Not a crush, not infatuation, but lust. Her talons trembling, she took the silver stem that held Dim’s cigarette, put it to her lips, and inhaled, filling her lungs with clove scented smoke. It numbed her, but also awoke her senses, and as she went light headed she felt a second heart pounding away between the clenching folds of flesh hidden between her hind legs.

She wasn’t sure what her father would have to say about her current situation.

“So you wanted to be a knight,” she said, doing her best to be sympathetic, to understand this pitiful wretch that left her both confused and aroused. “It was the only example of goodness that you had. I can kind of understand that, I suppose. I won’t pretend to understand much of it though. You don’t make a lot of sense to me.” With each word spoken, her curiousity grew, and being a felinoid creature, she had a lot of curiousity.

“The Equestrian nobility were once good.” Dim retrieved his cigarette holder, and then took a long, steady draw from it. He held his smoke for many long seconds before he continued, “Maybe some of them still are. I don’t know. My house, we went bad, like toxic fungus that grows in the dark, and is consumed by the light. I was raised… I was created... manufactured?” After a long pause, he shook his head. “Much was done to me to make me serve a purpose.”

“I’m sorry.” She found herself feeling concern for the pony sitting before her, and a part of her wanted to hold him. Not just for comfort, but for other reasons. She could think of many reasons, some good, and some bad. “I was made the old fashioned way. My father and my mother fucked each other silly every chance they got and didn’t care who knew about it.”

Much to her surprise, he laughed, and it was not mad laughter, which was a relief.

The vardo rocked a bit in the wind, and Blackbird’s keen senses checked on everything. They were drifting now, slow but steady, and heading in a general northward direction. The cobbled together ship creaked a lot, and she could hear the whirring of the propellers mounted to the sides as they spun, which charged the batteries. Blood thundered in her ears and pounded through her kitty slitty. All of her senses seemed somehow both dulled and hyper aware. The terror of her time spent in Cloppenburg was replaced with calm, and the calm had a fuzzy sensation as it traveled through her bloodstream, tickling her insides like a pipe cleaner.

This was better than catnip, which her mother sometimes shared with her.

“So, Dim, why did we have to leave in such a hurry?” Blackbird’s lips felt too thick, both above and below. Her voice seemed strange in her own ears. This joint was a bit stronger than the last one she had sampled. Even if Dim told her the most terrible thing ever, she wasn’t sure if she could panic or freak out.

“I poisoned Grimy’s tea—”

“Why?” Blackbird shouted. “Why would you do that? He was nice to us! He was helpful! He was my mother’s friend! Why did you have to kill him?”

“I poisoned Grimy’s tea with a few ingredients that on their own, do nothing. They need a spell to activate. It was a backup, in the event that he wouldn’t cooperate or wanted to send us off on some foolish errand. Alas, the poison is pretty agonising once it sets in, but it can be stopped with a reversal spell… at least, for a time. There is a very narrow window. Usually, those in the throes of the poison will give you exactly what you want.” Dim’s explanation was calm, collected, and each word spoken done in a way that it was almost like he was teaching a terrible, dreadful lesson.

“But why?” Blackbird whined.

“He was a slave with no will, no spine, who kept others as slaves, and I found that unforgivable. He was repulsive, repugnant, and horrid. He trafficked in the misery of others even though he knew the pain of being a slave. It was mercy that moved me, and a desire to take away a resource from whomever was exploiting the situation.”

In that moment, she hated him, but also understood him, and even worse, she understood the meaning of hypocrisy. It burned into her soul like a brand, and left behind a mark that would always be there, reminding her of her own misdeeds. She couldn’t send Dim away, she needed him, if anypony could help her reach her mother, he was the one. The realisation that she was exploiting Dim galled her, that she was only keeping him around to further her own ends. She resented him for killing Grimy—a part of her hated him—but a killer he was—and a killer she needed.

She hated him for being exactly what she needed him to be, and she was stuck with him.

“I too, know the pain of being a slave,” Dim said, and his voice was soft and strained. “I grew up a slave, not knowing it, not realising it. As a slave, I had it pretty good. I lived as Grimy lived, but better. I had everything. All of my needs were looked after, mental, physical, and carnal. I was left without want and I was an obedient slave.”

“What happened?” Blackbird snatched up her own tail, and began to squeeze it in her talons, but was mindful of her own claws.

“I rose up against my master,” Dim replied, and in Blackbird’s ears, he sounded haunted. When he continued, she shivered, scarce-able to bear his words. “I rose up against her, I turned on her, and I crushed her. I broke as many bones as I could and then I hurled her against the wall.”

“Her… you keep saying her… who was she?”

“My mother…” The word hung in the air, unwanted, unwelcomed.

Horrified, Blackbird clung to her own tail for comfort, and watched as the end of Dim’s cigarette glowed with each of his strong inhales. At the moment, life itself was almost too much to bear, and feeling as though she herself was about to be crushed, she acted. Lunging forward, she stole Dim’s cigarette, placed the silver stem between her lips, and with much frantic puffing, she made a desperate attempt to numb her own pain.

“I am no motherfucker,” Dim said, and his body slumped forward as if being crushed under some great weight.

“Dim—” Blackbird was mortified by the squeak of her own voice, and went silent.

“Every slave that rises up against their master seeks power over them.” He sighed, a raspy sound, and something rattled within his chest. “For a moment, I wanted power over my mother, to make her feel weak, ashamed, and humiliated, just like I felt. I thought that maybe stretching her asshole out might make me feel better. I have looked back upon that moment ten thousand times… and I am disgusted that I regret not taking the opportunity to make her scream. My dreams try to show me missed opportunities every chance they get though.”

Her heart thumping, Blackbird puffed away on the remains of the nail in the holder.

“The problem, as I see it, is that I still wish to be a motherfucker…”

At these words, Blackbird’s nethers clenched tight, and her attraction to Dim wavered. Then, the worst happened. She knew that she could not condemn Dim without also condemning her own mother. Both were killers, both had done awful things, bad things that were incomprehensible in nature to her, and she couldn’t justify her own need to save her mother without also trying to save Dim. Who was she to save one while judging the other?

It was like a painful punch to the guts, and she began to whimper while she puffed away.

Why was one life worth more than another? Why did masters and slaves exist? If one foal was meaningful to a parent, then why not all foals? What was the nature of forgiveness? Why would she be so willing to forgive—to turn a blind eye—to her mother’s actions, but still have the need to judge Dim for his? A million questions of this nature swirled around inside of her head while heavy blue smoke curled out of her nose.

Was there even a name for the types of questions she had?

“You… you’re going to help me find my mother,” Blackbird said to her companion, and she felt her resolve gain some much needed strength. “In return, I’m going to help you get better. You’re going to become that noble knight that you always wanted to be. We’ll sort this out together, okay?” The look on his face, she could not read, and his heavy goggles obscured too much of his face anyway.

“You would do that for me?” he responded. “I would like to be deserving…”

Author's Note

When next we begin, it will be at a large body of water...

A mother's lies

Dim believed that he could see the future, or that the future had become the present, because he found himself in the void. There was nothing to see here, no colour, no light. Nothing could be touched here, there was nothing below his hooves but emptiness. This was nothing, the sort of nothing that might drive a pony mad, but not Dim. No. Here, he found comfort in the darkness, in the nothing.

With enough operant conditioning, one could make a pony anything.

There was magic here, he could sense it, but it was faint and strange. He made no effort to shine a light from his horn, but drifted, allowing himself to enjoy this nightmarish experience. There was no recollection of how he got here, so he deducted that magic had to be involved, or he was dreaming. Under normal circumstances, dreams had rules, but this had nothing, and the magic was strange. If this was a dream realm, this wasn’t Princess Luna’s dream realm.

“In the first moments of your life, you drank an elixir mixed with my milk, and then you were left to face the darkness. I had such hopes for you, Dimmy, such plans. I had already given so much in preparation for your coming. You were the contingency for what might have been, and as such, your destiny had a certain flexibility to it. That softness was weakness.”

Dim knew that voice, and he knew it well. It came from everywhere, from nowhere, it came from the void because it was the void. His body shifted, and he tried to brace his hooves, even though he had nothing to stand on. The need, the instinct for combat was strong, and that in itself was its own special kind of conditioning. When faced with a threat, a survivor sought to react, to improve the odds for continued survival.

“I know what you gave,” Dim replied, and his voice was filled with an almost beautiful aristocratic rage. His parchment thin lips curled back from his teeth, but in the darkness, this could not be seen. “I have gained awareness of your crimes.”

“Aw, you’ve learned of your sister… I called her ‘Doomed Dark’ before she was taken… isn’t that funny, Dimmy?” The void now pealed with mad laughter, which seemed to echo between the pillars of nothingness. “She was a small trade! A worthwhile sacrifice! With her, I was able to pull away the curtain! I could read the stars, Dimmy, and they told me of you. The constellations became my alphabet, and once I knew the letters, I was able to read a great many things. I saw the futures, many of them, and I saw how reality splices itself together like a film in front of a projector made of starlight.”

Dim waited, adrift in a vast sea of sensory deprivation.

“Your success hinged upon the failure of another,” the voice said, filling Dim’s ears with sound, but offering no sensate relief, no comfort of hearing words spoken by a living being. “I felt that was cheating you, my little Dimmy. Every mother wants a grand, glorious future for their son, so I set about making one for you.”

“What is this place?” Dim demanded.

“You were cast aside by a cold, unfeeling universe, hostile to your needs,” Dark Desire said, and there was much mocking pity in her voice. “Twilight Sparkle defeated Nightmare Moon, and you were no longer needed. You were cast aside after the universe rolled the dice and found that you weren’t necessary. So many suffer this fate, being cast aside, their greatness robbed from them by cruel, random chance. But Mommy loves you, Dimmy.”

At the edges of his perception, Dim could sense that there was now something in the void with him. His nose caught a whiff of his mother’s perfume, and his stomach lurched in disgust, even as he felt the first stirrings of his perfect, beautiful cock in his sheath. So much had betrayed Dim in life that he now had trouble even registering it when it happened.

“Mommy still loves you, Dimmy.” More mocking laughter crashed through the empty expanse like thunder. “You were so perfect. You took to the darkness and you took to the changes. Those things were important to me, but a mother’s love goes beyond those things. Make no mistake, I adored you. With all my heart and soul, I loved you…”

Each word was a hammerstrike on the anvil, and Dim flinched with each syllable his mother spoke. Now, his mother giggled, that obscene titter of hers, and the beast that hung beneath his belly began to shake off its drowsiness. The first bit of light appeared, but came from nowhere, there was no source, only the suggestion of light.

“There was a naughty, naughty thrill the first time I pulled you from my teat and positioned your head between my legs, Dimmy… Mommy’s hungry little colt found something to suckle on. Oh, it was torturous, and slow, but somehow I endured until such sweet pleasure came.”

For whatever reason, Dim was not surprised, and he could not discern his own reaction. The void existed within now, internal, and while Dim felt himself emptying out, the external void gained substance. There was the distinct feeling that something was being drawn from him, taken from him, but he didn’t care. His mother’s words had left him stunned, stupefied, unwilling and unable to respond.

“You loved Mommy’s little pacifier!” More tittering reverberated through the not-so-empty spaces, the places that were now being filled with whatever was being drawn out of Dim. “I miss those days. I was happy. You made me happy. I too, was made to serve a purpose, I was little more than a slave, but once I had you… once I created you and began to shape your future… I ceased to be a slave. There was power in my creation. Freedom. No longer did my father humiliate me, no more did I feel his crushing weight on my back, and never again did he pant and huff into my ear. His excitable lusts were a threat to the plan, Dimmy, and he was the first thing to go when we began to prepare for you.”

“What happened to him?” Dim asked, his morbid curiousity getting the better of him.

“Mother and I cast him into the dark places between the walls, the thin places… and then, once he was gone, I cast her into those places as well.” Dark Desire’s tittering almost sounded like sobbing for a moment. “She never did anything to stop him… and she liked to watch. Mother had powerful magics, and for many, many years, I could hear her in the dark spaces between the walls, pleading for help, begging to be let out. I don’t know how she survived…” The words trailed off into silence, and then the silence became a faint crackle that filled the void.

Stars sprang into existence, and lit up the void. Swirling nebulae of raw magic could be seen and it was almost as if a new universe was being born. Dim could feel his own essence being drawn upon, and the emptiness inside left him feeling hollow. With new stars came new constellations, and he saw them as they came to life. One was pony shaped and filled with dark stars. Another was catlike, a bipedal felinoid. Another was like the suggestion of a goat, but still somehow amorphous.

“Dim?”

Wincing, Dim could not bear the sound of that voice. Her voice.

“Do you want to go and play, Dim? I could be your princess! You could save me!”

The eager excitement in the voice was all too familiar, and hearing it caused unwanted arousal. Now, the beast no longer stirred within its cave, but slapped up against his belly in anticipation. More constellations came to life, creatures of all shapes, all sizes, from ponies to dragons. A whole universe of evil sprang to life around him, and Dim’s awareness expanded.

This was a dream realm, distinct and different from Princess Luna’s. How it was being created, he did not know, but he was connected. This place came from him, or was drawn from him somehow, and he could feel everything around him. This was a place of action without understanding, and the conceptual workings of this place were absolute unknowns. This was an in between place, a hidden place betwixt the foundations of within and without, a location between the walls of life, death, dreaming, and reality.

“The bassinet is still empty, Dim.” Darling Dark’s voice filled the void with a sense of life, but it lacked warmth. “You were the replacement, Dim.” Now, Darling tittered, and she was indistinguishable from Desire. “Should Twilight have failed, you were to be the one that restored the world to light, and being the distant son of Princess Luna, you were to continue her legacy after you slew Nightmare Moon. Once these connections are created, they can never be fully severed, just incase destiny has a little hiccup later.”

“So this is a trick of destiny?” Dim asked as more of his essence was bled away.

“So clever.” This was his mother’s voice now. “So quick to catch on. The universe made contingencies of what to do if Twilight failed and Luna could not be redeemed. So many things might have gone wrong. One friend might have gone astray, or worse, betrayed her to Nightmare Moon. The universe is filled with redundancies, Dim, and I cannot help but feel that you were robbed of your greatness.”

Dim understood redundancies. “A simple twist of fate…”

“Yes Dim… a simple twist of fate.” The voice, now Darling’s, was filled with laughter and lust. “The world is filled with redundancies, and we are hunting them down, one by one, and we are delivering a little twist of fate. A little trick of destiny. All of these unused, unwanted connections that were never established, never used, we are exploiting them all. The universe was careless with its playthings, and now we’re collecting all of the unwanted toys.”

“All those who might have been.” Dim allowed this realisation to sink in, to settle into the depths of his mind. “All those who could have been. I suppose that is all I am. A cast off.”

“Yes,” Darling replied, her voice purring, “but your mother sought to give you something better. Surely you can forgive her for that? It just wasn’t fair that Twilight was so successful, and you were left with nothing.”

“I’m okay with it—”

“WHY WOULD YOU BE OKAY WITH IT?” Darling screeched, and for a moment, her voice wavered enough that she sounded almost like Desire. “You were meant to be a Celestial power! This was your potential! This is what could have been! The Ink prepared for all outcomes, all eventualities, and in those pages I saw, I read what could have been!”

Now, the void had mutable substance. It changed around Dim, altering itself, and he recognised the walls of his old room. How could he forget them? How many times had he stared at these walls while enduring fits of ennui? This was not a happy place, and seeing it filled him with despair. Was this to be his fate? To be returned to this place? The constellation creatures were gone, now hidden behind the walls.

In the corner of the room, his room, he saw something that chilled his blood. A bassinet rocked, and not just any bassinet, but the bassinet. Darling’s cutie mark come to life in perfect, exacting detail. The little baroque bassinet terrified him like nothing else, it froze his blood in his veins and sapped him of life, of will, of reason.

“Had Twilight failed, and had you succeeded, you would have ascended to take Luna’s place. You would have become an alicorn, Luna’s replacement, and you would have had all of the power due to you in that position. You have no idea what was stolen from you with Twilight’s success.”

“I don’t care,” Dim muttered, distracted by the feeling of the floor beneath his hooves and the rocking cradle. Even though he didn’t want to, he began to move, to shuffle along, compelled by some irresistible force that drew him towards the bassinet in the corner. “It wasn’t my dream, it isn’t what I wanted. I don’t know what I wanted, but I don’t want this.”

The rocking cradle somehow seemed obscene, and Dim found it was difficult to look at. His hooves scraped along the stone floor and he jerked ahead like a puppet. It was too terrible to look, to see, to observe, but he was being made to do so. This was destiny, a strong, steady pull, tugging you along to where one’s heart would chose not to go. Freedom was an illusion, with no more substance than Luna’s realm of dreams. In that place, anything could be made manifest, and reality was malleable.

This place was no different, and operated under the same rules.

It might have been drawn from his essence, but he was not the master of this place. He wondered if Luna was even the master of her own realm, or if she too, was a slave to some greater force of will. Was she subject to whatever cosmic forces existed, and did her proud neck bend? Perhaps her rebellion had a greater reason, a greater purpose, and perhaps she had allied herself with whatever the nightmare was so that she could have the strength to push back, to be free.

Dim could understand the reasoning, but could not abide choosing one form of slavery over another. There would be no happiness to be found, no sweet victory to savour. Both were defeat of self, a loss of agency. But what did he know of freedom? He was institutionalised, and part of him knew it. He was a born slave, given a wide range of options to look after his slave related needs. Slave to his mother, his family, his family name. Slave to destiny. Slave to purpose. Slave to addiction. A slave to basic living needs, and held under the tyranny that was the necessity of food and water.

“Only the dead are free,” Dim said.

“No,” the croaking voice in the cradle replied, “they belong to me.”

“There is a better way!” a voice cried, a commanding voice that made the walls tremble. “Don’t look into the crib, Dim! Fight it!”

“What point is there in fighting?” Dim asked. “What point is there in anything? I am defeated. All options lead to slavery.”

“Choose a better master!” the voice demanded.

It took all of Dim’s willpower to turn his head, but this was an understatement. This was like raising the moon or lifting the sun. He ripped his eyes away from the bassinet, and made himself look to his left. There was a paper pony, and her cheeks were stained with tears of ink. She—it was most certainly a she for some reason—was an alicorn of fine paper design.

“I can’t promise you freedom,” the paper alicorn said to Dim, “but I can offer you honesty and as much free agency as can be mustered.”

“So, I am forced to chose between masters, one of whom plies me with honeyed words. You promise truth, but do so with a promise of something I desire, while he”—Dim knew who was in the cradle—“does so with no pretenses, only a direct answer. There is no freedom.”

“Yes, but I offer life, and he can only give you death,” the paper pony argued.

“There is that, yes.” Dim paused, and the choice gave him power. The spell, whatever it was, was broken, and he found himself freed from whatever bonds had held his body.

“With life, there is a chance to live out your dreams and be happy. You can live, you can love, you can laugh and enjoy all that life has to offer. I will not be an onerous master, and I only ask that you do one task… just one and nothing else.”

“And what is that?” Dim asked, and he could hear ferocious heavy breathing from within the cradle.

“Resist,” the paper alicorn replied. “Only in resistance will you be free. You resisted looking into the cradle. Keep resisting him!”

“She lies,” the croaking voice in the cradle said. “She of the Ink is dying, and when she does, she will serve me in death. To serve her is to still serve my will. One way or another, you will serve me.”

“Ah, but she has offered me a choice… and you haven’t.” Dim didn’t allow himself to look into the crib, to look into the face of evil, so he could be smug and overbearing. “With that one action, she has won me over. It isn’t much of a choice, but I’ll take it.”

“What do you wish to be?” the paper pony asked.

“A vizard,” Dim replied, and he let out a sigh. “I wish to be like the knights of old. I would like to help Blackbird find her mother.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “I would like to help Blackbird find her sexuality. She is very alluring, she is.”

“That’s right Dim! You can’t do that if you’re dead!”

“I beg to differ,” the voice in the cradle said.

“I like warm bodies!” Dim shouted, and then he shivered with revulsion while bile bubbled in the back of his throat.

“A warm body was given to you to satisfy your needs, and you cast it aside.”

The monstrous entity in the crib made a point, and this infuriated Dim. He had killed Darling, a warm, willing, compliant body. She was little more than a slave, and he had killed her. Her life, the entirety of her existence, was to serve the needs of others. His mother. Himself. Then, in the end, Grogar’s own will. In death, she served to cause guilt, to plague him with fear, loathing, and doubt. The loss of her life, the life that he had taken away, it was just something else for Grogar to exploit. Even in death, Darling was somehow serving him.

Lifting his head, Dim turned and looked the paper pony in her paper eye. “I would step back if I were you.”

“Why?” the paper pony asked, and she began retreating. There was fear on the paper folds of her face, and her paper ears were pricked.

“Because, paper burns,” Dim replied, and then, exerting all of his will, knowing that this place was constructed from his essence, understanding that even the dream realm had to follow certain rules, it had to obey certain laws.

Dim set the bassinet ablaze with a focus of will.

An ear-rending screech came out of the cradle and the flames whooshed in the most terrible way. A single tentacle slithered out, but it too, was ablaze, and being consumed. The monstrous entity in the burning bassinet gurgled, shrieked, and howled in agony. Two figures blinked into existence, and rushed to the burning cradle.

One was tall, bipedal, and catlike. Dim did not know her. The other he knew all too well. Both were rotten looking, dead, both were liches. The catlike one began casting spells to extinguish the flames, while Dim’s mother turned to face him, her horn glowing with an eldritch green light.

“Never summon me to this place again,” Dim said while the paper pony retreated into a far corner. “Now release me from this place at once, or else you too, shall burn. I mean it. Don’t think I won’t, Mother. I killed you once and I won’t hesitate to try to do it again. I have chosen, and you have no power over me here. If you did, you would be cutting me down right now, rather than just standing there, staring at me in shock. You would be bending my knee to make me submit.”

“You will be made to obey,” Desire promised, and there was no love, no affection in her voice.

“And you will be made to burn,” Dim replied, and in the corner, the paper pony began laughing, a booming, thunderous sound. “Now release me, before I flood this place with my fiery essence, and turn it into a second Tartarus.”

“You’re bluffing!” Desire’s rotting face contorted with rage.

“Am I?” Dim asked, and his voice was as cold as the grave. “I am done being a meek little slave. Your slave, anyhow. Now release me, or face my fiery wrath!”

“It would be wise to let him go,” the paper pony said, interjecting her words into the exchange. “You know who I am and you know what I am capable of… I’ll write in the power he needs to turn this place into a second Tartarus. I have nothing left to lose and you know it. My end approaches, but what an end it shall be. Right now, I live without consequences, and you made that possible!”

“Your day is coming, Nameless One!” the tall cat creature shouted as the flames died down. “I have seen your end! The stars themselves reveal that your days are numbered! When you die, you will be made to serve!”

“But today is not that day!” The paper alicorn spread her wings, and a torrent of ink spilled from her weeping eyes. It spread over the floor in a flood, and it was blacker than any void. “Release him, or else there will be a new Tartarus, and a new Lord of Tartarus!”

Snarling, the catlike creature made a gesture with her paw, and reality shattered into tiny fragments, a million, billion tiny fragments that seemed to outnumber the very stars in the universe. For a brief eternity, everything hung in place, existing, suspended within ink, and then that too, gave way. In the end, there was only nothingness, and Dim was hurled away from the new dark realm of dreams that had just been created.

Sitting on the roof of the vardo, Dim lit a clove and cannabis cigarette. Afterwards, he then looked out upon a vast, beautiful lake. It was quite a sight to behold, and possessed with a surreal sense of calm, he allowed himself to enjoy the moment. The dream was now little more than fading memory, and he did not feel troubled. In fact, all things considered, he felt pretty good. He puffed away, thoughtful, and his mind was on the future.

Resist.

Blackbird was below, folding up the sail and the rigging. The vardo shook a bit and began to slow while Dim yawned and thought about what he could remember. The paper pony… already, he was forgetting her, and the details were becoming fuzzy. What little recollection that he had crumbled when he took notice of a settlement along the shore of the lake, a little hamlet that existed out in the middle of nowhere.

It might be nice to sit by the lake and compose his thoughts by moonlight.

Filling his lungs with smoke, he tried to summon the courage to begin again…

Author's Note

So... something is up. The entire time he is on Tortoise-Tuga, he is left alone.

To catch a cat creature

The tiny settlement by the lake was a strange one. The buildings here—if they could even be called that—were all shaped trees. This settlement reeked of strange magic, magic that was foreign, unknown, and unsettling to Dim. Walkways had been fashioned in the treetops, stretching from one tree to the next, connecting the canopies.

The welcoming committee was already on its way, and Dim hoped there wouldn’t be trouble. There were ponies here, but also a few other creatures, from what he had seen while looking the settlement over. The welcoming committee included a hunched over diamond dog that had been in his prime at least five decades ago.

“Greetings,” the pegasus leading the crowd said as he drew closer. “I am the druid known as Gesundheit and this is my little village. It is my sincere hope that you are not here for trouble. We have nothing of value, there is very little here to take, and we prefer peace to war.”

Druids? Suddenly, much about this settlement made sense. Dim knew of them and their magic, but only in passing. He glanced at the pegasus, and then at the shaped trees. It was possible that this pegasus was responsible, and this was fascinating. He glanced at the pegasus again, and Blackbird slipped past him so that she could say hello.

“My name is Blackbird, and we’re not here to cause trouble. We just want a safe place to rest. I need to make some repairs to my vardo. My companion is a wizard for hire, if any of you have need of his services.”

“You’re welcome to stay,” Gesundheit said with a guarded expression upon his face. “Avoid the lake at all costs when the sun goes down. Something horrible lives in the depths. Sunlight keeps it at bay. The surrounding woods are filled with wolves, some of them magical. At night, the strix come out—”

“I can deal with strix.” Dim’s interjection was so smooth and polite sounding that the pegasus did not seem to mind that he had been interrupted. Lifting his head a little higher, he adjusted his broad brimmed hat, and then smiled a fine, aristocratic smile. “Perhaps I can help you in exchange for our stay here. Tell me, what lurks in the lake?”

Gesundheit’s face relaxed a little, and something that was almost a smile could now be seen on his muzzle. He looked relieved, perhaps, or maybe hopeful. “Something truly terrible, wizard. My skills as a druid are powerful, but subtle. I am only gifted with plant shaping, which is an odd gift for a pegasus to have. I can do nothing to dissuade the monster in the lake from eating my townsfolk. I don’t know what it is, but it’s large, and has tentacles. It is only active at night, and it is completely dormant during the day.”

“I see.” Dim’s cigarette holder bobbed in the corner of his mouth, and blue smoke curled upwards, then clung to the brim of his hat. “Perhaps I shall go for a walk around the lake this evening.”

“I don’t know if that would be wise—”

“Vizards have no concern with what is wise,” Dim said, leaning forward a bit, and puffing smoke. “The wise do not become vizards. Only a fool meddles with powerful forces that he has no understanding of. The wise become druids, yes?”

Eyes narrowing, Gesundheit studied the eccentric wizard, and his ears angled forwards over his face. The pegasus was now smiling without reservation, a warm, pleasant smile indeed. “Welcome to Baumhaus. I hope you enjoy your stay, Vizard.”

See Dim, you can be charming, the pink voice said. I’m worried, something is blocking your dream from me. Other things have been inside of your mind, and I’m a little scared for you. So many are fighting right now to claim you. You seem calmer, Dim, and dare I say happier?

Ignoring the voice in between his ears, Dim continued to roll cigarettes with his own blend of herbs and alchemical reagents. He slipped them into the shining, gleaming, untarnished silver holder, and kept one eye focused on Blackbird, who was working on her wagon. She was sleek, beautiful, supple, and her ebony pelt shone like a coal-black sun. In the back of his mind, he thought about what it would be like to touch her right now, with her sooty-black hide left hot by the sun. There would be warmth there, life giving warmth, arousing warmth. It would be luxurious and grand to rub up against.

You fancy her, don’t you Dim?

When she smashed one of her talons with a hammer, a stream of the most vulgar profanity imaginable gushed from her mouth like a flood. Dim continued rolling his cigarettes, and beneath his hat, his ears perked at the rapid-fire hard-consonanted expletives. Even with her anger—or maybe because of her anger and her profanity—there was something alluring about her.

She’s not quite like the Pies we have back here at home, Dim. She’s quite a catch though, but I think if you catch her before she’s ready, she’ll claw your eyes out. I’d watch your balls, too.

The pink voice spoke truth, and Dim knew it. He smiled, and it was not a sarcastic smile, or a sardonic smile, or a cruel, jaded, hate-filled smile. No, this smile was just a basic, stock, run-of-the-mill smile of amused happiness. Another cigarette went into the silver case, and it was then that Dim realised that he would need more supplies soon. For that, they would have to go some place civilised with a well stocked alchemist’s shop.

The ponies and creatures of Baumhaus kept their distance, for now. After the welcoming committee had made he and Blackbird welcome, they had departed, retreating back to their shaped homes among the trees. Civilisation had taken root here, but had not purged the wilderness, or pushed it back. It existed with the wilderness in a marriage of harmony, and Dim found it quite fascinating.

Living in your tower, the pink voice began, you never really had a chance to experience life as an Equestrian. You lived a very different life, and then, when you fled, you saw the world. You saw the worst of it, I suppose, and you probably think the world is a bad place.

“Oh, I do,” Dim muttered to himself. “I have seen too much of life to be an optimist.”

There is good in the world, the pink voice continued, but there was something hesitant about it, something doubtful that Dim could not help but to notice. There is much good in the world, and not just in Equestria. We do not have a monopoly on goodness here in Equestria, but we do strive for a different set of ideals than most places. Come home, Dim, please, and let me show you. Let me love you, let me be kind to you, let me give you the nurturing that you starve for. I will love you, wholly and completely, and without reservation. Let me do this.

“Maybe?” Dim grunted the word, and for the first time, he gave serious thought to returning home. “I have to help Blackbird first. She needs to find her mother. Once that’s done, I’ll think about coming home.”

Dim, please, listen to me for a moment… try not to burn the world down along the way.

“I make no promises.”

Well then—the pink voice sounded quite worried and a bit put out—if you must set things on fire, try to only burn the really bad things, okay? I’m not saying that it makes it better, and I will not say that you are justified in doing so, I’m just suggesting that you save your fire for those most deserving.

“If I went solely after those most deserving and burned them to ashes, I would die of old age long before my task was finished. I could get started now, make a life of it, and only purge a small fraction of what needs to be burned away for the world to prosper. In the bigger scheme of things, I am a match and little more.”

Yes, Dim, but entire forests can be burned with but a single match.

Off in the distance, Blackbird was sucking on her smashed thumb, and her tail slashed from side to side. She looked sulky in a way that only feline creatures could, and her hammer lay on the ground a few feet away. For the first time, Dim noticed that there was something almost foalish about Blackbird. He dismissed it right away, as she was big enough, mature enough, and worldly enough. Every adult had foalish moments.

Still… there was something about her.

She was far too alluring to be considered anything but mature. With a feline screech of rage, she pounced upon the hammer, snatched it up, and held it in her clenched, uninjured talons. Her rage was adorable and Dim felt as though he could sit and watch this all day. After staring at the hammer for a time, Dim heard her say, “You dirty, no good, piece of shit finger flattener! I should throw you into the lake!”

She’s kinda cute when she’s angry, isn’t she?

“Indeed, she is,” he replied, not giving the fact that he was talking to himself a second thought.

Dim, love is a different thing entirely when you have to earn it. You’ve never experienced real love before. This is the great struggle, Dim, and maybe, the meaning of life itself. Figuring out how to get somepony else to feel the same way about you as you feel about them. For some, it’s simple. For others, well, there is a reason why I exist.

This pained Dim, and he thought of Darling. Had he loved her? Or was he conditioned to feel for her? Had anything been his own choice, his own will? Was Darling even capable of love, after what had been done to her? The pain grew worse when Dim didn’t have the means to answer. The empty spaces within him ached, longing to be filled with something.

All of that was the past… and right now, there was a crazed hippogriff creature cursing her hammer that he sort of wanted to be his future. She had her own future, and perhaps that is what made her alluring; her purpose, her determination, her desire and drive to find her mother. It was then, staring at her, talking to a voice inside of his head that he realised he admired another living, breathing soul. Her passion, her purpose, it awoke something within him, something great, something grand.

For Dim, this was quite a realisation.

Perhaps, by helping her to realise her future, she would be willing to share his.

You’re getting it, the pink voice whispered deep within the folds of his grey matter, like a mouthy pearl lodged deep in the recesses of his mind. I’m so proud of you. This is empathy, Dim, and it kind of sucks sometimes, but allowing yourself to feel it will make you a better pony.

“I have felt empathy before,” he grumbled, not liking this exchange.

No doubt you have, the pink voice replied. But has it ever moved you? Have you ever sat down and gave thought to your future because of it? Right now, you are contemplating the act of sacrificing a great deal of time and your own future plans to help her achieve her goals, her dreams. You have assigned a value to her feelings, and you have made them equal to, or perhaps greater than, your own. This might just be the most moral thing you have ever done in your entire life, Dim. This is what I am doing for you. I am sacrificing some of my own future, my own time, I am expending much energy with the hopes that you will be made better.

After a moment of thinking, Dim had no response for this, and was silent.

I grow exhausted, Dim. We shall talk again, but I must go silent for a time. It felt good to have finally made a connection with you. Give some thought to what has been said.

With that, the voice inside of his head went silent.

“Your friend, he suffers from sad sickness.”

Blackbird glanced over at the pegasus in the corner of her vision, but did not turn her head. He was, like most pegasus ponies she had met, observant, but this one seemed far more so. A cup of tea that smelled a bit like pine steamed in a cup, and a bit of precious honey had been drizzled in. It wasn’t yet cool enough to drink, and she was eager to have some.

“And next, I suppose, you’ll be telling me how dangerous he is,” she said in a reply that she hoped wasn’t too sarcastic or rude.

“Oh, I don’t know if he’s dangerous,” Gesundheit responded, and he shook his head from side to side. “You would know that better than I do. But he has the sad sickness. Happiness will be difficult for him, and joy will elude him. It will always be a struggle for him.”

“Is this some kind of druid thing?” she asked.

“I guess.” Gesundheit shrugged, and something that was almost a smile could be seen on his face. “Maybe it is. I was always good at reading ponies, but after my encounter in the Grove, ponies, other creatures, they became like books for me.”

Reaching out one talon, she dunked it into her tea, only to discover that it was still hot. She pulled it out, waved it around a bit, and then stuck it in her mouth. The sweetness made her ears perk, and the flavour of the tea was something she had never experienced. She liked it a great deal, and she only pulled her talon-finger from her mouth after the last of the sweetness was gone.

The sun was on its way out in the west, and in the east, the darkness lurked, waiting for light to retreat. Already, the moon was rising, and it was as if it was chasing after the sun, being playful, an eternal game of tag. Something about it made Blackbird wax poetic and she let out a satisfied sigh.

“Your friend, I never did get his name, I think he will go after the lake monster. The outcome concerns me.”

“I’d say the lake monster is in trouble,” Blackbird replied. “I’ve only known him for a short time, but I’ve known him long enough to know that he knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t go pick a fight with the lake monster unless he was absolutely certain of the outcome.”

Lifting her head a little, she looked down at Dim, who was doing something with an assortment of long wooden poles. Her talons flexed, a nervous reaction, and she shook her head, uncertain of what he was doing. Too much of her vision was obscured, and Dim was too far away. The blacksmith’s stone cottage was the only building on ground level, and everything else, including where she was currently sitting, was up in the trees, for safety.

“I think your friend… I think he is going to harpoon the monster,” Gesundheit said.

“Then I’d say the monster is in for a bad night.” Feeling worried, Blackbird thought about the reassuring heft of her sidearm. It was old—an antique from a bygone era—but still deadly, still functional. The massive black powder revolver, she called it The Foalsitter, and it was the guardian that had kept her safe. On the odd chance that Dim got into trouble, she hoped that she would be able to do something.

“I’ve met another like you,” Gesundheit said in an attempt to make conversation.

“Oh?” This took Blackbird’s attention away from Dim and she turned to look at her pegasus companion. Steam rose from his own teacup, and clung to his fuzzy face.

“The Heliophant, he has a daughter,” Gesundheit replied, and he leaned back in his somewhat crude wooden chair. “I only met her once, for a very brief time. She is part manticore and part pony.”

“Oh.” Blackbird sat there, blinking. “Why bring this up?”

“She is well loved by but a few, but feared by the many.” The druid turned his head and his eyes focused upon Blackbird. “She focuses upon the few, and ignores the many. You would be wise to do the same.”

“I see.” Blackbird’s eyes narrowed, and she studied the pegasus with feline intensity. “Is this what druids do? Say wise, mystical things to strangers?”

“We strive for an ideal.” Gesundheit grinned, and gave Blackbird a nod.

Lifting up her teacup, Blackbird pursed her lips and blew into her tea, preparing for that first brave sip. Down below, Dim was preparing, and the blacksmith was rolling barrels out to the front of his cottage. Cocking her head to one side, she couldn’t quite understand why Dim would need barrels, but she trusted that he knew what he was doing.

Killing was his business, and if anypony could kill something with a barrel, it would be Dim. She lifted her teacup to her delicate, fuzzy lips, sniffed, and then began to drool. She loved sweets, and this smelled sweet, but it also smelled like pine. Sweets, good sweets, were in short supply when one flew from place to place, looking for one’s mother.

The first sip, though hot, was bliss.

“I suspect that I understand what your friend is planning…”

Author's Note

Next chapter: Dim behaves like a thoroughly normal pony and goes fishing so he can do a little relaxing. Perfectly normal.

Go away, baitin'

The amorphous clouds formed strange shapes—sentinels without form, guardians without definition—around the moon. Like a mother’s embrace of a newborn, the clouds seemed to cling to the moon as it rose into the sky, and it rose a ruddy, almost bloody, orange. The loaded cylinder of Blackbird’s revolver sat on the table before her, and she began to take apart the rest of her weapon. The Foalsitter was no mere revolver, but a cannon, a relic from another time, another age. It’s ninety-calibre bore was terrifying to behold, a black void held within ebony-black iron. It was a magic wand that performed only one trick, but that one trick was done well.

Abracadaver! And lo, a dead body would appear..

With a brush, she applied oil to each moving part, each hinge, each pin; her talon-fingers seemed to move on their own, with her paying very little attention to her task. She was swift, nimble, coordinated, and her companions around the table took notice. The night was alive with sound, causing ears to prick and heads to turn, looking for strix or other dangers.

“Who taught you to do that?” Gesundheit asked while his eyes lingered on Blackbird’s swift-moving talon-fingers.

“My mother,” was her calm reply, and she gave a sidelong glance to the pegasus beside her. “She put her big guns away, but kept a number of smaller sidearms around. I didn’t start my adventure with this gun, but I have it now. Somebirdy tried to find a new way to skin a cat, and I took exception to his efforts.”

“I too, take exception to things.” Dim took a sip of tea. “I am not a fan of bandits, for example.”

A unicorn mare brought out a tray loaded down with bread, cheese, and the various fruits of the forest. She put it down on the crude wooden table, nodded to Gesundheit; then with a smile, she took her leave, departing to go indoors where it was safe. Being outside at night was dangerous; the sensible remained behind locked doors and secured windows.

“You have something in common with my mother,” Blackbird said to Dim, and she had some faint awareness of the coldness in her voice. Given what had happened to her father, she herself had no pity nor remorse for anything done to bandits or raiders. “She taught me how to shoot. I think she expected me to become like her, a protector. I don’t mind hunting, but I’m not keen on leaving others a bloody mess.”

She watched as Dim levitated a slice of bread and a slice of cheese. Even though she said nothing, she was worried, because in her opinion, her companion didn’t eat nearly enough. It scared her a bit, because she needed him to be at his very best if they were going to find her mother. At the moment, there was an odd sense of calm about him, which seemed out of place to her, given what he had planned.

Glancing over at Gesundheit, she asked, “So, how does a pegasus get named Gesundheit, anyhow?”

This made the chestnut brown pegasus smile. “I’m allergic to clouds. No, really, I am. I get near them, and I start sneezing. It’s so bad that I can’t fly through them. My parents had to leave Cloudsdale, and I reckon that’s a good thing, probably saved me from the fascism that’s taken root there. I grew up honest, kind, and sensible on the ground. I hate to say it, but I’m the impressionable sort. Might be why I became a druid.”

Chewing, Dim turned to study the pegasus, and behind his goggles, his eyes could not be seen. Blackbird’s eyes lingered on Dim’s pointy ears, which weren’t covered at the moment. His ears… those ears. They were distinctive and unique. When Dim was done chewing, he swallowed, and she heard him say, “Sometimes, it is good for us to leave our home...”

For a moment, it appeared as though Dim was going to say something else, but after a few seconds of waiting, it seemed that nothing else was forthcoming. In the faint available light of the oil lantern burning overhead, Blackbird began to reassemble her sidearm, The Foalsitter. Gesundheit too, began eating, and there was a loud slurp when he bit into a green apple.

“By Luna’s light,” Dim muttered, more to himself than to his companions, “I am almost enjoying myself. I can’t recall feeling this way… ever. ‘Tis a strange calm for one so damned as myself.” He took a polite bite of his bread and cheese, his lips curling away from his teeth, then chewed in what appeared to be thoughtful silence.

Eyebrow arching, Blackbird glanced over at Gesundheit, only to find him looking at her, and he too, had one raised eyebrow. There was worry on the pegasus’ face, a genuine, sincere worry, and she could see pain in his eyes. His compassion for a stranger moved her, made her feel something within her breast, and gave her a much needed reminder that there was still good in the world. It was easy to forget that sometimes, after visiting Tortoise-Tuga or Cloppenburg.

“Why did you come here?” Dim asked once his mouth was empty. “Why come to this place?”

“Me?” Gesundheit looked a little surprised to be asked this question. “Equestria had many healers already looking after its needs. The Heliophant told us to go out and find the bad places in the world, for it is not the healthy or well-tended who need a healer. I wandered for a short time, and then I found this lot. Refugees. They wanted away from sin and vice. We settled here.”

Hearing this, Blackbird nodded. “This is a good place.”

“I worry that, with growth, this place will become like any other.” A sad, but still somehow hopeful smile flashed on Gesundheit’s muzzle. “I’ll do my best, but I know in my heart that this place will probably grow beyond what I am capable of pruning.”

“This is why we need responsible nobility.” Dim’s ears pricked upwards, and the inward facing points almost touched. “Such is the way of things. The trick, it seems, is finding good nobles. Alas, I know not where to find them.”

“There is great reform in Equestria, or there was when I left.” Gesundheit eyed his apple, looking a bit morose, and he let out a sigh. “The nobles were being restored to rule and the ponies rejoiced. A new order was being established, but I don’t think anypony quite knows what this new order is, just yet. A new form of governance is emerging.”

“I have only read a little bit in the papers,” Dim remarked while Gesundheit took a bite of his apple. “A new feudal contract. More protections and guarantees offered by the Crown, in return for more service from the peasantry. Centralised government hasn’t quite worked out and the peasantry longs for a return of localised fiefdoms. The entire world watches.”

“Indeed it does,” Gesundheit replied around a mouthful of apple.

“I don’t understand much of what was just said.” Blackbird hated her own confession, her admission of ignorance—it made her feel a bit stupid—but her companions didn’t seem to think any less of her. Relieved, she replaced the cylinder into her revolver and locked it into place with a satisfying click. She smiled her best smile, raised her revolver in salute for but a moment, and then stuffed it back into its holster.

Meanwhile, Dim had finished his bread and cheese. “I am going for a walk…”

Dim was gone and worry began to gnaw upon Blackbird. Sitting at a table on a wooden balcony high in the trees, she felt a little useless at this moment. She doubted that shooting the lake monster would have much of an effect, and Dim was going in alone. What if he failed? What if something happened? How would she find her mother without him? How would she save him?

“You seem worried.”

“I am,” Blackbird admitted, and she hated the feelings that rose up within her. She felt like a foal again, a little, ineffectual, helpless foal, and she loathed this feeling more than anything. There were butterflies—no, not butterflies—there were parasprites in her stomach, swarming around and devouring her from within.

“I think your friend has a good chance. He’s made a whole batch of harpoons and he and the blacksmith have secured those to barrels to be used as floats. It’s a smart plan, if somepony can get in close enough to do what must be done.” Gesundheit’s eyes lingered upon the platter of food, but he reached for nothing.

“So, about that sad sickness that you mentioned—”

“What about it?” Gesundheit asked.

She thought of her mother before she continued—“can it be cured?”

The first reply came in the form of a shrug done with both Gesundheit’s forelegs and his wings. Then the wise pegasus began to speak: “Sometimes. Maybe. Not every creature recovers from it. Just like the body, the mind too, can be hurt. Lasting harm can be done. It rarely if ever fixes itself on its own, and to cure it you need a healer. Somepony like Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, Empress of the Crystal Empire. I have heard it said that she can cure anything… heal any wound of the mind, body, or spirit.”

“He”—she paused, hesitating with what she had to say next—“is a tortured soul. Like my mom was. My father, he healed my mother. I don’t know how, he mighta done it by just existing, but he set her straight. Maybe this princess coulda helped my mother too.” Blackbird closed her eyes and then thought about the faces of her parents, images burned into her memory.

“I see another tortured soul,” Gesundheit said in a gentle whisper.

Opening her eyes, Blackbird turned her head and stared at the pegasus beside her.

She was about to say something, maybe even something a bit rash, but the night sky over the lake lit up with a bright flare of light, illuminating the area. She lept from her seat with a flap of her still-folded wings, and in a single bound, she was at the railing. Squinting, leaning against the railing, she peered in the direction of the lake, hoping to spot Dim.

What she actually saw took her breath away. Something monstrous had surfaced in the lake and she could see tentacles writhing and waving about. She saw flames, and the source of these flames was Dim. He was tiny and small from this distance, but she could see him. He was blinking around in bright flashes of magic, popping in and out of existence rapid-fire.

The largest explosion that Blackbird had ever seen happened, and a pillar of roiling fire rose from the lake while unfolding like a scroll. The sound was deafening and the shockwave struck her so hard that it was like a slap. All of her skin stung—as though she had a sunburn—and tears flowed from her eyes because of the sting. Her vision blurred and she gripped the rail with her talons, refusing to turn away. The pillar of fire was still rising, still growing, still blooming, and the heat from it washed over them in waves.

“That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Gesundheit murmured while he took his place beside Blackbird. Then, perhaps as an afterthought he added, “The lake is on fire.”

“Yeah, that happens. He set the ocean on fire the first day I met him.”

“So much destructive force… and yet, even the volcano serves the will of Terra Firma. I will not be afraid, but shall instead show reverence.” Gesundheit bowed his head a little, but kept his eyes on the lake.

Her claws dug into the rail while her stomach did flip flops. So terrible was her fear that Blackbird forgot that Dim was her best chance to find her mother, and all she could think about was Dim’s own safety. He was still blinking around down there, sometimes even blinking into existence into the open air over the lake, and somehow not falling into the water before he blinked away again.

There was a hissing sizzle of magic and then Dim was right there on the balcony. Blackbird screamed, she couldn’t help it, she screamed just like a scared little filly discovering there was an actual monster beneath her bed. Wood splintered beneath her claws as she dug into the rail, squeezing with her terror. When there was no more air left in her lungs, she sucked in a wheezing, ragged inhale to fill them, then she shrieked again for good measure; this one helped her recover her damaged feminine sensibilities.

Shaking, Dim shuffled over to a chair, and Gesundheit moved to help him. Blackbird recovered her senses after a few panting breaths, and then she too, was at Dim’s side. The shaking was bad—she had never seen anything quite like it—and she wondered what was wrong with him. Had he been injured? Poisoned?

“It is done,” Dim said through teeth that clattered together. “The beast cannot submerge.”

“How can I help you?” Gesundheit asked.

“The blood sings from battle and I have foolishly conditioned my body to expect coca and opium.” Dim gritted his teeth for a moment, and his paper-thin lips curled back in pain. “This body still wants…”

“I understand.” Gesundheit’s voice was soft and the pegasus stallion just stood there, his ears drooping, and there was a profound expression of pain that could be seen upon his face.

Reaching out, Blackbird plucked Dim’s hat off of his head, and noticed that it was bone dry. He hadn’t even gotten wet when fighting the lake monster. She reached inside, fished out the silver case that held his cigarettes, opened it, and pulled out a nail. Dim, perhaps anticipating her actions, had already pulled out his silver cigarette holder, and it now floated in front of her face.

She pushed one end of the joint into the holder, and then held it out to Dim, who took it. The long silver stem hung from the corner of his mouth, bobbing up and down while his teeth clenched together. There was a flicker of flame, and then the end of the spliff glowed a cherry red. She was rewarded with a faceful of smoke for her troubles, but she didn’t mind.

“With the floats in place, the creature will exhaust itself. When the dawn comes, the sun should finish it off.” Gesundheit returned to his seat, sat down, and rested his forelegs upon the table. “Baumhaus owes you a debt of gratitude.”

“Wait until dawn,” Dim responded, and curls of smoke crawled out of his mouth like seeking tendrils. “We shall see if my plan works and if the floats hold.”

Turning her head, Blackbird looked over in the direction of the lake, which was still burning. An island of flames floated in the water, and faint, keening cries of anguish could be heard. She understood the battle that had just taken place, the quickness of it, the suddenness. Every second spent fighting was a second exposed to risk. A chance for something to happen, to go wrong, for the plan to fail. Dim had gone in, lured the monster to the surface, engaged it, weakened it considerably, and had stabbed it with harpoons.

Time and sunlight would finish what Dim had started.

Again she turned her head, this time to look at Dim, and he was just inches away from her muzzle. His breathing was heavy and she could hear something rattling around inside of his barrel. It worried her, that sound, and without thinking about it, she reached out and touched him. He jerked away for a moment, a confused expression on his face, and then, puffing his cigarette, he relaxed. Blackbird persisted, and began smoothing out his cloak. It had been a fine, fine fabric once, but now it was rather ratty and threadbare.

“The Heliophant says that the art of combat is to minimise risk.” Gesundheit let out a nervous chuckle, and shook his head. “I’m not sure I believe that. The Heliophant takes extraordinary risks when he goes into battle, and from what little I know of him, he doesn’t really plan. He just improvises as the situation demands.”

“I’ve had to improvise,” Dim wheezed as he struggled to calm himself. “I prefer planning. I am… frail.” He took an enormous toke and then with his nostrils flaring, he held it for as long as possible. When the need to breathe overtook him, the blue smoke came out in a vast, billowing cloud that reeked of sweet cloves.

Sniffing, Gesundheit’s eyes narrowed. “I did not expect cloves. Why cloves?”

It took several seconds before Dim responded, “The Grittish Isles damaged my lungs… the coal dust. I am frail and I grew up in a sterile environment. The dust, the pollution, the miasmas, they were hard on me. There was a retired ship’s doctor on Tortoise-Tuga. He was a drunkard, but he still knew medicine.”

“I see.” The pegasus pony sighed. “I am going to fix some tea. Perhaps that will help you. Something warm and soothing. Maybe Chancy has some leftover broth or soup.”

Blackbird, unable to resist, poked at Dim’s cloak with her talons, and the weak threads fell apart at her touch. She frowned—a feminine frown of intense disapproval—and then she said to Dim in a soft whisper, “When we reach a place a bit more civilised, I’m going to buy some fabric and I’m going to make you a new cloak.”

“You sew?” Dim asked, and she could see the surprise on his face. “You did not strike me as a domestic creature.”

A smile split her worried face, and her green eyes twinkled with merriment. “I actually prefer sewing to stealing and killing…”

Author's Note

Next chapter: a tranquil dawn.

The killer arose before dawn...

Was he dreaming? Had he been dreaming? Disoriented, Dim had trouble discerning what was real and what wasn’t. His nostrils were flooded with the sharp tang of ink, and his eyes watered from it. He was in a bed, a warm, soft bed, one of the nicest beds he had slept in for a long, long time. How long had it been since he had been this comfortable? He didn’t know. There wasn’t an answer. In this confusing moment of being trapped between slumber and waking, this disturbed him a great deal, and he came to full awareness like a swimmer abandoning the depths to come up for air.

He gasped.

Ink. He had been dreaming of ink again. The paper pony. A warning that he couldn’t remember. A warning? He coughed, a hard hacking cough, and his mouth filled with lung butter. Dizzy, he rose out of bed, stumbled over the floor a bit, remembered to put on his goggles, shuffled over to the window, opened it, stuck his head out, and spat.

‘Twas only good fortune that nopony was below.

It was still dark out, but not for much longer. Dim coughed again, hawked up some rubbery, slimy chunks from the depth of his lungs, and spat out the window once more. Stars swam in his vision and blood sang in his ears. Since it was still good and dark out, he took off his goggles and looked out the small round window.

He was a perfectly normal pony now, at this moment, sticking his head out of a window. This was, perhaps, the most normal thing he had ever done in his life. Ponies made windows just so they could stick their heads out of them. Mismatched eyes darting from side to side, he had himself a good look around, and his desynchronised eyeblinks were now visible without his goggles, but there was nopony to see them.

Dim decided that he did not like windows. Sure, he could look out, but things could look in. Ponies liked looking into windows just as much as they liked looking out of them. Pulling his head in, he yanked the window shut. Never mind the fact that he was over fifty feet up in the air, there were pegasus ponies and unicorns that could walk up walls. He was inside of a tree, which in and of itself was rather amazing. The room had been shaped from the living wood and so had the beds. Both of them. Blackbird was still fast asleep in one of them. She was a bit too long of body to fit into the bed, but as supple as she was, it didn’t matter. She had curled into a tight coil and only took up half of the bed.

Dim suffered another normal pony moment while he stared at Blackbird’s sleeping form. She looked sweet, innocent, and her body rose and fell with each breath she took. Thoughts of Darling flooded his mind and with each new memory that surfaced, his breathing grew shallower as his throat drew tighter. With Darling, even when things seemed complicated, everything was easy. She was his toy, his plaything. How many times had he woken her up from her sleep by slipping himself inside of her? She had no means to resist him, no power to make him stop, no agency to say no.

With Blackbird, he had no idea how to reach her. How to connect. She was not beholden to him in any way, shape, or form. When Dim begin to think, when he began to compare the two of them, he began to understand, and even worse, he felt ashamed. Other thoughts grew like unwanted weeds in the garden of his mind, taking over the fertile beds of his memory. There had been no effort, no work, there had been no real challenge in his relationship with Darling. No struggle. Her entire existence, her purpose, her reason for living was to satisfy him. Even her cutie mark reflected that.

Had his mother, Dark Desire, somehow affected Darling Dark’s destiny as well? Had her cutie mark been forced somehow to make her complacent? Compliant? Could a cutie mark be implanted and free will swept away? Even though it was warm in the small room, Dim shivered, and the cold sweat that overcame him made his coat glisten with perspiration.

The void lurked, a fantastic, terrific predator, the very same void that Dim had seen himself looking out of. His emptiness haunted him, his ennui clung to him like a foul plague-bearing miasma, and he thought back to the first time in his life that he felt like he had some sort of meaningful existence; leaving home, stumbling around Canterlot, completely and totally blind. The struggle had been thrilling as much as it was terrifying.

And it had been terrifying.

All of that blind fumbling had meaning, and Dim had done more living in those horrifying, wretched, agonising moments than he had done in any of his years leading up to that point. He had left home, fled the country, and then he had to make a living for himself. Arriving in the Grittish Isles, trying to make a name for himself, trying to establish himself—all of that was so fraught with meaning, so pregnant with purpose, and looking back on it, it had been quite satisfying.

Every bit of the rare, strange, weird, and even esoteric knowledge from his homeschooling had been put to good use. The questionable magic taught to him by his family had practical applications in the real world. His schooling had been extensive and every dark, forbidden, or questionable subject had been pounded into his brain from an early age. He knew things that other wizards didn’t, and it gave him the upper hoof.

But none of this helped him with Blackbird, who mystified him. He had no clue how to even begin. It was… starting over. Starting his adventure over from the beginning, when he was blind, helpless, and had no clue how the world worked. She was worth the effort of discovery. All of these realisations came at a cost though, and with each thought, each memory of how things were, with each hope of how things could be, Dim felt himself sinking back into the mire.

It was too much, too overwhelming, and once more, he found himself back at the beginning, blinded, afraid, in a panic, and in need of help. Dim’s maturity crumbled as his seventeen years of life had not prepared him for this, and he was a foal once more, lost and in need of guidance.

When the conclusion came that he had nopony to turn to, it was far too much for Dim to bear.

Early mornings just before the dawn were excellent times for strix attacks, as they liked to catch the unwary just starting their day. Though he was distracted, Dim was not unwary. He stood smoking on the balcony, staring off in the direction of the lake. More had been done with planning and preparation than actual combat. The harpoons and barrels had to be made fireproof. He had cast repair spells on the barrels, which had caused the individual wooden planks to join together, thus making them stronger. Hours of preparation, mere minutes of combat.

It had gone off without a hitch.

He had never been in any real danger from the creature, only from his own mistakes or failure. Puffing away, he contemplated his existence, his thoughts of Blackbird, and his many epiphanies he had experienced since awakening not but a half-an-hour ago. The cool of the morning would not last long and he expected for it to be another hot day.

Hearing hooves, he cocked his head off to one side and saw a unicorn approaching. He sort of recognised this mare, having seen her a few times, and she approached him with cautious apprehension. She looked scared, but also kind of excited, yet still somehow half-awake. One thing she wasn’t doing was keeping an eye out for strix. Dim scowled.

“I saw you out my window,” the mare said as she drew closer.

Hard work and drudgery had not been kind to her. She was young, but hard living had aged her. Wrinkles graced the corners of her eyes, one ear was notched and had a hole through it, and her hooves were in a condition that would cause any proper-bred noble to feel faint. His eyes lingered on the hole in her ear, and the notch. He’d seen those before, and he wondered if she had removed her own tag or if some kind soul had helped her. The better question was, how was she freed? Had she saved herself? Some rescuer? Some knight errant?

Something had to be wrong with him, because something about this disgusting primitive evoked his sense of pity. Remembering his manners, he turned away and stopped staring. No doubt, she was self-conscious about the hole in her ear, the enduring mark of shame of being a slave. Dim had one too, but his was inside where it couldn’t be seen.

“My name is Fancy Chancy,” she said, her voice timid and quavering.

Taking a deep toke, Dim did not reply, but he did nod.

“Would you like to come and lay with me for a while?”

Dim did not allow himself to react but kept himself stony faced.

“You’re new and different and that’s kinda exciting—”

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Dim asked, and his voice was devoid of emotion.

Fancy Chancy stood there, stammering for a time, unable to form words. Taking a deep breath, she tried again, and was not successful. On the third attempt, she managed to say, “Don’t judge me. It’s what I know. It’s about all I know. I got comfortable with it.”

The silver stem of his cigarette holder that hung from the corner of his mouth bobbed up and down while he turned his head once more to look at the pale green mare. “I too, got comfortable with it,” he muttered, and his words made the mare’s ears perk. The sound of her sniffles made his pointed ears perk, and in the faint available light, he saw tears welling up in her eyes.

“Save it,” he said, his voice flat, feelingless, a deadpan. “Save it for somepony worthy.”

“But I… but no… but you don’t understand—”

One of Dim’s eyebrows lifted while the other bore downwards.

“—after what I’ve been though, nopony will find me worthy.”

Sighing, Dim sent out a cloud of blue smoke that shrouded his face. The words—her words—stung, but the place where the hurt had landed he could not fathom, could not comprehend, there was no one place on his body where he could point to and say that he felt pain. Once again, he thought of Darling, and felt the metaphorical flagellation crack upon his metaphorical back. He winced, drawing real pain from abstract concepts.

“There is no saving it,” Fancy Chancy said, almost whimpering. “It’s already gone.”

“I know.” The words came out as clove and cannabis scented smoke. “But it was taken from you. Stolen. You have your freedom now. I don’t know where I am going with this.” A third, invisible entity manifested, and it was Awkwardness. Dim had a keen awareness of its presence, and he cringed.

Confused, the young mare stood there, sniffle-snorting, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “At first, I hated it, it hurt, it hurt me, and for a time, I thought they would rip me in half. There was always that terror. But then, one day, everything changed…” Her voice trailed off and she shuffled a little closer to Dim.

“And what happened?” Dim asked, even though he didn’t want to.

The reply was a shame-filled whisper. “I started enjoying it.”

Dim’s teeth made a dreadful click against the silver end piece of his cigarette holder as he attempted to keep it in place and to prevent it from falling from his mouth. This hurt—surprisingly so—his teeth chipped again and somehow, even with the electric jolts of pain shooting through his head, he managed to catch the falling silver tube with his magic. Little jagged fragments—tooth chips—threatened to slice his tongue as they settled into the soft, vulnerable, fleshy places beneath where his saliva squirted from. Leaning over the rail, he began to spit and sputter, trying to rid his mouth of the chipped bits of enamel.

“The stallions here, they won’t be rough with me. They won’t hurt me. They won’t bite me or kick me.” Fancy Chancy’s voice somehow sounded aroused and haunted at the same time. “And now that I’ve slept around a little, most of them won’t have anything to do with me. I have a powerful need now.”

It seemed that Dim was doomed to think about Darling, and even worse, he thought of his mother, and how she had said that Darling had suffered a confusing orgasm. He too, had suffered a confusing orgasm, and the damage it seemed, was permanent. His sexuality had gone in every single direction it could that day, leaving him with lusts that nopony should have.

“I am not a motherfucker,” Dim murmured to himself.

“I watched my mother get fucked,” Fancy Chancy said while she stared down at her hooves. “After that, she was paid for and taken away to some place called Menagerie. I was seven.”

Unable to respond, Dim plucked his cigarette holder from his lips and passed it to the mare beside him. She accepted, and for a moment, their magic intermingled. Her magic was little more than a spark, a flickering flame on a candle. Certainly not enough to defend herself. She took a puff, coughed, spluttered, and then tried again. Almost right away, her eyes became sleepy looking, and a sad, heartbroken smile could be seen upon her face.

“I wasn’t beautiful enough to be sent to Menagerie. I was sold to a group of miners.”

“Okay, since we seem to be having this horrible conversation no matter what, I have to ask, how did you get free? Let’s skip past the bad parts and get to the good parts if we have to keep discussing this, okay?” Frowning, Dim yanked his cigarette holder out of her mouth and inserted it back between his own lips so he could puff away on what little was left.

“Four ponies came along,” Fancy Chancy began, and she seemed almost eager for the telling. Her expression was now sleepy, calm even, and she shuffled on her hooves. “Two unicorns and two pegasus ponies. One of the unicorns was chocolate brown, big fella, and the other was little and I think she was an albino. One of the pegasus ponies had a rainbow mane.” She paused for a moment to smile, and something in her eyes changed, though how, Dim could not say.

“There was a huge fight and I thought for certain that these four ponies were going to end up as new slaves, but all kinds of bad things happened and there was a flying talking sword and the big brown one, he kept smashing ponies with his shield, and the albino… she was scary. She had a lot of magic. When the fighting was done, we were freed, and they diverted the river and flooded the mine, and that made it collapse. I don’t know why they did that, but they did. We were digging for something, but the forepony never said for what. We just had to keep digging down.”

“Alright then. I expect something in return for my sympathetic ear. Tea and breakfast would be good.” Dim saw the faint pink light on the horizon, and a sense of eager anticipation overtook him. He wanted to watch the lake monster fry. “Do you have eggs? I would really like eggs.”

Confused, Fancy Chancy stood blinking. “We… we have duck eggs—”

“Well then, scrambled duck eggs is what I will be having. I’ll have toast too.”

“But I… but we… but you… you and I—”

“Something sweet would be great. Something sour sweet would be better. Now go!”

Blinking in confusion, her tail swishing from side to side, the young mare ran off to do Dim’s bidding.

Author's Note

This chapter was difficult to write. I’m feeling squicked out, stressed out, and kinda icky.

Whoops!

The ponies who had pulled themselves from their beds to see the dawn were rewarded with a rare sight: the monster that had plagued them now boiled in the lake. They gathered on balconies, congregated on skywalks, and gathered together on the long bridges that separated the trees. Being gregarious sorts, they chatted together, said good morning to each other, and were generally pleasant to one another as they greeted the dawn.

In the lake, the tentacled monster sizzled in the water, its blackened, charred remains bubbled when touched by the light. Already, a terrible smell was in the air, but so relieved were the ponies that the menace lurking in the lake had been destroyed that they didn’t pay much notice. The atmosphere held a general feeling of celebration.

One pony stood apart from the others. Wearing a broad brimmed hat that was only just a little ratty looking, he sat eating breakfast, unconcerned about the whole event. His entire focus was on his meal, and not on the remains of the monster frying in the golden rays of dawn. He ate with impeccable manners, one might even say he had an aristocratic mien to him. He seemed out of place somehow, too fancy, too refined, too well-heeled and genteel for his crude surroundings.

The other standout was shiny, she was slinky, she was big, black, and inky. In general, the smaller ponies gave her space, but she was not unwelcome. Somewhat bleary eyed, she stood at the rail, her talons gripping it, and she watched the final destruction of the tentacled pony-devouring horror that had lurked in the lake.

As one source of trouble died, another came along to take its place…

Dim found himself quite enjoying this rare moment of calm. Tortoise-Tuga lacked this, because it had not been a safe place, a wholesome place conducive to resting. While he did not lower his guard, he did relax a little. Baumhaus was an idyllic place that was entirely unique and he hadn’t experienced anything quite like it. He sighed, not an expression of ennui, but one of satisfaction, and felt a faint twinge of remorse because the waters of the lake were a bit befouled.

At least fresh water wasn’t a concern. Several streams and one river flowed into the lake basin, so the town’s source of potable water hadn’t been destroyed. In time, Dim hoped, the lake would clear up. At least, for a time. He thought of what Gesundheit had said and knew that, with time, this place would grow, and eventually, the sheer number of bodies living here would begin to pollute the environment. Such was the way of things. The wilderness existed to be consumed in the name of progress, and sophistication—a cancer—grew across the face of the world. Beauty existed to burn and the fires of progress would propel civilisation ever onwards.

Factories were dragons, consuming wealth and resources, only to belch out smoke and ash. Vast armies of workers existed now—the peasantry—and they toiled away in endless labour to serve the whims of these dragons, feeding them, tending to them, and hauling away their excrement so it could be peddled amongst the peasants. The same peasants who slaved away to earn a few coins so that this excrement exchange could be facilitated. Sitting in his chair, Dim wondered if the world had been a better place when the nobles had provided for the peasantry and they had not been left to fend for themselves. This new exchange seemed unfair to him—the peasants laboured far too much, they gave too much of themselves, and in return, seemed to have so little. The dragons, these factories, were not kind, generous lords that provided well for their subjects.

“Mister Dark…”

Dim’s thoughts collapsed like a house of cards. “I don’t recall giving you my name.”

“Blackbird told me. Please, don’t be upset with her.” Gesundheit moved out of Dim’s peripheral vision and into full view. “Mister Dark, I wanted to thank you for your kindness with Fancy Chancy. She’s coming around… a bit slow, but she’s getting better. You did the right thing. She is an excellent cook and she shows much talent with her developing skill.”

Dim did not reply, but gave favour to silence.

“Every great story begins in some way,” Gesundheit said to Dim, “and there are only two great stories. A pony… a creature, they leave home and go on a journey. The other is that a stranger comes to town. For me and my story, a stranger came to town. Two of them. Now I have a town free of the menace in the lake.” The pegasus sat down in a chair beside Dim, let out a sigh, and rested his forelegs against the unyielding edge of the table.

Silence continued to pour from Dim in an never-ending stream.

“Look, Mister Dark, I won’t bother you. I just wanted to say that I am glad that our plot lines crossed and I feel that both of our stories are better for our meeting. My story, I feel, is a simple one. This place, Baumhaus, it is my story. This is my life’s dream, I think. I am starting up a city from scratch. How many ponies can say they’ve done that?” Gesundheit cleared his throat and then smiled. “You of course, are going to go on and do other things. There are many towns with monsters in their lakes, Mister Dark. The world needs monster slayers more than it needs those with aspirations of civilisation.” With nothing left to say, the pegasus slid from his chair, then walked away.

Still silent, Dim watched him go.

Deep within Dim, his awakened nature stirred, excited to battle with hidden horrors…

Much to Dim’s annoyance, Blackbird was acting like a disgusting primitive. She was making horrendous faces, hooking her talon-fingers into the corners of her mouth, stretching her cheeks out to ridiculous lengths, and revealing her many somewhat disturbing teeth. Her eyes crossed, she made rude, disgusting, flatulent noises, and the overall effect of everything she did was quite distracting.

Damnit, someponies were trying to read!

The little ones who watched her every move were giggling, proving beyond any doubt that they too, would grow up to become disgusting primitives. Peering over the top of his book, he watched the little ones as they watched Blackbird. Some of them were still afraid of her, but they were warming up to her.

Unable to read, he shut his book. Blackbird was just too distracting to read about efficient ways to maximise hydrogen yields when preparing for a fireball. Casting a good fireball was an artform, a creative process, and the end result demanded a spectacular conclusion. A little hydrogen would get you a good woosh, but thaumaturgically charging hydrogen atoms and compressing them into an area would yield spectacular pillars of fire, such as the one he had summoned last night.

The fireball was a spell that just begged for personalisation, something that made it unique to the caster. The atmosphere was filled with all manner of flammable gasses, and the aether was just begging to be tapped into. It was Dim’s obsession, and he was irked to have his muzzle pulled out of his book.

“Get inside, all of you, now!” a pegasus mare barked, and all of the foals vanished in an eyeblink.

A crowd began to gather, and Gesundheit flapped down to the balcony where Dim was sitting. Dim, feeling the first pangs of alarm, adjusted his hat and waited. A little bird sat on Gesundheit’s head, chirping away, and something about the little songbird seemed panicked. Other pegasus ponies came out, and the old diamond dog, far too old, loped along a skywalk.

“We have a visitor who bears much darkness,” Gesundheit announced while the bird tweeted away on his head. “The animals say that the ground shrivels at his touch. Come, let us go and greet our guest. I really hope there will not be trouble. Can I ask you for help, my friend?”

Behind his goggles, Dim blinked and felt an itch between his ears. “Of course.”

Coming to a halt, Dim reached out with his senses. All of them reacted, all six of them, but he focused on one in particular, his magic sense. There was something rotten about this unicorn that approached, and some strange, lingering energy clung to him. Long distance teleporter? Perhaps. It seemed likely.

“I have no desire for trouble,” the unicorn said, announcing his intentions. “I only wish to speak to you, Dim Dark. You vanished for a time, and we were quite worried that you were dead. You somehow became quite invisible to us. It is good to see you alive and breathing.”

“I do not know you,” Dim replied. “Do not speak to me in a familiar manner, you disgusting primitive.” There was a prickle along his spine when he realised that this was not a workable defensive position, there were too many ponies and other creatures around him, all of whom could be hurt. Something deep within him balked at this protective notion, and he felt a strange stirring of confusion.

“I did not come here to threaten or coerce you,” the strange unicorn said. “It is not my intention to fight you. My goal is to parley. I am a messenger and nothing more. You’re no fool and I know for certain that you can sense that I am no real threat to you.”

Something else lingered on the edges of Dim’s perceptions and he strained to sense it…

“I came with explicit instructions to not be a threat to any of you.” The unicorn removed his hat, a somewhat battered looking derby with a bright green ribbon. “Parley. Discussion. Surely, you won’t kill the messenger, will you Dim, Chosen of House Dark?”

“I do so enjoy killing the messengers when I happen upon them,” Dim deadpanned. “It’s the look of surprise on their faces, it moves me.” He felt his ears prick beneath his hat when he heard the satisfying gulp of fear from the visitor. “You were foolish to come here. Why should I talk to you?”

“Because if you don’t, my associate will set the woods on fire and everything here will burn. I have explicit instructions to not be a threat, but he doesn’t.” The expression upon the unicorn visitor’s face was one of fearful worry. “No rest, no shelter, no place to hide Dim… we will keep coming, we will find you, and every place you go, you will bring danger with you.”

To Dim’s left, there was an ominous click, a dreadful sound, and he knew exactly what it was. He didn’t dare look away though. Every muscle quivered, his stomach clenched, and there was a powerful, powerful need for a cube of coca-laced salts. Reaching out with his mind, he tried to feel around with his magic sense, hoping to find what he had first sensed moments ago. There was indeed another, and Dim began to home in on his location as best he could.

“Your plan is a steaming pile of minotaur shit.” Dim gave the stranger a nod. “Eventually, Grogar will run out of morons to do his bidding. Although… the world is full of idiots. I have no qualms about killing you all. I have already set your master on fire.”

“And he is quite upset about that!” the unicorn stranger replied. “But he is willing to forgive you. Like it or not, Dim, you are one of us! The final spell was cast and even now, your mother’s magic begins to transform you. You must understand, you have no choice but to come to us. The final plan has been set into motion. That is what I was sent here to tell you.”

Try as he might, he could not stop his mind from racing. A cold sweat gathered along his belly, and he wondered why he had been invisible on Tortoise-Tuga. How had he not been seen? This mystery was a distraction, a distraction he didn’t need, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. His clenching stomach caused a wave of nausea that almost overwhelmed him, and Dim realised that he was sick. There was no longer any denying it and wishing it would go away, he was ill.

“Why be so honest?” Blackbird’s voice was demanding and commanding.

“If you would just come with me, we could discuss this.”

The stranger took a step forwards, there was a thunderous roar that echoed through the trees, and everything from the neck up on the stranger exploded into something resembling chunky, lumpy marinara. The sound of ponies puking filled the air and Blackbird let out a startled squeak. The body stood there for a moment, quivering, and then fell over, flopping down into the dirt before the headless neck began spurting out a flood of crimson that stained the ground.

“It moved!” Blackbird’s voice was a shrill, panicked whine. “It moved! It was an accident! It was an accident, I swear! You’re not supposed to move when a gun is pointed at you! Oh, this is horrible! Does this make me a bad Blackbird? Oh no! What would my father say! Oh this is bad… bad… BAD! My talon twitched!”

So mighty was the blast from Blackbird’s revolver that Dim now had trouble hearing.

One hind leg twitched and with each feeble kick, a little more blood spurted out from the gaping neck-holes. A growing puddle began to spread around the body and there was no sign of anything resembling a head anywhere to be seen. An empty hat that would never know a head again lay in the puddle of scarlet. The trees directly behind the body were stained red with mist.

Blackbird stammered, trying to get more words out, but no words came, only a fountain of puke that came arcing out and shot for a considerable distance. She puked again, her mighty wings pumping against her sides, and she almost dropped her massive revolver. In a moment that could only be described as gentle understanding—or perhaps a fear of being obliterated if the gun fell—Dim plucked the cannon from her grip, flicked the safety, and slid the gun back into its well oiled holster.

“Look after her,” Dim commanded while he turned to look at a terrified Gesundheit. “I must go and deal with the second. Do you have a plan for what to do if there is a forest fire?”

Gesundheit nodded, but could not reply as he was fighting back the urge to be sick.

“I go.” And then, Dim was gone in a flash of magic.

Author's Note

Next chapter: Dim struggles to do right.

The crossroads

Befouled magic. Dim knew he was closer, but his prey was still out of his reach, for a moment. Reaching out with his senses, he concentrated on the source of the befouled magic. The horn was a sensitive organ, at least to those who paid attention and tried to push their sensory limits to the very edge, as Dim had done. The source of the magic was on the move, perhaps fleeing, because nothing was on fire yet.

Dim vanished from one spot and reappeared in another.

What had changed? Why was he visible now? The shakes were pretty bad now, bad enough that it was starting to affect his ability to focus. This weakness could be fatal should circumstances turn against him. He stood on a tree branch, up high and out of sight from anything that might be down below. Silly little equines, most of them never looked up.

Something had changed, some unknown variable, and he was visible again. Dim popped out of existence for a brief second and when he reappeared, he did next to a startled squirrel. The squirrel did what any self respecting critter would do when a crazed wizard just sprung into existence beside it: freak out and run away, all while chittering away and critter-cussing.

Thinking of the Sea Witch for but a single moment, Dim blinked away.

He was close now. Not only could he sense his prey, but his ears registered the sounds of panic. Standing on a narrow tree branch, Dim gave no thought to the fact that he had been blind teleporting through the woods, because doing so would be a distraction. Not one thought was spared for the theory that unicorns possessed quantum consciousnesses and could project their situational awareness ahead of them. No, he remained focused upon his prey.

When he had a lock on his target, Dim descended…

“No!”

“Yes!” Dim hissed the word for full terrifying, dramatic effect while his cloak fluttered around him. There was no wind, yet his garment still billowed, making him look bigger and far more menacing than he was. His prey didn’t seem threatening at all, not even in the slightest, but Dim, wary, kept his wits about him. Ears pricking, he heard the panicked whimpers of the unicorn as it backed away. For some reason, the cowardice infuriated Dim, leaving him both revolted and disgusted. He advanced.

“I didn’t want to fight! I didn’t want to come! I didn’t want any part of this! My brother made me! He made me! I didn’t have a choice! I didn’t have a choice!” The unicorn made no effort to defend himself, to protect himself. “I wasn’t going to burn the woods, honest, I swear! Please don’t kill me!”

“Oh, I have no intention of killing you,” Dim replied in a phlegmatic growl. “At least, not right away. But you will beg for it—”

The unicorn screamed, a high-pitched blood-curdling shriek of terror.

This disgusting primitive had no spine. Dim snorted and felt insulted that Grogar would send this worthless, sniveling sack of shit. Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps nopony wanted this worthless, sniveling, wretched coward, and he had been sent so he could be disposed of. A closer inspection revealed that the strange unicorn was a colt, perhaps a little bit younger than Dim was.

“You know,” Dim began, “they say that pain is fear leaving the body… when I am done with you, you will never know fear again. Let us begin the removal of this weakness. I have so much fear to extract from you. Let us start with what you see, those eyes will need to come right out—”

When the unicorn colt collapsed in the dirt, Dim fell silent, his orotund words now clung to his lips like a clingy film. His intention had been to scare the colt into submission for interrogation, but the weak, screamy little shit had fainted. Well, that certainly took the fun out of things. Dim’s ego unsheathed, swelling, becoming tumescent and feverish. Something about the notion that his victim feared him more than his master, Grogar, titillated him, and left his id aroused.

“This disgusting little primitive went to market,” Dim said as he pulled out a cigarette. “This disgusting little primitive stayed home.” He lit his clove and cannabis cigarette, then puffed away while looking down at the comatose unicorn on the ground. “This disgusting little primitive had roast potatoes.” A pause, and more puffing that filled the area with blue smoke. “This disgusting little primitive had none.”

Squinting behind his goggles, Dim reached the part where all four hooves were accounted for and it was time for the boop on the snoot. “This disgusting little primitive went right into the dark places where no disgusting little primitive should go.” He snarled, his thin lip curling back away from his teeth in disgust. “Now I have to haul you back, you worthless little weakling.”

There was a thump when Dim dropped the body to the wooden floor and he stared right back at the ponies staring at him. The colt was still passed out, fainted away, and unmoving. Dim kicked him hard enough to make him roll over a bit, and then stepped away, sneering in frustrated, contempt-filled disgust.

“He’s alive?” Gesundheit’s voice was strained, uncertain.

“Yes, sadly.” Dim was sweaty, shaky, and uncomfortable. He needed a fix something awful, and he felt itchy all over. There was a desperate need to get into a cool, dark place and maybe have a nap. Alas, there was work to do, dreadful work. A vizard’s work was never done. His throat was dry and parched to the point of pain. It was a struggle to even breathe.

“Did you put him to sleep with a spell?” Gesundheit asked.

Dim shook his head and then mentioned as an afterthought, “I might have said something about plucking out his eyes...”

“I see.”

“Gesundheit?”

“Yes?”

“Poor choice of words after talk of eye-plucking.”

“Indeed it was.”

It was Blackbird who came over to inspect the pony on the ground, and Dim did nothing to stop her. She rolled him over onto his back, pressed her talon-fingers against his neck, and waited. After a moment, she nodded, glanced up at Dim for a second, and then looked away. She sat down, lifted her talons from the pony’s neck, and shook her head.

“What do we do with him?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Dim replied. “Perhaps something useful can be learned.” Sweat was running down the insides of his ears, a sensation that drove him crazy. The beginnings of a headache tapped and thumped at the base of his skull, while a faint throbbing just behind his eyes drove him to distraction. But the sweating was the worst, as it ran in rivulets down the insides of his ears, making them feel as though they were flooding.

“He’s a colt… I mean, he’s young. Look at him. He’s too young to be messed up in something like this.” Blackbird looked queasy for a moment—she covered her mouth with her right talons just in case—and she closed her eyes. “I feel sick.”

Dim felt sick too, but he didn’t say anything. Blackbird’s queasiness bothered him, left him irritated and annoyed. She had been when he had set Grenadine on fire, or when he killed Zinc. Had that been his name? Zinc? But now, after her accidental discharge, she was squeamish. He found this inconsistent weakness of hers to be a real irritant. A part of him wanted to grab her, to slap her, to lecture her until she saw reason, until she became consistent, until she became logical.

Another part wanted to comfort her and make her feel better.

Aware of his own inconsistencies, a coruscating flame of rage ignited in the center of his mind. His own weakness galled him, pained him, and his smouldering rage filled him with shame. He looked down at the limp body and wondered what he was doing. Why hadn’t he just killed him? Why not just be done with it? Just one more body, one more ghost to join Darling in her frequent hauntings.

“Fancy Chancy!”

The young unicorn mare appeared as if by magic, and she gave Gesundheit an expectant stare while she stood waiting for his further commands. She did everything she could to not look down at the body sprawled over the wooden deck. It was obvious that she was scared—everypony was scared—but she did her best to hide it.

“Fancy, be a dear and fix some tea for Blackbird and Dim. Also, find something we can use as a blindfold for our guest. I think he’ll be spooked when he comes around. Thank you, Fancy.”

Bowing her head, Fancy trotted away in a hurry, off to do Gesundheit’s bidding.

The soft weeping was like the edge of a hoof being scraped down a chalkboard for Dim. The blindfold, a scrap of blanket, was soaked with tears. The pathetic mewling of the bound prisoner left him filled with a murderous rage, a burning, consuming anger that made him want to throttle the colt, to strangle him until at last there was blessed, wonderful silence. At least Gesundheit had the patience that Dim himself lacked.

“My brother forced me to go with him,” the colt said in a low whine. “I wanted to stay in school… I didn’t want to go… I didn’t want to go… my brother used his magic to hurt me, just like he’s always done. Please don’t hurt me!”

“Keep talking.” Gesundheit’s voice was gentle and held the promise of benevolence. “You said you couldn’t run away. Why? If you don’t like this life, why stay? Why continue this tortured existence? Help us, and we will help you. Tell us what we want to hear and I’ll stop Dim from plucking out your eyeballs or whatever it was he threatened to do.”

Dim snorted. If he wanted to pluck eyeballs, then eyeballs would be plucked.

“I’ve been marked,” the colt replied. “Catrina, she touched me. It left behind a mark, a dead place on my side. It doesn’t hurt or anything, it’s just a little sore that never heals. They know where I am at all times and since I got it, I keep hearing singing. The singing never stops. It haunts me.”

“Where?” Gesundheit leaned in a little closer.

“On my left, right at the bottom of my mark.” The colt squirmed in his chair, straining against his bonds.

“I don’t see anything,” Gesundheit said when he leaned in to have a look.

“It’s there, I swear! Please don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me! Why does everybody want to hurt me? I just want the hurting to stop!”

Ignoring the throbbing in his head, Dim concentrated upon what little he had learned. The colt couldn’t say his own name, and Dim believed him. It seemed likely that the colt was marked, even if the mark was invisible. The mark was no doubt what held some means of control over the unicorn, and could be used as tracking spell.

“Everypony just keeps beating me!” The colt broke down in bleating sobs and squirmed against his restraints. “Catrina and Desire and Belladonna all practice their torture spells on me and I just want the hurting to stop! No matter where I go, they’ll find me! I can’t run away and the singing is growing louder!”

“You know, Dim, it occurs to me that they sent this wretch just so you would kill him.” Gesundheit let out a sigh, rubbed his eyes with his foreleg, and then sat down on the floor, looking worn out and weary. “Doing so would be giving them what they wanted.”

“Do not attempt to manipulate my emotions,” Dim warned, and his voice was cold.

“Look at him, he’s pathetic. He’s no good to them. He’s been abused all of his life, no doubt.” Gesundheit gave Dim a hard, fearless stare while the nameless colt wept. “I can’t find a mark, but I can sense that something is off. What do we do? If they’re tracking him, we can’t just send him on his way. How do we help him?”

“Help him?” Dim’s irritation neared its breaking point.

“Well, you are a wizard and this is a magical problem—”

Dim’s resentment of this manipulation bubbled like a simmering pot of porridge.

“—and if you were as powerful as you make yourself out to be, then you should be able to fix this. To counter this—”

“Enough!” Dim snapped while he thought about strangling Gesundheit. “I will not be manipulated! I get enough of that from my mother and I don’t need it from you. I am aware of what you are attempting to do!”

“Then do the right thing!” Gesundheit stood up, trembling, and his ears were splayed out to the sides. “Fight your mother’s evil. Fight Grogar’s evil. Stop being a selfish bastard that only thinks of yourself and your own survival.” The pegasus pointed to the colt tied to the chair. “This pony is one of Grogar’s slaves. Can you save him?”

Dim thought of Fancy Chancy. At some point, would the torture become pleasurable? Would the colt grow to enjoy it? The shakes were now almost unbearable and with the way his heart was racing, he was in desperate need of something to slow it down. The colt was still blubbering, still sobbing, and a long ribbon of snot hung down from one quivering nostril. Turning away, Dim was filled with disgust and revulsion.

“I might know a way to see the mark,” Dim said in a low whisper that was almost drowned out by weeping that filled the room. “I don’t know what we are dealing with, I would need to see the mark first. It could be any number of things, any type of malicious magic. This is probably more than the standard geas. I don’t know if I can help.”

“Thank you, Dim.” Gesundheit bowed his head.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Dim snapped in extreme irritation. “I must go and prepare.”

Author's Note

Next chapter: the burning lets you know it’s working!

The veil is torn

The mirror wasn’t much, but it was the best that could be hoped for in a place such as this. Dim’s whole body trembled while he cast the necessary enchantments, and was working entirely from theory, using all of the ‘what ifs’ he had learned during his extensive schooling. The small mirror had a wooden body and handle, the glass was clear, and had a good reflection. Something made of silver would have been better by far, but this would have to do.

As he cast multiple spells on the mirror, it began to glow with an eerie astral light. It was now extradimensional, protruding into multiple planes of existence, all of which Dim could see. Sweat poured from him in a flood, and when he went to lick his lips, they were as dry and crinkly as old parchment. His tongue, too, was also dried out, and it felt shriveled as it traveled over his thin, wrinkled lips. He was so dehydrated that he could feel his eyelids scraping over his eyeballs with every blink, a painful, distracting sensation that threatened to be his undoing.

“Blackbird…”

“Yes?”

“I wasn’t lying when I said you had a perfect ass,” Dim said to his companion. “Keep that in mind, because I am about to kill myself.”

“Dim, I wish you wouldn’t—”

“There is no other way.” Dim cut off her protest with a few harsh words and eyeballed the phial of foxglove poison. “Remember, pour the antidote down my ear if something goes wrong.”

“Right.”

“Dim,” Gesundheit whispered, “good luck.”

“If my luck holds, perhaps I will see my sisters again… both of them.” Dim laughed, a terrible, dreadful sound in the darkened room. It was the worst kind of laughter—mad laughter—and it turned into a hacking cough that made Dim see starbursts floating in his vision.

“Catrina is wrong,” the colt whined, “there is something scarier than Grogar!” He collapsed into wordless whimpering and covered his face with his forelegs. “I don’t want to live to remember this!”

Still laughing, still coughing, Dim examined the phial of digitalis poison. It glowed with a faint, flickering magical aura, and it was quite a sobering sight. The laughter ceased, but the coughing did not. When he lifted the phial in his magic, it was consumed in a dark glow, the faint light snuffed out.

“Dim”—he could hear Darling’s voice in his ear, and he was certain that he felt her lips brush up against him—“you’ll be joining me soon, dear brother. I’ve missed you, Dim. Every day without you is an eternity of anguish.”

Each word whispered into his ear made his body jerk and Dim held the phial just in front of his nose. Now, he began to shiver, as the sweat pouring from his body chilled him. The cold grasp of the grave was upon him and he began to wonder if, perhaps, it would be best to not take the antidote. It might be best to just accept what was coming to him and be done with it.

Memories, given life once again by lysergic acid diethylamide, began to play out in real time. He thought about Darling pinned beneath him, writhing, the scent of her clinging to his nostrils, the soft muscles of her back rippling against his belly. The incessant urge to go deeper, the whimpers of pain that rewarded his cruelest efforts, and his brain was on fire with the memory of how Darling’s hind legs would stiffen when the pain was too much for her to bear.

Sometimes, it had been just what he needed to push him over the edge.

But like any other drug, the powerful feeling of intoxication faded over time, becoming weaker, and his cruelties had to become more and more fantastic to fuel his lusts. The muted whimpers were soon not enough, and sometimes he strove to make her cry out so he could have his release. The stiffening of her legs ceased to be enough—no, she had to spasm and convulse with pain—but even this once titillating thrill had become commonplace and boring.

The edge, ever moving, ceased to be an exciting place once it was experienced.

Unstoppering the phial, Dim made ready to take his medicine.

With each passing second, Dim felt his heart grow weaker, and a terrible pain ricocheted around inside of his ribcage. Try as he might, he couldn’t quite grab whatever it was that was lurking in the necrotic ulcer. It remained elusive, not quite real, it continued to be nonexistent to his magical touch.

There was a rushing sound in his ears, which was almost enough to drown out the sounds of Darling Dark’s singing. He could see her in the corners of his vision, a haint given life by his guilt, shame, and remorse. Something cold and icy gripped his heart, constricting it, making it impossible to keep beating. Haints had to be kept away by something blue. He had nothing blue, nothing at all, but he had the blues.

Keep your focus, Dim, the pink voice said within the folds of his grey matter.

Something cold and unnatural slithered through his guts, heading down towards his clenched-tight asshole. The skin of his scrotum had gone flaccid to the point of being almost wrinkless, and his balls felt like two lumps of dry ice. This was dying, he had felt it before. He was close now, he stood at the veil, with nothing left to do but push through it.

Perhaps then he would have the means to touch his enemy.

As entropy devoured his heart, Dim became aware of two more figures in the room. One was a zebra, who was quite like the Sea Witch, and the other was a pale alicorn. They started out fuzzy, indistinct, but as his heart continued to slow, they gained contrast. When his heart gave one last final shudder in his barrel, they gained total clarity and Dim could see them quite well.

Cᴜʀɪᴏᴜs, ɪᴛ ɪs ᴀʟᴍᴏsᴛ ᴀs ɪғ ʜᴇ ᴄᴀɴ sᴇᴇ ᴜs.

This was the pale pony speaking, and he gave a sidelong glance to the zebra.

Iᴍᴘᴏssɪʙʟᴇ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs ɴᴏ ᴡᴀʏ ʜᴇ ᴄᴀɴ sᴇᴇ ᴜs.

While speaking, the zebra’s dreadlocks formed puzzled question marks around her head.

“I can see you,” Dim croaked, and the words almost took more effort than he could bear. His ears were filled with the sound of reverberating thunder, and Darling’s singing had gone silent.

Wᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ᴅʀᴜɢ ғᴜᴇʟᴇᴅ ʜᴀʟʟᴜᴄɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴍᴏʀᴇ.

For some reason, Dim doubted the pale pony’s words.

Tʜᴇ Nᴀᴍᴇʟᴇss Oɴᴇ's ᴛᴀᴍᴘᴇʀɪɴɢs ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɢᴏɴᴇ ᴛᴏᴏ ғᴀʀ. Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs ᴡᴇ sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴛᴀᴋᴇ ʜɪᴍ, Lɪᴍᴀ?

Nᴏ, Pᴀʟᴇ, ʜᴇ ᴀᴍᴜsᴇs ᴍᴇ. Lᴇᴛ ᴜs sᴇᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜɪs ᴄʟᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ᴅᴏᴇs. Sᴇᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ʜᴇ sᴛʀɪᴠᴇs ᴀɢᴀɪɴsᴛ ʜɪs ᴡᴇᴀᴋɴᴇss? Lᴇᴛ ᴜs ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ ʜɪᴍ, ғᴏʀ ᴀ ᴛɪᴍᴇ.

For hallucinations, they were annoying and haughty. Dim ignored them, he had precious little time, and he had something that demanded his attention. He focused his magic upon the tentacular horror lurking within the patch of diseased tissue. Much to his disgust, he was able to touch it now, now that he was dead. Contact with it made his dead flesh crawl with revulsion.

I ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅɴ'ᴛ ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜ ᴛʜᴀᴛ. Yᴏᴜ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ɪᴛ's ʙᴇᴇɴ.

“Silence, you disgusting primitive.” Dim’s lip curled back into a hateful sneer. This, whatever it was, was slimy to his magic touch, and slippery as well. Grimacing, he reached beneath the skin, and pushed his magic down inside of the colt. The world seemed to have gone still, and nothing moved, saved for the pale pony and the zebra.

Lɪᴍᴀ, ᴅɪᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴊᴜsᴛ ʜᴇᴀʀ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʜᴇ ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ ᴍᴇ?

Wᴇʟʟ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ʀᴜᴅᴇ—

I ᴀᴍ ɴᴏᴛ!

A wordless snarl slipped from Dim’s dead lips as he tightened his magical grip and gave a yank. Whatever it was wasn’t keen on coming out, and it tried to burrow in deeper, all while keeping a firm grip on two very different realities. Dim was starting to fade now, and he wondered, how long had it been since his heart had stopped beating? Blackbird seemed to be frozen, unmoving—would she even be able to save him?

Lɪᴍᴀ, ʜᴏᴡ ɪs ɪᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ɢᴏɪɴɢ ᴍᴀᴅ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ? Sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴅᴏᴇsɴ'ᴛ ғᴇᴇʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛ.

Gritting his chipped teeth together, Dim gave another yank, and somehow he became a gardener trying pull out a weed. This was menial, manual labour, and Dim found it quite degrading. The strain pulsating through his brain threatened to make his eyeballs pop out of his head like over-eager wine corks. Refusing to be beaten, Dim threw everything he had into it and pulled even harder.

Pᴀʟᴇ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟ ɪs ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ ᴍᴀᴅ. Wʜᴀᴛ sᴀɴᴇ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴅʀɪʙʙʟᴇs ᴀ ᴘsʏᴄʜᴏᴀᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ ʜᴀʟʟᴜᴄɪɴᴏɢᴇɴ ɪɴᴛᴏ ʜɪs ᴇʏᴇʙᴀʟʟs? A ᴍᴀᴅ ᴏɴᴇ, ᴛʜᴀᴛ's ᴡʜᴏ!

I ɢʀᴏᴡ ᴡᴇᴀʀʏ ᴏғ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀᴅ.

Yᴏᴜ ɢʀᴏᴡ ᴡᴇᴀʀʏ ᴏғ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ, Pᴀʟᴇ.

“Silence, you disgusting, degenerate primitives!” Dim’s fury gave him strength, and he gave a mighty heave. The tentacular horror was pulled free with a slimy sounding slurp, revealing an amorphous blob of ectoplasm that jiggled like gelatin at the end of the tentacle. “What the fuck is this?” he shrieked while he flung the eldritch lurker into the mirror. It passed through the glass and plopped like a fish landing in a fishbowl.

A ɴᴇᴄʀᴏᴠᴏʀᴏᴜs ᴅᴇᴍᴏɴ.

Nothing moved. Dim’s right eye blinked, and then a fraction of a second later, his left. He thought about taking a deep breath, but there was no need to breathe, not really. He looked down and much to his own surprise, he saw his body sprawled out on the floor, unmoving. This was a bit alarming, alarming indeed, and he raised his head to look at the haughty hallucinations that just wouldn’t shut up.

“I seem to have lost some weight,” Dim remarked in perfect deadpan, and his words caused the zebra mare to begin chortling while she covered her mouth with her dreadlocks. “This wasn’t how I expected things to end. This is rather anticlimactic.” Everything seemed frozen, save for the necrovorous demon swimming in the mirror and the two strange beings who never took their eyes off of him.

“Carry me to my fate,” Dim said, resigning himself to whatever afterlife awaited him.

The pale alicorn shook his head.

Nᴏ. Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀɴ ᴀssʜᴏʟᴇ ᴀɴᴅ I ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʟɪᴋᴇ ʏᴏᴜ. I'ʟʟ ɴᴏᴛ ᴇɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴇʟʟ-ᴅᴇsᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ sᴜғғᴇʀɪɴɢ. Wʜᴇɴ ɴᴇxᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴍᴇᴇᴛ, ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ᴍᴀɴɴᴇʀs.

There was an indescribable sensation and Dim felt himself being flung…

The first ragged breath was the worst. Agony came in the form of white hot lances piercing his body and striking what felt like every major organ. Blinded, he could see nothing, and he couldn’t make his legs move. Something oozed down his ear, but he couldn’t make it move to make the ticklish sensation go away. Whatever was in his ear left a bitter, metallic taste in the back of his throat.

“There is something in the mirror, but I can’t quite see what it is. If I try to look directly at it, it becomes quite indistinct and the mirror seems dark somehow—”

Sucking in as much air as he could, Dim shouted out a warning: “Don’t look!”

Nothing else seemed to work. Breathing was labourious and excruciating. His entire body was drenched with sweat and his heart seemed as shriveled as his tongue. His ear twitched, but it seemed as though it was disconnected from his head and far away. His balls felt like lead lumps against the smooth wooden floor.

“Come Blackbird, let’s get Dim sorted out. He doesn’t look well.”

Now, Dim froze. The sweating had ceased and now, he shivered so hard that his teeth clattered together. He sat on a bed, wrapped up in several blankets, hunched over a steaming cup of pine-scented tea. His barrel ached in a most dreadful way, and Dim had a strong suspicion that he had done permanent damage to himself.

The colt—his name was Swift Swirl—remained close to Dim and seemed eager to do anything to help. The dreadful mark was gone, and with it, the dark shadow that existed over the colt. Swift was in a much better mood now, he was outgoing, friendly, and kind. For a short time, he had started talking, just blurting out anything and everything, but this had ended when Dim had snapped at him.

“Doesn’t it feel good to have done something—”

“No!” Dim’s reply came with a snarl for emphasis. “Nothing about this feels good!”

“But Dim, you did something brave… something good… you did something to help a fellow pony,” Gesundheit said, keeping his voice down to a low whisper. “Swift, why don’t you give Dim a little space?”

With an apologetic whinny, Swift took one tiny step backwards away from Dim, and then just stood there, his eyes wide with grateful astonishment. Blackbird reached out with her talons, grabbed the colt by his tail, and gave him a gentle yank to pull him away. Swift yelped in fear, but them swallowed his panicked cries before Dim could begin shouting his angry words.

“What do we do with the mirror?” Gesundheit asked the question that begged to be uttered. He glanced at the mirror—it rested on a small wooden ledge by the bed—and then he looked away, fearful of the mirror’s power. “Can it be destroyed?”

“I don’t know,” Dim confessed, “I was working with theorycraft… I didn’t expect this to work. The mirror has become a vessel that is spirit-bound. It is probably nigh-invulnerable now, as things with bound spirits tend to be. There are things that might be able to destroy it, but I don’t have the means. I don’t even know what destroying it would do. It might send it back to the black pit that spawned it, or it might set it free on the world.”

“We could drop it in the lake—”

“Swift, don’t be foolish.” Gesundheit raised his eyebrow at the colt.

“That isn’t a terrible idea.” Dim slurped some tea, but couldn’t feel the teacup against his lips. His face was numb and his head seemed disconnected from his body. He closed his eyes, trying to ward off the hallucinations that were still appearing in his vision. “Secure it to something heavy. Drop it into a deep part of the lake. Maybe the beast that lived in the lake had an underwater cave or a lair where it hid from the light.”

Blackbird raised her talons. “You know, this can be discussed later. Right now, I think Dim needs his rest. I’ll stay with him and if anything is needed, I’ll be the one to fetch it. Now, go on and get outta here while I’m asking nice.”

Nodding, Gesundheit acquiesced to Blackbird’s suggestion. His eyes lingered on Dim for a time, worried, and his face was pained when he began to back up towards the door. “Come, Swift, let us depart and give your saviour the quiet that he needs.”

“Okay!” Swift was entirely too cheerful for his own good.

Dim was not sorry to watch them go.

Author's Note

Yeah, yeah, sorry in advance.

What softly streams

The moon rose, and with the ascendence of the moon into the heavens overhead, some of Dim’s strength returned. He hadn’t died, Blackbird had assured him that she had felt a faint pulse in his neck when she had poured in the antidote, but his memories about the event were jumbled enough to be useless. The aftereffects were unbearable, he was still having seizing pains in his heart, and in the back of his mind, he wondered, he worried, how much permanent damage had he done to himself?

Piercing the veil was a dangerous hobby, and Dim resigned himself to never doing it again. He wanted to live, at least, at this moment. He sat in a shallow stream of almost warm water, smoking, and Blackbird was showing him extraordinary kindness by scrubbing him. Somehow, she had even scrubbed and wiped away the gritty crust around his eyes without even scratching him with her claws. She was a marvellous creature, now made all the more beautiful by a cloak of moonlight.

His holder was plucked from his lips, Blackbird took a toke, and then returned it to its rightful place. Under most circumstances, Dim would never allow this, but Blackbird had proved herself as his companion. He didn’t mind in the slightest. There were a lot of things about Blackbird that he didn’t mind. Tilting his head back, he looked up at the stars.

They might have been his stars, had the circumstances been different. This might have been his night. The moon might’ve been his moon. But these were passing thoughts, and he was grateful that they remained with their rightful owner, the Night Lady. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering about what might have been. He knew the story, he knew the whole convoluted tale about how Twilight Sparkle had cut down Nightmare Moon and in doing so, freed Luna from the demon shadow that had claimed her. The prophecy had proven true: the stars had aided in Luna’s escape. She was set free and made whole by one of her own bloodline, Twilight Sparkle.

Had Twilight failed though… Dim gave this serious thought. He too, was one of Luna’s stars, and it would have fallen on him to free her, to aid in her escape. Death was an escape of sorts, and Luna would have been freed from the clutches of her cruel, unyielding tormentor. Dim was gifted at aiding others in their escapes. Escape from what though? Destiny? Destiny did not guarantee the outcome—Dim now had proof of that trapped in a mirror—it only suggested an outcome. The world was a better place for Twilight’s success and Luna’s restoration. All of the pieces had fallen into place and a great success had been had. It all worked out for everypony and everything that lived on this planet—except for Dim, the successor whose great destiny had not been realised. No backup was needed. Puffing, he sighed and blew smoke out his nose. The clove smoke numbed his sinuses and eased the pain just behind and below his eyes.

“Blackbird—”

“Yeah?” She cut in before Dim could finish what he was saying.

“—it is good that I can trust you. You saved me earlier. Thank you. I was far too engrossed in my work to think of saving myself. I mean, I suppose you had your reasons, like saving your mother, but all the same, I thank you.”

“My mother was the last thing on my mind at that moment,” Blackbird confessed and her scrubbing ceased. “I believe my exact thoughts were, ‘Oh fuck me sideways, my friend is dead.’ Or something like that. I panicked. But yeah, I’d admit, I did think about my mother a couple of times during everything that happened.” Once more, she swiped Dim’s cigarette holder, took a few deep tokes, and then stabbed it back between his lips.

“Blackbird, I intend to make my own destiny. I am going to carve a bloody swath across the countryside, collect the scalps of bandits, and remind everything why Equestrian nobles should be feared. I don’t know what my destiny is, or what it is meant to be, but I know what I’d like for it to be.”

“You know, Dim, I know nothing about you, but you know an awful lot about me. I mean, I know you’re a noble, and you set things on fire, but that’s about it.” There was a splash when she sat down in the water and the rocks she sat on clunked together while she settled in, scooting her backside around to form a seat in the stream bed.

Blackbird’s body was warm, but her pelt was cool and wet. Dim shivered from the contrast and his muscles bunched up as he felt a spark of never before experienced desire. This was different from his experiences with Darling. This was new, and Dim got off on new things. Blackbird was new. She wasn’t a pony, she wasn’t a griffon. As far as creatures went, she was unique. This inflamed Dim, and left him filled with want.

When Dim blinked, the world took on a pink tint to everything. The moon, the stars, the faint light, all of it was tinted pink. Something inside of his brain popped in a pleasant way, like a pimple bursting and the sudden relief one felt when the pressure subsided. Blackbird was captivating, bewitching… his arousal grew and with it, the need for violence. Entire kingdoms would burn, if necessary, so she could reach her mother.

Another blink and the pink hue vanished: with it went some of the pressing urge for violence. Entire kingdoms might be somewhat charred and might smoulder, if necessary, but Blackbird would find her mother. Dim was aware that magic was being cast within his mind, but he did not care. These pink flashes he saw were evidence of remote spellcasting, and he didn’t care. The pink alicorn… what was her name? He felt as though he should know it, but it was somehow blocked from him. He decided that the pink pony princess wasn’t the target of his ire or mistrust, no, he had a goat to worry about.

Strong claws grabbed him, which made him panic for a moment, and then he was laid on his back in the water. It flowed into his ears, tickled his sides, and he felt the prickle of talons on his belly. It seemed that Blackbird had plans to scrub something else, and Dim just wasn’t in the mood to stop her. The idea of her flesh-rending claws touching him in his most vital, most delicate places was titillating for some reason, and he longed to explore this new sensation.

“I did not have a normal upbringing,” Dim began, and his cigarette holder bobbed in the corner of his mouth while his mane was plastered against his neck by the water. He relaxed and allowed his hind legs to fall open, which left his scrotum to float free, tugged at by the flowing, eddying water. With his head propped up on a few rocks, he was almost comfortable.

The pink tint returned to his vision, along with a strange relaxed sensation. Soap suds were being rubbed into his stomach and Blackbird worked with a light touch. “I grew up in Equestria, but only in a technical sense. I existed in isolation, secluded away in a burrow made of pocket dimensions. I was raised as a prince, because I was The Ideal Dark. I was given a magical education that few can even begin to conceive of. I was born into a life of privilege, wealth, and luxury that few mortals can comprehend. I had it all. I had everything. I was also a slave…” His words faded out and he hesitated, not knowing if he should continue.

“Let it out, Dim, if it makes you feel better.”

Making a split-second decision, Dim decided that he would, indeed, feel better. “I think to best sum up my lifestyle and it’s wicked ways, I should tell you that I was given another pony as a pet… her name was Darling Dark, she was my possession, my playmate, my companion… she was mine to do with as I pleased, and nothing was verboten. Nothing at all… before I left home, I found out that she was my sister…” Sighing, his vision now glowing with pink light that almost burned his eyes, Dim made ready to tell Blackbird everything.

Blackbird was silent and this worried Dim. He lay in the water, exhausted, having poured out every detail he could think of. His soul had been bared, and while he spoke, as he delved ever deeper into the issues that plagued his psyche, the pink tinge to his vision had intensified. It kept doing so, right up to the point where he had fallen silent and could no longer say anything. Now, during the silence that followed, the pink hue had vanished.

“Dim,” Blackbird murmured, and then there was a long pause while she sat beside him, looking thoughtful. “Dim, I’m so sorry.”

This was not what Dim had expected to hear. Relief flowed through him while the water flowed around him. His mane was tugged by the current and saturated tendrils slapped against his neck. Water flowed along his sides and cascaded over the inside of his thighs. Cool, clean water flowed into his sheath, bringing relief to the salt-galded flesh within.

“All that sex against your will, it’s awful—”

“What?” Dim shook his head. “No, no, I very much wanted it, that was the problem—”

“Dim”—Blackbird reached out with her talons and pinched his lips shut, preventing him from saying anything else—“Dim, I’m gonna be real blunt, because I grew up on a farm and I’m no good at this soft, helpful shit. You spent your entire life being raped. No foal should ever have been put into that situation… both you and Darling. Your mother, she did that to bring out the worst in you. That was rape. You were too young to even begin to understand what was going on, and the act of rape happened so many times that now, right now, this minute, you can’t even see it for what it is. You’re like a dairy cow that has been milked its whole life… you just walk right up to the barn and let it happen every day, and just like the dairy cow, it is a normal part of life for you. You can’t imagine a life without being milked. Do you know what happens to a dairy cow if you stop milking them?”

Unable to reply—his lips were still pinched together—Dim made no effort to respond. He lay there in utter disbelief, half not-listening to Blackbird, refusing to believe that any of this was true. This just couldn’t be true.

“When a dairy cow doesn’t get milked, they go crazy and they suffer. We dairy farmers, we’ve messed with those poor cows and screwed up their nature. It ain’t right or natural for them to give milk day after day, but we’ve trained them to be that way. They resist at first, but we train them up from the time they are young, and we make them obedient to what we want because we want milk from them. Sorry Dim, but this is the only way I can understand this and put everything into words.” Black let go of Dim’s lips and pulled her talons away. “I grew up milking cows, among everything else I did.”

“It’s not true.” Dim’s voice was far more whiny than he would have liked, and this pain in his barrel, it had to be from the foxglove poison he had drank earlier. He stared up at the stars, unable to look at Blackbird, and tried to think of a logical argument to disprove everything that she had said. When logic failed him, Dim went with something tried and true: outright denial. “What you said isn’t true. I am not the victim of… that. Darling might be considered the victim of that, but I was the aggressor.”

“You were forced into the position of being the aggressor,” Blackbird said back to Dim, and her words were soft as silk bed sheets sliding together. “You had no choice in the matter, and you were made to perform for your mother. Forced sex is forced sex—”

“IT’S NOT TRUE!” Dim’s voice echoed through the trees and in the distance, a startled owl hooted. Heat rose from Dim’s body and the water splashing against his horn had little curls of steam that rose from it. He started to say something, something angry and mean, something about the ignorance of little farm fillies, but the words felt hollow, petty, and even before he said them, he knew he would regret them. They remained a bitter lump in his throat, a painful protrusion that could not be swallowed.

When Blackbird began to stroke one of his ears, Dim almost lost his temper and his first reaction was to set her on fire. But he withheld his temper, he held back his flames, and the smouldering fires of resentment burned within him. He forced himself to think about what she had just done for him, how she had washed him, how gentle and attentive she had been. In doing this, he felt ashamed, and knew he was right to feel this way.

The resentment died, but the smouldering flames lingered on.

“Dim, I grew up hearing all kinds of justifications and excuses for rape.” Blackbird, squirming in the water, looked up at the stars as well. “Colts will be colts. Little so and so got too excited and just couldn’t help themselves. Oh, she was asking for it, what was she thinking going off into the woods to play with those colts? Oh, if she didn’t want that to happen, she shouldn’t have been acting so damn flirty. She deserved it. I’ve heard it from the other side, too, where excuses were made for the rapists. Every single word I said can be twisted around to turn the attacker into the victim. It was my fault, I got him too excited, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

For a moment, it felt as though Dim was going to strangle from the constriction that grew tighter around his throat and he thought of Fancy Chancy.

“Farmers, Dim. They’re kinda casual about this sorta thing.” Blackbird sighed, shook her head, and then looked down at Dim while the breeze tousled her mane. “They force livestock to breed and there ain’t a lick of difference between livestock and mares, for most of them. My father, he had some funny ideas about the whole thing, and he got laughed at for what he believed in. I suppose he was more enlightened than the rest of the hicks around him. Of course, he did manage to lure a creature twice his size into bed with him, a creature that was all claws and had a razor sharp beak I might add, and with nice words and a bit of affection, he and my mother made me. My father, he was fond of boasting over how I was made with love.”

Dim stared upwards, past Blackbird’s face, which was looking down at him.

“I figured that he boasted because it meant that his way of life was better and more superiour than the others. It proved that he was right. At least, that’s always been my thinking. And I grew up hearing that I wasn’t livestock to be bred, that I was a free creature and it was my right to decide when I felt ready to settle down.”

Within Dim, the smouldering flame extinguished, and he felt a terrible numbness go creeping through his body, just like he had felt when he fled his home during the cold of winter. Now, there was nothing within him, no sensation, no feeling. He hardly even registered the water flowing around his body. The tension left him, causing his four limbs to go limp, and the deadweight of his body made him settle against the hard stones beneath him. This numbness did not last, and he began to notice that there was something wrong with his eyes. It was like walking out into the sun that fateful day, stumbling into the streets of Canterlot when he fled his home. The stars became blurry and indistinct. Life had begun when he had left the womb, the tower he called home. The tower had birthed him, spat him out into the world, an unwanted gift to civilisation from the Dark family.

“Something is wrong,” Dim managed to say, and his voice was so strained that it shocked him. “It hurts… my eyes are all blurry.”

“I bet it does. I bet they are.” Blackbird blinked a few times, her green, slitted eyes flashing in the moonlight, and she brushed a few loose strands of Dim’s mane out of his face. “Let it out, Dim. I can see it lurking. I’ll be here to keep watch for those damn birds. Just let the poison out, okay?”

“But I don’t want to—”

“You don’t gotta choice…”

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay! This was going to be up yesterday, but that just didn’t happen.

Take to the skies

The dawn came, grey and mournful, and with it, a hard rain. This torrential rain that fell seemed like a continuation of the storm that Dim had endured during the night, weeping until exhaustion had overtaken him sometime a few hours ago. Blackbird had held him, trying to comfort him—for that he was grateful—but now, with the dawn, he did his best to pretend that nothing out of place had happened. Such weakness was not to be acknowledged, even though it felt as though more leakage of weakness was lurking.

A simple trick of unicorn magic allowed him to be outside and sitting at a table. No rain molested him, not one drop dared to disturb him. The entire table and the surrounding area was quite dry. Breakfast was nourishing cornmeal mush, which cooled on the table before him untouched. Rather than run off, Fancy Chancy had stayed at the table after serving breakfast, though she was silent and she kept looking at Swift with wide, curious eyes. Blackbird had already eaten her bowl of mush and was eyeing Dim’s. Gesundheit was still eating and Swift Swirl was too busy staring at Dim in a manner most adoring to even bother trying to eat.

“Gesundheit, the mirror…”

“Yes?” The pegasus looked up from his food and waited with an expectant stare.

“The princesses are aware of my accidental creation of a dark artifact. No doubt, agents of some sort will come along to collect it. It would be best to drop it into the lake. The compulsion magic it has is dangerous. The simple-minded and the weak-willed are vulnerable to it.” Dim slouched in his chair while he reached up and smoothed back his mane with the side of his foreleg. The cool air of morning was welcomed against his somewhat fevered skin and this morning the shakes were minimal, at least for now.

“As for you...”—Dim turned his attention upon the eager colt that stared at him—“Swift, you should go home. Tell the princesses what happened. Inform them of these doings.”

“No.” The colt shook his head from side to side, a vigourous motion of denial.

“No?” Dim controlled his lurking irk. “Go home to Equestria. Be with your parents. Get back to a civilised land. Seek shelter from this storm that is coming.”

“My parents left me to my brother’s tender mercies,” Swift Swirl replied and his gaze never wavered from Dim. “They don’t care about me. There are too many other sons with talent and skill and stronger magic.”

Dim almost said something, but didn’t.

“I’m going to stay here, with Gesundheit, and I am going to help these ponies. I don’t have much in the way of magic, but what little I have will be useful here, compared to elsewhere. In Canterlot, I’m a nopony. But here? Here I can be somepony. In Canterlot, I am but one little candle, unseen among the brilliant lights, but here, in this place, a single candle can hold back the darkness.”

Much to his own surprise, Dim understood, and he began to nod in agreement.

“Every druid needs a helper wizard,” Swift continued, “and I’m no wizard, I’ll confess, but I am a unicorn with a pressing need to be helpful. You’re right though, a storm is coming.” Some of Swift’s vim vanished and the colt’s ears drooped while fear flashed in his eyes. “Thank you again, Dim. I don’t want to be part of that storm.”

When Dim made a dismissive gesture with his hoof, hunger overcame Blackbird, destroying her better judgment. With a swipe of her talons, she stole the wooden bowl full of cornmeal mush in front of Dim, dragged it over the wooden table until it came to rest in front of her, and began gobbling it down. With one aristocratic eyebrow raised into a fine arch, Dim watched her while she destroyed his breakfast.

She too, had wept last night, overcome with emotion, no doubt about the life she had taken. What else could she be bothered about? Perhaps she missed her father, still grieving him, and longed to be with her mother once more. Too wrapped up in his own pain at the time, Dim hadn’t asked. He hadn’t inquired. Laying in the rocky bed of the stream, he had his own outpouring of grief to contend with, or would have, had he broken down, which he most certainly hadn’t.

“Swift and I had a long talk last night.” For a brief moment, it seemed that Gesundheit would explain more, but something changed in his expression and no more words seemed forthcoming. He glanced at Fancy Chancy, then over at Swift Swirl, and then his eyes moved back to Dim. His lower lip quivered and his left ear had an almost unnoticeable twitch to it.

“You want me to stay here,” Dim said to Gesundheit in a low voice that was almost unheard over the steady beat of rain against the canopy of the trees. “You wish to grow your collection of beaten, battered unicorns—”

“I wasn’t going to say that!” Gesundheit lifted his head away from his bowl while Fancy Chancy’s eyes dropped down into hers. “Look, this is a good place… a serene place… an idyllic place that is suitable for troubled minds. I think you would do well here—”

“I would grow bored and expire from ennui here,” Dim said, cutting Gesundheit off. A pang of guilt slithered up the back of his neck, and he didn’t know why, but he felt bad about what he had just said. There was no trace of pinkness in his mind at the moment, so he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. Taking a deep breath, he tried to make better his awful words.

“This is a good place for them”—he gestured at Fancy Chancy and Swift Swirl—“but it is not a good place for me.” Dim struggled to find the rest of the needed words, but they did not present themselves. He sighed, exasperated with himself, and realised that he didn’t know how to fix this mess. It was better to be silent and avoid making the mess worse. There were things he had to do, like return to Equestria at some point for spiritual healing, whatever that was. He was sick in body, mind, and spirit. A healer might be able to cure his body, he had no clue how to heal his mind, but it would take the magic of the princesses to fix his spirit.

Animancy. The word floated through his mind, a nebulous thought.

A pony was at least two parts, and Dim had seen the evidence of that. He had his body, and then there was the energy that projected from his body, the source of animation that was his life. The flesh in the physical realm could be healed by a skilled healer, but what of the black astral glow he projected? A sincere worry awoke within him, and he thought a most dreadful thought: this sickness could take him away from Blackbird before he truly had a chance to know her.

He shivered and hoped that anypony who noticed would think it was the chill in the air.

“Blackbird…” Gesundheit turned to look at the ravenous black creature that dwarfed them all. “I’ll see to it that you and Dim are well stocked and ready for your departure. I think I understand. Dim doesn’t want to put us in danger with those who are sure to come looking for him, but he is too much of an asshole to just come right out and say it. We wouldn’t want him revealing any sense of compassion now, would we?” The pegasus had a wry smile upon his face when he turned to look at Dim, who was pulling out a clove and cannabis cigarette.

“That’s Lord Asshole to you, and don’t you forget it.” With a flick of magic, Dim lit his cigarette and then glowered at the pegasus across the table. “Ungrateful disgusting primitives.”

For whatever reason, Dim felt better.

And just like that, it was time to go. Baumhaus was not on fire, nor were there a surplus of dead bodies left behind. For once, the town was noticeably better after Dim’s visit, rather than made worse. For Dim, this felt like an upswing, a return to how things had been for a time when he was Harsh Winter, wizard for hire. This felt like an accomplishment, even more so because he was not Harsh Winter, but Dim Dark.

He watched as Blackbird said goodbye, feeling regretful that he was not one for goodbyes himself. What point was there, really? What greater purpose did it serve? If there was one, he failed to see it. A sense of attachment was still a great mystery to him, and rather than try to puzzle it out, to endure it, Dim chose to flee from it. Turning about, he headed for the open door of the vardo.

“Not a word of goodbye, Dim?” Gesundheit said, and his troubling words caused the fleeing unicorn to halt. “Equinity is a great and splendid thing, Dim. Come back to it. Come back to us. You’ll always be welcome here in Baumhaus.”

Dim’s magic faltered and he could feel raindrops thudding against his hat. The harder impacts made the brim wobble and he stood there, frozen, unable to move or respond. A breeze that was warm blew from one direction, while a chilly breeze blew in from another, a sure sign of a coming storm. Yes, a storm was coming and this was only the beginning.

Without turning around, Dim said, “Gesundheit, I wish you well. As a druid, you are wise and under your guidance, this place will prosper.”

“Thank you, that means a lot coming from you, Vizard. Long will be your story in the telling, I think.” The pegasus took a few steps forward, then halted, giving the unicorn his space. “For whatever it is worth, you are wiser than you give yourself credit for. You saved a life, Dim, you freed another from a lifetime of slavery and oppression. There is no greater act of goodness.”

“And yet my soul remains as black as tar,” Dim muttered to himself.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” Dim’s response was a weary sigh. Already this was far too complicated for him to deal with, and now more than ever, he loathed saying goodbye. It was time to flee before self pity ignited into a raging wildfire that consumed him. This was much, much harder than just leaving town under the cover of night, catching a train and vanishing. “I enjoyed my time here. I had a pleasant stroll by the lake.”

“Goodbye, Dim.”

“Fare thee well, Gesundheit.” Hoping to avoid further awkwardness, Dim fled into the confines of the vardo, seeking sanctuary and blessed silence.

It was not smooth sailing. Flying? Dim didn’t know. The storm was higher up, with high winds, and the flying vardo was not at all aerodynamic. Turbulence became a real problem and he found himself being tossed around in a manner most undignified. Blackbird’s real strength was evidenced by how she managed to pull this contraption, this flying brick. Her wings, the enormous things they were, sliced through the uncooperative air like massive black swords and dragged the vardo through the sodden grey mists.

No longer content to sit on the floor and be bounced around, Dim decided that he could be bounced around in bed. He unfolded the top bunk and was almost cracked upon his head. Snarling, he struggled and scrambled into his bunk, and then tried to get comfortable. When he was almost bounced out of his bunk, he began to wonder if, perhaps, this might have been a bad idea.

A particularly bad bit of turbulence tossed Dim from his bunk and made him smash snoot first into the ceiling above him. When he fell back down upon his mattress, he felt his face, panicking, fearful of discovering blood. Everything felt dry, yet he continued, reaching up to feel his nose while he rolled over onto his side.

With a spell, he made himself stick to his bunk, in very much the same way a wall-walking spell would make him cling to walls. He sniffled a bit, still fearing a bloody nose, and tried to settle in. Stuck into place, it didn’t take him long to get comfortable, and he began to tune out the world.

Names had power. He thought of the Sea Witch, not knowing her name, and it dawned upon him that she probably had her domain protected. She was probably the source of his shelter, the means that he had privacy on Tortoise-Tuga. Something inside of a nearby cupboard clunked, but he failed to register it. Living in close proximity to her, he had probably been invisible to those who held an interest in him.

She was powerful, but nameless, and this made him think of the pink voice within his mind. It occurred to him that he should know all the names of the alicorn princesses of Equestria. He was positive that he had known their names, that at some point during his upbringing, he had to have learned about it. He thought of his encounter with Princess Celestia that night at the standing stones when he had met with his sister.

No, my darling foal, your blood is still polluted with a poison most terrible, most vile…

Princess Celestia had warned him. It was difficult to remember, those memories were hazy, and some felt incomplete in a strange way. He thought of the pink alicorn that materialised beside Princess Celestia, and he did not know her. How could he not know her? She was inside of his mind, even now. How could his upbringing, his education, all of those things afforded to him as a prince of the Dark family somehow miss her?

A name has power, that’s how, something from the depths of his mind reminded him. This is a glammer, a trick, there is a reason Princess Celestia appeared first. This was planned. Dim considered this. Maybe it was. He was inclined to agree with his paranoia, if that was what was speaking to him. Princess Celestia had lept into him to help him fight.

Had she purged the information about the pink princess from his mind?

A name had power. If he knew the name of the pink alicorn, he might be able to purge her from his hind. Did he want to do that? He didn’t know. Maybe he did? Maybe he was better off with her? Perhaps she was protecting him from the wasting poison that Princess Celestia had mentioned. What vile poison lurked in his blood?

The pieces might fit together better if Dim only had more of them. As of right now, it seemed like a fruitless endeavour. A piece of vital information seemed missing, stolen, and logic dictated that it was common knowledge that he should know. All the evidence said he was poisoned somehow, and this he did not doubt. In the dream, his mother had finished casting some spell.

The final spell was cast and even now, your mother’s magic begins to transform you. The messenger that Blackbird had killed had said that, and so much more. Dim couldn’t recall everything and he flogged his brain for more details, needing to remember more. So much was at stake.

Such was the problem with picture puzzles that had far too many missing pieces.

Author's Note

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
E.B. White

The cost of defiance

Ahead was rising smoke and the potential for danger. Blackbird slowed a bit, her powerful wings moving with steady metronomic beats, and Dim peered ahead through the smoked glass of his goggles. The town ahead looked ruined, and the destruction seemed recent. Buildings still smouldered and what remained of the windmill was still on fire.

“Dim”—Blackbird had to almost shout to be heard over the sound of her own wings and the rush of wind—“do we dare investigate this?”

The headwind that poured into Dim’s nostrils reeked of death and Dim wasn’t certain that he wanted Blackbird seeing this. Had he not been so distracted, he might have marvelled at his own empathy, but alas, he was caught up in the moment. He held the map up in front his face, studied it for a moment while the edges flapped in the wind, and then he lowered the map a little to peer over the top edge at the ruination ahead.

“This is supposed to be Schwarze Wasserüberquerung,” Dim said to Blackbird, amplifying his voice with just a touch of magic so it could be heard better. “I can’t remember what that means, but the town is built around an important bridge. This is a major alchemy production center.” Folding up the map, Dim magicked it back into its hidden location inside the vardo.

“Do you think something went wrong?” Blackbird asked while her wings moved slower with every flap.

“Define wrong.” Dim’s voice was a loud, clear deadpan that seemed to communicate the very state of his own being.

“Exploded?”

“Doubtful.” Dim leaned forward from where he sat atop the vardo. “An explosion would knock buildings over and have a noticeable center… this is wanton destruction for the sake of ruination.”

“I suppose you could do worse!” Blackbird shouted.

“Oh yes,” Dim began while he fought back the urge to cough, “I could level this town and leave nothing standing. If I wrecked this place, you would only find ashes and puddles of slag. I take pride in my work.”

Blackbird came to a complete halt, unhitched herself from her harness, and then just hovered near the wagon, her powerful wings creating eddies of ash in the air. Dim noticed that the town walls had crumbled near the gate and that the large, heavy stones were scattered everywhere. Buildings near the breech in the wall had toppled or were now crooked. All of it had a peculiar look about it, but Dim wasn’t sure what it was.

Unicorns probably wouldn’t have destroyed the walls, at least not like that. The walls might have been transmuted into a liquid. Most dragons could and would fly over the walls, or leap over the walls. So something big, powerful, and ground bound had smashed in the walls. Perhaps an army of somethings. Whatever happened next ended with the town left demolished.

“Let’s go have ourselves a look, Blackbird.”

“Alright.” With swift, sure movements, Blackbird swooped in, snatched up Dim and made ready to carry him to the ground. “Don’t burn your hooves, Dim… I’m worried, you can’t fly like I can.”

Caught up in Blackbird’s clutches, Dim allowed himself to enjoy this moment but did everything he could to hide the fact that he was. Scowling, he squirmed, pretending to wiggle away from Blackbird, while also managing to rub his body against her, and he could feel her delightful pelt sliding against his. “You worry about yourself, I’ll be fine.”

Alchemists were not helpless types and Dim knew this because he was an alchemist himself. Chemical bombs, alchemical explosives, dangerous dusts, alchemists were the very epitome of dangerous foes. One simply did not mess around with most alchemists… and yet… this town had been destroyed. Dim stood near the ruined gate, watching for any signs of danger, and Blackbird hovered overhead.

How had this happened?

What could have possibly overpowered the alchemists of this town? This was unsettling to say the very least, as it went against everything that Dim knew, that he understood, his concepts of how the world worked. Off to the side of the stone road, he saw something that chilled his blood.

Footprints, but not just any footprints. Perfect round circles that were larger than a supper plate that sunk entire inches into the well packed ground. Dim could only think of one thing that could do something like this that would have feet like that and so much destructive potential: a golem.

Cold fear made his balls prickle and he wasn’t sure if he could defeat a golem. Nothing in the town seemed to be moving, and golems were far too valuable to just leave behind. With a critical eye, he surveyed the destruction. The golem had gone crashing through the wall or the gate, it was difficult to tell, and then had no doubt absorbed the brunt of the town’s considerable offensive capabilities.

But what else had attacked the town? Who and why? Not common bandits. Common bandits would be blown to smithereens and they would not have a golem or golems to aid them. No, you needed resources, skill, and reason to attack a town full of alchemists. Yes, a reason, and perhaps a powerful need, as places like this one no doubt had vaults full of rare, obscure ingredients that were prized, treasured beyond measure.

The city-state of Schwarze Wasserüberquerung was supposed to have five to ten thousand residents, employed its own guard, fielded its own army, (albeit, a small one) and was marked as a safe haven on the map. All Dim could do as he surveyed the destruction was wonder how. Shaking his head from disbelief, Dim pushed ahead in a slow, cautious, methodical manner, while every nerve in his body screamed in alarm.

Now standing atop the wall, Dim had a good look around. No bodies so far, which seemed weird. The narrow little alley below was caked with ash and trash. Doors hung broken on their hinges like ruined teeth left in a mangled maw. Broken windows glittered with thousands of jagged points ready to slash the unwary.

“Blackbird?”

“Right here!”

Turning his head, he saw her hovering near a somewhat melted, misshapen lightning rod. She didn’t have her hand cannon out, and that suited him fine. He wasn’t in the mood to get shot right now, and probably wouldn’t be in the mood to get shot later, either. With a jolt of magic, Dim winked in and out of the aether, reappearing on top of the remains of a roof, ready to teleport away if it buckled beneath him.

The structure held, but some of the slate shingles slid free. Stretching out his neck, Dim had himself a peek at the street below. Lots of ash, debris, some slate shingles, and many stone blocks with crumbled corners, but no bodies. This was odd, and it began to disturb Dim just a little bit. One would think in a town with five to ten thousand citizens, there would be a few corpses somewhere, some burned bones, a skull, something, but so far, nothing.

“I swear on my father’s name, if some zombie or some ghoul comes crawling out, I’m gonna scream and wet myself like a filly—”

“No bravado from you, eh Blackbird?”

“Not when it comes to the undead, no. My mother told stories, Dim.”

Too focused on his environment, Dim did not press the issue. There were many stories, very few of them were true, and he had seen the undead with his own two eyes. For but a moment, he thought of the zebra that he had hunted down for Constable Knobby Russet Apple. The chicken was still a great mystery to him: how did one ejaculate their semen into a chicken?

After a good look about, Dim drew one conclusion that left him chilled to the bone. If there were corpses here, there would be birds here, feasting on the remains. Not one bird to be seen, save for Blackbird. The skies were silent and there were no signs of roosting birds anywhere on the high and secure places of the town.

Dreadful tremours began in Dim’s knees and the longing for a coca-laced salt cube manifested in his mind. That was the whole reason why he and Blackbird had come here, so that he could find medicine to help with his addictions and to get a potion that would repair the enamel of his teeth. It was supposed be just a little stop on the way, but then, this had happened. Now he was standing upon a ruined roof, trying to solve the mystery of where the ‘all you can eat’ bird buffet had gone.

Not one fly. Nothing. None of the usual signs of corpses or the process of decay.

With a need for a fix now a pressing concern in Dim’s mind, he winked…

In the center of the town there was a horror nigh-impossible to take in. Dim had a dull, almost vacant stare as he gazed into the blown open vault that lay in the town’s center on the other side of the river. Whatever riches had once been here, whatever fabled and storied ingredients had once been stored in this lockaway, they were now gone. In their place was a… soup of dead bodies that was more like a bubbling, boiling pit full of tar.

Birds had flown in, but they hadn’t flown out. Nothing that went in came out and Dim watched the bubbling bodies in mute horror. Blackbird had landed on the roof a short distance away and had been sick several times already. Dim reasoned that more birds had kept coming for a free meal, until the whole area had ran out of birds. Even now, he watched a few survivors that struggled while they dissolved away into goop.

Written in the wall in garish red paint was a message for those who came upon this gristly scene: “This is the fate for all of those who refuse my reasonable demands. Submit to me, or else. Catrina, devoted servant of Grogar.” A red paw print punctuated the grim words and Dim had stared at it for a while upon first seeing it. Now, he couldn’t look at it at all.

“Dim, please… come away with me from this place… I’m too scared to be alone and I can’t leave without you.”

Blackbird’s voice was pleading and there was something… foalish about it. It shook him from his near-insensibility, breaking the spell and freeing him from his dreadful fascination. There was nothing else to do here, nothing else that could be done but leave. With a slow, almost pained motion, he turned to face his companion.

“Blackbird, can you carry me back to the vardo?” Offering her a hug to make her feel better was out of the question—Dim would never succumb to such weakness, even though it might make him feel better—but he could ask to be carried. That was different. It was practical and pragmatic, with no admission of weakness.

“Sure, I can do that, Dim.”

Even though it was warm, Blackbird clung to her blanket, and Dim knew why. He understood the compulsion, having learned about it as a foal. It wasn’t for comfort, as some might think, but an attempt at practical protection using the weakest of passive magics. She didn’t have it wrapped around her, but squeezed it in her talons while she rubbed a somewhat tattered corner of it against her cheek.

“Do you know why foals cling to blankets, Blackbird?” Dim asked, hoping that he could somehow comfort her with some random, obscure bit of knowledge.

“It just makes you feel better?” she replied while sniffling away some tears.

“Salt.” Dim spoke the word in a cool, but not quite collected monotone. It was clearly the voice of somepony working hard to hold everything in. “It has to do with salt. It needs to be a little dirty, which is why foals beg and plead with their mothers to not launder their favourite blanket.”

“I don’t understand.” Blackbird’s green eyes glittered with keen intelligence and curiousity—curiousity which was a driving force for felinoid creatures everywhere. Inquisitiveness might be fatal to the feline species, but smug satisfaction would revive them from the dead, or so it was said.

“Salt is a pure element and it protects us from evil.” Dim looked into Blackbird’s eyes while she stared at him, listening to what he had to say, and no doubt wondering if he was about to tell her the truth. “When a foal dives into bed and covers themselves with their blanket, when they pull it over their heads and then shiver in the dark beneath, what they are really doing is protecting themselves in a crude, almost ineffectual covering of salt.”

“What?” Blackbird, gripping her blanket, twisting it in her talons, seemed incredulous.

“It’s true.” Dim held up his hoof and gestured at the blanket. “The salt collected in the fabric can help keep away the weakest of evils, things like bed lurkers and the like—”

“You mean monsters under the bed are real?!” Blackbird’s voice grew in both pitch and volume with each spoken word while she wrapped her own wings around her in a terrified self-hug. Her eyes grew wide and her face sagged with terror while she pondered Dim’s soul-shrivelling words. “Are you telling me that monsters under the bed are real and the very things I spent my foalhood being afraid of weren’t my overactive imagination?”

This had gone wrong somehow, in the worst way possible. Blackbird seemed even more terrified, more unhinged. Dim sighed, resolving to continue to blunder ahead, hoping to salvage this somehow. “Yes, bed lurkers are real, and they are part of a collection of nocturnal emovorous parasites. Creatures who are part shadow and dwell in dark places, like beneath the bed—”

“In the closet!” Blackbird hid half of her face behind her blanket while keeping one eye focused upon Dim.

“Yes, in the closet, anywhere with sufficient darkness and shadow, really. They lie in wait and then feed upon a foal’s fears. They make you afraid. They are the reason you shiver in the dark. When you feel that icy touch upon your spine that makes you tingle, that is them trying to feed. When I was a foal, I tried to catch one to keep it as a pet. I kept killing them, they’re actually quite weak and very fragile—”

“You really are the stuff of nightmares, Dim. You are the Lord of Nightmares! You tried to make pets of these things? What’s wrong with you? You’re horrifying! If some foal was scared of the dark, you’d be telling them tales of terror before bed to make them feel safe!”

“I… I was trying to make you feel better after what we saw—”

“I don’t feel better! I don’t feel better at all!” Blackbird shivered while clinging to her blanket for a moment longer, then hurled it away from herself and back into her bunk with wide, terrified, almost unblinking eyes. “I just got confirmation of all of my worst fears as a foal! They’re real! I’ll never sleep again!”

“But… but…” Dim stammered, “but I was birthed into the darkness and left to survive in it… these are the things I learned, being a dark-dweller. I was taught to recognise that fear, as an indicator that something was there, so I could either try to capture it or perhaps broker a deal with it of some kind, should it be capable of advanced intellectual communication, because it might be a worthwhile minion or familiar—”

“Listen to you! You are the literal Lord of Nightmares! Ugh! Listen to the words coming out of your own mouth, Dim!”

“I was trying to be kind…” Dim struggled to get the words out and the realisation that everything had gone wrong was almost too much to bear after what he had witnessed in the town. It had never occurred to him how ‘normal’ folk might react to his education. “I was trying to be comforting. I was trying to empower you with knowledge—”

“You creepy little shit!” Blackbird’s voice was shrill with terror. “You were taught to make friends with the monster under the bed! This is just one of the many things that is wrong with you!” Shuddering, her teeth clattering against one another in fright, Blackbird fled the confines of the vardo and launched herself out of the back door. “Your mother is a real bitch, Dim!” she shouted from outside.

A moment later, the jingle of her tack and harness could be heard, and the vardo shuddered as it took off. Stymied, Dim sat in silence while trying to comprehend what had just happened, unable to tell if Blackbird was angry with him or just scared shitless of him. It seemed they were off again and the medicine he needed would have to be found elsewhere.

Try as he might, Dim just couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

Author's Note

He tried, didn’t he?

Looking for work

With a frustrated glower, Dim realised that whomever had drawn this map had been a disgusting primitive. Perhaps even a career drunkard that had no business drawing maps, or anything else for that matter. None of the landmarks tagged on the map seemed to be present and he couldn’t even be certain if they were in Pranceylvania. The only somewhat helpful information that the map offered were the words, ‘Don’t fly at night,’ which were emblazoned across the top in bold letters.

Raising his head, he scanned the horizon, looking for some sign of civilisation. There were mountains, which were not marked on the map, a muddy looking river, and a vast forest of what appeared to be poplar trees. The map fluttered in the wind but he had a good grip on the edges with his telekinesis.

“There!” Blackbird cried.

“Where?” Dim’s head jerked around in the direction that she pointed. “What?”

“Road!”

For a moment, Dim strained to peer through his goggles and he could feel the beginnings of a headache. His needs, his addictions had been wearing away at him all morning and his temper was worn thin. There was, indeed, a road, and that was a welcome sight. Perhaps following it would lead to civilisation.

“I wonder if those mountains in the distance are the Clopathians,” Blackbird said, thinking aloud. “We’re getting close to Pteroșani, I can feel it. This is one of the places my mother went. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll pick up her trail. I’m feeling really good about this, Dim, I am!”

Sighing, Dim folded up the useless map and dismissed it with his magic.

“There are supposed to be vampires here, Dim! Real, actual vampires! They look like bat ponies, but they are different!” Blackbird clapped her talons together, unable to contain her excitement, and Dim winced from the sudden sharp sound. “Maybe I’ll get bitten on the neck and I’ll turn all vampy and I’ll get big wings with membranes… oh, wait, I already have fangs.”

For whatever reason, Dim found this idea appealing, even though—or perhaps because—of the fact that he suffered from hemophilia. Without even realising it, he slipped into something of a daydream, and thought about Blackbird nibbling on his neck. Sure, it was wrong, and he had no desire to become the sort of abomination that he knew he would have to kill, but the fantasy was appealing.

When she spread her wings, Dim was torn from his fantasy by the eye-watering stench. Several days of flying with no bathing had done unkind things to Blackbird’s wingpits and Dim now found himself quite repulsed by his companion. Of course, he was probably no bouquet of tulips himself, and he wondered what sort of funk he might have that he had lost awareness of.

Blackbird began strapping herself in and Dim knew that they would be moving again soon.

The city appeared as if by magic and Dim couldn’t help but feel a little awe inspired. It was built against a sheer cliff and a massive wall wrapped around the city, leaving it well defended from the ground. The secure aeries of pegasus ponies were built along the cliff face to overlook the city below. This had to be Pteroșani.

Already their approach was noticed and a lone pegasus pony came flying out to greet them. She was wearing dull grey iron armor and her helmet had a bright red visible plume that rose from the crest. Even encumbered with armor, she flew with remarkable grace and speed. Dim watched her approach and hoped that their meeting would be a friendly one.

“Don’t land outside of the city,” the pegasus mare barked. “It’s not safe! I repeat, it is not safe! Touch down inside the city if you wish to trade! I say again, to land outside the wall is folly!”

Blackbird raised her talons in salute to acknowledge the warning and then fell into place behind the armored mare. Dim felt the vardo begin to descend and he wondered what could possibly threaten a fortified city of pegasus ponies. A shivery chill traveled down his spine as he thought about Schwarze Wasserüberquerung and it occurred to him that there were no longer any safe cities, no shelters, no havens. With Grogar, there was no sanctuary to be found.

“There are landing platforms near the marketplace,” the armored mare shouted. “I am Commander Starhammer and this is Pteroșani, the city under my protection. You are welcome to visit, but I must request that you remain on your best behaviour. Welcome to Pteroșani!”

Adjusting his hat, Dim watched as Commander Starhammer approached, and no doubt, she was sizing him up. She looked at him with eyes hungry with need, a mad desire for a wizard. Dim had seen this look before and something about her gaze left him feeling giddy. Her heavy iron armor clanked with each step and combined with the sound of Blackbird’s tack jingling, the moment was almost musical.

“Are you a wizard?” Commander Starhammer asked as she drew to a halt.

“I am a vizard,” Dim replied and he watched as her eyes narrowed. A crowd was starting to gather as ponies began to emerge from the almost deserted marketplace.

“Ah, so the eccentric explody kind that throws spells around like confetti. Excellent.” The commander’s short cropped tail thumped against her armor and her wings folded against her sides while she continued to study Dim. “We are besieged by trolls, an entire army of them working together—”

“Preposterous!” Dim retorted and he began to shake his head. “Trolls don’t work together! They hate each other! It is the only reason why they haven’t overrun all of civilisation yet.”

Commander Starhammer’s jaw firmed for a moment and then she responded, “I assure you, they are working together. One of the cat folk has them under some kind of spell. She calls herself the Jaguar Witch.”

“Why not just kill them with fire?” Dim asked as Blackbird drew up beside him.

“And burn down the woods?” Commander Starhammer shook her head. “We need the woods, otherwise we’d already be flying sorties with firepots filled with pitch.”

“Excuse me for a moment, but I’m looking for my mother,” Blackbird said to Commander Starhammer. “Hippogriff by the name of Starling… gunslinger.”

The armored pegasus nodded. “She was here. Came here looking for a mercenary but found disappointment—”

“Disappointment?” Blackbird took an eager step forwards and looked down at the smaller pegasus mare while towering over her.

When Commander Starhammer was forced to look up to meet Blackbird’s gaze, the neck plates of her armor clanked and clattered. Her front hooves shuffled and it was clear that she was uncomfortable being this close to the much larger hippogriff spawn. Dim had to fight back a chortle and it was a struggle to remain professional.

“She came here looking for a griffon named Gossard. He was a pistoleer that I had hired to help guard the city. Not long before she arrived, he got himself into a bit of trouble… committed a nasty rape, he did. He was scheduled for execution, but somehow escaped his cell. I still don’t know how because the door was locked and nothing was disturbed. Starling told me what happened and why she was looking for him.”

“And that’s it? There is nothing more you can tell me?” Blackbird’s voice quavered and her talons clicked against the stone. “Surely there must be something else, something… please, it is very important that I find my mother… did she say where she was going next? Did she do anything while she was here? Did she help you somehow, perhaps?”

“She had shells made.” Commander Starhammer took a step backwards and then another to get some breathing room. “She had our brass smith make more shells than I’ve ever seen and she stayed in town while she pressed her own bullets. She flew out of here with a ton of brass and a brand new rifle just off the bench. Her last words to me were something about having a lot of killing to do, a whole lot of killing, and I wished her good luck.”

“Gossard!” Blackbird almost hissed out the name. “I keep hearing that name, but I know almost nothing about him. This is driving me crazy!” Turning about, she stalked away, her claws tapping against the stone, and she stood near the vardo with a sour expression upon her face.

“So, about your troll problem… I might be able to help you, but I require payment.” Dim glanced over at Blackbird for a moment and then returned his focus to Commander Starhammer. “Half up front and half when I am finished, of course. I assure you, I am worth the expense.”

“You know what, let’s go talk about this in a more comfortable place.” The commander almost smiled and relief could be seen in her eyes. “Come, follow me, let us all wet our whistles while we discuss business.”

Lighting a clove and cannabis cigarette, Dim settled back into the comfortable cushions of the chair and watched as a tall glass of gin was poured. The room was quiet, filled with a few muffled sounds, and the lighting conditions were poor, which suited him fine. Commander Starhammer sat across from him and her iron helmet sat on the table near her elbow. Taking off his hat, he set it down upon the table and he began to study Starhammer in earnest, watching every move she made.

Blackbird was a bit too big for the table but somehow managed to fit anyhow. Her slinky body was hunched over in what could only be described as a boneless manner, and her expression was one of distraught worry, but this changed when a platter piled high with smoked fish of some kind was set down in front of her.

“You”—Starhammer gestured at Blackbird with her hoof—“you strike me as being a bit green but still dangerous. Something tells me that you have some training, probably from your mother, but you lack experience. You on the other hoof”—she turned her attention upon Dim—“you… you give off a bad vibe, wizard. You…”

“Yes?” Dim almost hissed the word because he was so eager to have his ego stroked.

“You strike me as the type that keeps Death busy.” Starhammer pulled a cigar from some hidden place in her armor, stuck it between her scarred lips, and lit it with the candle sitting on the table. She puffed a few times, releasing clouds of sweet smelling smoke, and her eyes narrowed. “Something about you makes Gossard seem like an innocent. Don’t mess with my townsfolk, wizard, and I’ll pay you well.”

“My primary interest is getting paid—”

“I’m counting on that, wizard.” Starhammer chomped on her cigar for a bit and then looked on with disgust as Blackbird began tearing into the plate of smoked fish. “Now, we actually have a good bit of intel on this Jaguar Witch. We know where she is, where she hides, and let me tell you, she is powerful. Them cat folk tend to be real powerful magi, in my experience. Somehow, she is controlling the trolls and making them cooperate. Break her spell somehow, and if you can, kill her. I’m not interested in giving her a fair trial at this point, because she’s been a nuisance for too long. If I hear one more cry of, ‘For the glory of Ahuizotl,’ I’m likely to snap.”

“Killing her costs extra.” Dim’s cold tone was both unfeeling and mercenary. He lifted up his glass of gin and took a little sip, testing it for flavour and drinkability. As it turned out, the gin suited him fine. “But nothing too dear… this price can be negotiated though. I am in need of medicine, something to fix my tooth enamel, for one—”

“Oh, I can do that!” Starhammer blurted out. “My soldiers like to get a little rough during training and punches in the mouth are common. We’d all be snaggletoothed without our alchemist.”

Dim considered this, and then decided not to inquire about a means to flush his body of his addictions. He would pay for that with coin, afterwards, when the job was over. He watched as the rough and ready mare puffed on her cigar; she was a disgusting primitive and a brute, which was exactly what the world needed sometimes. On her face was written the creed of battle, and if each scar was a word or a sentence, life had written entire paragraphs upon her flesh.

“We’ve been experimenting with killing some of the trolls with acid, but so far it has been just as dangerous to us as it is to them. There’s been some gruesome injuries and disfigurements. There’s also too many trolls and not enough acid, so our efforts really haven’t been working out.” Starhammer continued puffing on her cigar and the tip of it glowed a bright cherry red in the feeble light.

“Just wondering, what is the industry of this town?” Blackbird asked in between bites of smoked fish. “How is it that you can make acid? Is this an alchemical city?”

“We make a fortune from shit!” Starhammer bellowed in return, and then smoky laughter spilled out of her muzzle. She laughed until she coughed and then she banged her barrel plate with her hoof. Wheezing a bit, she sucked in wind, squinting with pain and concentration. “We get birdshit from the rookeries in the mountains and we get batshit from the caves. We make all kinds of stuff… gunpowder, fertiliser, bullets, I can’t keep track of it all.” She snorted, coughed again, and shook her head. “The earth ponies are getting fat and lazy just sitting around. We can’t escort them out of town so we can get our shit together.” Once more, the cigar-chomping mare exploded with laughter, and a wet, wheezy rattle could be heard from within her chest.

Pausing with a chunk of fish stuck to her talon, Blackbird had this to say: “I hope that you are nice to your earth ponies, at least.”

“Well, I should hope so, I’m married to one!” Starhammer banged her hoof against the rough wooden planks of the table and a phlegmy chortle could be heard deep within her throat. “Most of us in the sky are real, real watchful of our mates on the ground. Mess with them and it’ll be a hard, hard rain that comes down upon you.”

“That is an unusual arrangement.” Dim eased himself back into his comfortable seat a little more and did his best to relax while he puffed on his joint. “But a good arrangement.” He glanced over at Blackbird and then back at the rough and tumble pegasus mare. “So, tell me more about this Jaguar Witch.”

“Well, what is there to say? She’s a mean, hideous kitty bitch and she needs to die…”

Author's Note

This has been updating every weekend. Is that okay with everybody?

In the city, the peaceful city, the lioness wakes at last

The dental restoration draught had a dreadful smell and Dim had a feeling that it would taste even worse. He wasn’t looking forwards to drinking this, because as a trained alchemist himself, he knew what had gone into it. The main ingredient was several organs from dragons, organs responsible for regrowing teeth and scales so a dragon could remain in good condition for fighting. This draught, this rather common potion that was available almost everywhere, on almost every continent, consuming it was like drinking liquified meat, and this disgusted Dim to no end.

“You were a completely different pony earlier,” Blackbird said to Dim while she examined a somewhat corroded battery cable. “You sat down and discussed the killing of another sapient creature as if it was nothing. You haggled about cost… you haggled about the estimated value of another creature’s life and you bickered and you threatened to bring the Jaguar Witch in alive to cause Commander Starhammer a problem and you convinced her to pay you more. You actually used another life as an inconvenience and as bargaining leverage.”

“Does it bother you?” Dim asked as he watched Blackbird pick up a brass-bristled brush to scrub away the corrosion on the cable. He wasn’t sure why he asked this, but for some reason he was worried that she might not approve of his actions, for some unidentifiable reason.

“No.” This lone syllable came out low and slow. “But it did make me think of my mother and I was uncomfortable with what I thought. I don’t know if I can put it into words. Dim…”—she blinked and the brass-bristled brush moved in a circle while she made a gesture with her talons—“you should know that I don’t think any less of you, I guess, if you happened to be worried about it. I just don’t know how to deal with all these thoughts in my head.”

“I have good reasons for securing as much money as possible.”

“Do you, Dim?”

He nodded and his nostrils crinkled from the potion sitting nearby. “We might need a bribe. Sometimes, information must be purchased. I know that we have a small fortune right now, but trust me, it isn’t enough. There are those whose minds I cannot sway with magic and the only option is coin. Lots of coin.”

“Oh.” Blackbird began scrubbing at the corroded battery cable and her body shook with her efforts. “So you were trying to help me, I guess?”

“Yes.” Dim nodded and found that he was shocked by his own honesty. After lying for so long, after living a lie, this was refreshing, like a cool drink of water on a hot day. It felt good to be straightforward with Blackbird, and he longed for further opportunities to do so. He wanted honesty. He needed honesty. Honest expression was a release like none other, and he longed to be balls-deep in Blackbird’s hot snatch, whispering into her ear all of the ways that she was a perfect sexual creature. Each word would be honest and spoken from his heart. The truth would grant him culmination, and oh how he would culminate everywhere when he could at last whisper these sweet truths into her ear.

“Dim, you got a weird look in your eye and you’re staring at me funny.”

“Yes, I undoubtedly was,” he replied, and he said nothing more while he continued to savour his perverse thoughts.

“Something about the way you looked at me gave me the twat-twitchies, Dim. Don’t do that, it’s distracting.” Her tail began slashing from side to side and she scrubbed even harder, trying to remove the off-white and green buildup on the cable. “Now I’m gonna have to find a spot to rub one out later,” she grumbled.

“I’ll be going out on my own… it is too dangerous for you to follow and while your weapon is impressive, it will not kill trolls. Stay here and try to fix up that rattletrap—”

“What did you just say?” Blackbird’s eyes narrowed in the most dangerous way imaginable.

“I said ‘rattletrap’ just before you interrupted.” Dim’s eyes narrowed too and he glared right back at Blackbird, fearless. “You were the one that said it needed some serious repairs, not me. You keep complaining about stuff breaking, not me. I haven’t said one word about my concerns on how that flying scrapheap holds itself together.”

The angry felinoid-avian-equine now had a white knuckle grip on the cable and there was murder in her eyes. Dim could not help but fantasise about sweet, sweet sexual murder and all of the ways she could kill him. His fevered thoughts made his skin feel clammy and sweat trickled down his sides, almost tickling him. Infatuation was like a drug, like coca or opium, and right now, Dim was getting his much needed fix. Something about her angry expression left a fire in his mind and an ache down deep in his loins. She was a terrifying predatory creature and right now, he wanted to be pinned beneath her with that angry, hungry expression of hers looking down at him.

Never taking his eyes off of Blackbird, he snatched up the now well-oxygenated potion, pinched his nose shut with his magic, tilted his head back, and poured the vile concoction down his throat. It was slimy going down and it slid down his throat in one long slippery strand that did not break. The sensation was exactly how Dim imagined drinking a glass of dog slobber would be like. He could feel the part deepest down tugging at the part still highest up and it tickled his tonsils in the worst of ways.

Shuddering, Dim was given no chance to recover from downing the horrendous liquid before the magic began its work on his broken, jagged teeth. It felt as though things squirmed and slithered just below the surface of his gums and electric tingles coursed through his teeth. His mouth grew hot, his tongue went dry, and the earwax in his ears melted. He could feel it trickling down through the canals in the corners of his jaw, and then the bitter drainage hit the back of his throat.

It was an unpleasant but interesting experience, and Dim focused on every awful moment, enduring a perverse enjoyment of everything while it happened. For a few seconds, all of his teeth turned rubbery, and he could feel them wiggle-jiggling against one another, jostling for space while they regrew. After a few seconds, they went stiff, and each tooth was like a tiny, tumescent erection in his mouth, starting off with a half-hardness, going firm, gaining rigidity, and then going rock hard.

Magic was the most amazing and most terrible thing in existence…

“Hey, Blackbird… check out my teeth… they’re shiny!” Peeling his parchment thin lips back, Dim revealed his restored choppers with a grin that could only be described as unsettling. His teeth almost seemed to glow because they were so white and so brilliant. She didn’t quite have the reaction that he had hoped for, and after thinking about it for a time, he thought that it might be because she was still angry with him. Provoking her would now have to become part of the agenda, because an angry Blackbird was an attractive Blackbird.

Feeling swimmy headed, Dim could feel his internal organs trying to rearrange themselves, each of them trying to be far, far away from his stomach, which was filled with liquified unspeakable horror. He had just drank the distilled essence of another creature to heal and restore himself, not a pleasant thing to think about when one’s belly was sloshing with the remains of said creature.

“Dim…”

Still sporting his unsettling grin, Dim clacked his now perfect teeth together.

“Dim… you’ve gone… dim.”

Blinking, Dim’s lips slid back over his teeth and he had himself a good look at himself. He held up his foreleg and he was just as Blackbird had said: dim. It was difficult to describe, but it was as if he existed in shadow, or perhaps he had faded somehow. This was curious. It was faint, but noticeable, and his companion appeared to be quite concerned.

“Dim, what is going on? You look weird!”

“Probably just a side effect of the potion,” he muttered, bothered by his condition but in a hurry to dismiss it. “Alchemy is not an exact science. There are quirks, odd side effects. I’m sure that I’ll be just fine. Just needs some time to wear off. Nothing to worry about, nothing at all.”

Blackbird did not seem convinced and her mouth puckered into a worried pout, complete with a protruding lower lip. As for Dim, he continued to examine himself and couldn’t help but notice a fascinating near-translucence to the fine hairs that covered his foreleg. So the potion had a bit of transparency as a side effect. It wasn’t anything to worry about, but it was intriguing to have a look at.

Further examination revealed that his hoof had a touch of translucency to it, or perhaps he was seeing things. Intense curiousity transformed into mild obsession and he remained fixated on his hoof long enough to gain a painful self-awareness of it. Blinking, he jerked it away and then did his best not to think about it. There was a peculiar sense of wrongness, but he was unable to put his hoof on what it was.

“I’ve never encountered a troll.” Blackbird peered at Dim in an odd way, not the way that Dim wanted to be looked at. She pulled her toolbox from a cubby beneath the vardo, opened it up, and began to look inside. “I’ve only heard stories about trolls and how scary they are, and you don’t seem worried at all that you are about to face an army of them.”

Shrugging, Dim wasn’t sure how to respond, but he did so anyway because he wanted to keep talking to Blackbird, and not think about the nagging thoughts that lurked in the back of his mind. “Trolls are megaflora. They are highly evolved carnivorous plants that are filled with a ravenous hunger. In sunlight, they are deadly. The nighttime slows them down just a little bit. I’ve heard that it restricts their limited intelligence. The only way to kill them is to burn them into nothingness.”

“Just stay safe, okay?” Blackbird’s eyes shimmered with some meaningful emotion and she pulled a wrench from her toolbox. “And Dim, whatever you do, don’t set the woods on fire.”

“I’ll do my best, but I make no promises,” Dim replied with a chuckle. “I am going to go to the room given to us and I am going to try to get a little sleep. I am going to have a long, busy night ahead of me.”

“Sleep well, Dim…”

“Blackbird, right?”

Startled, Blackbird looked up from the hinge she was trying to fix and found Commander Starhammer studying her. The pegasus looked a little antsy and her armor made muffled clanks as she shifted her weight back and forth on her hooves. For some reason, Blackbird felt a prickle of worry and her grip on her wrench tightened a bit.

“I’ve been debating on how to deal with this… how to tell you this… for a time, I even thought about cashing in on this and to be truthful, I almost did. I almost slipped a little something something into the food and drink I gave you earlier after I realised who your companion was.”

All of the hairs on the back of Blackbird’s neck stood up and her tail fluffed out, becoming three times its normal size, an indicator of feline fear. One hind hoof clopped on the stone and her grip on her wrench caused the tendons in her talons to creak. Eyes narrowing, she focused her burning stare upon the much smaller pegasus mare just a few yards away. One single pounce and she would be on the mare in an eyeblink. By the second eyeblink, the little pegasus pony would be shredded meat, iron armor or no.

“Now, before you claw my eyes out, and I can see that you are thinking about it, at least hear me out.” The brave little mare drew herself up to her full height, which was nothing compared to Blackbird’s bulk, and when she met the hippogriff’s gaze—locking eyes with the fearsome predator—her jaw muscles clenched tight. “There is a huge bounty on your friend. A few days ago, a strange griffon came to town and gave me a bounty notice. Has a pretty accurate picture of your friend and his name and it has a promise of a king’s ransom.”

Blackbird tossed her wrench into her toolbox and moved out from beneath the vardo. She moved with a fluid grace that was terrifying to witness, an ease that belied her size, and her hind hooves rang out like death knells with each step on the stone landing pad. Using her full height, she towered over Commander Starhammer, and her talons tapped and telegraphed her agitation as they clicked against the stone.

“I decided it wasn’t worth it!” Commander Starhammer blurted out. “I’m as mercenary as they come and everything I do is about making money… I m-m-made my husband p-p-purchase my services to prove that he was interested in me.” The little pegasus mare began to stammer while Blackbird loomed in a menacing manner over her. “B-b-but I am also about honour, and after meeting him, I decided that I liked him—OH SHIT!”

It was a movement faster than any eye could follow: Blackbird made a swipe and her talons closed tight around Commander Starhammer’s neck. The armored neck was large, but Blackbird’s talons were larger, and she lifted the much smaller equine up off of the ground to look her in the eye. Four little legs kicked and two wings made futile flaps. The sound of running water could be heard loud and clear in the immediate vicinity around the landing pad.

“Stand down!” Commander Starhammer shouted to the guard that began to gather.

“Dim is wanted by Grogar… betray him and you betray the entire world. I doubt you’d even live to spend that reward. I can almost guarantee that they would just kill you and take Dim. About a week ago, we came upon a town called Schwarze Wasserüberquerung… all of the townsfolk… everything in that town is dead. If you don’t believe me, go have a scout fly there. You’ll find out who you are dealing with soon enough.”

With that, Blackbird let go and allowed Commander Starhammer to drop to the ground. There was a clatter of iron and hooves striking stone and a wet splash as well. The smaller pegasus began to back away while making wing gestures to keep her fellow guards back. Blackbird reveled in her dominance, her aggression, and the outright fear that these smaller equines had of her. For the first time in her life, she had let her instincts get the better of her, and it felt good. She was a hippogriff among ponies, a titan, a colossus, she was vastly superiour to them in every conceivable way. With a heady rush, she began to understand her mother even more; in the back of her mind she had hazy thoughts about the relationship her parents shared, something she would recollect and reflect upon later.

“I want a scout sent to Schwarze right away!” Commander Starhammer barked, no doubt trying to regain some of her lost authority. She continued backing away from Blackbird, but it was obvious just how futile of a gesture it was—the big hippogriff had wings and her speed could only be described as supernatural felininity.

City walls would do no good; the danger, the lioness was already inside the town.

Muscles twitching, puffy tail slashing, Blackbird roared out an order: “Tell me more about this bounty notice, I demand to see it!”

Author's Note

Dim plays a dangerous game.

By the light of the night when it all seems alright

Not quite awake just yet, Dim lifted a cup of hearty breakfast tea that was still steaming from the small table and then he just held it. The room was nothing special, but it also wasn’t terrible. The table was battered, low to the floor, and had seen better days. Blackbird hunched over the table, far too large for common pony furniture, and she watched, waiting for Dim’s reaction.

In the middle of the table was a most curious bit of parchment, a bounty notice. It had his picture and a brief blurb about his description, including his heterochromia. Perhaps most interesting of all were the instructions to collect the bounty; sprinkle the parchment with blood and then burn it in a roaring, well-fueled fire. Even in his half-awake state, Dim had to appreciate just how much work, effort, and planning had gone into his ‘recruitment.’

With every idiot, moron, and cretin hoping to collect, Dim suspected that there would be a lot more killing. This inconvenience would grow tiring and would make it difficult to visit new places. Uncertain of how to react, he slurped some of his tea and continued to contemplate the bounty notice. A little blood and a little fire… the parchment presented a unique opportunity to speak with his enemies, perhaps to parley. Not that much negotiation would take place, but he could provoke them… yes, he could do that. Provocation was something of a talent for Dim. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he could provoke them into doing something foolish, somehow.

“How are you feeling, Dim?” Blackbird asked in a voice thick with concern. She loomed over him like an enormous, overprotective mother hen and watched him as he drank his tea.

“I feel well enough to go out for a long walk through the woods,” he replied. Licking tea from his lips, he looked up at Blackbird and found her looking down at him. “I’ll be fine, trust me. I am not stupid and I know how to deal with threats like trolls.”

“I am worried about how you will deal with them.” Blackbird’s tufted ears bobbed a few times and then she rested her right talons on the table. “Hungry?”

“A little, but also nauseous.” Dim slurped more tea and reveled in the fact that his teeth were now whole once more. Perfection had been restored. Keeping his voice low, perhaps concerned that the walls had ears, he said to his companion, “While I am gone, do not sleep. Keep a wary, watchful eye about you. Commander Starhammer might be honourable, but those under her command may not be. There could be others hoping to collect and they may try to use you as a hostage.”

“And if somepony tries?” she asked, also keeping her voice low.

“Kill them.” Dim took a quick slurp of tea and then repeated his reply. “Kill them. Do so horribly and make an example of them. Let others see the fate of those who would move against us.”

“I don’t know about that.” Her words were hesitant and she shook her head from side to side. “I’m having bad dreams about that pony that I shot. It’s bothering me, Dim. I feel terrible. I feel really bad about what I did. I don’t mind scaring a pony near to death, but killing them…”

“Do what you must, then.” Dim lowered his gaze and stared into his teacup, then half-closed his eyes while he enjoyed the delightful steam. Seized with a marvellous idea, he issued a command to his companion: “Go and fix me scrambled eggs. Many of them. And toast. There must be toast. Do so now.”

“What?” Blackbird bristled and her talons resting on the table clenched into a fist. Her green, slitted eyes narrowed and her feathers fluffed out, making her wings look enormous.

“Eggs. Scrambled. Bread. Toasted. Surely a disgusting primitive such as you can manage these simple instructions.”

“I can cook!”

“Then do so.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hoof.

“But I—”

“But you are having trouble with simple instructions?” Dim knew that he was playing a dangerous game, but he didn’t care. To tug the tail of the lioness was going to be an enjoyable new pastime for him, his new hobby. Her irate expression nourished his soul and woke unknown desires that lurked within the shadowy recesses of his psyche.

“Fine, I’ll fix you a meal, but you owe me!” Growling, Blackbird got up and flounced away, leaving Dim to slurp his tea in silence.

A rusty red-orange moon rose over the wall of the city of Pteroșani. The residents had gone indoors as the sun had gone down, save for a few unfortunate members of the local Nightwatch. Like in so many other places, the ever-present strix were a real problem here, but vampires were said to be a far more pressing concern.

Strands of garlic hung everywhere, filling the town with a pungent funk. Every home, every residence, every place of shelter had at least one well-lighted window, even as the other windows were claimed by darkness. This was a town that lived in fear of the night, and for good reason. Dim understood them, and he pitied them. The disgusting primitives were right to fear the dark and were prudent to seek shelter in places where the light held sway.

The velvet shroud of night was his domain, his birthright, and Dim felt an odd sense of revivification as the moon and stars shone down upon him. As he stood basking in the moonlight, he could feel strange magic here in this place, exotic magic of unknown origin. Just as other places in the world had their own unique magic, so too did this place, and Dim could sense it.

Somepony needed to travel the world to catalogue these strange local magics and study them, but alas, leaving Equestria or the civilised parts of the world was not something most scholars would do. The sort of pony that could study the places such as this one were unlikely to leave their well protected, comfortable studies. Most unicorns lacked the ability to even sense the variations of magic, being far too weak and removed from the ebb and flow of magic. With some small sense of sadness, Dim realised that these studies would probably never take place, and the that strange magic to be found in the world would remain unobserved, unknown.

“Dim, I’m a little scared.”

With a smirk, Dim turned to look at his companion. She wore her revolver out in plain sight for all to fear and she had woven herself a crown of daisies picked from somewhere. Blackbird was a silly, ridiculous creature, a horrendous hybrid, a tossed salad of random limbs and creature parts. Some parts were far more intriguing than others and he did nothing to disguise his lust as his thoughts burned pink.

“I’m not scared to stay alone here, I can handle myself, I think… but out there”—she made a broad, sweeping gesture with her talons to the woods beyond the wall—“out there is an army of trolls and the Jaguar Witch. Are you sure you can just go for a stroll all by yourself? I mean, you’re little, and kinda fragile looking.”

“I have no intention of fighting the trolls,” Dim admitted so that Blackbird’s mind could be put at ease. “I will make it a point to avoid them. I will go and deal with the Jaguar Witch directly.”

“What if she is dangerous?” Blackbird asked.

Sighing, Dim looked away from his companion and looked up at the moon instead. “From what Commander Starhammer said, she is trying to curry favour from Ahuizotl, which means she is trying to prove herself. If she was dangerous, if she was skilled, she would already have the favour of Ahuizotl, whomever he is. So I can make a reasonable assumption that she isn’t as dangerous as she might first appear.”

“So the powerful have no need to prove themselves and gain positions, while the weak must somehow prove their worth and justify their existence to the strong.”

Smirking even harder, Dim could not resist himself when he said, “Yes, like fixing a fine meal of scrambled eggs and toast.”

“Hey!” Blackbird’s thrashing tail conveyed her ire and a ferocious growl could be heard deep within her throat. She bared her teeth at the pony beside her and let out a heated hiss. Being ignored made everything worse, and her feline eyes held a almost luminous glare of disapproval. “Asshole.”

“The eggs were good.” It wasn’t often that Dim offered praise of any sort, and he could not help but notice how good it felt to do so. “Fluffy and not overcooked. How hard can it be to scramble an egg? So many mess this up somehow. Myself included, sadly. I grew up pampered and lack the skills to care for myself.”

“The trick is to pull them off of the heat before they are finished, and then let the residual heat finish them off. If you cook them until they are done and then pull them from the heat, by the time they hit the plate they’ll be overcooked.” Blackbird was still furious, but she still reveled and took pride in her cooking skills. After a moment, her heated expression cooled, and then she extended her massive wings to stretch them.

They were huge wings, wings that when they were folded, they ran the entire length of her body from her girth to her hindquarters, with her primaries extending out past her backside. She did not have pegasus pony wings, but the reaching, majestic wings of eagles. Well oiled feathers glistened in the moonlight and she gave herself a little shake to loosen everything up.

“I met an Abyssinian in Southbury when I was staying there.” Dim’s voice seemed distant, far away, and his eyes seemed unfocused somehow while he gazed upon the moon. “I was helping an inspector from the Shetland yards. Together, we hunted a killer and a rapist. The Southbury Slasher, as he was called, was gaining notoriety. He liked to prey on fillies and young mares. This Abyssinian, she came upon one of the bodies and she was quite distraught. For good reason, I suppose. The body was skinned, and she had a hard time dealing with what she saw.”

Blackbird cringed and let out a hiss. After a moment of disgust, she asked, “What happened to the slasher?”

“The inspector and I had a writ,” Dim replied, his expression still unfocused and distant. “The inspector was wounded, taken by surprise, but I subdued the slasher. Then, I put a chain around his neck, hung him from a bridge, and I set him on fire. His howls and screams could be heard all over the town. A reporter came out and took a picture of him while there was still some life left. I was seen as a hero for what I did.”

“I don’t know what—”

“I was no better than the slasher, really.” Dim’s outburst cut Blackbird off, but he didn’t seem to care. “At that point, I had killed quite a number of ponies, but I was celebrated and congratulated for the work I did. I was hired to kill these… undesirables. The only difference between them and myself was that I had permission to kill and I killed those that society had no love for, no feeling for.”

Staring at her reminiscing companion, Blackbird remained silent.

“At that point, I had already taken more lives than the slasher himself. He had taken dozens while I had taken scores. Many met gruesome ends. In just a few months, I had made a name for myself as Harsh Winters. The slasher was feared, loathed, and hated, while I had a celebrated, sterling reputation as a hunter of mad dogs. I was seen as being beneficial to society. I still don’t understand why.”

“Dim…” For a moment, it seemed as though Blackbird was about to say more, but she faltered and no further words were spoken.

“Now, I am going to go out and kill another. I will go forth from the city, find her, and kill her. She will not be given a trial, or even a chance to explain her actions. I tried to muster up some feeling about this, but there was nothing, nothing at all. She is just a means to an end, a task to be done so that I might be paid. No feeling, no remorse, and not even a sense of hesitation. I am going to kill her and get paid. I am no better than the slasher, but performing this contract somehow makes me the hero. I’m the good guy. There is something wrong with the world, Blackbird.”

Blackbird’s crown of daisies slipped down on one side when she tilted her head. A much-welcomed cool breeze blew over the rooftop where she and Dim sat and she continued to stretch her wings while allowing the wind to tickle her. Several times, her mouth opened, but no words came out. After many failed attempts, she scooted a little closer to her companion, stretched out her right talons, and rested them upon his withers.

Dim’s muscles quivered at her touch and his thin body shuddered. He felt her talons travelling up his neck, along his crest, and then those deadly sharp points were moving through his mane. One little slip, one careless mistake, and his thin flesh would be torn open. A head wound might be fatal. When she took his ear into her talon-fingers and gave it a gentle tug, he leaned over into the direction of the pull with the hopes of another.

For all of his faults, for all of his monstrous behaviour, for all of his horrible deeds and actions, he was still a pony and he longed for the touch of another. Blackbird’s talons were large enough to completely wrap around his neck or his head and the tips of her claws were potentially fatal. Her talon-fingers curled into a fist and with the back of her knuckles, she began to rub the tender location just behind and below Dim’s ear.

“I understand my father a whole lot better now,” she murmured while she continued rubbing. “I mean, he knew about my mother’s past and chose to be her friend anyway. If you will let me, I’ll be your friend, Dim.”

For a moment, Dim thought about saying how he needed more than friendship, but he chose not to ruin the moment. There were no cold, calculating thoughts of how he might get what he wanted later, his selfishness did not manifest, nor did his possessive, greedy, hedonistic nature. A part of him was glad—relieved even—that she had said that she was his friend.

What he did say surprised even him: “I have never had a friend. Not even Darling… I thought that she was my friend, my playmate, but I realise now that you cannot be friends with the property that you own.”

“No Dim, something tells me that you can’t.” Blackbird reached up, adjusted her crown of daisies, and continued to rub Dim’s neck. “Stay safe, Dim.”

“Keep your wits about you, Blackbird.” He sighed, regretting that this moment had to end. “I should be going and I shall do my best to return before dawn. Remember what I said and be on watch. I would not trust this place enough to sleep alone, unguarded.”

“I’ll keep myself up somehow,” she replied. “Good luck.”

“Goodbye, Blackbird… when I return, I shall no doubt be hungry for eggs again. See that I get them.”

Author's Note

It was either that or a 'Faster pussycat, kill kill!' reference.

Walkin' after midnight

As Dim made his way through the woods, slinking from shadow to shadow, he was not alone. The voice of his dear, dead sister sang to him as was so often the case when he was by himself, and she sang loud and clear even without the usual mind-altering substances polluting his blood. She was his Geist der Qual, his punishment, and her keening song tore fresh new scratches into Dim’s already wounded heart that made him ache for the sweet release of coca or opium.

The hills were alive with the sounds of trolls. Slow moving and stupid at night, Dim knew to avoid them and evade them if he could, or stun and run if he couldn’t. He had to conserve his magic as much as possible while he made his way to the Jaguar Witch, who was holed up in an old guard tower that stood near what used to be a profitable gold mine. Now, it was a home for bats, and filled with a veritable fortune of batshit, a never-ending source of wealth just so long as one cared for the bats.

As he darted from one copse of trees to another, he glanced up at the moon and thought about how it might have been his. The thought was terrifying, unwelcomed, and made his heart race even harder. His sister’s haunting voice moved with him, crooning some tale of tragic love gone wrong.

“I'm young, I know, but even so, I know a thing or two. I learned from you, I really learned a lot, really learned a lot. Love is like a flame, it burns you when it's hot. Love hurts.. ooh love hurts—”

“Shut up, Darling, I am trying to sneak past trolls,” Dim whispered to the expansive nothingness around him, which paled in comparison to the nothingness within.

“You burned me, Dim… your love was like a flame and I was like a moth… why’d you have to burn me, Dim?”

“Because, as I seem to recall, you were being a real bitch at the time.”

“I just wanted to love you, Dim… why didn’t you try to save me?” she asked in a wailing, sing-song voice.

Taking cover behind a tree, Dim sucked in a deep breath as sweat began pouring down his sides and debris from the ground stuck to his damp frogs. He shivered and could feel his eyeballs vibrating in their sockets. Blood seemed to gurgle through the veins in his neck and the muscles in his thin legs quivered. Why didn’t he try to save her?

“Your foal was in my womb when you killed me,” Darling said in a sweet, alluring whisper that Dim longed to feel against his ear.

This made him recoil and he squeezed his eyes shut, a dangerous thing indeed when one was surrounded by an army of trolls. When he went to respond, a body-wracking sob came out instead, followed by an inequine screech of pain and rage. That just couldn’t be true, it couldn’t, and he didn’t want to believe the dreadful words of his dead sister. It was a trick, it was all a trick, and this was a nightmare—

Except it wasn’t.

Dim knew that he was wide awake, and he opened his eyes, wary of trolls.

“Throw yourself to the trolls, Dim, and it will be all over in seconds. Once you die, you and I can be together… forever. Mother has seen to that. Mother saw this coming and she prepared for this, Dim. Come to us, Dim, and let us end your pain, the pain of living. It grows unbearable, does it not?”

Try as he might, Dim could not ignore the chilling voice or its alluring siren’s call.

The pain of living was unbearable, there was no denying that. He took off, gritting his teeth together, and wondering what it might be like to die at the disgusting claws of trolls. Addictions were their own special kind of pain, he knew this to be fact, and right now, Dim understood that he was going through Darling withdrawals. He was in need of a fix—a relapse sounded fine right now—and he needed some of that sweet, sweet poison pumping through his veins.

“Trouble, oh trouble can't you see… you have made me a wreck, now won't you leave me in my misery. I've seen your eyes, and I can see death's disguise… hangin' on me… hangin' on me…”

Sometimes, Darling could be a right cunt.

“I'm beat, I'm torn, shattered and tossed and worn. Too shocking to see... too shocking to see. Trouble, oh trouble move from me. I have paid my debt, now won't you leave me in my misery. Trouble, oh trouble please be kind. I don't want no fight and I haven't got a lot of time.”

Distracted from the danger around him, Dim hurried along and his entire body was soaked with sweat. He shivered and the need for something to end his pain was an electric current that crackled through his nerves, making him jerk and twitch like a marionette connected to a clumsy puppetmaster.

“I watched you suffer a dull, aching pain. Now you decided to show me the same. No sweeping exits or offstage lines, could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind.”

For a moment, Dim considered throwing himself to the trolls. It was preferable to this. Was this to be his fate every time that he was alone? Where was the pink voice in his head to save him? He had sensed her earlier. Was this all he had to look forward to in life? His sister crooning her songs of the damned?

“Wild ponies couldn't drag me away… wild, wild ponies, couldn't drag me away. I know I dreamed you, a sin and a lie… I have my freedom, but I don't have much time. Faith has been broken, tears must be cried… let's do some living after we die. Wild ponies couldn't drag me away…”

So that was it then, an entire night of this, this torment that would continue until he snapped or killed himself, or maybe snapped and killed himself. Either way, this did not bode well and such a distraction could prove fatal in a battle involving magic. Perhaps death was preferable, perhaps inevitable. If he could not get the sweet release of a fix, perhaps he could could get the sweet release of the big sleep.

What end might come?

Ahead was a meadow, a broad coverless expanse devoid of trees. In the moonlight, Dim could see troll patrols moving back and forth, an unnatural sight indeed. His sister was still singing her tormented lullabies of the damned, and his loathing of her had grown by a magnitude. His heart sank when he realised that he had no easy way to move forward. He was already suffering some physical exhaustion and there was some mental fatigue as well. Perhaps it was time to turn back.

Or was it?

There was a meandering river that flowed through the meadow; broad and deep, it went in the direction that he needed to go. Looking at it gave him ideas, mad ideas, but that was okay because he was already mad, having suffered a serenading sibling. Scowling, he plucked his silver cigarette holder from his lips, held it out in front of his face, and examined it while thinking of the river.

Sometimes, it was good to be mad.

The silver stem was about two feet or so in length, long enough to keep smoke away from the face and eyes. Long enough even to keep smoke from rising into the brim of his hat. But was it long enough to be used as a snorkel? Well, there was only one way to find that out and Dim moved to make the great discovery.

Sweating, shivering, burning up with a fever while also freezing, Dim plunged into the summer-warmed water of the river with a splash. Rocks wobbled beneath his hooves and threatened to snap his weak fetlocks. A broken leg right now would be awful indeed, and would make him an easy meal for trolls. The fast flowing water was clear and when he was in a little bit deeper, he felt both sand and rocks beneath his hooves.

Fish passed by his legs and the fine hairs of his tail began to separate in the water. Holding his cigarette holder in his lips, he allowed himself to submerge, and then found that he could breathe just fine, much to his own surprise. The flow of the river pushed against his backside, coaxing him along, and the rush of water filled his ears, drowning out the siren song of his sister.

Only a madpony would attempt this and Dim was up for the task. He went a little deeper only to find that the riverbed was mostly sand and small, smooth pebbles that tickled his frogs. The voice of his sister was now muffled, drowned out by the fast-flowing river. Submerged, Dim resumed his walk and did his best to relax a little.

A fight was coming and he needed to be at his best.

A strange silence worried Dim as he stood dripping behind the cover of a pile of boulders. No singing sister, no song, no nothing. For some reason, it was even more unsettling and distracting than hearing her keening wails. Even though it was silent, he was not alone, no, he wasn’t alone. Something was here with him, watching him. The Jaguar Witch? It was possible. He might be outmatched. The witch might even have magic that somehow kept his sister away, if such a thing was possible.

A shake as well as a bit of magic left him almost dry and Dim realised that he wasn’t trembling as bad as he had been. Perhaps the long soak in the river had been good for him. Lazy clouds lingered in front of the moon, robbing the night of brilliant, silvery moonlight. It was dark, dark, and this suited Dim just fine. He saw everything in perfect detail in the faint light that was available.

In the distance, the tower loomed and from a crumbling window near the top floor he saw the warm orange glow of fire. He thought about making the fight start right now, because he could make that source of fire—whatever it might be—blossom like a bloom in spring. But there was no guarantee that his sudden fireball would burn anything.

With a great deal of caution, Dim began to check for wards, knowing that he was bound to find some spell protection. Abyssinians had lots of attack magic, but he wasn’t certain if they had much ward magic. Wards were the specialty of unicorns, for the most part, but other creatures could (and did) cast them.

This left Dim at an disadvantage, as he did not know nearly enough about his foe, neither magic nor habit. Swearing under his breath, he began casting his own wards, starting off with the usual protections; Steelguard, which would turn away non-magical iron and steel weapons from his flesh, numerous spell protections, immunity to fire, protection from lightning, protection from cold, and Platinum’s Vanguard, which would increase his magic resistance to a considerable level.

While Dim was not the most powerful of wizards, he was educated and he was prepared. This was usually enough of an advantage to see him through most fights, but that was against other unicorns and disgusting primitives who lacked his impressive education. Hearing a roaring crackle, Dim was quick to discover that he was not the only one with an education.

Charging right for him was a lamassu made of fire, a conjured elemental familiar. Dim only knew what a lamassu was because of his considerable education; it had a lion’s body, (or sometimes an ox) the wings of a bird, and the head of a wizened, wrinkly ape, sort of like the centaurs did. This one was made entirely of flame and it was charging down the hill from the tower, running right for him.

Of course Dim made the most apropos response for the situation: “Oh shit.”

He could dispel it, but that would be draining and might give the Jaguar Witch some indication of his relative strength. He was immune to fire at the moment, but if the elemental familiar had a psychokinetic element to it, it would do physical damage as well. This was as life-threatening as it was thrilling, and all thoughts of Dim’s troubles had fled his mind.

With the lamassu drawing far too close, Dim made a grudging decision, he summoned an inferno devil, a flaming variant of the dust devil. It was a draining spell to be sure, but it gave him an ally and it would keep the elemental familiar busy. The inferno devil let out a terrifying moan as it manifested and then it went whirling away to do battle with the charging, flaming lamassu.

As the inferno devil traveled over the ground, it picked up both dust and magic, gained strength, and grew in size. The funnel started off small, but had doubled its breadth and height in no time, and would only get larger as it devoured the flames of the lamassu. Dim knew that he had made a good choice. With the lamassu nullified, he turned his attention to the old crumbling guard tower.

Author's Note

If you don't know, Google it.

Meeting of the minds

The inferno devil was already snacking on what little remained of the flaming lamassu as Dim made his cautious approach to the crumbling old watchtower. No sign of the witch just yet, but he could sense her. A sulphurous musk was heavy in the air, something that was almost like burning bat guano. Doubt was already gnawing at him like a ravenous beast; coca was a powerful substance for unicorns as it greatly enhanced spellcasting abilities, increasing both mental and magical endurance. He was at a disadvantage without it and he could already feel the beginnings of fatigue setting in.

Perhaps this was a mistake…

The dirt beneath his hooves began to change as he approached the tower, becoming a bit more pebbled and having what appeared to be shards of volcanic glass in it. He cast a spell on his tender frogs, knowing that an injury would make him bleed out in a short time. A fine black grit could be seen in the dirt, and the lung-burning reek of rotten eggs grew even stronger.

Ahead, Dim could see fire and something moved… something danced?

No, maybe not dancing, as there appeared to be a fight ahead, but Dim couldn’t be sure of what he was seeing. Ducking behind a boulder, he kept his head down and cast a roving eye spell. It was tiring, further depleting his reserves, but he had to know what was going on. As the roving eye manifested, a shimmering soap bubble of magic, Dim’s left eye took on a muted glow. He willed the eye forwards to see what he could see.

The eye zoomed forwards, travelling far faster than Dim could tolerate, and he was overtaken by a powerful sensation of nausea. Since it wasn’t a physical object, the eye really didn’t obey the rules of physics and moved at the speed of thought while still dumping information directly into the brain. It took an extraordinary amount of willpower to keep one’s mind intact while maneuvering a roving eye, which was the reason why this spell was almost never taught.

Ahead, a tall, thin feline figure was engaged in a magical battle with something that made Dim’s vision fuzz over when he looked directly at it. Around the creature was a circle of salt, but even with his less-than-perfect vision, Dim could see that it was not an exact circle, and there were thin, weak places in it. Somepony—something—somekitty? The Jaguar Witch had been in a hurry it seemed and was now paying the consequences as she battled with her own summon. Dim did his best to put the pieces together; he guessed that she had sensed him coming, had summoned the lamassu to buy time, and then conjured up this fell creature to defend herself from him.

Whoops.

The Jaguar Witch made magic with hand gestures and spoken words, which was interesting. Unicorns tended to will magic into existence, save for spells that had a spoken requirement or had a need for spell components. In her right paw, the witch held a glowing spear that ignited Dim’s curiousity, as a quick visual inspection revealed it was something magical.

The Jaguar Witch and the fell creature in the faulty salt circle were exchanging spells and Dim knew this to be folly. Conjured demons, fell creatures, riftlings, and shadowlings all had magic resistance, which had to be overcome somehow before you could even think of hurting them with magic. Dim had once summoned a tiny riftling as a foal and it had taken all of his mother’s magic to banish the impish, prankish little creature.

A fiery burst destroyed the weak salt circle and the fell creature was set free. Uncontrolled, unrestrained, the creature that Dim could not look directly at lept free of its prison, pounced upon the Jaguar Witch, and then proceeded to twist her head off while letting out infernal screeches that Dim could hear from where he was hiding. This was bad, real bad, and Dim wasn’t quite sure of how to deal with it.

The shadowy, wispy fell creature picked up the spear and then with a turn of its head, it looked right at the spot where Dim’s roving eye hovered. A great many sensations overtook Dim’s body all at once, with the chief feeling being that of terror. The creature howled, then lept into action, and began to run down the rocky escarpment in the direction of where Dim was hiding. This was pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen.

He tried to teleport away but found that he couldn’t. This made the situation even worse, and it was then that Dim realised why the Jaguar Witch hadn’t teleported away: she had been unable to do so. Panic rose up from the maelstrom of emotions to join horror, as Dim realised that he had no chance of running away from such a creature.

No, he would have to stand his ground and fight.

“Oh fuck me,” Dim whimpered to himself as he began to make an optimistic retreat while also raising as many spell protections as he could. His hooves slid over the gravel and dirt while he kept his eyes on the advancing imp of unknown origin. The scent of sulphurous musk was strong now, eye-watering and lung-burning. Too late, Dim realised that what he needed to have cast was a fear ward, and he felt his magic beginning to falter as terror overtook him.

Giggling as imps tended to do, the creature loped down the slope, running right at Dim, pumping the spear clutched in its fist over its head. It had a dreadful, maniacal laugh, and that was just about all that Dim knew about it, because he couldn’t see the creature if he looked at it straight on. Shivering, Dim struggled to cast a fear ward, knowing that his life might just depend on it.

The creature moved with supernatural speed and when it was about fifteen or so yards away, it hurled the spear it held at Dim. Frozen in terror, he watched as the deadly missile closed the distance and in the back of his mind, he was impressed by such a throw. Smoke trailed from the spear and the weapon was glistening with the blood from the Jaguar Witch.

At the last second, Dim was able to raise a telekinetic shield, which crackled, fizzled, and was weak from his terror. It didn’t matter though, as the spear passed right through it, phasing through the magic barrier. A fraction of a second later, it struck Dim just below his neck, and sank into his chest. It really was an impressive throw. The shield bubble popped when his concentration broke and as it did, the fell creature drew near just as Dim toppled over into the dirt.

There was a curious sensation as Dim felt himself being drained and he knew that the creature was feeding on him, devouring his emotions. The spear in his chest was painless, or maybe there was so much pain that he couldn’t comprehend it. Perhaps it just hadn’t set in yet. The fell reek of sulphur filled Dim’s nose and for a moment, the creature came into perfect focus. It’s face was indescribable and when it blurred over once more, Dim’s mind tried hard to forget what he had seen.

With a demented howl, the freed conjurling went running off into the night, leaving Dim to die.

Wᴇ ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ᴀɢᴀɪɴ.

The pale pony seemed to flow into existence and beside him, a zebra mare did the same.

Nᴏᴡ I ᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴡʜʏ I ᴡᴀs sᴜᴍᴍᴏɴᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀsᴛ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ sᴏ ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ. Tsᴋ, ᴛsᴋ, ᴛsᴋ.

The pale pony stood there, clucking his tongue while shaking his head from side to side. Beside him, the zebra mare looked sorrowful, as if she was attending a funeral.

Laying in the dirt, Dim began to shiver as strange sensations overtook his body.

There was a flash of lightning that seemed to come out of nowhere and it was accompanied by a thunderclap. Where the lightning had struck, a dark pony now stood, folding his wings and peering down at Dim through narrowed eyes. The unknown stallion pawed the ground with his hoof and there was a terrible, wicked gleam in his eyes.

A Cᴇʟᴇsᴛɪᴀʟ ʟɪᴇs ᴅʏɪɴɢ, ʙᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇsᴛɪɴʏ ᴡᴀs ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ɴᴇᴇᴅᴇᴅ. Pᴇᴄᴜʟɪᴀʀ.

The pale pony turned to face the newcomer and took a single step forward.

Nᴏ, ʙʀᴏᴛʜᴇʀ, ɴᴏᴛ ᴅʏɪɴɢ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʀᴀɴsғᴏʀᴍɪɴɢ.

The zebra strode forward, but her hooves never came to rest against the earth. No dust rose from where she walked, and the ground remained undisturbed. She left behind no hoofprints, no trace of her passing. When she reached Dim, she lowered her head down, frowned, and then her dreadlocks began to writhe. Reaching out, they grabbed the spear, gave it a yank, pulled it free, and dropped it back down into the dirt.

Wᴇ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʙʀᴇᴀᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴜʟᴇs ᴀɴᴅ ғᴀᴄᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴsᴇǫᴜᴇɴᴄᴇs.

Deep within his barrel, Dim felt his heart and it was almost as if it was shriveling. A groan came from his lungs and he felt a strange sensation, almost as if drawing air into his lungs caused him pain. Breathing felt wrong somehow and the night seemed to be growing brighter, his vision becoming sharper.

Now, the dark pony drew nearer.

Yᴏᴜ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ʙᴇᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ ᴀ ʟɪᴄʜ. Tʜᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴄᴇss ɪs ᴜɴᴄᴏᴍғᴏʀᴛᴀʙʟᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪᴛ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴏᴠᴇʀ sᴏᴏɴ. I ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ, ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴏᴘᴛɪᴏɴs. Yᴏᴜ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏ sᴇʀᴠᴇ Gʀᴏɢᴀʀ ᴊᴜsᴛ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴜɴᴅᴇᴀᴅ. Wʜɪʟᴇ Cᴇʟᴇsᴛɪᴀ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴀʟʟᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ᴇxɪsᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜɪs ғᴏʀᴍ ᴀɴᴅ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ sᴇᴇᴋ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴇsᴛʀᴏʏ ʏᴏᴜ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠᴇʟʏ ᴀɪᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ᴏғ ᴇᴠɪʟ. Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʀᴇᴍᴀɪɴ ɴᴇᴜᴛʀᴀʟ, sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏ ᴄʜᴏᴏsᴇ ɪᴛ.

With the rustle of leaves, or maybe of paper, a new pony appeared, one made of parchment. She sprang into existence right beside the tall, dark stallion, raised her wing, and in silence, bade him hello with a wave. Black lines stained her face and neck, and with her horn glowing bright, she lifted up the spear from off of the ground.

Cʜʀᴏɴᴏs, sᴛᴏᴘ ᴛʜɪs ᴀᴛ ᴏɴᴄᴇ. Tɪᴍᴇ ɪs ɴᴇᴇᴅᴇᴅ.

Nᴀᴍᴇʟᴇss Oɴᴇ. I ᴅɪᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴇxᴘᴇᴄᴛ ᴛᴏ sᴇᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴇʀᴇ.

Dim could feel the dreadful transformation coming to a halt and he was caught in some strange in-between place where he wasn’t quite alive, nor was he dead. Undead? He didn’t know. Blood ceased to flow from the gaping hole in his chest, but the icy shivers of the grave remained in his muscles.

“Let us speak as the mortals and the living,” the paper pony said to the others.

“If you insist,” the dark pony replied.

“I never did like all that shouting, it wears me out so,” whined the pale pony.

The zebra snorted and said nothing while her dreadlocks wriggled like agitated serpents.

“Let us not break the rules, but bend them.” The paper pony looked around, meeting each pair of eyes in turn, including Dim’s. With each of her movements, the crinkle of parchment could be heard and tears of black ink began to trickle from the corners of her eyes. “Grogar does not need a potential ally and the world does not need yet another unchecked threat. We also cannot afford to keep disrupting harmony.”

“What do you propose, Nameless One?” The pale pony had a look of bored disinterest upon his face, but something about his eyes were keen. “I for one would like to have one less lich in the world, there are far too many already.”

“I am listening,” the big dark alicorn rumbled. “Let us begin our lawyerly debate, shall we?”

The parchment pony raised the spear that was now slick with the blood of both Dim and the Jaguar Witch. She held it up before her and her strange paper eyes studied its every detail. The shaft was some sort of black wood, made blacker with blood, and the tip was a jagged shard of obsidian. “This,” she began, “is the spear that Ahuizotl used to kill Chantico, and Chantico was the one who created the Hearthfire spell way, way back when Grogar was a threat the first time.”

“Chantico did not die,” Pale interjected, taking part of the lawyerly debate. “I never collected her soul. Using foul magics, Ahuizotl bound her into that spear, which he then used to kill off all of her followers in an attempt to break her enshrinement. Her soul is little more than a flicker now.”

“Wait!” The dark pony raised his hoof. “Who is Chantico?”

This question seemed to exasperate the Nameless One, who snorted in annoyance. “She was the creator of the Hearthfire spell! Equestria was founded with that spell! She wove together the aethereal cords that made Hearthfire possible!”

“Yes, yes, get to it, Nameless One. Not even I can hold back time forever.”

With an annoyed crinkle, the paper pony shot the dark pony a scathing, dagger-launching glance while also baring her paper teeth at him. “Chantico was an enshrined entity,” she began, and she drew in a deep breath so that she could continue her lesson. “She was the goddess of pain and pleasure, the guardian of the family hearth, and she had power over volcanos.”

“So, kinky in the bedroom, useful in the kitchen, and a connoisseur of flame-roasted virgins. Got it. Could we hurry things up? I have dozens and dozens of broken time threads to fix because of that insufferable little bitch, Starlight Glimmer. I should make her clean up her own mess.”

“I hate you so much sometimes, Chronos.” The paper pony had what could only be described as a nettled deadpan.

“She connected other wheres and whens to this where and when, and now those places are bleeding over into this one. She about ruined everything with her meddling. The threads of time keep trying to converge with events that never happened. It’s like a self-repairing rug that is half-unraveled and tangled up with other self-repairing rugs. They don’t want to let go of one another.”

“We all have our burdens,” said the pale pony, whining once more while making his point. “Can you just get on with it? I have a headache and I want some tea—”

“You’re dead,” the dark pony snapped, “now get over it!”

Laying on the ground, Dim continued to linger between life and death.

Shaking the spear in the dark pony’s face, the paper pony was fearless in her antagonising of the larger alicorn. “Chantico knows how to summon Hearthfire at will—”

“What does that have to do with anything?” the dark pony bellowed.

Sucking in a huge, deep breath, the paper pony rustled and crinkled. “Hearthfire can heal, restore, and revive the dead. It can cure Dim before he lapses into lichdom.”

“Oh.” The dark pony’s lips now formed a large round ‘O’ of understanding.

“It did revive those frozen to death by the windigos.” The pale pony’s eyes now focused upon the spear, which dribbled a little blood as the paper pony shook it. “Hurricane, Puddinghead, and Platinum. I had just showed up to collect them only to find I couldn’t. I was peeved that day, let me tell you.”

“So, tell me, Nameless One, what is your plan to revive a slumbering goddess?” the dark pony asked. “Surely you must have one, otherwise you wouldn’t go through all of this trouble.”

“Well, she is enshrined,” the paper pony replied. “She only needs a follower to wake up. Just one believer should rouse her from her nap.”

“So a deathbed conversion?”

“Yes, Chronos. A deathbed conversion.”

“Wait, I don’t like this idea, this Chantico lady, she has control over volcanos—”

“Stop whining and get to the point, Pale.”

“Do we really want him having control over volcanos?” The pale pony asked while pointing at Dim with his hoof.

“I’m alright with it.” The dark pony shrugged.

“Well, I guess…” The pale pony let out a whimper. “Lima, you’ve been quiet.”

“I have nothing to say on this subject.”

“So, the zebra abstains and Pale and I agree. Very well, Nameless One, let us hear your plan…”

Author's Note

I'm tired.

Beheaded

“You must pardon me, but I feel very peculiar. I don’t recall agreeing to anything.”

Dim did, indeed, feel quite peculiar. He felt alive, which baffled him, because the last thing he remembered was the spear he was now holding in his magic going deep into his barrel, just below his neck. Even stranger, a spectral figure floated up out of the end of the spear, like some myth from the Saddle Arabians, but Dim could not recall the name of said mythological creature. The spectre appeared to be half diamond dog and half Abyssinian, with a kind face, but fierce eyes.

“I am Chantico and I revived you with Hearthfire. I cured you of your impending lichdom. I, the Mighty and Benevolent Chantico have purged your blood of your vile addictions and healed your flesh. I offered you redemption, and you agreed to be my champion.”

“I agreed to be what?” Dim asked, worried and confused. Lichdom? This concerned him. What had his mother done to him? It made sense and struck him as something his mother would do—being the conniving plotter that she was—and he thought about Darling telling him to kill himself. The pieces began to fit, but Dim was still unable to ascertain just what sort of puzzle he was dealing with.

“You pledged to champion my cause.”

“This is troubling for me, I seem to have lost some of my memory, perhaps a good bit of time as well.” Dim looked up at the spectral figure staring down at him, and when she reached down to touch him, he shied away from her touch. When a paw touched his cheek, her touch was warm, not cold as he had expected, and it filled his body with a peace that he had never known. “What was it that I agreed to do for you in exchange for being revived?”

“You swore to look after the meek, the humble, and the helpless, so that they might know the pleasure of a hearth and home.”

“I could see myself agreeing to that.” Dim nodded, as he did not find this onerous. “The peasants suffer horrendously and bear the brunt of the hardship that the world has to offer. I find it unsettling.” The paw stroked his cheek again and some of his nervousness faded.

“You must burn the wicked, for they must know pain—”

“I can burn the wicked!” he blurted out with much youthful enthusiasm, a trait that Dim did not normally possess. Under most circumstances, he was quiet, reserved, and acted with a maturity that was far beyond his years.

“Yes, burn them! Set fire to those who would disrupt and disturb the sanctity of hearth and home! Those who would prey upon the meek, the humble, and the helpless, you must set them ablaze! Do this and I will give you what you crave… redemption! Not through petty, meaningless words, but through sweat, toil, smoke, and tears!”

“I do want… I want redemption…” Dim’s faltering voice was now little more than a whisper. “I am wicked through and through.” The cravings were gone, the shakes did not plague him, and nausea did not twist and contort his guts into a knot. Without realising that he was doing so, he pressed his fuzzy cheek against the spectral paw touching him, revelling in the peace its phantom touch offered.

“Your final test will be to bed a virgin, and then to give her the hearth and home that she deserves,” the spirit commanded.

“I do happen to know a virgin,” Dim remarked and his eyes narrowed. “In fact, I rather like her and I would like to produce unnatural offspring with her. What vizard would not want unnatural horrors for his young?”

“Build a shrine so that I might be worshipped. Revive me so that I might live again. These are my commandments. The world comes upon dark times, and my Hearthfire is needed once more. Now get busy!”

With that, the spirit vanished into the spear and was gone. Dim thought about her words while he studied the spear. Some wizards had staves, and he supposed that a spear was close enough. It had strong magic, powerful magic, and it did not resist him. Standing there in the moonlight, Dim realised that he had work to do, so much work to do. He was a pony in need of redemption, and the world was full of creatures just begging to be burned for their wickedness.

Even the most pious of ponies had to eat, though, and to live in the world took coin. With what could only be described as a manic grin, he took off up the hill to collect the head of the Jaguar Witch so that he could collect a reward from Commander Starhammer. Nopony needed to know how this actually went down and the only thing that really mattered was that the Jaguar Witch was dead.

As for the conjured fell spirit? That was somepony else’s problem.

The woods were alive with the sounds of troll-on-troll violence. A terrific orgy took place while the trolls savaged one another, because combat was their means of reproduction. When sap was exchanged from wound to wound, new trolls would be created in the form of seedpods. In no time at all, these woods would be swarming with tons of terrible, toothy, truculent, tiny toddler trolls trying to make their way in the world.

It seemed that the only thing that trolls hated more than everything else that existed was each other. Woody sounds of violence reached Dim’s ears and he kept his spear at the ready, knowing that its burning touch would finish off a troll. How did he know the spear had a burning touch? He had no idea, but know he did. He was the master of the spear now, without question, and its full complement of magic was available to him without struggle.

While Dim moved through the troll-infested woods, he thought to himself that maybe it would be prudent to come back here with Blackbird to search the old guard tower, which he had failed to do while he was there. It bothered his natural, meticulous, and thorough nature that he had skipped a beat, but he chalked it up to being disoriented from whatever had happened. His fortuitous second chance had left him in quite a mood and he felt better than he had in a long, long time.

Even in a forest filled with the sounds of a troll orgy, Dim found himself in a great mood. It was as if a dark shroud had been lifted from him, some great dark, smothering shadow had been cast away from his soul. He was hungry, and the idea of food didn’t nauseate him, as it sometimes did. Had he been paying attention, he might have recognised this as a symptom, but with his drug-addled mind affecting and dulling his perceptions, he had failed to notice.

Whatever spells his mother had cast upon him were being broken one by one, and Dim relished the prospect of being free. Free from his family’s dark shadow, free of his mother’s machinations, free of his painful, debilitating addictions, and someday, with luck, free of the black stain upon his very soul. This was a high unlike any other, and the euphoria it offered was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Humming to himself, Dim Dark had a lovely walk through the troll-infested woods.

The city of Pteroșani was now a warm glow on the horizon and the trolls seemed to be moving away from the city. Dim could hear them, bellowing and shouting their strange, creaking cries, trying to establish new territory. This was a mistake, of course, because soon enough, a bigger troll would come along to dispute the territorial claim. This made it remarkably easy for a non-troll to stroll through the woods almost unnoticed.

Slipping unnoticed between copses of trees, Dim paralleled the road leading into town, enjoying his late night stroll. He smelled smoke, a sweet smell that brought back thoughts of the warm cosiness of hearth and home. When this was all over, when Blackbird had her mother back, when he went home, he would start anew. Perhaps a new life was possible. The overwhelming, crushing sense of despair didn’t seem so heavy now, and he wondered if perhaps it was part of his mother’s tampering. Having narrowly avoided lichdom, he had good reason to be happy and was in a fine mood.

Upon reaching the gate, two pegasus ponies came out to greet him and allow him entry into the town. As the gate closed behind him, it was then that Dim realised that something wasn’t quite right, that something was wrong, because he noticed the flaming, ruined remains of the vardo ablaze near the market.

“There has been a change of leadership,” one of the guards said in calm voice. “Commander Starhammer has been relieved of her duties. Your companion is in custody. If you resist, she will be killed.”

Dim weighed his options and thought about killing the two pegasus ponies near him, but that would surely go bad for Blackbird. He didn’t know how she had been captured, or even how she had been incapacitated, because there was just far too much that was still unknown. The burning vardo infuriated him though, and somepony was going to pay for that, plus interest.

“I’ll be needing that spear,” the other guard said. “Nice and slow, pass it over. You are being watched. Even a hint of a lack of cooperation and your companion dies.”

With his jaw muscles having gone taut and his teeth now gritted together, Dim allowed the spear to be taken from him and he tossed away the severed head of the Jaguar Witch, knowing that he would receive no payment. The spear was taken and tucked under the wing of the guard who had demanded it. Dim’s eyes darted from side to side, taking in his surroundings, and he noticed one pegasus pony up on a roof armed with a levergun, a modified rifle that allowed creatures with hooves full operation. If there was one, there was probably another. This one had its hoof inside of the brass hoop that acted as a trigger and a single, swift action by the guard would make the gun fire.

“Do as you are told and cooperate. I’ll be talking you to Commander Snowbird. It’s nothing personal, just so you know. This is just business.”

Business indeed, Dim thought to himself. He understood business, this business in particular, because it was his business. These disgusting primitives were going to have to be taught a lesson in respecting their betters. His jubilant mood from earlier was gone, popped like a balloon. He hoped the town had good gutters, because a lot of blood was going to be spilled over this.

“Come along quietly and don’t make any sudden moves.”

So, this was the new normal. Betrayal and backstabbing, because they would never find a place of refuge ever again. For the promise of some great reward that would never come, he and Blackbird would be hunted everywhere they went. The vardo was gone—there would be no repairing what was done—and so even if he did somehow get them out of this situation, travelling would become quite difficult. He was confident that he could deal with this somehow, but first, he had to make sure that Blackbird was safe.

He walked between the two pegasus guards and tried to keep track of just how many rifles were aimed at him. There were a few unicorn guards about, but they didn’t seem all that dangerous, at least as far as magic went, but their firearms would give him trouble. He wasn’t sure how he was going to nullify this threat to him just yet, but his mind was already scrambling for ideas.

They stopped at a sturdy door, the entrance to the barracks, or so Dim guessed, and he kept his wits about him as the door opened. He heard sobbing from within, Blackbird’s sobbing, and something entirely unpleasant awoke within him, something like rage but it was far, far worse. In his short life, he had never felt anything quite like it, but he never wanted to hear the sound of Blackbird weeping ever again.

“Ah, our esteemed guest,” a voice said. “Do come in. No doubt, you are worried for your friend. Do not let your emotions get the best of you. Remain calm, make no sudden moves, and don’t even think about casting any spells.”

Dim was shoved through the door and he almost stumbled. He saw Blackbird in a heap on the floor, bound in rope, and her whole body jerked and spasmed while she sobbed. She was soaking wet and lay in a puddle of gritty, debris-filled water. His own eyes began to water a bit and Dim suspected that he knew how Blackbird had been captured. The crushed red and orange pepper flakes in the water told a story of torture that pained Dim to even think about.

“She is quite spirited,” a pegasus wearing heavy iron armor said to Dim. “Even after hitting her with the dust bombs, she put up quite a fight. Killed two of my soldiers and a third is not expected to survive. Such is the cost of doing business, I suppose. Now, you do so much as blink an eyelid in a way that I don’t like and she’ll be the one to suffer. Do we have an understanding?”

Too enraged to even speak, Dim remained immobile while he considered his options.

“Come now,” the pegasus said in a chiding tone. “Don’t make me use all of the usual threats that apply to this situation… rape, torture, branding, plucking, enucleation, and of course, all of this will happen after you have been subdued and you will be made to watch.”

Dim’s response came in the form of impenetrable, inky darkness that filled the room…

What little light that Blackbird could see was suddenly gone, and crushing darkness settled over her. The sound of gunfire was deafening, but there were no bright flashes of light, only darkness. She felt a tugging sensation upon the whole of her body, and then the floor beneath her ceased to exist. Something which almost felt like tumbling into nothingness happened for a brief second that stretched for far too long, and then she felt herself lying on cold, chilly stone.

Terrified, still sobbing, she could hear the sounds of Dim breathing, and he grunted a few times, though the reason why was unclear to her because she was still blind from having pepper dust go in her eyes. Each burning breath was agony and she writhed against the cold stone, trying to free herself. The ropes she was bound with cut into her flesh and left her with cruel friction burns as she thrashed around, confused.

“Be still,” Dim commanded from somewhere near her ear. “You are safe, for the moment. Be still, be quiet, and do nothing to give away your position. I must leave you, but I will return, you have my word. Stay silent and stay hidden.” Then, she felt the ropes bound around her front legs loosen.

She wanted to tell Dim not to leave her, but her mouth was still bound; it felt as though her cheeks would be torn by the pressure of the rope tied around her head and the rough hemp almost cut into her soft tongue. If she could get her talons free, she knew that she could remove her rope gag and free herself.

There was a sound like a popping of a cork, and she knew that Dim had left her. Gunfire filled the night and there was screaming, so much yelling and screaming. She felt a rumble and whatever she was laying on shook beneath her. Then, there was a crackling woosh, followed by a wave of heat that washed over her. Afterwards, there were many shrieks and the pungent stench of burning feathers filled the air. She struggled against her loosened bonds, managed to get her talons free, and began clawing at the ropes lashed tight around her head while the sounds of fiery destruction continued all around her.

A sound like not-so-distant thunder crashed all around her and the structure beneath her lurched as though it would come tumbling down. She suspected that she was up on a roof somewhere, but she couldn’t be certain. Blinded, she listened to the cacophony of rampant obliteration coming from every conceivable direction. Glass shattered, heavy stones smacked together with terrific force, and the roar of flames grew so loud that it almost drowned out the sound of everything else.

What was Dim doing? Blackbird’s own talons tore open her tender flesh as she scratched away at the tight knots, and the clumps of red pepper still lodged in her mane worked their way into the fresh cuts. The sound of what could only be a stone building collapsing caused her to let out a muffled, gagged squeak of terror, and her fright was made worse by her utter inability to see anything of what was going on.

Gunfire stuttered and chattered, broken glass tinkled, and above all else, the most dreadful, blood-curdling screams that Blackbird had ever heard in her life tore through the dark shroud of night. At last, she was able to pull the rope gag off so the rough, cruel hemp was no longer rubbing friction burns against the corners of her mouth and cheeks. Pepper dust immediately began to work its way into her burns and abraded flesh, along with the saltiness of her sweat and tears.

When the pain proved to be too much, she puked and the contents of her stomach splashed down her neck and torso. Her vomit too, was filled with the many pepper flakes she had swallowed, and this made everything so much worse. Miserable, fighting to even draw breath into lungs that burned with irritating dust, she writhed against the stones and wished that she was dead. Nothing in her life had prepared her for pain like this.

Snot festooned with red flakes poured from her nostrils, along with foamy vomit. Gagging, for a moment she feared that she might choke to death, and Dim wasn’t here to save her. Not knowing what else to do, she punched herself in the stomach, which made her puke again. Now, starbursts filled her vision as her brain screamed out its need for oxygen. She heaved a few times and then, much to her relief, her airway was free again, but the pain of breathing was too much to bear.

There was just no relief to be had.

The claws at the end of her talons raked over hard stone as she squirmed, trying to endure this unimaginable misery. Her hind legs were still bound and the sensation of pins and needles she had experienced down her hooves had been replaced by total numbness. There was another terrific explosion and the sound tore into her vulnerable ears, leaving them ringing with the sounds of tolling bells. Tonight, the bells tolled for somepony, but not for her.

Curling into a fetal ball, Blackbird begged to anypony that might be listening for this to end.

Author's Note

Sightless

“No funny stuff. Do as I say and you will live. Now get to work.”

Blackbird struggled to bring herself to wakefulness and couldn’t remember when she had lost consciousness. Her eyes were covered by something damp and soothing and she was laying on something soft that cradled her body, but had a few lumps. Or maybe she had lumps, she didn’t know and it was hard to tell.

A soft feminine voice cried out and she heard Dim say, “I told you. Such is the nature of domination spells. Do as I say or the pain will be unbearable.”

The blanket over Blackbird lifted and she felt a soft, light touch that she knew to be magic. Blackbird’s ears pricked at the sound of muffled sobbing and then she felt a tug on the bandages around her eyes. As the gauze was unwound, Blackbird saw some light, but little else.

“You killed my husband—”

“Last night, I killed a lot of husbands, so you are not special. Get over it.”

“You monster! You tore his wings off and wouldn’t let me save him!”

“Cease your bleating, as I grow weary of such things,” Dim responded in a dismissive voice that left Blackbird with a cold, chilly sensation.

When the bandages were completely removed, Blackbird realised that she could see nothing at all, except for the light. Her body ached all over, every place that she had been beaten, kicked, bucked, and clubbed. The sobbing mare was close, real close, and Blackbird could feel hot breath against her ear. She couldn’t smell anything as her nose was gunked shut.

“I’m blind,” Blackbird croaked.

“It’s part of the dust,” the mare replied. Blackbird’s ears perked and she heard how grief distorted the mare’s voice as she wept. “I’m going to apply some eye drops. It will sting. In fact it will hurt a lot, but it will help make you better. When I am done, I will reapply the poultice so you may have a little relief.”

Taking the warning at face value, Blackbird braced herself, and was thankful that she couldn’t see what was coming. Sniffling a bit, she tried to clear her snot-encrusted nostrils, but couldn’t. Her muscles wanted to tense, but the many bruises, knots, and tender places sent telegraphs of distress through her nerves.

“Remember… you do anything to harm Blackbird, and I will burn your foals alive for all to see.” Upon hearing Dim say this, Blackbird’s blood ran cold for the second time in the span of just a few moments and the unknown mare’s sobs gained strength. “And if you do anything funny when changing my bandages—” Dim’s words trailed off into wet, raspy coughing.

“I’m a healer, I save lives, not take them,” the mare murmured. “Even the undeserving get my mercy.”

“Dim, are you okay?” Blackbird feared the answer, and Dim continued to cough, so he did not reply. She started to say something else, but felt a tug on her right eyelids, pulling them open. Bracing herself, she gritted her teeth, waiting, even anticipating the pain, she was not prepared for the sting. Hissing, she writhed in the bed and almost pissed herself.

Before she had a chance to recover, her left eyelids were peeled back and more drops were applied. Blackbird’s talons tore through the sheets and her claws dug deep into the mattress beneath her. The pressure inside her built and she could feel every single sphincter on her hind end clenching to hold everything in. When the pressure proved to be too much, her mouth fell open and a ragged scream almost tore open her parched, gritty throat.

“I’m sorry, dear, I know it hurts.”

Blackbird did not hear these words of comfort, as she was lost in her own private Tartarus of pain. Blinking, her eyelids fluttering, the drops acted like lubricant and she could feel the rough, scratchy sensation of her eyelids closing over eyeballs being smoothed out little by little. Rolling over onto her side, she rocked back and forth while praying to whatever might be listening that the pain would come to an end.

After some time to recover, Blackbird felt her head tugged into position and then a salve was applied to her burnt abraded cheeks. It stung too, but only for a second, and then her skin went rather numb from a strong cooling sensation that was like peppermint, but stronger. Some distance away, she heard a door open and she waited, straining to listen.

“How are things?” she heard Dim ask.

“About as well as to be expected,” a strange voice replied.

“How are you holding up?” After a pause, Dim spoke again and there was a strange something in his voice, but Blackbird wasn’t sure if it was kindness. “I am sorry about your wife, Starhammer. She dealt honourably and fairly with me. I wish things had been different.”

“Me too. Me too. At least her death was avenged.”

The cooling salve was rubbed around Blackbird’s eyes and the sensation that brought relief was welcomed. Heaving breathing could be heard along with the sounds of soft sobbing as well. The unknown stranger moved closer, his hooves striking hard and heavy against the floor, and Blackbird felt bad for him because of what he had lost. Starhammer was likeable.

“Short Stitch is a good sort, Dim… please, there’s been enough bloodshed and violence. There’s no need make it worse for her. I overheard what was said when I was standing outside.”

“You’ll have to forgive me, Brand, but at the moment, I have a real lack of trust.”

“I suspect that you do,” the stranger replied. “So do I, if it makes you feel any better. Last night, Snowbird and those loyal to him kicked down the door to my home, beat me into submission, and killed my wife right in front of me when she would not relinquish her authority… so I understand your anger… I really do… but those responsible have been punished, and now, those of us that survive, we need to find a way to pick up the pieces and come together.”

“This is all because of greed,” the sobbing mare murmured. “Greed and stupidity.”

“Dim, is that you?” Blackbird asked in a scratchy voice when she heard somepony close to her bed. “No fooling around… I’ll rip out your throat—”

“It’s okay. Be still.”

Something about Dim’s voice was reassuring and Blackbird relaxed just a little. “Dim, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“A few bullets grazed me, but other than that, I am fine,” he replied.

Shuddering with relief, Blackbird squirmed in her bed and it took her a few seconds to realise that Dim was lying to her. His breathing was laboured, wet, and raspy sounding. She wanted to be angry, but knew that he was trying to spare her some worry. As she lay there, unsure of what to do or how to respond to Dim’s fiblet, or perhaps even a full blown fib, as she had no real way of knowing, something soft touched her, something damp, and there was light pressure.

It took several seconds to register what it was, and then she asked, “Did you just kiss me?”

“It felt like the right thing to do. Are you mad?”

Before responding, Blackbird took a moment to check and see if she was. She thought about it, he had kissed her on the top of her head, a kind gesture of affection. Probably just affection. It didn’t have to mean anything else. “No,” was her response, “not mad.”

“I have been worried for you like I have worried for no other creature.” Dim’s voice bubbled in his throat and sounded like he was gargling. “It has unhinged me, made me terrible and monstrous. I think you are my friend, Blackbird, perhaps my only friend. This is new to me and the idea of losing you made me murderous.”

“Dim…” Blackbird, at a loss for words, did not know what else to say.

“Go back to sleep, if you can, and I will stand guard over you.”

But Blackbird was in no mood to sleep, no. She was in pain, she ached, she missed her parents, and was in dire need of comfort. Her ribs and wings had taken a pounding and though nothing felt broken, she wondered if things were cracked. The pepper dust bombs had left her lungs a stinging, burning mess and even now, not knowing how much time had passed, it was still difficult to draw breath.

“Leaving you behind was a mistake,” she heard Dim say. “It’s tearing me up inside. I left you behind so that I might keep you safe. But then, all of this happened. When it was just me, I didn’t mind the danger so much, but now, with you…” His words trailed off into wet, phlegmy wheezes that filled her with much worry.

Blackbird thought about picking her nose, but she had learned a painful lesson about doing that long ago. Sharp claws and tender nostrils did not mix. Her sinuses drained down the back of her throat and her nostrils seemed to be cemented shut still. A dreadful feline curiousity possessed her, and there was something she had to know.

“What did you do to Snowbird?” she asked in a voice that was no more than a hushed whisper.

“Well,” Dim began, and Blackbird heard him shudder. “Snowbird threatened to have you raped, tortured, branded, plucked, and enucleated. I thought that it was only fitting that he endured those experiences himself, so that he might have a better understanding of what they mean. I gave him an education in the finer points of sadistic cruelty, and near the end, he understood the error of his ways. I first impaled him on a tent pole in the marketplace, and then I began my terrible work, all while his disabled troops watched, helpless, and unable to do anything.”

“Was all of that necessary?” she asked, breathing the words through parched lips. “Was killing Snowbird necessary?”

“Who said that Snowbird is dead?” she heard him reply, and she felt her blood almost freeze solid in her veins. Her terror was so strong that her bowels clenched and she both felt and heard her guts gurgling. “No, he lived. To stop the bleeding, I dipped him in hot tar, and then I rolled him in his own feathers. Right now, he probably wishes that he was dead. They’re still peeling away the tar, you see.”

“Dim, could you get me some water? And maybe something to throw up in?”

“Sure thing,” he replied, and she heard him shuffle away from her bedside.

Dim told a strange tale of his meeting with the Jaguar Witch, his encounter with some kind of conjurling, his near death and subsequent near-transformation into lichdom, and then his revival by an old, dead jungle goddess named Chantico. While it was a very strange tale indeed, it was certainly no stranger than a hippogriff travelling the world hoping to find her alcoholic gunslinger mother who had vanished to avenge her husband’s murder.

And after hearing the tale, when Blackbird thought about everything that had taken place during that long, horrible night, she realised that her mother and Dim had something in common: Dim too would travel to the ends of the earth to get revenge if something was to ever happen to her. Blackbird could only speculate upon what this meant, but she wasn’t nearly as stupid and naive as she might appear to be at times. It was almost flattering, how he felt for her, but it was also horrifying what he would do and had already done because of his possessive nature.

All of this led to a greater understanding of her mother and her father. The complexities of her father and his mind had long eluded Blackbird, but now, after chasing after her mother’s evasive, slippery shadow, she had come to understand much about her parents. She had learned much that she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. And just like her father, she found herself falling for a vicious sort. Dim, for all of his faults, still had his charms. But like her mother, he was dangerous, so dangerous and fickle.

It was amazing that none of her talon-fingers were broken, after having been stomped on. She clutched a wooden bowl filled with some kind of starchy, salty broth. It tasted alright, but she had to take only a little at a time or her stomach would revolt. The sound of Dim’s breathing was the only thing in the room, a room she had not seen, nor could she see. Not liking the silence that had settled in, she was compelled to say something. But what?

The gauze bound around her head crinkled against her sweaty head with every little movement, causing distraction. She sat in the bed with her back against the wall and the cool stone felt good against her hot bruises and lumps. A tiny sip of the broth slid down her throat and the pain of swallowing made her head feel swimmy.

When the door opened, every muscle tensed, almost causing her to spill her bowl of broth.

“Brand,” Dim said.

“Snowbird has died,” Brand announced.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I fail to shed a tear,” was Dim’s sardonic response.

“Much of the town is still in ruins. There are still trolls in the woods. Most of our protectors are dead. For some reason, everypony is turning to me for leadership and I have no idea what to do. I have no head for this sort of thing. I can’t even see how this town is going to survive.”

Blackbird heard the creak of wood and guessed that Brand had sat down, but she couldn’t be certain. Dim’s wet, bubbly breathing demanded the attention of her ears, and she heard a sigh from afar, which meant it came from Brand. She took a sip of the broth and forced it down her gullet, pushing past the pain of swallowing.

“We had a good thing going in this town. All of us, we looked after one another. Hiring the mercenary company was a good thing. For years, we prospered and we were safe. The mercenaries put down roots. Many of them married. I had my eye on Starhammer almost from the beginning, because she was a real prize. Honourable. A pony of her word. She didn’t make rash decisions. The mercenaries were supposed to be the saviours of our town… they made everything safe and good… but now… but they… but—”

“But some of them were still mercenaries,” Dim said in a wounded sounding whisper. “Some of them were looking for that big pay off. Such is the risk of dealing with mercenaries, because you only get as much loyalty as you pay for.”

“We gave them homes… wives, husbands, this town was their town… why do this?”

Blackbird quivered at the pain in Brand’s voice and she pitied him. He was not responsible for what had taken place last night, but like her, was a victim of everything that had transpired. The broth in her bowl sloshed because her talons shook so much, and she realised that she had dug her claws into the wood. Try as she might, she could not relax her grip.

“Sometimes, mercenaries are just bandits with an air of legitimacy.” Dim coughed, a terrible sound, and when he spoke again, his strained voice was little more than a wheeze. “I have dealt with many in my travels. It is why I try to keep my dealings honourable.”

“Which is why I wanted to ask you—”

“No.”

Brand’s voice was pleading. “Please, even if it is only a temporary arrangement. We need somepony to protect the town, at least until we can hire new security. We’re vulnerable right now, and you’ve already shown that you can defend the town—”

“I said no,” Dim whispered.

“Over a hundred dead… and I don’t think we’ll even find all of the bodies. Some of the ponies here want you gone and I’ve had to plead with them to show some reason, but there are a few that see that you could protect us… please, reconsider.”

“No.”

Now after Dim’s flatout refusal, Brand sounded desperate. “Who will look after us?”

“Not me,” Dim replied. “I have my own problems to look after.. I don’t even know how we are going to travel away from this place—”

“What do mean, Dim?” Lukewarm broth sloshed over the side of the wooden bowl and trickled down Blackbird’s foreleg, but she did not notice.

“The vardo is gone, Blackbird.”

Unable to respond, Blackbird sat in stunned silence, stupefied. She found that she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t do much of anything, so she just sat there, unmoving. The vardo. Her home. Her fantastical flying machine that was always in need of constant repair. It was a work in progress, and she had such dreams for it, such as engines, propulsion, a better interiour with nicer curtains… none of which mattered now.

Everything was gone. The Foalsitter was lost and so was her vardo.

“I have no idea what to do,” Brand said and his voice began cracking. “If we put out a call for more mercenaries, surely the bandits will also hear of such a thing and know that we are weak. They will come, just like vultures who sense carrion. Please, please stay for just a little while until we can get new security established. Please?”

“No. As soon as Blackbird is fit to fly again, we are leaving this place.”

“You’re killing us—”

“I’ve already killed you,” Dim blurted out, cutting Brand off. “I’ve slit your throat for your betrayal and now you will bleed out. Make peace with it.”

“I don’t know what to do… these ponies, they expect some kind of leadership from me…” Brand’s words trailed off into wheezes and then Blackbird heard the sounds of him sobbing. She pitied him, really, she did, but like Dim, she had no desire to stay.

Author's Note

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

Arthur Miller

A Nightmare's legacy

“My husband was not the pony that I thought he was.”

When Dim glanced over at Short Stitch, there was a growing sense of annoyance and he wished that the mare would just shut up. “Why do you tell me this? I don’t care. He died as a craven coward, begging and pleading for mercy.” When the mare turned to look at him, there was a profound sadness in her eyes and Dim saw her ears go limp.

“I was married to a stranger,” the grieving widow said to Dim as she mashed something in her mortar with her stained stone pestle. “I feel as though I owe you some gratitude—”

“Why?” Dim now felt more curious than annoyed and he rubbed at the bandages wound tight around his throat. “Why would you owe me any gratitude?”

“I thought my husband was a good pony,” she whispered and there was a wet squelch as she continued to pulp the root in her heavy stone mortar. “I thought him to be honourable. I believed that he was good… but for him to have gone along with Snowbird’s plan… for him to betray Commander Starhammer… all for… money.” She spat out this last word and it appeared as though it had left a bad taste in her mouth. “In the past few days, I have grown to hate him. Whatever love I had for him has died and my respect for you has grown.”

Something in Dim’s cold, bitter, cynical nature gave way and these words rent a terrible tear somewhere deep inside of him. He understood betrayal, perhaps more so than most others. He started to say something, but the words got caught in his swollen, aching throat. There was anger in Short Stitch’s teary, bloodshot eyes, but also something else, something that looked an awful lot like relief.

“So, I owe you some gratitude for revealing to me that I lived among strangers… ponies I thought I knew to be good ponies. But they proved to be greedy liars, betrayers, and cutthroat psychopaths. As painful as it is, I would rather know the truth than live a lie. So… thank you.”

Unable to be sardonic, Dim found himself apologising and he was quite surprised by the words as they came out of his mouth. “I’m sorry, Short Stitch… I know what it feels like to be betrayed and then to learn the truth about somepony that you loved”—he was forced to swallow and the sudden lump in his swollen throat made it almost impossible to breathe—“and that you thought loved you in return.” In the back of his mouth he tasted blood and there was a cold prickle in his stomach when he realised that he was bleeding again.

“I would imagine that you do,” Short Stitch replied and she nodded while she pestled the fibrous root in her mortar. “Sometimes… sometimes a pony hates a healer for slicing open a cyst to let the infection out. They curse and shriek and kick and fight and they wish the healer dead… I’ve been the target of this sort of resentment many a time. You…” The mare’s words trailed off and her pestle ceased its quick, furtive movements.

Dim watched as the mare’s ears stood up.

“You came along and revealed a cancerous growth in this town. Many a wife and husband found they were married to strangers. I can’t hate you for this… I just can’t… but I do find myself hating my husband a great deal, and this hurts my heart more than anything.”

“I really am sorry, Short Stitch… betrayal hurts more than anything else.” Dim had a desire to say more, but he had no idea what to say, and comforting others was not his forte. The sound of his own gurgling voice worried him, and Short Stitch seemed concerned as well.

“Sounds like you’re bleeding again,” she said as she resumed her task of grinding up the bulbous, fibrous root. “I don’t understand how you’re even alive right now. Hemophilia is an awful thing to try and live with. Getting shot in the throat tends to kill even healthy ponies.”

Closing his eyes, Dim recalled the bullet grazing him and opening up the wet, sucking wound. The memory was every bit as fresh as the injury and he shuddered, unable to cope with the pain of either. He was still alive because Chantico had sustained him—it was odd for him to have faith in anything, because for so long he had believed in nothing. His life had been defined by his nihilism, his hedonism, and his cavernous emptiness. Now, there was purpose, there was meaning, and perhaps most importantly, there was a powerful desire to live.

While she was still mashing the root, Short Stitch began mixing the ingredients for the elixir that would help Dim’s throat. One eyebrow raised and her bloodshot eyes had a curious gleam about them. Staring at Dim, she said, “I heard you mentioning Chantico to Brand”—with her hoof, she gestured at the spear that stood in the corner—“tell me about her. I’d honestly like to know.”

Dim found that he didn’t know what to say.

So much has changed, Dim, the pink voice said between his temples. I’ve struggled to make sense of it, but all of this is beyond my experience. I’ve never seen such betrayal… such open animosity. Being connected to you has taught me much. I think that I take my fair home of Equestria for granted.

Distracted, Dim did not reply, but continued to study the strange bit of parchment in his telekinetic grasp. What strange magic needed blood to activate? This was new to him, unknown, and he was tempted to experiment. How might his mother be surprised should he contact her? He could gloat—gloating would be satisfying like nothing else right now—but that would destroy the precious parchment and his chance to study it.

It is good that you have made peace with Short Stitch. The pinkness inside of his head had some sense of affection to it now, and even though Dim was loathe to admit to it, this affection was every bit as comforting as it was distracting from his studies. She trusts you, you know, even with her foals. Even after the awful, awful, shameful thing you said about harming them. She is a good and forgiving pony, Dim. You could learn from her and you would be a better pony for having done so.

Rolling up the parchment, Dim slipped it back into the protective wooden scroll tube and gave up on trying to study it. Melancholy had set in, and with it came a strange need for morose musings. Redemption was about being a better pony, right? The pinkness was seeping through his brain like groundwater through porous rock and in the most curious twist of all—even in light of the current events—he was in no mood to resist. There was no strength left in him to defy.

Turning his head, he glanced over at the sleeping form of Blackbird, feeling envious that she was in a place that was beyond pain and suffering. There was something there now, he could feel it when he looked at her, but this feeling was something new… something good… something that terrified him and made him want to run away. It felt like weakness and he didn’t want to enjoy it as much as he did.

Is love really so awful, Dim?

To this, he had a susurrate response—a correction that had to be made: “Infatuation.”

There was now a smug pink silence in his head that Dim did not much care for, but had no means to get away from. Yes, he called it infatuation, but he had just razed an entire city for reasons that went beyond mere infatuation, and he knew it. He hadn’t just killed, no, he had been cruel, merciless, and he had made others suffer exquisite agony for trying to take something from him… something that was his. Dim knew himself well enough to recognise his own selfishness when he saw it, and he knew the dangers of giving himself over to his own cupidity.

He had behaved like the world’s most terrible toddler who had just had his toy taken.

It is called ‘growing up,’ Dim, and it is a dreadful time when we start taking responsibility for our own actions. It comes in phases. You left your home and you went through a period of transition where you learned how to take care of yourself. You did a lousy job at that, giving into your hedonism and satisfying every crass desire that you had. This is pretty normal, Dim, so don’t feel bad. When we are young and taking our first few steps, we stumble. It is how we learn to walk.

Closing his eyes, Dim did something extraordinary: he listened.

It is easiest to make mistakes when it is just us by ourselves, on our own, and we go through an extraordinary phase when we try to figure out what sort of lives we want for ourselves. Life has introduced a complication, Dim, as life tends to do. You now have something that you care about, something that you don’t want to lose. Something that would be unbearable to be without. You have been introduced to meaningful consequences. You have something that can be taken from you and this scares you just like it scares everypony else. Welcome to the race, Dim. You stumbled out of the gate and you dragged yourself around the first few laps, but now the stakes are real. If you want to keep what you value, you’ll have to run a better race, Dim.

Rather than sneer in contempt, Dim weighed everything that bounced around inside of his head and then asked, “How?”

Chantico is a good start, Dim. Each and every one of us needs a cause, something that is bigger than ourselves. You struggle with morality and purpose. You want morality like a thirsty pony wants water. You’ve done something extraordinary, Dim, in that you’ve gone thoroughly, totally morally bankrupt and you haven’t even hit your second decade mark yet. Your debauchery, your hedonism, your total and complete selfishness, your self-centeredness, your inability to do anything other than slaking your own lusts… what has come of it?

The question was almost too much to bear and Dim sat with his eyes closed hating the voice in his head that had just ripped the scab open. While he weighed his potential answers, he thought about what Short Stitch had said to him earlier, about hating the healer for slicing open the wound and letting the poison out. No, he couldn’t hate the voice in his head for pointing out the obvious—he couldn’t hate the healer trying to save him.

It galled him more than anything, but he mumbled, “You’re right.”

After a short time of silence, he added, “I didn’t ask for this to happen. I didn’t ask to be born this way, or to have this purpose, or to have my destiny corrupted. My life was already beyond my control… but at the same time, I have made it worse, haven’t I?”

Many try to shy away from their madness… you embraced it, Dim.

“At the time, it felt like strength.”

When you felt so weak and powerless? There was a long, pregnant pause inside of Dim’s grey matter and he wondered if the pink presence was judging him. I can accept that, coming from you. You and your bloodline, even the progenitor of your bloodline, all of you struggle with the darkness—

“You speak of Luna,” Dim whispered in a low croaking gurgle.

Yes. Each of you deal with it in your own way. Luna embraced a nightmarish aspect, thinking it would give her strength. All of you, all of her distant offspring, each of you in whom Luna’s blood runs strong, I have found that all of you bear a shadow… a nightmare… each of you have such strength, but also much weakness. It troubles me and it is something that I ponder a great deal. Luna left you all a great and terrible legacy. Of course it pains her and she is riddled with guilt. So few live long enough to see how one bad decision, how one poor choice can affect their entire bloodline. She waits for you, Dim. She longs for you to come home so that she might comfort you so she can appease her own guilt. Do come home to us Dim, so that we might cure your tainted soul.

He started to reply, but he felt the presence in his mind leave him. Frustrated, he had things he wanted to say, questions he wanted to ask. There were things he wanted to sort out. He wanted to be angry, to be foalish, and throw fits… but he knew that magic could be tiring. Magic could be exhausting and the voice, whomever she was, had said much. Reaching across the vast distances had probably drained her in some unbearable way.

Left with nothing but himself, Dim continued his lonely vigil through the night, watching over his sleeping companion.

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay, but I was a bit paralysed by this chapter.

Lips on a cup

With one eyebrow drifting upwards in concern, Dim looked into Blackbird’s jade green eyes and only realised the danger in doing so when it was too late. Her slitted pupils widened, then narrowed, and he watched with flustered fascination as her eyes attempted to focus on him. She had fishy breath, but that couldn’t be helped because she had just eaten, and when he felt a soft touch upon his neck, just below his bandages, he almost jumped right out of his skin.

“You’re a little out of focus still, but everything seems better,” Blackbird remarked as her claws at the end of her talon-fingers lingered upon the tender, vulnerable flesh of Dim’s throat. For a moment, her talon-fingers grazed the gauze covering Dim’s wound, where they remained for the span of a couple of eyeblinks, and then she pulled them away, flexing her still swollen knuckles. “You seem faded, still. Shouldn’t that potion have worn off?”

“I don’t know what is wrong, and neither does Short Stitch.” The elation of staring into Blackbird’s eyes was already wearing off and exhaustion rushed to fill the void left behind. The fading worried him, but only in a general sort of way, because he just couldn’t be bothered to pay much attention to the problem.

“When was the last time you slept, Dim?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t know and that was true. “I had to keep you safe. You were so vulnerable. So much happened. One of us had to remain on guard.” Feeling talons on his front legs, he looked down as he was being pulled into Blackbird’s bed with her. Heart thumping like an out of time piston, he lost his balance and tumbled against the warm, inviting velvet of her hide. Feeling her against him, he found that he didn’t have the strength to pull himself away as she tugged him into the bed with her.

A moment later, she was pulling a blanket that was downright stinky with her scent over him, and he lacked the means or the desire to protest. There was a warmth here that he craved, a fragrant humidity that lulled him into drowsiness. When he was rolled over onto his back, he grunted and a pillow was stuffed beneath his head. Settling into the bed, he wiggled a bit and felt the rough wool of the blanket rub against the tender flesh of his sheath as the damp coverlet over the mattress was warm against his aching spine.

“This is just a practical arrangement,” Blackbird said to Dim as she tucked him in. “Don’t get any ideas. No means no. Now get some sleep, Dim.”

Unable to resist, Dim closed his eyes.

The landscape was bleak, barren, and desolate. A nagging, persistent wind blew fine grit into Dim’s eyes, and he squinted to protect himself. Overhead, the sky was a dull grey, the colour of dingy blah, and darker grey clouds dotted the otherwise featureless sky. Both the sun and the moon were visible, with the sun being rather, well, dim, and the moon being little more than a weak suggestion of itself.

Turning about, Dim tried to get his bearings, and found that he was on a vast, flat plain save for a narrow spire of dead rock that rose up in the distance. Atop the spire of rock was a castle and a city… landmarks that he found somewhat familiar, though he could not quite say why. The wind picked up and Dim had to close his eyes for a moment to protect them.

When he opened them again, he was not alone. A grey figure stood some distance away. Cloaked and wearing a fine wizard’s hat with a magnificent broad brim, the figure made a beckoning gesture with his hoof. The playful wind tugged on the pony’s beard and tried to push his hat down into his eyes.

After taking a few steps, Dim slipped into an aristocratic trot to follow after the grey figure, who now also moved. Together, they seemed to be heading towards the stone spire, which had armies of dust devils playing tag around its base. As Dim approached, the spire seemed to be growing, not just in height, but in width, as if the dust devils were depositing mass around the base while they played.

The sun seemed to wobble for a moment—it flickered like a candle in a drafty room—and the moon, perhaps feeling sympathetic, blinked a few times in reply. Nothing felt threatening here, but things that didn’t feel threatening were often the most dangerous things of all. Dim kept his guard up while he followed the figure who led him towards the bleak civilisation that was ahead.

Perhaps a hundred paces ahead, the figure stopped and made a gesture. Dim too, stopped where he was, and began to look around. The grey cloaked figure pointed with his hoof, and when Dim turned around, he saw faded greenery in the space where he had walked. There was life here now, weak, sickly looking life, but make no mistake, his presence here seemed to have brought life to this place.

For whatever reason, he did not feel alarmed by this revelation, but comforted.

What was this place that he should affect it so?

He stared at the dull green grass for a time, the sparse, withered-looking blades that poked up out of the fine, gritty dust and sand. A beetle with a dull, matte shell crawled up out of the sand and began to explore the new greenery. Dim turned to look about and when he found himself staring into his own face, he let out a startled cry of alarm. The grey figure was right beside him now, grinning, and the beard sprouting from his chin was being tossed about by the teasing wind.

Dim took a good long look at himself when he recovered, and his barrel heaved from his sudden start. He was smirking and holding a balloon that bore a remarkable resemblance to the moon, which was now missing from the sky. Tied with a night blue ribbon, the moon balloon bobbed in the ever-present wind and glowed with an eerie inner light.

“What is this?” Dim asked of himself, and much to his own dismay, he did not reply to himself. He cast a sidelong glance at the moon balloon and then he looked into his own mismatched eyes. His doppelgänger, whatever it was, had an unsettling grin and an all too familiar desynchronised blinking.

Without warning, the figure took off at a swift pace, heading for the distant stone spire that wore a city as a crown. The pony in grey trotted through the sandy expanses, and Dim followed, intrigued, curious, and cautious. The sand was soft against his hooves and had Dim been paying attention, he might have noticed that he left behind no prints.

Dim blinked to protect his eyes from the windborne grit, and when he opened them again after the wind had died down a bit, he was no longer alone with himself. A tiny blue alicorn filly trotted along beside his bearded doppelgänger, and her ears bounced with every step. She was cute, she was adorable, and Dim knew exactly who she was. Seeing her disturbed him.

“May I please have my balloon back?” the filly asked in a somewhat lispy voice and there was a whistle from the gap between her front teeth.

“Of course,” the Dim leading the way replied, “you have but to ask.”

Like a soap bubble, the balloon seemed to pop into nothingness, and it reappeared back into the sky. The little blue alicorn seemed pleased, and she rubbed the side of her face against the ribs of the bearded stallion beside her. After a few affectionate nuzzles, she pulled away and began to pronk in the manner of over-excited fillies everywhere.

“Princess Luna?” Dim asked as he watched the filly pronking beside himself.

“Nope!” The filly sounded manic and cheerful, as if she had consumed too much sugar.

“Who are you?” After a moment, Dim realised the inadequacy of this question and tried again. “What are you?”

“I am the Essence of Night and so much more,” the filly replied in a chipper voice. “I am Luna, in a way, but she is not me. My companion is also the Essence of Night, but he was the Essence of Night Who Might Be. Harmony was prepared for all eventualities.”

“But what are you?” Dim hurried to trot by the pronking filly’s side and found that he wasn’t quite fast enough. She seemed almost playful, remaining just out of reach, and his heart almost failed him when she looked up at him with wide, luminous eyes. He found himself wanting to protect her, to keep her safe, and glancing into her eyes filled him with strange compulsions.

“Should Luna die, I am what will rebirth her body. I am the source of all of her power. I am her connection to dreams, to shadows, and all of the Gifts of Night, of which there are many.” The filly ceased pronking long enough to give Dim an affectionate nuzzle against his neck, and then she bounced away once more, carefree and joyous. “For the longest time, I was sick and weak… bad things came and bad things happened. I was little more than a shadow of what I should be, and because of this, Luna’s power suffered because I suffered.”

“Getting better now,” doppelgänger Dim said to the filly.

“Yeppers!” The filly bounced, clicked all four of her hooves together, and flicked her tail while in midair. “I am worshiped once again, which gives me strength. Luna is being made whole once more with her sister… the ancient tear is being mended. Celestia’s power fills this place, making it a powerful celestial realm.”

“What is this place?” Dim asked, and he noticed for the first time that everywhere the Essence of Night pronked, she left behind signs of life much in the same way he did.

“The dream realm,” the filly replied without hesitation. “But not the old dream realm. That place was touched by corruption and by the Nightmare. It will now begin to fade away as Luna is healed and this place will gain life. Already, Canterlot takes shape and life takes root here. This place will have power and reach… something the old realm lacked. It needed to pass away so that things could start anew, free of corrupting shadow.”

“To give this place life, Celestia’s sun must shine. For it to shine, Luna must learn to trust and love her sister once more. The sun grows a little brighter each day, and soon, it will flood this place with life and magic.” Doppelgänger Dim stopped for a moment, peered upwards at the sun and the moon, and then resumed his brisk pace.

There was so much that Dim did not understand, but he could feel his connection to this place. He could not comprehend how a part of him strolled beside little Luna, or the Essence of Night as she called herself. His was a destiny unneeded, an outcome that had never manifested. He was not the chosen one, so to speak, but a castaway. Refuse. Cosmic debris. Celestial dross

“I know what you are thinking,” doppelgänger Dim said in a stern voice. “Had things been different, I would have absorbed the little aspect of Luna that you see, we would have merged, and become as one. Dim, you can’t look at yourself as what you might have been, or what could have been. If you do that, you’ll be blinded to what you really are—”

His patience already spent in the span of a few words, Dim snapped out a question in need of an answer: “And what is that?”

“A worthy vessel is still a worthy vessel, empty or full.” Doppelgänger Dim smiled down at the little blue alicorn filly and then glanced at his mortal counterpart. “You have enemies, Dim, and they wish to fill you with bad things. If you allow them, they will fill you with poison and you will be a vessel full of vile venom. You will become a cup of wrath. Or, you could find something else to fill yourself up with. You could join us, here, in this place. Help us… this place is available to you Dim, but you must first step into the light a little more, just as Luna has.”

“The choice is yours, Dim.” The Essence of Night flapped her wings while she pronked and her mane bobbed against her neck. “If you give me a chance, I will fill you up with good things. I can give you something that Grogar cannot. You are still a worthy vessel and I will make you a prince of this realm, should you desire it. Don’t answer now, take some time, think about it. Sleep on it, as the old saying goes.”

“When next you return to us Dim, perhaps Canterlot will be ready for visitors.” Doppelgänger Dim peered off into the distance in the direction of the city atop the rock spire. “When you are here, they can’t reach you. You’re safe here, Dim, mind and soul. Should you find yourself in trouble, come here, come to us, and we will protect you.”

The night blue alicorn filly lifted off from the parched, dusty ground and hovered up beside Dim. He froze, finding himself unable to move, and when she looked into his eyes, he saw the moon. A blazing, brilliant light flooded into him through his eyes, and it poured right into his brain. Her face was beautiful, perfect, and when he basked in the glory of her countenance, pain and sorrow fled from his body. She moved closer, filling his vision, and she was now so close that he could see nothing else but her. He felt a soft touch upon his cheek, and realised that he had been kissed.

Something like a live coal blazed on the spot where her lips had touched him, but it wasn’t painful. It was life, it was wholesome, good, and pure. It was everything he had longed for in his life, a touch that hadn’t debased him or defiled him. This kiss was a mother’s kiss, a real one, the kind that made the world make sense while it drove away the shadows of doubt, fear, and confusion. The sort of maternal kiss that eased the pain of the many scrapes, bumps, and bruises of life. This was a kiss that did not diminish, but restored.

Lost in peaceful dreams of perfect maternal kisses, Dim slumbered.

Author's Note

Don't worry, the pace will pick up soon. We'll be departing and heading to a new location.

Partners

When Dim awoke, his body was leaden, his throat was sore, and his stomach was nothing more than a cavernous, empty space begging to be filled. Tilting his head, he tried to deal with the tight tension in his neck, and his horn scraped against the wooden headboard of the bed. His eyes were gummed shut and it was only with great difficulty did he open them. The sensation of his horn scratching against the wood sent pleasant shivers through his brain, making his ears quiver and his dock tingled in response to his half-awake state of mental arousal.

Sometimes, it just felt good to scratch.

When he managed to get one eye open, he found Blackbird staring down at him in a quizzical manner. Even with his bleary vision, he could see the scratches on her face, the swelling, and the bruises lurking beneath her fine black pelt. It occurred to him that she lacked avian features on her face, but he couldn’t decide which stood out more, her felinity or her equinity.

“Hello, sleepyhead.”

Groaning, Dim was in no mood for cheerfulness, though a part of him was happy to see her.

“You’ve been out for a while. A long while actually. While you were asleep, I allowed Short Stitch to really put you under because you needed your throat stitched back together properly and it wasn’t the sort of job that she could do with you being all awake and paranoid. She gave you potions to keep you in a deep, restful sleep so you would heal and make new blood. You were running pretty low on blood, it seems, and she was kinda worried that you were gonna die. If you are gonna be angry with somepony, be angry with me. You leave her out of this, you grump!”

All in all, Dim took the news rather well, and croaked an apropos response: “Well, shit.” As more of him began to wake up, he stretched beneath the blankets, his horn poked the headboard again, and he knew that he wanted to be angry, but he just didn’t have it in him. There were other far more pressing needs, like getting to the bathroom, and fixing the emptiness that gnawed at his guts.

Blinking away the sleepiness, he managed to get both eyes focused on Blackbird, and then he said, “Go fix me some eggs. You know how I like them.” Then, his hoof shot out from beneath the blankets and he gave the hippogriff beside his bed a smart smack to get her motivated and moving.

“What?” Blackbird’s eyes widened with incredulous shock that she had just been smacked like common livestock.

“Eggs. Now. Go.”

“Why you no good… why I oughta… you good for nothing… I can’t believe—OUCH! Hey! You just pinched me in a very delicate place! What'd ya do that for? You keep your magic to yourself!”

“You seemed to have a hearing problem so I had to do something to get your attention—”

“So you pinched my fuzzy-wuzzy…” With her words trailing off—with the target of Dim’s lascivious pinch left unsaid—Blackbird began to back away from the bed, shaking her head from side to side, with her hackles raised and her leonine tail slashing from side to side. “Pervert!”

“I don’t know what I pinched, because I couldn’t see, and I just reached out at random. Now go fix me some eggs!”

“Fine, I’ll go fix you your damn eggs, but only because you’re sick and you’ve been asleep for a long time and you probably need the food.” Muttering to herself under her breath, petulant, sulky, Blackbird stalked away from the bed, her hooves and claws clicking upon the stone floor.

The plate of eggs was thrown down upon the wooden table with a clatter; the metal spoon bounced from the impact, clinked against the wooden tabletop, and was caught mid-air by Dim, who failed to notice the enormous, angry form of Blackbird glowering over him. At least a dozen scrambled eggs lay glistening upon his plate, hot and sneezy with the scent of black pepper.

Blackbird’s tufted ears twitched as her eyes alternated between being narrowed with annoyance or widened with upset. Snorting, she flounced herself down into a sitting position on the floor beside the table so that she could watch Dim gobble down his food. Then, with a huffy-puffy sigh, the stormclouds of anger dissipated and something that could only be described as relief could be seen on her face.

“While you were out, I took care of business,” Blackbird said to Dim as he took his first bite, and her eyebrows raised when she examined his face to see if he looked pleased. All she got was a contented grunt, but that would have to do. “I have a new pistol and a carbine. They’re not cannons, but I think they’ll suit me. I’ve seen to it that we’ve been paid for the Jaguar Witch. Brand threw in a little extra money to uh, compensate us for everything that’s happened.” Expectant, Blackbird seemed to quiver in anticipation of Dim’s response, for either his eggs or her accomplishments.

Dim took the news rather well, she thought. He sat there, chewing, unresponsive. Not that it took a lot of effort to chew scrambled eggs, but he had shovelled in about half the plate after the first bite and now his cheeks bulged from his love of excess. His lips and chin had a slick, greasy shininess to them, and she found herself possessed with a strange need to give him a lick, a compulsion she did not dare act upon.

“A trade ship is coming… the town is in disarray still, for obvious reasons, but there are goods and materials to trade. I guess it’s the first step towards recovery after everything that’s happened. I’m pretty sure that we can hitch a ride on the ship and get out of here. I have no idea where we’ll go, or how we’ll keep going, now that my vardo is gone.”

Now, Dim seemed thoughtful as he chewed, and Blackbird was fixated upon his every movement, his every tiny bit of expression, waiting and hoping for some kind of sign. Every muscle in her body tensed when his mouth opened, but rather than say anything, he crammed more scrambled eggs into his gob. Sighing, Blackbird wondered how she was going to live with such disappointment.

Some girlish part of her wanted to flop over onto the floor and bemoan the cruel misfortune of Dim failing to compliment her cooking, but Blackbird persevered, still hoping that he might say something, or maybe just smack his lips in a pleased manner. She now had some new, exciting understanding of why her father cooked for her mother, she had a glimpse into what must have motivated him, driven him, and she could recall how her father would sit and watch her mother eating. Stinkberry had even managed to make meat pies, quite a feat given the fact that he was a pony.

She remembered those pies, being fond of the smoked jellied eel pie, while her mother liked the smoked fish and egg pie. Unaware that she was misty-eyed from reminiscing, she gazed at Dim looking every bit like a love-stricken school filly. Dim had come for her… he had rescued her… and then, he had done terrible things to avenge her poor treatment. It was all quite flattering.

The earth ponies placed much of their cultural heritage in their food, with certain dishes being a reminder of hard times, or good times, lean times, or fat times, and her father had said that every meal, every pie, they all told a story. Remembering a recipe wasn’t just so much a practical thing for eating, but also a way to remember history and everything that had come before. Ears sagging, the corners of her mouth sinking floorward, she wished that she had paid more attention to her father’s lessons. She wished that she had learned more from him, that she had spent more time with him in his kitchen.

“The eggs are good,” Dim mumbled around a mouthful of food. “Go fix more of them.”

Ears perking, smile returning, Blackbird was only all too happy to oblige.

Smoking a fresh-rolled clove and cannabis cigarette tucked into the end of his holder, Dim stepped out into the dark, sacred night to get some fresh air and have a look around. The clove smoke numbed his throat, easing the pain, and perhaps best of all, when he inhaled or exhaled, curls of smoke didn’t come filtering out though the bandages around his neck.

Pteroșani was a town in recovery: Dim surveyed the destruction he had wrought and shivered. Was it the night air or the memory of his actions? He couldn’t tell. The market square still had tar and feathers stuck to the stones. Some of the wooden structures were being rebuilt. In some places, the stone was still misshapen from being melted and turned into lava. A simple touch with the spear tip was all it took to change a solid rock into a liquid puddle. Many of his enemies had been forcibly shoved into these puddles and would now be forever part of the town, part of the street, or a wall, or whatever. These stones, these rocks, they would tell a story for any who had the means to read or otherwise understand it.

The wicked had burned for their betrayal.

Above, the stars twinkled and Dim knew them for what they were, illusions. The moonlight hit him, struck him like a physical force, and he shivered as the cool night air left a thousand little kisses along his damp, somewhat sweaty pelt. Yes, he was ready to go, ready to leave this place, he was ready to take his chances elsewhere. When the trade ship came, he would do whatever it took to secure passage and begone from this place so filled and haunted with wretched memory.

Looking about, the memories were all too vivid. Screaming, gunfire, the stench of smoke and burning bodies. Flames, the eggy reek of gunpowder, and the thunderous rumble of stones collapsing. The things he had done here could not be undone and would forever be burned into his memory. Like Canterlot, this was not a place he could ever return to and something about this pained him, though he could not say why.

Behind him, the door opened and he heard Blackbird coming out. She moved beside him, then sidled a little bit closer. His ears perked at the sounds of her feathers rustling and she was close enough that he could feel the heat of her body. What a delightful heat it was, too, and he thought about being pulled into the bed with her. Reaching out with her talons, Blackbird plucked his cigarette from his lips and he gave her a sidelong glance as she placed it between her own lips to take a few tokes.

“Short Stitch actually knows a bit about hippogriffs,” Blackbird said as she puffed away.

“Oh?” Dim, amused and curious, raised one eyebrow.

“Gigantism is common,” Blackbird continued in a smoky whisper, her muzzle just a few inches away from Dim’s ear. “Ponies descend from horses, Dim. It seems that the theory is, when griffons and ponies breed, a pony’s horse features from the long ago past are dredged up to merge with the lion features because the size compatibility is better. The way she talked about it, it made a lot of sense. Would explain why my mother is so big and why the stories of hippogriffs all seem to be about how big they are. How we are titans.”

“We ponies really are tiny,” Dim remarked and he felt his silver cigarette holder being inserted back into the corner of his lips. “Having left Equestria, that was one of the first things I noticed about the world when I got away from ponykind. Bigger chairs, bigger tables, bigger everything. Somehow, we have conquered much of this world and adapted it to our diminutive size.”

“Dim, I want to be away from this place as soon as possible.”

Ears drooping, Dim could hear Blackbird’s voice cracking, and winced, both physically and mentally. The pain in her voice filled him with some emotion that he couldn’t quite comprehend, and quite a few that he could, such as anger. When he looked at her, she was shaking, and great big droplets of sweat rolled down her coal-black hide.

“I like Brand and Short Stitch…. in fact, I’ve grown quite fond of them. I like Short Cake and Short Stack, Short Stitch’s foals. I’ve enjoyed playing with them and telling them stories. But I can’t stay in this place Dim, not after what happened. All I can think about is them bursting into my room and tossing in the dust bombs. I remember suffocating and choking… I can’t stop thinking about all of the pain, Dim, and it just makes me angry. Being drenched with icy water to wash away some of the dust so it was safe enough to tie me up… and the beatings when I fought back… they just wouldn’t stop beating me.”

Not knowing what to say, Dim said the only thing he could think of, but it felt weak and meaningless. “I’m sorry, Blackbird.”

“You came back for me, Dim, and that means a lot. I can’t even put it into words.”

Puffing on his cigarette, Dim had no idea how to navigate this awkward moment. Nopony ever told him how to handle these moments, he was never warned, never schooled, he had never been prepared to deal with times like these. The faint breeze prickled his neck, but it went unnoticed, and his ears twitched as the fine hairs inside were tickled.

“You were my hope, Dim… for a time, a really bad time, you were all I had. When I was being beaten and mocked and all of the bad things were happening and I was blind and couldn’t breathe, all I could think about was that you would come back and save me. That you’d come back and make things right. It kept me going, Dim… and I’m really glad you came back for me because if you hadn’t… if I’d gone through all of that, everything that had happened, if I had put all of my hope into you and you hadn’t come back for me, I can’t even imagine how that would end. It makes me feel sick just thinking about it. Like, right now, I feel like barfing.”

“Well…”—Dim drew out the word for several long seconds—“we’re partners, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, Dim,” she replied in a squeaky, almost fillyish voice, “partners. I have your back and you have mine. Let’s have us a walk, Dim, I need to stretch the knots out of my legs.”

“Partners.” Dim breathed out the word with a cloud of heavy smoke and decided that a stroll suited him.

Author's Note

He really likes eggs...

Angels of arson

The spectral image of Chantico loomed large and Dim was filled a strange sense of reverence, a feeling that was almost as alien to him as empathy. The enormous cat-dog creature seemed a bit more solid somehow, a bit more real, and she flickered a whole lot less. She paused in her pacing, coming to a halt near Dim, then reaching out with her paw, she stroked him on the top of his head and rubbed his ears. Shivering with fervent devotion, Dim’s eyes rolled back into his head, but this was unseen because of the goggles that he wore to protect him from the light. For reasons unknown, her touch was decidedly real and her affections were like rain falling upon parched earth.

Chantico’s paw lingered upon Dim’s head, caressing him, and she turned to examine Briar Burr, the colt that just recently received his cutie mark. After a moment of staring into his very soul, her head turned just a little, just enough to see Short Stitch and give her a good looking over.

“I had forgotten just how fervent you little ponies are in your faith,” Chantico said and her voice thrummed with power. “Your souls are so attuned to the energies of enshrinement and your hearts are so very earnest. It is why so many court you and offer boons in exchange for your faith. At least, this is how the world once was, but I do not know about now. Much has changed while I slumbered.”

Beneath Chantico’s paw, Dim almost melted from her lavish affections.

“You there, colt, what is it that you want?” Chantico asked as she looked down at the foal.

“I wish to know the majesty of fire,” Briar Burr replied and when he looked up, flames could be seen reflected in his eyes. “Dim has told me of the firekeepers and I want to be like them. I want to be light and warmth for others. I want to push back the darkness and the cold.”

“A sincere and honest wish.” Chantico ran her paw down Dim’s neck, smoothing out his mane, then, she pulled her paw away and hunkered down so that she might get a better look at the colt. Her face—not quite a dog and not quite a cat’s—was wizened with intense concentration, as if she was reading a book. “Home and hearth has a special magic all of its own, but this old and ancient magic has been forgotten. The world has changed, from what little I have gathered. Salt and fire were once powerful weapons against the dark things of the world. Now there are spark lights and the old ways are all but forgotten, save by a few.” Turning her head, Chantico gave Dim a sidelong glance, and then she returned her attention to the colt.

Reaching out her paw, she placed it atop the colt’s head and Briar closed his eyes beneath her touch. “The ways of salt and fire are old ways indeed. In time, you will learn them. Dark times are coming, but do not be afraid. You will know the majesty of fire, little one, and the wicked shall fear your flames.”

“Thank you.” The colt sounded breathless, eager, and when Chantico’s paw lifted from his head, he opened his eyes.

“As for you…” Chantico drew out the words as she stood up and looked down at Short Stitch. “Tell me, why are you here? What is it that you want? You are no warrior. What is it that you hope to gain from me?”

Short Stitch’s ears fell, her back sank, and she stood there, looking dejected and droopy. “My heart is broken and it is filled with a great emptiness. I loved somepony… I loved them, I cherished them, I gave them the entirety of my heart. I cannot bear this pain, this ache, and I do not want others to suffer as I have suffered. I wish to burn the wicked so that I might save the good.”

“You lie.” Chantico’s response was a flat deadpan, devoid of any emotion.

“No, I—”

“You have a healer’s heart, you are incapable of such mercilessness.” Chantico moved closer to the now trembling mare, bent down, and picked the mare up. With her paws braced just behind Short Stitch’s front legs and pressed into her ribs, leaving her hind legs to dangle several feet from the floor, Chantico looked deep into the unicorn mare’s eyes, which held no flaming reflection. “Even with your broken, shattered heart and all of your grief, you do not have it in you to bring harm to another. Dim killed your husband and by all rights, you should hate him, but your compassion keeps you from wishing him harm. The love you feel is an anathema to hatred and apathy.”

“I can’t just do nothing!” Short Stitched shrieked. “I lost everything! Everything! My bed was shared with a stranger! My foals were sired by somepony that I did not know! Nothing makes sense right now and everything hurts! I am a healer stricken with disease! There are so many broken hearts right now… how do I heal them? How do I fix what is broken? How do I cure myself?”

In response, Chantico pulled the now sobbing mare into a tight embrace, cradling her like an infant. How the spectral, phantom figure was able to interact with the living was unknown, but faith was a strange, wonderful, mysterious thing indeed. “I am sorry, but I cannot give you the means to bring harm to yourself—”

“Then what good are you?” Short Stitch wailed, her cry filling the room with grief and anguish.

“I have need for more than warriors,” Chantico replied, whispering her words close to Short Stitch’s ear as she held the writhing mare. “I need healers, but precious few can bear my gift. Serve me and I will give you the means to mend flesh with but a thought and purge diseases with cleansing fire. It is time for healing magic to be restored to the world, as there is far too little and too much need.”

“Healing?” Sniffling, Short Stitch went still and looked up at Chantico.

“Healing magic is a rare gift for unicorns and those who can channel magic,” Chantico said as she stroked the distraught mare’s neck. “Those of us who can grant healing, like myself, we were hunted down and destroyed, one by one. I was one of the last, if not the very last one. Hearthfire was my gift to the world, but also a grave threat to those allied with darkness.”

“Give me the means to heal others,” Short Stitch begged, and as she spoke, pale pink flames could now be seen reflecting in her eyes. “I am sorry for my anger, forgive me.”

Smiling, Chantico gave the sorrowful mare a squeeze and then set her down upon her hooves. Squatting down, she placed one paw beneath Short Stitch’s chin, lifted her head, and looked down into her eyes, which now had glowing flames reflected in them. “I can give you nothing, you have already claimed it for yourself. Only those with the purest hearts have the slimmest hope of channeling this gift, and the fires now burn inside of you.”

Reaching out her paw, Chantico pulled Briar Burr closer, until he was standing beside Short Stitch. Placing her paws upon them both, she had this to say: “You will keep my shrine here and from this flame, other flames shall be lit and so shall my fires be spread. Offer sanctuary to any who ask, heal those afflicted in body and mind, and if you do these things, I will preserve this town.”

“How?” Briar asked.

“You shall have to trust me,” Chantico replied.

Dim, moving forwards, spoke in a soft, aristocratic voice, “This place is now Chantico’s candle in the darkness. It is in her better interests to keep the flame alive. If it goes out, she goes out. If you cannot trust in faith, then trust in a mutual need for survival. Both of you will be given powerful magics, no doubt, forces beyond what you’d be able to muster on your own. The wicked must be reminded that Chantico is a force to be reckoned with and why she was once so feared.”

“Since my awakening, I have been in the astral realms, trying to study this new world I find myself in.” Chantico pulled her paws away, stood up, and looked down at the three ponies looking up at her. “It seems the druids have also been revived as conduits of living force. They channel powerful magic, each and every one of them. I have learned much in my observations and see the wisdom in what has been done. Not one body, but many bodies. A lone, singular body is easy to destroy, and I have learned much from my defeat. So, in the two of you, I shall leave some of my essence. Each of my followers will receive a little piece of who and what I am and never again shall I know the dreary slumber of death.”

“Burn the world,” Dim said and there was a disturbing, deranged quaver in his voice.

“Yes”—Briar Burr nodded his head and the shimmering flames in his eyes blazed ever-brighter—“burn the world.”

In a much softer, far more gentle voice, Short Stitch echoed her companions. “Burn the world.”

Grinning, revealing a mouthful of needle-like teeth, Chantico nodded. “Yes, the world must be set ablaze. Grogar fears the return of the Hearthfire and healing magic. Let him know terror. Obey my commandments and burn the world.”

Blackbird was almost unable to contain her excitement and she knew that soon, it would be time to go. Well, there was still the issue of securing passage, but that was about to be taken care of and she was confident that she and Dim could get a ride. If all else failed, Dim could use magical compulsion and make an offer that the captain could not refuse.

As for the captain himself, he was quite a remarkable creature. A minotaur, he was a massive figure of epic physique that made little ponies look even littler. One leg was mechanical in nature, a strange contraption that captivated Blackbird’s endless mechanical curiousity. Little puffs of steam and black smoke could be seen shooting from various vents, and she very much wanted to know how it worked.

If Blackbird chose to adopt a bipedal stance, she reckoned she’d be about eye level with the captain. Long and lean of body, she had good balance when standing on her hind hooves and it freed up her talons to do other things. She liked being quadrupedal though, because standing up at her full height tended to leave little ponies and other small creatures scared silly. Well, she already scared little creatures, but adopting a bipedal stance only made it worse and she didn’t like causing a scene.

Dim had a remarkable lack of fear when he approached the minotaur and he stopped a few short paces away. “Hello captain,” she heard Dim say, “I understand that your name is Melvin. I don’t know where you are going, but we need a lift. Preferably to some hub of civilisation where we might secure other means of travel.”

The minotaur began rubbing his chin with one big, beefy hand and he looked down to study Dim. “The sky round these parts is a danger. Raiders, pirates, privateers, sky bandits… they go by many names, but all of ‘em pose a real danger to my ship, ya savvy? I can’t promise your safety.”

“I am more than capable of promising my own safety,” Dim said in a cool, calm, aristocratic voice that gave Blackbird a wicked case of the minge-tingles. “I am a vizard and I am willing to offer my services in exchange for passage.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed and his head turned from side to side, surveying the damage that could be seen around the town. After a few seconds, his eyes narrowed even more, becoming slits, and he studied Dim with great intensity. “Are you the one that did all of this?”

“I am,” Dim replied, still cool and calm. “I do not take betrayal lightly. I am a pony of my word and a verbal contract was breached. A lesson had to be taught.”

“I see.” Melvin’s eyes widened and he pulled his hand away from his chin to rub the spot between his massive, curving horns. “I have exactly one spare cabin for passengers. It’s not very big. There be no showers or toilets, just a drop hole. In an effort to deal with the lice and such, there are no beds, just some hammocks. It ain’t what you’d call a comfortable cruise ship. Ain’t much in the way of heat either, and it gets colder than a windigo’s teat. Plenty of heat in the boiler room though, but it’s loud enough to make you go deaf in there.”

Every muscle in Blackbird’s body tensed when Dim turned his head to look back at her. She gave him a nod, a silent acknowledgment stating that she was willing to endure such wretched conditions, and then Dim returned his attention to Captain Melvin the Minotaur, who was still rubbing the spot between his horns. Blackbird hoped that she might get a chance to check out the engine and give it a look-n-see, because she loved engines and seeing how they worked.

“Is it wrong that I kinda want to see a group of raiders try to board me?” Captain Melvin asked as his hand dropped down to rest against his hip, where a massive revolver was holstered. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want trouble, but seeing an actual wizard just lose his shit is quite a sight.”

“I give you my word,” Dim offered and his lip curled back into a smirk that made Blackbird’s legs feel like jelly, “if trouble happens, I’ll give you quite a show. Just don’t look directly into the light or you’ll go blind.”

At this, Melvin bellowed with laughter, slapped his thigh, and shouted, “Welcome aboard!”

Author's Note

And lo, the Burninator did come and the wicked were given to fiery ruination.

Interspecies relations must go into the closet

Saying goodbye really wasn’t Dim’s style, so he avoided it. In a sense, he had said his goodbyes, having left a few instructions for Briar Burr and Short Stitch. He had shared parting words with Brand—sort of—and there was no need to draw everything out. Blackbird insisted on saying goodbye though, and so Dim sulked, alone, standing on the deck of the flying scrapheap that somehow doubled as an airship.

Celestium was a miraculous substance that forgave a great many sins. Even airships that shouldn’t fly somehow did. With Celestium and enough electricity, almost anything could be given enough lift. This was a cargo ship, so the electrical demands had to be enormous. In general, Dim didn’t like knowing how things worked, because with the knowledge of how things worked, he had an intimate understanding of how things failed. Such erudition made one a pessimist. Of course, there were many times that he knew that something wouldn’t work and he did it anyway—a fool’s errand if ever there was one—because there was something satisfying about defying statistically long odds. It was like bucking life itself right in its metaphorical teeth and telling it to fronk off.

As awful as life was, it was still better than the alternative—unlife. Lichdom did not appeal to Dim, neither did vampirism or a ravenous hunger for brains. Since striking a bargain with Chantico, the undead were somehow even more offensive—to the point of being unbearable—and Dim longed to find a way to channel his hatred for necromancy into cleansing fire.

And really, when one boiled everything down, Dim’s hatred of necromancy was just an extension of the loathing he felt for his mother, which could only be expressed in the form of incendiary, fiery wrath. He longed to set his mother on fire—though not with passion, because that would make him a mother fucker—but rather with the fiery flames of cleansing that would purge her life-mocking undead existence.

Mother fucking in general was the greatest fail-state of life—becoming overwhelmed with the desire—the compulsion—to return to one’s point of origin and bury one’s self inside the snug orifice that one had spent entire months trying to escape from. It was the only failure worse than becoming undead and a definite sign that everything that could go wrong in one’s life had, in fact, gone wrong in the worst way.

Not wanting to think about these thoughts, Dim focused his attention on the crew, minotaurs, the lot of them, most of which had mechanical replacements of some sort. The ship’s engine produced the most dreadful whine and it sounded as though the turbine had an asthmatic death rattle.

The deck of the ship was rather spartan and there was a wide, spacious opening for the cargo hold down below. Barrels and crates were still being loaded, hauled up and stowed with the swing-arm crane. One of the minotaurs was wearing some kind of advanced exoframe of a design that Dim hadn’t seen before and this allowed him to lift crates, barrels, and other cargo with no real effort.

Dim had only seen one exoframe before and it was on display in Liverypool. It was heavy, clunky, complicated, and allowed a single earth pony to haul the same weight as four, but Dim doubted the claim. The huckster hawking the exoframe seemed more charlatan than salespony and the dangerous contraption threatened to rip apart the earth pony operator at any moment.

The world lacked a surplus of powerful unicorns gifted with telekinesis capable of lifting heavy loads, and those precious few who had that sort of levitation weren’t working in the cargo industry. Things were heavy and the entirety of the world was in a massive, merciless competition to adapt and overcome. First attempts weren’t always successes, but the disgusting primitives on this mudball were possessed with an indomitable will, and some, like these minotaurs that clanked and clonked around the deck, had made impressive strides forwards.

Of course, they were all walking bombs, but Dim suspected that they all knew that. Each of them that had mechanical parts or extensions had a tank of superheated steam, and the merest flick of magic would and could cause catastrophic failure. Yet, even with their own potential destruction—inescapable and strapped to their body—these disgusting primitives persisted.

Dim found himself in the unusual position of admiring them.

The sound of feathers and wings flapping alerted Dim to Blackbird’s presence and he turned just in time to watch her land. For her immense size, she was graceful—beautiful even—but Dim was biased. She had the last of their gear—what little had survived—strapped to her and she wore her guns out for all of the honest world to fear. The guns were not as impressive as the Foalsitter, but they were both of a far more modern design. Both were chambered in the Minotaur standard fourteen-point-two-five millimetre round, considered the barest minimum when dealing with megaflora and megafauna.

“Say your goodbyes?” Dim asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes.” Blackbird folded in her wings and stood on the edge of the deck, a creature of incredible beauty that could not be ignored.

She was now a precious thing in Chantico’s eyes, and as such, she had to be protected. It filled Dim with a fervent, overzealous sense of dedication. And while Dim very much wanted to wax poetic, to blurt out and say all manner of useless words, he remained practical. “Did you pack enough ammo for your weapons?”

“There wasn’t much stockpiled,” Blackbird replied, “and I’ll need to get more if we find ourself in a place that sells it.”

Frowning, Dim let out a low rumble of equine concern. This was the problem with guns, as a whole. With black powder, there was a significant advantage, as lead was cheap and readily available: candlesticks, toys, little soldiers with bright, garish paint, old pipes, all manner of stuff could be melted down and cast into a bullet-mold. Ammunition was also expensive and he knew that he would be wincing with every shot fired—each of which would be like throwing hard currency at the enemy. Dim prefered throwing fire at his foes, but had learned a few neat tricks during his last battle, a means to conserve energy for prolonged engagements.

And that had been a prolonged engagement.

“Let’s go stow our gear and check out our quarters…”

The ‘cabin,’ such as it was, appeared to be one of Tartarus’ industrial storage closets. There was a thick brass pipe that went from floor to ceiling in the middle of the room, and it pinged from heat and pressure. Touching it was a bad idea and Dim kept his distance. There were four hammocks hung in a space that shouldn’t have hammocks at all. Blackbird was going to have a rough go of things, and he felt bad for her—but also amused.

“Why are you smirking?” Blackbird demanded as her claws clicked on the metal floor.

“Nothing,” Dim lied, and he was irritated that his face had betrayed him.

“I think,” Blackbird began, “if I try to climb into a hammock, I’m gonna burn my cute little kitty slitty on that hot pipe.”

Too big for such a small room, Blackbird let out an indignant huff and glowered at the evidence of their misfortune. Meanwhile, Dim was smirking so hard that it made his face hurt, and he suffered from his intense enjoyment of Blackbird’s predicament. He dropped his saddlebags on the floor, in the corner, and then fished out a fresh, unmarked journal so that he might keep himself busy.

“Captain Melvin says that we’re heading for the minotaur city, Istanbull, to the south.” Still Smirking, Dim watched as Blackbird shrugged off her bags and stowed them. “It is down near the far end of the Worldwall Mountains, in a valley known as Starhome. Melvin tells me that the peaks of the tallest mountains align with the brightest, most notable stars on certain nights. There is much mystery there and strange magic.”

Sighing, Blackbird shook her head. “With each day that passes, the trail grows a little colder. I am starting to wonder if this is a fool’s errand.”

“It is a good thing we are fools…” Dim waited for a laugh, but none seemed forthcoming.

“Just before I left, Short Stitch warned me about getting too caught up in all of this.” Blackbird turned about, reached out with her talons, and placed them on Dim’s cheek. “She warned me that if I focus too much on what I want, I might neglect what I already have.”

“And what is it that you have?” Dim asked in a whisper that could only be heard by the most sensitive of ears.

“A best friend,” she replied, “and maybe something more. You came for me, Dim, and you rescued me. I’m never going to forget that. I trust you. For good or for ill, I trust you.” She stroked Dim’s cheek, a series of caresses that lasted for several seconds, and then she leaned in a little closer, almost to the point where their noses were touching. “You know what, Dim? I think Short Stitch was right… you’re growing a mustache and a beard.”

Dim, who had expected something else, stood there with his body quivering from need. He had needs, dreadful needs. Blackbird’s touch on his cheek left him ablaze, but also left him feeling confused, as he did not understand most of what he was feeling. There was no pink cast on his vision, no nothing to help him understand what was going on, which meant that he was on his own in this new, undiscovered territory.

Though he did not know it, Dim craved intimacy like a parched pony craved a drink of water, or a drunkard craved wine. Even though he feared the faint light, he pulled off his goggles so that Blackbird could see his mismatched eyes. Just breathing the same air as she satisfied some deep, secret desire, and he stood there, holding himself back because he was too fearful to make a move.

Rejection would be the worst.

“Dim…” Blackbird breathed his name and his ears flickered from the sound. “Dim, Short Stitch and I talked… we talked about… we talked about how you dominated her mind and took control of her—”

“I did what I felt was necessary at the time,” Dim cut in, feeling the need to defend himself. Blackbird’s eyes were pools of liquid fear now, and he watched her chewing on her lip. She was shaking, trembling, she was terrified, and he realised that Blackbird was afraid of him.

“I wouldn’t stand a chance, would I?” Blackbird asked. Before Dim could respond, she pinched his lips shut so that she could keep speaking. “I’d never even get a chance to tell you, ‘no,’ would I? If you really wanted to take me, there would be nothing that I could do to stop you. I wouldn’t even be able to fight back, would I?” She let go of his lips and stood there, waiting.

“Blackbird, I—”

“Be honest with me, Dim. Please?”

Unable to look her in the eye any longer, Dim stared down at the floor and he could feel Blackbird’s hot breath on his ears. “No, there would be nothing that you could do to stop me. That is the whole point of compulsion and domination spells… total control. But I—”

“Dim...” Blackbird placed her talons beneath his fuzzy chin and forced him to look up at her. She was careful, mindful of the fresh stitches on his throat, and her touch was gentle. “I said that I trusted you, and I meant it. Thank you, Dim, for being honest.”

“A domination spell wouldn’t get me what I want from you,” Dim said, feeling a need to confess his feelings. “My whole life, I was given whatever it was I wanted and I just took the rest. You have something I want, Blackbird, but it is something that cannot be taken.”

“But it can be given,” she whispered, and her words were playful. “You’ve already shown me how much I mean to you. Now it is just a matter of finding my mother and then all of us can be happy together.” There was something almost foalish about her seductive playfulness and she scratched beneath Dim’s chin with her knuckles. “Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to take a tour of the engine room. I’ve never seen a coal dust fired turbine before and I have me a powerful hankering to do a bit of learning!”

Author's Note

Next chapter: science and salt.

Separate ways

Crystals, Dim? It is curious that you dabble in this subject. There is much I can teach you. What is it that you are after, I wonder? You are up to something interesting and I don’t know what it is. I get so little time to experiment with my own magic these days. How I wish I could join you in pony so that we might work together.

The wind tugged at his hat but a simple spell kept it anchored in place. Inches away from his face, he kept a blob of liquified salt that somehow did not burn him. From this glowing mass of liquid salt, he drew away small quantities and allowed them to crystallize while he tried to infuse them with magic. Magic that he pushed through the liquid salt changed, though he could not say how, not exactly, other than there was a distinct difference.

“Salt purifies,” Dim muttered to himself, an act that was unnecessary because the pink presence in his mind could share his thoughts. “So does chalk. I don’t understand the how or why, not completely, but I do understand the end result.”

Dim, what is the end result? The presence seemed curious and eager. I mean, of whatever it is that you are after.

“I don’t know yet,” Dim murmured as he pulled away a little more of the boiling liquid salt and began to cool it. “I wish to create an explosion of ultimate purity… fire…. cleansing fire that will purge corruption and evil. Magic bears a taint, I have discovered that in my studies, and Grogar and his minions I assume, have some means, some measure of magic resistance because of this taint. It stands to reason that if I can purify magic on the spot, then I can purify Grogar’s minions—”

You mean burn them to death!

“Yes!” Dim hissed and a passing minotaur jerked and shivered at the sound.

On its own, the salt began to grow in some odd way as it cooled and transitioned into a crystalline form. The chaotic fractal sprouted like a weed and Dim watched with keen interest while also trying to keep it thoroughly infused with magic. Floating nearby, a pen scratched away in his journal, scribing his observed results. This was the most difficult sort of magic, channeled spells involving components, and this was why wizards needed extensive educations. Any nattering boob could cast a cold spell filtered through a blue sapphire, but to create a new spell entirely from scratch was an epic undertaking, an accomplishment that Dim was already hankering to be able to boast about.

You’re trying to purify raw aetherfire, aren’t you? Dim, that’s insanity… that is a raw element that manifests when magic is being channeled. This isn’t an element that is controlled, not in the traditional sense, it is raw chaos that is harmonised when channeled by will. It is the primary element that emits light and sometimes heat given the circumstances… Dim, don’t do it! Not even Celestia or Twilight tries to tap aetherfire directly to ignite it!

“Then I shall be the first.”

No! No! No! The pink presence was so panicked that there was a physical pressure inside of Dim’s head now, pushing on the inside of his ears and the backs of his eyeballs. I am supposed to keep you from blowing yourself up! The world too! Auntie will be furious with me! With a violent pop that threatened to make his eyeballs go squirting out of his skull, the pink presence fled and Dim felt alone… so utterly alone, the voice in his head keeping him company having gone silent.

Free of distractions, Dim focused upon the task at hoof. All of magic was inherently corrupted due to the Black Star—a subject that his mother had been obsessed about. It had come to Terra a long, long time ago and the impact had been catastrophic, to say the very least. Magic became wild and dangerous for a time. Monsters were spawned from the introduction of strange, new energy. The dust from the impact almost destroyed the sky and left Terra’s natural system of weather in a state of perpetual, inoperable chaos.

With the skies forever damaged, pegasus ponies and griffons were needed to control the weather and the corrupted monsters that prowled the skies. The ground too, also suffered as the dust settled, and earth ponies were needed to maintain the surface, while diamond dogs dealt with the corruption that gathered far below. The world had survived this potential extinction because all of the sapients had come together and pooled their respective talents. Unicorns and those who could directly channel magic wrestled with the state of magic itself to bring order back to chaos.

All of the surface had been corrupted from the dust of the Black Star, but as Dim had discovered during his time on the Grittish Isles, there were pockets—pools—wells of purified magic far down below the chalk and the salt. He had felt them, touched them, and it was with much pleasure that he recalled the sensations experienced when touching them during his studies.

In hindsight, his mother’s knowledge—Dark Desire’s knowledge—of the Black Star made sense and Dim wondered how much of what his mother knew must have come from Grogar himself or sources close to Grogar. He had no doubt that his mother’s intimate knowledge of this subject had come from those who had witnessed the dreadful event. On that day, a seed of evil had been planted.

It stood to reason that if the surface magic had been corrupted, it could be purified, much like it was down deep in the hidden clefts of the ground. Magical radiation rose through the ground, which acted like a filter, and then ambient magical energies were channeled by the various sapients of Terra. There was passive magic, like the earth ponies and the diamond dogs, the pegasus ponies and the griffons, and there was active magic such as what he himself could do.

Entranced, Dim watched the salt flowing, changing shape, and in the crystalline salt lattices that formed, he could see tiny dancing lights—the glow of aetherfire, the visible light of magical radiation that came from thaumaton particles. Thaumatons, which interacted with everything and changing their properties profoundly. Things like Celestium—two neutrons, two protons, two electrons, and at minimum one thaumaton—allowed airships to fly. Solestium—a hydrogen atom infused with a thaumaton—was a volatile substance that Dim had been warned many, many times not to play with.

And of course, he had played with it.

Manfrit the Minotaur had a mechanical hand and was endlessly fascinating. He was older, greying, and had more than a few scars. From the battlefield or the boiler room, it was impossible to tell. The old minotaur was kind, patient, and knowledgeable, answering just about every question that she could throw at him.

For Blackbird, it was the perfect, welcome distraction after everything that had happened. The tour of the engine room—no doubt a jarring experience for some due to the noise—had done a good job of settling her nerves. The coal fired turbine was an amazing contraption; with so few moving parts, it had remarkable reliability and could be depended upon to run and run and run.

The ship’s turbine wasn’t direct drive—though the wash from the turbine was ported through thrusters for maneuverability, she had asked about that to satisfy her feline curiousity—but was electrical. The ship had a tremendous electrical demand to maintain lift and the remaining electricity was used to power airscrews. Anything left over flowed into batteries and in the event of an emergency there was a bank of pegasus pony spark jars—containers that held compressed lightning bolts suspended within glass.

It was the most amazing thing ever and had almost left Blackbird in a freakout state.

“Never had a day in school beyond what I saw as a calf,” the old minotaur bragged as he pulled out a small brass flask from beneath his apron and unscrewed the stopper. “Learned by doing. Became a stowaway on a ship full of griffons. Good sorts. After dangling me over the rail for a while, they decided to keep me and I started a tinkering away. I went from crew to crew as the years passed, learning all I could.” Tilting his head back, the old bull took a nip from his flask and grimaced.

“The engine degreaser keeps you going, old timer?” Blackbird asked and she hoped that her good natured teasing would not offend.

Manfrit laughed, a sound that was far too soft, all things considered, and didn’t seem quite right coming from the minotaur. He put the stopper back onto his flask and then he made it vanish back beneath his thick, scarred leather apron. “It helps me manage pain,” he said in a muted voice, and offered no further explanation.

Blackbird decided to not push the issue any further and felt it necessary to change the subject. “So, your hand, I’ve never seen its like. How does it work? It is an impressive replacement and I’m dying to know more.”

Reaching out, the minotaur pulled a rickety wooden chair away from the battered steel table, threw his leg up over the back of the chair, and then sat down. The chair let out an alarming creak and its wooden legs all bowed from the minotaur’s weight. Blackbird too, sat down to join Manfrit and her eyes remained focused upon his mechanical hand. She leaned against the edge of the cool steel table, eager, her felinoid nature demanding to know all that could be known.

“There are those who say that we minotaurs are too heavy to be skyfarers who ride upon the wind,” Manfrit said as he squinted and made himself comfortable. “Those little ponies, like your companion, there’s not much to him… they are an ideal species of skyfarers. I envy them in a way. Small bodies, light weight, it must be easy to pack in tight. I hold a lot of affection and fondness for the little buggers.”

At this minotaur’s rumination, Blackbird found herself smiling.

Manfrit extended his arm to reveal his hand and all of his mechanical fingers relaxed into a neutral position as steam shot out of the vents. The hand itself was made of brass and what appeared to be nickel to Blackbird’s eyes. A faint glowing golden light could be seen emanating from the vents and when Blackbird leaned in closer, it was like standing with the sun on her face.

“How does it not burn you?” Blackbird asked as she pulled her head back.

“I have to drink a potion every day,” Manfrit replied as something within his hand hissed. “If I don’t, the hot metal will start to burn my stump. It’s not a complicated potion though, thankfully. Just a tincture of winterwort.”

“Oh.” Blackbird nodded, knowing what winterwort was. The ponies back where she called home grew it for use in alchemical powered refrigerators to keep things like milk cold.

“It’s quite simple, really. It depends on pressure and mechanical energy,” Manfrit began. “Inside of each finger there is a stout length of cable that runs from the fingertip all the way up to expanding cylinders in the arm. The pressure in the cylinder can be regulated, and this drives a piston out up into the arm, extending it and making the actuator longer. This pulls the cable inside the finger, and the fingers curl into a fist.”

Blackbird did her best to visualise this and found that it made sense. Real anatomy worked in a similar way, so she reckoned, because fingers—or in her case, talons—had tendons and such that made the fingers curl when they went tight.

“It’s powered by thaumaturgically infused coal,” he continued as he made one finger wiggle and each movement was accompanied by puffs of steam. “It doesn’t so much burn as it gets hot. It has to be exposed to a certain type of magic and this causes a reaction that makes the coal slowly crumble away while giving off intense heat and residual magic. The water is collected from magical condensers and it takes a while to build back up to full pressure if all of it is released. It’s slow, it’s clunky, it takes constant repair, but it is better than not having a hand.”

“I think it’s amazing.” Blackbird reached out and gingerly poked Manfrit’s wiggling brass finger with her claw. “There is such a demand for industrialisation… I learned about this in school, you see… and the cost of industrialisation has been a whole lotta maiming. City states and provinces have actually made mandates prohibiting industrialisation because they don’t want their subjects maimed and all of this stuff fascinated me to no end and now I get to see stuff like this and it just overloads my mind because I can see so much potential in it even though it takes something awful for this to be necessary—” Blackbird inhaled, wheezing, and then gave Manfrit an apologetic glance to make up for being a motormouth.

“It’s all so futuristic,” she whispered, trying hard to contain her growing excitement.

“Aye, in my own lifetime, I have seen airships go from steam boilers to coal dust fired turbines.” Manfrit allowed his mechanical hand to drop down to the table and his brass fingers tapped against the steel surface. “I’ve seen which way the wind is blowing. Soon, things will be too complicated for an old gearhead like me to understand. Not without a whole lot schooling. The world is changing faster than we can keep up with.”

“Thank you… really… for everything. You’ve been wonderful, Manfrit.”

“It’ll be a short trip, but I can teach you all I can in that time. I wouldn’t mind competent help.” The big bull minotaur grinned, revealing a fair number of missing teeth. “It’d be nice to pass along even just a little of what I know.”

“I’d like that.” Blackbird nodded and held out her talons, waiting.

Manfrit, still grinning but also solemn somehow, took Blackbird’s offered talons into his own hammy, fleshy hand and gave them both a squeeze and a shake. “We can start by getting you acquainted with the steam piping… the blood vessels of this ship, and her old brass heart. There’s a dreadful leak somewhere and pressure for vital systems is far too low. Want to see if we can fix it?”

Still nodding, Blackbird replied, “That’d be wonderful…”

Author's Note

It's a pleasure cruise!

Get stuffed

Salt was salt. Until it became something else. Or perhaps, it was seen another way. Dim contemplated the use of lysergic acid diethylamide, his reliable means of peering into the magic spectrum and maybe having a better look at salt, giving it a thorough examination. Perhaps seeing it in a new way would help him unlock its secrets. There were secrets there, secrets that would only be discovered by those brave enough to go looking.

The brim of his hat wobbled in the strong wind, but Dim himself seemed untouched by the gusts. To any passing casual observer, something was very wrong with the forces of nature, as it was only Dim’s hat that was affected by the wind, but not a strand of his mane nor his tail flew astray. The overall effect upon the crew of minotaurs was quite unnerving, and they gave their strange passenger a wide berth.

Ponies had an unusual relationship with salt, requiring quite a lot of it. The more magical a pony tended to be, the more salt they tended to require. This was something that Dim had learned when he began taking alchemy lessons as a small colt. When he was older, he had learned about crystal ponies after their re-emergence, and they had outrageous salt requirements—rivaling that of unicorns, no less—suggesting that they were perhaps the most magical ponies of all. For most, it was merely a passing curiousity, to an alchemist it was just one fact among many, but to Dim, who was fishing for ideas, it tickled his imagination.

Salt purified magic and Dim was certain that crystal ponies had secrets. If only he could study them somehow. Oh, not dissect them—that would, indeed, be dreadful—but to live among them, to observe them, study their diet, and observe the state of magic around them. An alchemist’s interest lurked deep within the confines of Dim’s grey matter. Ponies had strange ties to magic, most of which were still unknown, still unstudied.

Alchemy was really just thaumaton physics, just as chemistry was electron physics.

“Dim!”

Hearing Blackbird’s voice, he lifted his head and allowed a few grains of salt to slip away into the wind. The wind tugged on Blackbird’s mane, feathers, and tail, and being a creature of the air, she seemed happy. Her happiness was a precious thing… a treasure, and as Chantico would be so quick to remind him, precious things were precious things.

“Dim, we need your help.”

“Pirates?” he asked as he focused upon Blackbird.

“No—”

“Sky jellies?” A quick scan of the horizon revealed nothing.

“No, nothing like that.”

“Well, out with it then,” Dim demanded as his patience ran out.

“We need you to patch a pipe—”

“We?”

“Manfrit and I.” Blackbird lowered her haunches down and had a seat in a position that was distinctly feline, tucking her talons in between her hind legs. “The pipe is part of a retrofitting and it is inaccessible to either of us, because some dope ran it through a ventilation duct. You… you’re a little pony, so we kinda wanna stuff you into the ventilation shaft so you can fix the pipe.”

Dim’s lip curled back into a magnificent, majestic, aristocratic sneer. This sounded an awful lot like manual labour, of a sort. Exile though he might be, vagabond though he was, some things were beneath him. Still… it might make Blackbird happy, and it would give him leverage to use against her when he was hungry for scrambled eggs. On the other hoof, he could just tell her to fix him some eggs, and he was rather certain that she would.

“When you sneer like that, it makes me want to pinch your cute, cuddly little cheeks.”

Behind his smoked glass goggles, Dim’s eyes blazed with murder and he did his best to bore a hole through Blackbird by staring at her. His cheeks were not to be pinched. There was much he would tolerate in his partnership with this commoner… this… disgusting primitive, but he drew the line at cheek-pinching.

“You know, Dim, you have dimples. You do… it’s kinda cute. But you can’t see them when you’re smiling, like on normal ponies, no. You’re dimples only show up when your sneering, scowling, frowning, grimacing, or glowering. It’s like your face was made to have an upside-down smile. I kinda want to boop-boop your dimples, Dim.”

So this was what it was like to be in love… one was filled with mercy where there should be rage and fury. Love was an odd concept, a confusing state of being where one felt affection at a moment when the only rational response was flaming death or disintegration. How very peculiar love was, and how weak and ineffectual it made him.

Dim was a pony defined by disproportionate responses.

“You want me to crawl into a dirty vent?” he asked, hoping to clarify things.

“Um,” she ummed, and then she hemmed and hawed a bit. “It’s also quite wet, from the steam leak and a bit rusty. That’s actually how we found the leak. We found water dripping from the vent opening and the state of the vent is kind of a dead giveaway.”

“I see.” Dim’s voice was one of surprising calm and it revealed nothing of his emotion.

Leaning in until she was almost nose to nose, Blackbird asked, “What is it that you want in return?”

“Hmm.” Dim contemplated this query and began to cogitate suitable answers.

“I’ll fix you eggs,” Blackbird offered as one of her perfect eyebrows arched. “I’ve already checked the galley. They have eggs. Still fresh. Just picked up with the rest of the cargo.”

“Fine.” Dim’s response was difficult to hear over the wind. “You have a deal.”

“And you, you have a nice meal coming. I’ll try to make it special.”

First things first: Dim cast a spell to protect him from burning himself. The vent was a cramped space, hot, and had a live steam pipe ran through it. Squinting, he tried to peer inside and the humid, dirty air tickled his lungs. He wanted to cough, but doing so would hurt his throat. In silence, he pulled off his hat, his cloak, and everything else he was wearing, save his goggles, because it was just far too bright for his eyes.

“Dim, be careful, I don’t want you getting cut, or scraped… I’m having second thoughts about this, actually. Manfrit, Dim has very thin skin and bleeding problems.”

The big minotaur shrugged in response, but had nothing to say.

“I’ll be fine,” Dim said to Blackbird. “Now lift me up to the opening so I can do what needs to be done.”

“Okay, Dim… but please, be careful. If something happens to you, I’ll feel really bad about this.”

If something happened to him—if—Dim had already planned it to milk it for all that it was worth.

For the first time in his life, Dim realised that he might be somewhat claustrophobic. This was a dreadful realisation to have when one was crawling on their belly, wiggling through a duct like an inchworm with a steam-filled pipe mere inches above them. He felt ahead with his telekinesis and found nothing that might snag his tender flesh, which left him both relieved and disappointed.

So, this is what disgusting primitives did for a living. Dim did not like it, not one bit, being in cramped, dirty confines such as this one is what made primitives so disgusting in the first place. He would have to find some way of getting clean on this ship and he wondered how bad he was at weather manipulation spells. It had been a while since he had practiced, because they seemed so common and mundane. He had other spells, far more important spells, that he had prioritised for practice, such as conjuring and concentrating raw hydrogen.

These things were complicated and required a great deal of practice. If one got lazy and failed to stay in practice, one might go to conjure hydrogen and get hydrogen sulfide instead, and that was bad. Dim had done that once when he was younger and his mother had punished him for such lax, offensive-smelling magery. There was just no way to apologise for such a thing and one was forced to live with the shame of it, the bitter, degrading shame of failure.

Ahead of him, he saw it. The pipe joined together and there was a curl of steam shooting out of the spot where the ends of two pipes were fitting into the connector thingy. That was easy enough to fix, as having two sections of pipe at this point was foolish. Reaching out with his magic, he turned the brass pipe into a malleable liquid form, shaped it like clay, then turned it back into a solid that was smooth and perfect.

That was it. Rather ambivalent about whatever it was that he just did, Dim realised that he had just used the spells of a common tradespony for their intended purpose. He had not melted metal for the sake of war or battle, but had performed the spell in exactly the way it was designed for. He had done manual labour—well, by unicorn standards—and now he feared that he might have the stink of physicality about him. Where would this inanity end? Smithing? Farrier work? Cleaning? Housework? Cleaning dirty windows? Sweeping the street? Thankfully, he had his cutie mark already, lest he end up with some distasteful brand of shame.

As much as it bothered him to conclude this, he now had some understanding of his mother’s rage at learning such mundane, common spells, tradespony spells. He had done so out of defiance, thinking that there was some greater mystery within the simplest of spells, or maybe he had done it to drive his mother to distraction… but now that he was older and a little bit wiser, he saw the danger of what he had done. He might have earned himself a cutie mark as a pipefitter, or a plumber, or whatever it was that disgusting primitives did for a living. Suffering a simple twist of fate, he might have become like them, destined to be a dullard.

Still, would it have been so bad?

Yes, Dim surmised after but a second. It would have been dreadful being mundane and not having the means to go off on some grand, epic adventure and find Blackbird’s mother, Starling. Still, fixing a pipe like this wasn’t so bad, not really, it was fulfilling in its own way and he could see how a common, garden variety unicorn might be proud about getting paid for doing this and making a career of it.

This is what he wanted to protect in others that could not protect themselves. Perhaps knights and wizards should do manual labour to have a better understanding of what it was they were protecting. That said, a wizard that gave up all of his time for study so he could garden was utterly useless. There, at that moment, crammed into a dirty, dusty duct, Dim saw the crux of the problem, or at least he thought he did. For one glorious moment, it was like the clouds had parted and his vision had cleared. But that moment passed and he was filled with a million new questions.

Distraught, Dim let heave a sigh in the dark and regretted the very nature of enlightenment. This was as good of a place as any to do a bit of thinking. Wait, what was he thinking? No it wasn’t. Hissing in contempt, Dim began to back himself out of the vent.

Back up on deck, Dim had a vacant stare, focusing upon nothing at all from behind his goggles, because there wasn’t much to see. The ground was beneath the clouds and up here, all that could be seen was blue. The air was thinner here, but not too thin, and the ship made good speed at this altitude.

His experience in the vent had changed him, but he could not say how. How could such simple things, such mundane things, how could they be so profound? Were the great mysteries of life hidden in the most banal of acts? What happiness did the disgusting primitives have that he did not? Puffing away on his cigarette, Dim tried to compare these feelings he had now to the feelings that he had on that terrible night when he had and Blackbird had been betrayed.

He had felt so alive that night, laying waste to everything around him. Free to act without constraint, he had been able to unleash the full potential of his magic and try new things. Dreadful things. Terrible, terrific things. Ears twitching, Dim could remember the taste of the air that night, sharp, bitter, and rather metallic. The heavy stench in the air after the dynamite had exploded, mixing, mingling with the stench of burned hair, feathers, and fat rendering from crispified, blackened flesh.

“Ship!” a voice cried out, pulling Dim from his thoughts. “Ship off of the starboard bow!”

Turning about, Dim could never remember which direction was starboard and he wished that such things could be announced in plain language. Turning about, he saw something off to his left, but it wasn’t his left, no, when Dim got his bearings he saw that the approaching vessel was off to the ship’s right. These things were confusing, but Dim didn’t have time to think about them, as he had a ship to potentially blow up.

How hard could it be?

Captain Melvin came stomping out on deck, pulled out a telescope, and had a look. After a moment of peeping, he pulled the telescope away from his eye and chuckled. Dim did not relax his guard, but he did wait for orders, he awaited clear instructions before he let go and filled the skies with fire.

“Prepare for rum, sodomy, and the lash… Captain Jolie Rouge is coming by for a visit!”

Author's Note

Hooray for rum, sodomy, and the lash! Yay!

I was once an adventurer like you... and then I took a pirate to the knee

The fast approaching ship was terrifying to behold. Slim, slender, slight, sleek, and bristling with weapons, the main hull reminded Dim of a dragonfly for some reason. No smoke was visible as it slipped between the clouds, and the twin transparent sails that protruded from each side really did look like iridescent wings. Strong magic was at work here, Dim could sense it, but he did not understand the workings of the strange ship. The nacelle was long and quite thin, offering a poor target from a distance.

It was clearly a ship built for speed.

As it pulled up alongside, the sails retracted, folded in against the sides of the ship, and again, Dim was reminded of a dragonfly. There were ponies on deck, but also griffons, a minotaur, and creatures that resembled diamond dogs but were somehow just different enough to not be diamond dogs. Those on deck were hooting and waving as the ship pulled up closer, and Captain Melvin was waving back.

Dim did not relax his guard.

A griffon picked up a small bright red pony with a pale pink and white mane. With a few flaps of his powerful wings, the griffon was airborne with what appeared to be a rather foalish-sized earth pony, and Dim took note of the many guns and weapons the griffon had strapped to his body. The earth pony fidgeted, and for good reason, it was a long drop with quite a sudden stop.

Melvin had a crazy grin as the little red pony was flown over by her griffon guard.

“Jolie,” Melvin called out as he threw both of his hands up into air. “How have you been? I’ve missed you!”

“It’s only been a few weeks, you big suckup,” the little red mare replied with a heavy Fancy accent.

Dim blinked, having trouble with what he was seeing. The mare was no bigger than a filly, but there was something about her that was grown up—she had a maturity to her, even if her voice was squeaky. She was tiny enough to be fired out of a cannon, and Dim had never seen anything quite like her.

“Take on new crew?” the little mare asked as she was dropped onto the deck and right away, she turned to size up Dim. “Wait, I know you… well, I’ve never met you, but I know you. You’re wanted. Be careful, stranger.”

“I intend to be,” Dim replied as he tried to take in the tiny mare that was somehow bigger than life itself. If presense were size, she’d be the biggest pony he had ever seen. For some reason, he felt at ease around her, even though he knew that he shouldn’t be.

“Jolie, these are my guests, Dim and Blackbird.” The captain made a gesture with his hand at the small pony that didn’t even come up to his knee. “Dim, Blackbird, this is Jolie Rouge, Raptor of the Northern Expanses.”

“It’s all just a really, really fancy way of saying privateer,” the little mare offered as she batted her eyelashes at Dim. “Captain Melvin, want to take on a bit more cargo? We’re running heavy and it’s putting a real strain on the ship. After you sell it, I’ll know you’ll square up with me later.”

“That depends,” Melvin replied as he angled his horned head down at the little mare. “What did you take?”

“Ammunition, mostly.” Jolie let out a sniff and then began to study Blackbird while her griffon bodyguard stood beside her. “Lots of alchemical rounds from Menagerie. Destination unknown, but you’d think they were preparing for a war or something. There’s some guns too, and alchemical bombs.”

“There’s still some room in the hold,” Melvin muttered.

“Alchemical ammunition?” Dim found his interest piqued and he had to know. “What type? What sort?”

The little mare frowned, looking displeased, and Dim heard her respond, “Quite a few of them are the worst kind. Sodium potassium rounds. They ignite mid air and explode on impact. They carry quite a thaumaton charge too, so they’ll do a number on unicorn shields. The fact that there are so many is quite alarming.”

Now, Dim found himself frowning, but this was difficult because Blackbird had pointed out his dimples. Once one became aware of certain things, the knowledge was like having the plague. The big griffon beside the little mare was still as a statue and Dim could not help but wonder if there was more going on between the little mare and her bodyguard. With a turn of his head, Dim saw that Blackbird was standing right beside him, and she had much the same stance as the big griffon. Yes… bodyguards were good, because one tended to trust them.

“Also quite a number of anti-dragon rounds,” Jolie added and she gave her head a sad shake.

“I would like to study some of these.” Dim wondered how Blackbird might feel about him spending some of their money. “I could offer a little compensation, if necessary.”

“Sure thing, cutie, we can talk about it over tea,” Jolie replied and she gave Dim a grin. “So, Captain Melvin, what say you?”

The big, burly minotaur let out a sigh. “Let us discuss the transfer of cargo over tea…”

Jolie Rouge, the little mare, was prepared to do business and she packed her own tea service, which was brought over by some of her crew. Dim watched the entire surreal event in near silence, saying very little, and he kept an eye on Blackbird, who was conversing with the big griffon bodyguard. Based on how Blackbird kept turning to look at him, Dim could only guess that she was discussing the finer points of the care and feeding of a little pony. Or maybe they were exchanging pointers on how to kill those who menaced their little ponies, it was impossible to tell.

“—so I hit the ship before they even realised they were in danger and we had them boarded in record time. My crew is getting really, really good at what we do. We took their cargo, crippled their ship, and left them adrift as per the regulations of the Merchant’s Guild of Istanbull. We were polite and even apologised for the inconvenience. No one got hurt, which is just the way I like it.”

Melvin snorted. “I never understood the need for polite pirates—”

“Privateer!” Jolie demanded with good-natured aggravation.

“Ah, yes, my apologies, Jolie… I don’t understand what the Merchant’s Guild hopes to accomplish. If you ever get caught, you’ll see no such courtesy. They’ll either string you up by your neck or you’ll be used for some crew’s comfort. Neither is a good end.” Reaching out, Captain Melvin gave the tiny mare an affectionate pat.

Jolie snorted with laughter and shoved away Melvin’s hand with her hoof. “It’s the distinction, silly. Slavers die a horrible death and everybody else gets to live. We want everybody to be too afraid to haul slaves… it’s working too. More cargo captains have gone honest and have sworn off the slave transport.”

“And the slavers,” Blackbird said, cutting into the conversation, “what of them? How are they killed? Do they get a trial?”

“Get to Istanbull and you’ll find out.” There was something about Jolie’s mirthful expression that was unsettling.

Dim understood what was being done here. Cargo captains who worked for a rival nation or city state had nothing to fear, no worries of loss of life or limb, and it was of a benefit to them to peacefully hand over their goods. Slavers though, slavers had much to worry about. Fear was a powerful motivator to keep captains and crews away from the easy money of the slave trade.

Of this system, he approved.

Wearing his best aristocratic manners like a fine suit pulled out of mothballs, Dim allowed himself to relax a little. This wasn’t High Tea, these gathered creatures weren’t nobles, but he found that he could not hold their status as disgusting primitives against them. The tea, which was steeping, smelled delightful, what little he could smell with the gusts of wind stealing all scent, and quite a collection of cakes, cookies, and treats had been set out.

The conversation continued, but Dim wasn’t listening even though his ears twitched. They were discussing the transfer of cargo now, and he had no interest in that. What he did have interest in, was Istanbull, which had drawn a line in the sand and was sacrificing wealth for morality. Slaves meant easy money, both from the sale of creatures and their labour. Exploitation offered tempting returns for little investment.

“—Gratin over here, I saved him from an alchemist’s butcher block. So what’s the story with you and your little pony?”

Lifting a cookie, he nibbled the edge and found that it was somewhat stale. Why was it so hard to find good cookies here in the hinterlands beyond Equestria? It wasn’t a bad cookie, it just wasn’t fresh. He wondered if Blackbird could make cookies, and if so, what would it take for her to make cookies for him? When he turned and looked, he found that Blackbird too, was eating a cookie. As an omnivore she could eat almost anything it seemed, and that was just one of the many things he found fascinating about her.

“Oh, on the first day I met Dim, he threatened to boil a minotaur in his own semen.”

“Sounds like typical behaviour… for a Dark.”

Pulling the cookie away from his lips, Dim inserted himself into the conversation. “And just what do you know of the Darks, Jolie?”

The little mare bubbled with mischievous laughter and the wind tugged on her mane. Intelligence glittered in her eyes, revealing a keen mind, and Dim wondered what her talent was. Somehow, he had missed her cutie mark and he really should have been paying more attention. Her laughter was infectious and Dim found himself almost smiling.

“I know enough,” was her cryptic response.

Frustrated, Dim was not used to being denied, but he chose to let the issue drop. Meeting another Dark would be unfortunate, as it would most likely mean having to kill somepony. Still, if there were other Darks about, perhaps he should make an effort to find out what Jolie knew. He could ask… or he could just take… nibbling on his cookie once more, he let the issue drop, for now, though he felt some regret for doing so.

Dim was far too mercenary to miss an opportunity.

With the tea and pleasantries over, it was time for business. A small wooden crate stood open on the deck and within were several weapons packed in straw and sawdust. Blackbird seemed eager to have a look, but also hesitant to spend any of what money they had. Dim had a far more practical stance on the matter, and wanted Blackbird to be as well-armed as possible.

“Menagerie tends to favour the big rounds,” Jolie said as she stood on her hind legs with her front hooves braced against the top edge of the crate. “Their guns are a delivery system for alchemical rounds. They are well made—exceptionally well made—powerful, and when paired with the right ammo, turn the wielder into a force to be reckoned with. You don’t have to be a unicorn to cast spells.”

“May I?” Blackbird asked as she bounced in place, her claws and her hooves clattering against the hardwood deck.

“Go ahead,” Jolie replied with a polite gesture of her dainty red hoof.

Before the words were even spoken, Blackbird reached into the crate with her talons and pulled out a weapon. Straw and sawdust fell away to reveal a gleaming long gun. For a pony, this would have been a portable cannon, but for Blackbird, it looked like a rather petite handgun. It was, of course, terrifying to behold, and the fact that she held it with such relative ease left Dim feeling somewhat unsettled, though he could not say why.

“What is it?” Blackbird asked and she sounded gleeful.

“That’s a revolving ten gauge,” Gratin the griffon replied, and he pointed at the stock protruding up from the weapon strapped to his back. “I have one just like it. Good weapon. Versatile. Good for clearing crowds if you load it with shot, but can also be loaded with slugs or alchemical rounds.”

“Oh! Neat!” Blackbird hefted the ridiculously oversized weapon, held it up to her eye, and peered down the sights.

Her head bobbing up and down, Jolie laughed. “That’s a thirty three inch octagonal barrel that’s been hardened for alchemical loads. Most of my crew carry some version of one of these, they favour the double-barrel coach gun model, but that’s a long one. You’ll note that there is a bayonet mount on this particular model.”

Blackbird was biting her lip and Dim was feeling an odd sense of arousal. A happy Blackbird was an appealing, attractive Blackbird, and he squirreled away this important observation for later perusal. He marvelled at the ease with which she hefted the gun around, holding it in her right talons. It looked heavy and grossly overbuilt.

“How much?” he asked.

Jolie’s eyes met his and Dim felt a curious jolt. There was a look of cold, calculating cunning in her eyes, and he drew the conclusion that the tiny mare was far more dangerous than one might think. It appeared as though she was trying to peer through his goggles, or maybe she was trying to see right into his mind.

“Take it,” Jolie replied in a low voice. “I think my boss would want you to have it. You’ll be meeting one another soon enough. I’m not allowed to say more… I can’t say more. Even if I tried, the words wouldn’t leave my tongue.”

“Protection measures from interrogation?”

“Something like that.” Jolie’s nostrils flared and her ears angled down over her eyes. “Take this as a token of our goodwill. I think I can get away with saying that, and I guess I have. When you get to Istanbull, try to have a little trust.”

With a turn of his head, Dim looked up at Captain Melvin. “Were you to bring me to Istanbull?”

Rubbing the spot between his horns, the older minotaur nodded and before Dim could say anything else, he said in defense of himself, “We wish you no harm and only wanted to help you. Not everybody is out to get you. Too much has been said, I think, but maybe it is for the best. At least this won’t be such a sudden surprise when you get to Istanbull. Help is there.”

“It seems we are wanted, Blackbird. What shall we do? Shall I kill all of them right now?”

“Don’t kill them, Dim… I want to have friends. Even after everything that just happened, I want to be able to trust. I’m not ready… I can’t give that up like you have. I want to believe that others can still be good.”

Blackbird’s voice had a tremble to it that bothered Dim a great deal. He could kill them all with no effort. Even Gratin, dangerous though he might be, wouldn’t stand a chance. After a few moments of contemplation, he decided that he could forgive this initial treachery. Help would be appreciated—welcomed even—and anypony powerful enough to have taken an interest in him could make a potentially useful ally.

“If you wanted to kill us, we couldn’t stop you,” Jolie confessed and her voice was husky with fear. “We’re incapable of doing harm to you—”

“The same force that keeps you from talking also keeps you from harming me,” Dim said as his quick mind cottoned on. “You’ve been geased.” When he looked back into Jolie’s eyes, he knew, even if she couldn’t give him an answer. He was impressed with this level of magery and his initial assessment seemed correct: somepony powerful had taken an interest in him.

“Cat’s out of the bag, I suppose.” Gratin looked uncomfortable and he kept his eyes locked on Dim. “Jolie is very dear to me, just like Blackbird is to you. I’m not one to beg, but I do hope that you’ll keep that in mind.”

“Somepony knew where I was.” Dim said his conclusion aloud and glanced around at all of the various faces that were staring at him, waiting. “Somepony knew I was in Pteroșani… and knew I needed… help. This is quite curious.”

“I was on my way there anyway, to pick up cargo.” Captain Melvin shuffled a bit on his hooves, and his face was wizened with worry. “I really don’t want to die right now. I gave up piracy so I could die as an old bull in my bed. This really puts a crimp in my plans.”

With a sigh, Dim bowed his head. “It is too nice a day to go on a killing spree…”

Author's Note

Say hello to a couple of major characters. Remember them.

Equine harassment

“So, you made a friend today? Am I to understand this correctly?”

“Gratin and I totally hit it off. I hope we meet up again.” While Blackbird spoke, she appeared to be quite pleased with herself, and while Dim liked seeing her this way, it also filled him with some strange, unidentifiable fear. Now, more than ever, Blackbird posed as a mystery.

“Why? How?” Dim worried, fearing whomever else Blackbird might hit it off with.

“We both like little ponies.” Blackbird’s smile was teasing and drove Dim to distraction.

“This is worthy of friendship?” This was quite strange, and Dim was pretty certain that he didn’t like sharing. While he tried to control his possessive feelings, they were strong, confusing, and more than a little scary. He was not a pony given to sharing, no, Dim took and he kept. In a stunning moment of self discovery, Dim found that he had a jealous bone.

“I think so. It is a common bond we share. We both like little, fuzzy, cute things.”

Ears perking, Dim rejected this notion. He wasn’t little, at least by pony standards, he most certainly wasn’t cute. That said, he was rather fuzzy however, this much was true, but he resented Blackbird right now for pointing it out. Why the resentment? He didn’t know, but it felt right. Earlier, she had threatened his masculine dominance when she said she wanted to boop-boop his dimples. Now, she had called him little, fuzzy, and cute.

It was degrading in the worst way.

If sexual harassment existed, then so did equine harassment, and it was awful. In mere moments Dim achieved an incredible level of understanding of what mares of the world must go through, with catcalls, hooting, wolf-whistles, and the like. And now, he was on the receiving end of harassment that was just as degrading and demeaning. How could Blackbird do this to him?

Did she not respect his equinity?

Now, Dim found himself in the same sort of trap as those who became objectified sex objects faced: he would have to live up to Blackbird’s expectations, he would have to be little, fuzzy, and cute, because if he wasn’t, something else that was little, fuzzy, and cute might get her attention, and it was in that moment that Dim understood the way of the world. It was awful. Demeaning. Degrading. If he rejected the whole cute pony thing, he would be looked over and potentially ignored—unloved—left unfulfilled—replaced by somepony else that would embrace the shameful, humiliating state of existence that was being a cute pony.

There were feminists, masculinists, and at this moment, at this time, a newborn equinist.

“There is more to me than being cute and fuzzy and having a brushable mane and tail,” said Dim to Blackbird, feeling a need to protest his objectification.

“Not much more,” was Blackbird’s teasing response. “Say, Dim, would you like a carrot? I filched some from the tea party.”

Mouth watering, Dim found that he would very much like a sweet, sugary carrot, but he had no taste for the glaze of shame, degradation, and humiliation that coated said carrot. If he rejected the carrot, would Blackbird go out and find another cute, fuzzy, tiny equine to stuff her carrots into? He could try biting at her fingers, but that could go bad, as Blackbird could bite too. Those who submitted to equine harassment and bore the shame of it were rewarded with tainted love and fulfilment… and those who did not… in moments, Dim was overwhelmed with a new type of insecurity and a feeling of doubt that he did not like, not at all. He wanted carrots, he wanted to be brushed, to be given affection, but he didn’t want to be belittled or diminished from it.

A new and dangerous game had begun at some unknown point, and Dim did not understand the rules…

When the sun dipped down near the horizon, the temperatures plummeted and Dim was almost certain that he would die from the cold. As the creeping darkness intensified, hoarfrost formed an icy crust along the deck and the nacelle above. Little spikes of ice formed along the prow, a beautiful sight to behold, but a dreadful sensation to feel. Dim’s tattered cloak was far too thin to protect him from this kind of cold.

Even though he longed to feel the embrace of night, it was time to go indoors and seek refuge. Below them, it appeared as though a storm was brewing, but up here they would be safe. The air was thin, but also crisp, clear, and invigourating. Dim did notice that he had to breathe a whole lot more to get the air he needed, but it wasn’t too labourious. In a way, it was pleasant, life-affirming, a reminder to breathe more and be conscious of one’s efforts.

Faces formed in the hoarfrost, Dim could see them, they looked like spirits contorting in agony, eyes wide, mouths open, screaming, shrieking, wailing about their frozen fate. Luminous wisps of plasma formed along the steel rails and the support struts that connected the ship to the nacelle. The storm below had to be intense for corona discharges to happen this far above.

In silence, Dim turned to go.

Indoors, it was no better. It was cold and the air was thin. Laying in a hammock, Dim was almost certain that he was going to freeze to death, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to survive this journey. There was a searing hot steam pipe in the middle of the closet they called their room, but condensation was freezing into jagged crystals on the walls. The entire ship creaked and the metal sang a strange song as the cold crept into the very bones of the vessel.

Each breath he took froze into tiny flakes of snow that drifted down in a tiny swirling blizzard. This was a miserable experience and it seemed that no matter how he wrapped himself in his cloak and his blanket, he could not get warm. Laying in his hammock left him vulnerable and exposed, with no real insulation. At any minute now, Dim was certain that he was going to chip his teeth, because he couldn’t get them to stop chattering.

Death by hypothermia seemed certain.

Magic was an option, but it was draining and he could only keep a spell going for so long before facing exhaustion. At some point, he would need to sleep, and then he would be in trouble. As he lay there, cocooned in his blanket and his cloak, Dim began to understand why the ancient ponies of old wore clothing—wore fur and hide—and he was certain that if he had access to such things he would be wearing them now without disgust or complaint.

“Dim… Dim, I’m worried about you.”

Beneath him, Blackbird had her own troubles, those being that she really didn’t fit into her hammock all that well. Still, she had somehow managed to get situated after many failures and falling onto the floor at least a dozen times. A few of those times she had almost burned herself on the pipe in the middle of the room. What had been a most wonderful day had turned into one nightmarish night.

“Dim, get down here and sleep with me—no! I didn’t mean like that! Uh, um… come down here and let me get you warm. Uh, no, that doesn’t sound good either.”

Somehow, he managed to focus long enough to cast a spell, and with a flash, Dim went from one hammock to another. The moment that he appeared atop Blackbird, she began to peel away his blanket and his cloak, and then combine them with her own blanket. Her dense pelt and her supple skin were as hot as a furnace to Dim’s icy body, and he clung to her, shivering. After a moment of fussing with blankets, Blackbird wrapped her wings around Dim in an insulating cocoon. These were not short pegasus wings, but massive griffonesque wings that completely swallowed him.

“Don’t get no funny ideas,” Blackbird warned as she wrapped her somehow boneless body around Dim. “You’re like ice. Ugh, you’re so cold it hurts me to have you touch me. I should have said something sooner.” While she spoke, she continued to tuck the blankets around them in a cocoon, lifting and twisting her body so that she could slip the edges and corners beneath her.

Now that he was a little warmer, Dim’s shivering intensified and he curled into a fetal position atop Blackbird’s stomach. He pulled in his legs and his hooves as close and as tight to his stomach as possible, all while rubbing himself against her, cherishing her warmth. With luck, he might soon feel his hooves, legs, and testicles again, though he wasn’t looking forward to the pain that was sure to come when they thawed out.

“I’m not even that cold. Well, I mean, I’m a little cold, but I’m not cold like you are cold. I guess it is because I am made for these high altitudes and I have magic that allows me to breathe thin air and I have this thick, fuzzy coat that keeps the cold out.”

Gritting his teeth, Dim tried to stop shivering and he hated Blackbird just a tiny bit for having something that he did not. The hammock swayed from side to side and he could not help but wonder what might happen in heavy turbulence. Would the pipe be a danger? It might. The pipe was hot enough still to steam, but somehow offered no real heat to the room.

“I wonder what my mom is doing right now,” Blackbird asked and her voice had a rather foalish quality to it. “I keep having bad dreams that the trail goes cold and I can’t find her. There’s been a lot of dreams, actually. My mother was good to me and now I just have to find her so I can help her get straightened out and we can be together, and maybe we can talk about my dad. I miss him too, but it is easier somehow, because he’s gone and I don’t have to worry about him.”

In a hazy moment of vague awareness, Dim realised that he was being cuddled, and he thought about how he had felt earlier. Thinking about it now, he was too cold to care. If Blackbird wanted to collar him and tie ribbons in his mane, he would probably let her just so he could stay warm. But the moment he thawed out… there would be a reckoning. Why, he might even raise his voice.

“I’m scared to go to sleep, Dim,” Blackbird whispered and her voice was now more foalish than it had ever been before. “I keep having bad dreams… Dim, I killed a few ponies… it all happened so fast and everything was so confusing. My dad, he’s in my dreams, and he scolds me. I feel bad about what I’ve done, Dim, I feel so guilty, and my dad, he’s not here to tell me that everything is okay and that I just did what I had to do, or whatever it might be that he would say. I don’t know what he would say about everything that just happened, and that bothers me.”

“There is one pony whom I have killed that I have deep regrets about,” Dim said in response and then he noticed that he could hear Blackbird’s heart beating just beneath his left ear.

“Darling?”

“Yes.” Dim’s voice was a pained hiss as it slipped out from between his still chattering teeth. “Sometimes, I think about what you said… about the abuse… about me being a victim too…”

“And?”

“I just think about it.” Dim’s ear twitched and thumped against Blackbird’s breastbone. It was starting to become warm and a bit humid beneath her wings. He didn’t mind, he welcomed it, and as he thawed out, he realised that this wasn’t as comfortable as one might think. She had bones, hard places, Blackbird did not make for a comfortable bed, and the back of his mind informed him that she was probably just as uncomfortable as he was.

“I don’t know what is going to happen between us.” Blackbird inhaled and Dim rose with her girth. “Darling… it seems that I have to share you with a ghost, and after talking with Short Stitch, I think I’m okay with that. I didn’t mean to blab your secrets, but I needed some help. I hit a real low point while you slept.”

“I do not begrudge you.”

“Thanks, that actually means a lot. It feels good to tell you, because I’ve been worried about it and feeling guilty, and after the killing I done, that bit of extra guilt bothered me.”

Dim felt her talons move between him and her wing. He tensed a little, not knowing what to expect, and then he felt the dangerous tickle-prickle of her talon-fingers against his scalp. It was, at the same time, both exhilarating and terrifying. Fingers were also quite pleasurable and in mere moments, he was rendered powerless, much in the same way that he was when Chantico stroked him. This, along with the steady rise and fall of Blackbird’s girth beneath him as well as the abundance of warmth left him drowsy.

Even though he was certain that Blackbird had more so say, Dim slipped off into fitful slumber…

Author's Note

I don't know what happened here, but I decided to deconstruct sexual harassment. Feel free to rake me over the coals in the comment section. I might kinda sorta deserve it.

Don't drink the ink

Rain fell upon the dead ground that wasn’t quite dead. Dim knew this place, he knew its geography, and not long after arriving, he found the place where Canterlot stood growing. Life was coming to this place, if the rain was any indicator. Rain was vital to this place’s existence, because the realm of dreams had to mirror the real world. Natural systems had to function and certain rules had to be followed.

Somehow, Dim knew this place, the rules of this place. Time was different here; it was, at best, a nebulous concept and while he was here in this place, Dim had all of the time in the world. He could study spells, magic, he could take all of the time he needed to study the very ebb and flow of magic. In this place he could cast ten thousand fireball spells until he had it just right. In a realm such as this one, Luna had honed her magic into absolute perfection, understanding every nuance, every subtle change.

A short distance away, a paper pony pronked, and upon seeing her, Dim hurried after her. She was both familiar and strange, comforting and disconcerting, and from her eyes inky tears flowed. They fell to the ground, staining it black, and Dim noticed that from the black puddles sprang more life. So entranced by what he saw, Dim ceased his pursuit to have a better look at a patch of wildflowers that had sprang up from an inky black puddle. They were vibrant, vivid, they were oversaturated with colour and as Dim watched, some of that colour seemed to dribble out and then spread into the ground around the puddle.

To satisfy his own curiousity, Dim stuck his hoof into the ink puddle. He stirred it around, watching the flow of the strange liquid that seemed both thick and thin at the same time. The ripples, the movements had a peculiar solidity to them, while still being fluid. It was a liquid of contradictions.

“What is this?” he asked as he lifted his hoof to study the strange liquid.

“Magic,” the paper pony replied and something about her tone was teasing. She stood about a dozen yards away, weeping tears of black ink that stained the soil around her hooves. “Raw magic, pure, free of taint, free of corruption.”

“You are seeding this place.” Dim studied the paper pony, trying to take in as much detail as possible. “How is this magic pure? I thought magic was corrupted.”

“More than you know,” the paper pony replied and there was something in her voice that was almost laughter. “The wellspring of magic itself was polluted. I have since fixed that. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a lot of work that I must be doing, and I have an appointment that I need to keep with a young colt that I made a promise to.”

As he stood there, feeling stupid, Dim realised that the inky substance was soaking into his hoof. He looked down at it and could feel eyes upon him as he studied the curious phenomenon. “This is a dream—”

“Of course it is, silly.”

“No, when I was in this place before, I had a measure of control. Now, I am dreaming of this place, and I am not actually here. At least, I don’t think I am. I am skeptical of everything going on.”

“You sound far more commanding when you don’t second guess yourself and you are confident about what you think is going on,” the paper pony replied. Reaching out a wing covered in messy parchment feathers, she wiped her inky eyes, smiled, and ink flowed through the spiral channel of her horn, staining it.

The dream realm began to change, turning liquid, and much like watching a painting in reverse, everything flowed out of existence until all that was left was paper, endless paper in all directions, a vast, featureless paper plane that stretched as far as the eye could see. Dim noticed that the ink on his hoof was gone, having been absorbed.

“Hey Dim, do you know what soul mates are?” the paper pony asked.

Even though he knew it was distraction, Dim was curious. “No. Tell me.”

“They are two stories that are so deeply entwined that, given enough time, they become one book. What was once two eventually becomes one. It’s pretty fascinating, Dim. I’ve seen some things… amazing things. But I’ve never seen two books so in love with one another that they became just one book before. It was pretty special the first time I observed it.”

Why was she telling him this? Eyes narrowing, Dim studied the paper alicorn, because she was the only thing to look at in this space. Sniffling a bit, the paper pony sneezed and the most amazing thing happened: wads of paper and ink shot out of her nose, formed into beautiful paper butterflies, and then off they flapped towards some vast, unknowable horizon.

“Excuse me,” the paper pony said, and her ears dipped in an apologetic gesture. “That just happens sometimes. Random acts of creation and all that. Once, I sneezed a tiny cosmos into existence. I’ve been watching it for a time and one of the sapient species that developed near a peculiar ternary cluster of stars has just began the neolithic era. It was great fun watching them as they crawled out of the sea. I was worried for them when they climbed up into the trees. I’m pretty confident that coming down out of the trees was a mistake though. I don’t like it, no sir.”

If there was a purpose to this bizarre dream, Dim had no way of knowing what it was. He was well beyond baffled and had passed into the lands of confusion. Perhaps he had eaten something that hadn’t quite agreed with him, or maybe he was dying of hypothermia and these were his final, chaotic moments as he succumbed.

Then again, the ink seemed to soak into his hoof, so perhaps there was a point to all of this. There was knowledge too, an understanding of how things worked. How things operated. Dim’s keen intellect told him that he was getting closer to the heart of the matter, but there was still too much that was unknown.

“This ink,” he said as he waved his hoof around, “this is dream symbolism for something else. You are… rewriting me. Altering my purpose. Ink is something you place into an empty vessel and I strive to be a worthy vessel. What is going on and what are you up to, I wonder?”

The paper pony’s demeanour seemed to change right before Dim’s eyes.

“A dangerous game is being played and even now, I struggle to arrange the pieces on the board. Even with some knowledge of future events, the future keeps changing. It alters itself, it corrects. It is like a stream that over time, erodes the land and changes course. A thief of cutie marks was introduced into the game by an unknown player and she introduced a bleak future. Right now, many strive to make corrections to the ripples in the flow of ink. With the chaos introduced into reality, many destinies have been awoken that should be slumbering, and there are sleepers who should be awake and aware. With the power of the ink, I make corrections. Not changes, not alterations, but corrections.”

“And am I to be corrected?”

“In another future, in another when, she stole your cutie mark and doomed that future, condemning all who lived there to desolation. The residual ripples have effects in this reality, but as the ripples travel outward from their point of origin, they grow weaker. They are strong here because we are close.”

After a moment, Dim nodded because he understood. At least, he felt that he had a pretty good grasp of what was being said. His extensive schooling gave him unique insight and comprehension of esoteric subjects just like this one. “And am I to understand that Grogar is exploiting these ripples somehow?”

“Catrina’s power is unimaginable. She seeks the Worldstone, an artifact that was made here in this reality, but it is no longer here. Star Swirl the Bearded hid it elsewhere, in another when for safe keeping. I must say, this conversation was unanticipated.” For a moment, the parchment alicorn seemed distracted, and she shook her head from side to side, causing her neck to wrinkle. “I must be slipping in my old age. It is nice to converse with another.”

Intrigued, Dim asked, “What would she do with this Worldstone?”

The paper pony shrugged. “This is something that I actually do not know. Star Swirl somehow managed to hide the very knowledge of what the Worldstone was or what it did. Many pages were left blank. He committed impressive magery. I can only assume that because Catrina desires it, that she must know or have some idea of what it does.”

“Catrina must be stopped.” Dim felt a pressing need to say more, but he wasn’t sure what. He liked having something meaningful to say when he made a statement.

“Continue upon the path that you are on with Blackbird. You cause your own ripple effects, Dim, as you have become a force of correction. I have the feeling that you will do much to thwart Catrina, Belladonna, and Dark Desire just by virtue of what you are and what you do. As you push towards the other side of the world, you strive ever-closer to a destiny of your own making. You are far, far away from home, Dim, and even further from Celestia and Luna’s influence and control. You are where you are needed most, rest assured. You have become the knight errant, journeying far beyond his country’s borders.”

“Why tell me this?” Dim asked.

“It feels nice to talk to another,” the paper pony replied. “I developed a sudden interest in friendship, I suppose.”

“I have trouble making friends,” Dim blurted out for reasons he could not explain. No pink compulsion was responsible, and the onus for this dreadful sin was entirely upon him.

“There is an understatement,” was the paper pony’s deadpan reply.

“I have a friend… just one friend, I think, and she is friends with another. I am not okay with this! I am not okay with this at all.” Dim, standing on a plane of paper that stretched out forever in all directions, now felt small and insecure. “What if she finds somepony else and likes them more than me? I’m an asshole…”

Again, the paper pony’s demeanour changed and she underwent a visible shift of some sort. Emotion could be read in her eyes, but Dim did not know what it was. Pity would be met with resentment, but try as he might, he could not read her face, even though she was made of paper and wept tears of ink. He should have been able to read her like a book and this was most unsettling.

“You go into an undiscovered country—”

“Do you mean on the other side of the world or do you mean friendship?”

The paper pony seemed thrown off by the interruption and after she took a moment to recover, she threw her head back and laughed. It was an odd sound, unsettling, because it sound very much like two ponies laughing, not one. Unable to understand what was so funny, distrustful of the duplicity of duality, Dim scowled, revealing his dimples, something he had a painful sense of awareness about now.

“Blackbird poses a significant weakness to me—”

It was Dim’s turn to be interrupted and the paper pony had some wicked crinkles on her face when she cut in, “Blackbird, who saved you from certain hypothermia?”

Shuffling on his hooves, Dim heard the paper underhoof make papery noises and he tried again. “She poses a significant weakness to me. The very idea of her being hurt unhinges me. And she can be hurt. She has been hurt. It is all my fault, too. I don’t know how to keep her safe.” Reaching up with his right hind hoof, Dim scratched just behind his ear and tried to think about what else to say.

The paper pony spoke with two distinct voices when she replied, “I too, have had my friends get hurt because of their association with me.” Her eyes narrowed and her inky eyelashes stood out in sharp contrast to the bone-white parchment of her face. This time, when she spoke, it was with one voice. “Before you go home, you will have many weaknesses, friends that you will hold dear. You will let them into your heart and you will suffer for having known them. You will know a special type of friendship that is forged in the fires of conflict and is made stronger by a shared sense of loss.”

“I do not want this,” Dim replied, and his voice was a bit whinier than he would have liked. “This weakness is abhorrent.”

“You do not have a choice, Dim. It has already begun to happen. Certain events have been set into motion. You have made friends, whether you realise it or not, and it isn’t just Blackbird. Already, the world changes because of the friendships you have forged. Such is the nature of friendship, it is the means to change the world.”

“Why come to me? Why tell me these things? What is it that you hope to accomplish?”

“I come to many with the hope to impart knowledge.” The paper pony’s unknowable expression intensified in some weird, unreadable way, and her ink-stained eyes had a mysterious gleam to them. “It is part of the corrective process. We all have our part. Me. You. Others. You go into darkness, just like so many others, and you will shine your light and you will inspire others to goodness—”

Dim laughed, a cynical, bitter sound filled with derision. It was the very essence of contempt and scorn. “Pfagh! Have you seen how fractured my morals are? Am I to be some bearer of Equestrian ideals? Am I to be some great and shining light of civilisation so that the disgusting primitives will somehow know a better way? I am the last pony you want if you wish to uphold some moral ideal. You have sent a cripple to do the job of the able-bodied.”

“You have a purpose, a destiny—”

“One that was corrupted—”

“But is being fixed. You can still stand against the rising darkness that threatens to consume everything. You can be a force of good, if you so chose!”

“Ich werde die Welt dann grau machen.”

Then turn the world grey, damn you!

Pausing to catch her breath for a moment, the paper pony shook her head and tried again. “Just do something! Look, I understand your reluctance. I too was hesitant about leaving my lovely library tower to go to Ponyville for some silly festival. I had a really bad attitude about it, and I was mouthy, and sullen, and I pouted, and I might have been a little insolent, and that is kind of what destiny does, Dim. It finds ponies just like us to do the worst jobs because the common pony would buckle or lie down and die under such strain.”

There was a logic to this that Dim could not deny and his lip curled back into a resentful sneer upon having this realisation. “I will do what must be done for Blackbird’s sake.”

“Well, that’s a start, Dim.” The paper pony’s lips crinkled as they puckered and she seemed every bit as cantankerous as the flesh and blood unicorn that she faced. “You approach great conflict and trouble, Dim. Alone, you will fail. There is help to be had though. Try to follow Blackbird’s lead. She is trusting, kind, honest, generous, warm, and funny—”

“Most of what you have listed are weaknesses. Weaknesses that I exploit in others.” Dim felt this helpful interjection was necessary, but the scowl on the face of the paper pony was giving him second thoughts. “I just thought that I should point that out. Sorry.”

“When next you dream, I am sentencing you to friendship kindergarten.”

“That seems a bit harsh—”

“But well deserved.” The paper pony sighed, which sounded like pages rustling together. “Now go wake up. Trouble approaches and you have work to do. You have a boatful of friends to save. Go and do what you do best.”

“There is trouble?”

“Yes, Dim, now wake up!”

Author's Note

We do not apologise for any confusion in this chapter.

The building blocks of nightmares

The living cold gnawed at Dim’s vulnerable flesh as he strode across the deck with Blackbird just behind him. Three minotaurs stood near the rail, Captain Melvin and two others. They wore heavy woollen greatcoats that covered them from head to hoof, and steam billowed from their flaring nostrils. Already, Dim was starting to shiver and all he could think of was snuggling up against Blackbird once more.

“Captain, I saw their lights for a moment and then all went dark,” one of the minotaurs said. “You gotta believe me, I would never cry out a false alarm.”

“Malik, calm down, I believe you.” The captain sounded quite calm, given the situation. “Look, I get it, you’re young and you want to prove yourself. You already have my trust.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

When Dim drew near, he saw the captain looking down at him, but he could not read the old bull’s wizened face. Fear? Worry? Distress? Age and wrinkles did much to hide whatever it was he was feeling. Reaching out with his keen senses, Dim tried to get a feel for the situation, whatever it might be.

“Why ain’t they attacking?” Malik asked and his voice quavered with fear.

“They are letting us panic,” Dim replied as his sharp eyes tried to hunt for lights in the impenetrable fog.

“And how would you know that?” Malik demanded and his voice gained pitch.

“It is what I would do. By the time I got around to killing you, your fear would be flowing out behind you.” While Dim spoke, Malik began to whimper; when the panic seemed to approach a breaking point, Captain Melvin slapped the young minotaur across the face. Annoyed by this action—though he could not say why—Dim frowned and gritted his teeth together, trying to stave off the inevitable chattering.

“Malik, Myles, arm yourselves and bring me a rifle.”

“Yes, arm yourselves.” Dim nodded and felt icy fangs biting into his flesh. In the distance, he sensed magic—not just magic, but unicorn magic. It was curious and strange, though he could not say why, and it felt as though something was off about it. “I am going to go and say hello to our guests—”

“Dim, wait, what?” Reaching out her talons, Blackbird grabbed Dim by the leg. “You’re going to do what?”

The captain let out a growl of concern and shook his head. “You mean to tell me that you are going to make a blind teleport in the dark from one moving ship to another?”

“Yeah, Dim, no.” Blackbird’s green eyes glittered in the faint light.

Rather than argue, Dim locked onto the odd unicorn magic, and then he vanished.

“That son of a bitch!” Blackbird shouted and her voice carried through the thick fog. “I don’t even know if the asshole son of a bitch made it… for all I know he could be falling to his death right now. Bastard! I’m going to claw his good for nothing balls off and fry them with his eggs!”

“This is why I don’t get married,” the minotaur named Myles said as he backed away from Blackbird, who had steam rising up off of her back. “Shit”—the minotaur drew the word out, saying it like ‘sheeeeit’—“like this on a night like this leaves me fucking unsettled. And then that creepy little pony goes off and leaves us all standing in the fucking dark, not knowing a fucking thing. There won’t be a damn bit of sleep for me. My nerves can’t take this horseshit.”

“Myles, don’t be such a fucking calf,” Captain Melvin said to his panicking deckhand.

“Damnit, Captain, ponies are supposed to be all cute and cuddly and friendly and shit, and that creepy ass motherfucker leaves my damn teeth on edge! And now he’s done gone and fucked off and we’re stuck standing here not knowing what the fuck is going on or what the fuck that creepy ass motherfucker is off doing in the motherfucking dark.”

“Myles, grow a pair of balls.” Captain Melvin pulled a pipe out from his pocket, placed it in his lips, and then stood there, scowling. A moment later, he pulled a match, struck it on his horn, and lit his tobacco. He stood puffing and a warm, comforting glow could be seen rising from his meerschaum pipe.

“Hey…” Malik seemed a little hesitant to speak, but he placed his big, beefy hand upon Myle’s arm and continued, “At least that creepy little pony is over there on their boat and not on ours. That’s something.”

Feeling the cold of the deck creeping into her hooves and talons, Blackbird considered her options. It was dark. Dark. No light was visible and trying to find the other ship in the dark with this fog seemed impossible. She looked up at Captain Melvin and noticed that his pipe was an elaborately carved seapony. After staring for a time, she tore her eyes away and made herself look for some speck of light out in the swirling fog, some trace of hope in the dark night.

Skinning Dim alive might seem like an overreaction, but Blackbird was confident that such extreme measures were justified. The captain continued puffing on his pipe as the two younger minotaurs continued peering out into the thick, soupy darkness. She thought about strangling him, but his throat was still healing. Tearing the ears off of the inconsiderate asshole was an option, and she chewed on her lip while she gave this option some serious contemplation. Dim’s cute and cuddly adorableness wouldn’t save him, no, she was going to be firm with him and give him a piece of her mind for this little stunt.

“Hey, Captain, what d'ya think is going on over on that boat?” Malik turned to face his captain, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his greatcoat.

Captain Melvin puffed away for a time, blew a few smoke rings that vanished into the fog, and then he made a halfhearted shrug. “Bad things, I reckon. I figure he’s doing his job and earning his keep. We shouldn’t worry about it, we’re sailors and he’s a killer. We do our jobs, he does his, and so long as we stay alive, I ain’t one to complain.”

While the captain might not be one to complain, Blackbird was.

Stepping over the still-twitching corpse of a griffon, Dim made his way through the stygian darkness that filled the corridors of the ship. With his ears, he listened and with his telekinesis, he felt his way along while keeping the light snuffed. The sounds of panic could be heard, and he found them annoying, all this weeping, pleading, and sobbing. Was it the griffon that had shot at him? He didn’t know, and honestly, he didn’t care.

Somepony—somebirdy—had shot at him, and that was unforgivable.

Even worse, the bullet carried a heavy thaumaton load, had shattered his shield, and then had blown a hole right through his hat. Shooting a vizard’s hat… that was just rude and Dim could not allow such uncivilised, uncouth behaviour to go unpunished. Pausing just long enough to get his bearings, he focused upon the sounds of panicked whimpering ahead.

“Die Dunkelheit kommt für dich.” Ears pricking, Dim could hear that his prey was almost hyperventilating and this filled him with much satisfaction. “Hast du Angst vor dem dunklen, kleinen Vogel?”

“Bitte töte mich nicht.” The voice—screechy with fear—came from behind a door.

To which Dim replied, “Zu spät, es ist Zeit zu sterben.”

“Nein!”

“Ja.”

Reaching out, Dim pushed the door open after popping the lock with his telekinesis. There was no light, no hope, not even his own magic offered any illumination. Dim ‘saw’ everything, using his old trick to its fullest advantage. The griffon was cowering in the corner, now trying not to breathe and give himself away. It was too late, of course, Dim knew where he was.

“Es gibt Monster im Dunkeln,” he said in low voice while using a ventriloquism spell so it sounded as though his voice was coming from another corner. A terrified gibber could be heard in the dark, and Dim’s lips curled back from his teeth in a cruel, sadistic smile. “Ich werde deine Seele schlucken.”

“Nein, bitte, nein…” Pleading, the voice in the darkness cracked and all that could be heard now was panicked pants while the eye-watering stench of felinoid urine filled the air.

“Es ist Zeit für das Abendessen.” In the stygian shadows, Dim was grinning almost ear to ear. He allowed his telekinesis to tickle the griffon a bit, unseen hands groping and grabbing in the darkness, and he drew out this end to the point of torture. He played the griffon like a panpipe, and scream after scream came out of the griffon’s beak.

Alas, Dim grew bored, and this was the griffon’s undoing. Wrapping two spectral hands around the griffon’s neck, Dim throttled the large, dangerous predator, but did so in a slow, methodical way, because somebirdy had to pay for shooting a hole in his hat. After what felt like minutes, Dim was rewarded with the delightful sound of the griffon’s death rattle and then the body went mostly limp, though the limbs twitched a bit.

Only one living thing remained on the ship, and Dim hurried off to deal with it.

In the faint flickering light of a lantern, Dim studied the sick unicorn while wondering what might be done for him. His muzzle was bloody and from Dim’s initial inspection, it appeared as though he had bit his lips, the inside of his cheeks, and his tongue. The unicorn’s eyes were unfocused, glassy, and the pupils had wild spasms.

“Aurora,” the unicorn croaked in a dry voice that had far too much crackle. “The lights… I wanna see the lights… you promised me some Aurora if I did some magic for you… please, it hurts… I need to see the lights.”

The cell was a disgusting horror to witness, filled with vomit, feces, and urine. The unicorn was caked in his own filth and was sprawled out in puddles too nightmarish to describe. How long had the prisoner been left unattended in his cell? Dim had questions, but he doubted that he would have any answers.

“Just a little snort of Aurora so I can see the lights,” the unicorn begged.

Sighing, Dim shook his head and backed away as the writhing unicorn shat himself. This unicorn was sick and Dim wasn’t sure if he could do anything. The violent spasms and contortions made the pony prisoner thrash and as he sank into violent fits, he bit his lip again. Spurts of scarlet splashed into pools of bile and vomit, a sight that would turn almost any stomach.

Dim was unphased, having seen worse.

“Poor bastard.”

The pony gurgled now, and suffered yet another violent seizure. Coughing, hacking, choking, the unicorn on the floor horked out his own tongue, a good four inches of it. The severed tongue flopped around like a fish on dry land—Dim watched it with curious interest, marvelling at how severed body parts could continue to move—and the pony lay gurgling, drowning in a flood of his own blood. In a moment of sincere pity, Dim ended it for the unfortunate soul, so he snapped the pony’s neck with a good telekinetic thump to the base of the skull.

His nostrils crinkled in disgust, Dim backed out of the cell to have himself a good look around.

The ship was small, sleek, and held six as a crew. The griffons he had killed were armed well enough, with each gun being identical to one another, leading Dim to believe that said guns were some kind of standard issue. The ship was warm, or at least warm enough, and had electric lighting in the common areas.

It was a small vessel, too small to even be considered a corvette, and Dim wondered what purpose it served. Such a small size made it a poor raiding vessel, as cargo space would be limited. The craft was made for speed, for running down other ships, but lacking a proper hold, the purpose of this ship remained unclear. This boat didn’t even have a captain’s quarters, just a common bunk room for all six of its occupants. The lone cell in the back of the ship was more of a closet than anything else, and intrigued, Dim decided to have himself a look in the scant cargo hold.

He found a metal door and a panel with a thermometer on it. A distant motor hummed, but it wasn’t the ship’s engine, no. This was something else, something electric. Squinting, Dim had himself a look at the thermometer gauge and saw that the needle was sitting close to zero. This was curious. Why would a pirate ship need a walk in freezer? For surely that was what this vessel had to be. This was curious, and Dim’s lip curled back into an intrigued sneer.

Reaching out with his magic, Dim pulled on the lever that opened the door and then stepped back to allow the door to swing open. With a flick of magic, he flipped the light switch, and then right away, he wished he hadn’t. This was a sight that was going to stay with him for a long, long time, just one more bad thing in a long series of bad things, the building blocks of nightmares.

“Oh fuck me,” he muttered.

On the floor was a dead, frozen dragon, small in size. The horns had been hacked off and it appeared to have been partially butchered. Each one of the teeth had been pulled out, leaving behind gaping, puckered sockets. In the far rear right corner, there was a pile of what appeared to be minotaur horns, and Dim, an alchemist of considerable skill, realised right away what he was seeing.

An alchemical stockpile.

In the back, above the pile of severed minotaur horns, there was a dead, frozen unicorn hanging from a butcher’s hook. The horn and the eyes were missing, already harvested, but Dim knew that unicorns were full of all manner of useful ingredients. Organs, glands, magical bits, and unicorn skin made for wonderful enchanted leather that could be used to make all kinds of miraculous, wondrous things.

Seeing it made him think, and he didn’t like what he was thinking. As an alchemist, he had used things—things taken from another being—and some of them had indeed been sapient. He had never given it much thought before, they were ingredients, something kept in little jars, or containers, and most of them were so processed that they were just powders, or flakes, or granules.

It occurred to him that he might make a fine collection of powders, flakes, or granules.

In silence, Dim turned off the light and then shut the door. Afterwards, he just stood there, unsettled, not knowing what to think or how to feel. Of course ingredients had to come from somewhere, and many of these ingredients were things that one might find in a well-stocked apothecary or alchemist’s market. As the horror of it all settled in on him, Dim’s eyelids, both of them, began twitching.

Minotaur horn was particularly good for magic glue that repaired cracks and fractures in wooden objects, because it made the wood grow back together, turning two or more pieces into one solid mass. The very best wagon wheels and the like were all made with this glue and Dim himself had made vats of this stuff when he needed quick coin. Of course, all of the times he had worked with it, it had been a fine powder.

“I wonder if there is any alcohol aboard this vessel,” Dim said to himself as he thought about how nice a drink would be right now at this moment. “Yes, a drink sounds fine. I could use a drink. A little something-something to wet my whistle.”

Disturbed, Dim went off in search of the sanity restoring elixir known as liquor.

Author's Note

So much was introduced with this chapter. Feels good, mang.

Surprise party aftermath

A zip line had been connected between the two ships and now, Dim had company. Off to the east, which happened to be Dim’s left at the moment, the sun was starting to turn the sky shades of gold and pink. Captain Melvin stood on the deck, smoking his pipe while rubbing his broad, clefted chin.

“You know what this ship is, don’t you.” Dim did not ask a question, but rather, he made a statement. Captain Melvin did not strike Dim as being an idiot and it was a safe assumption to guess that the canny minotaur knew something.

Puffing his pipe, the captain nodded. Dim shuffled on his hooves, shivering in the extreme cold, but at the moment he was enjoying his pain and discomfort. Blackbird stood nearby and glowered at him, but he did not know what to say to her at the moment because his thoughts were elsewhere. Normally, he found her anger—her fuzzy feminine fury—to be arousing, but at the moment he was too numb to feel anything, both physically and mentally.

“To be honest, I did not expect to find a ship of the Black Hand this far from home.” Captain Melvin shook his head and smoke poured from his nostrils. “This is a Finger ship. I’ve seen others like it. All black construction to inspire fear. The hull is shaped like a claw and so is the lift nacelle. It evokes an image of terror in all who see it and know of the Black Hand.”

The cramped quarters now made sense to Dim, given that the ship had an unusual hull structure. Savage fangs of icy death were biting deep now that Dim had been outside for longer than he should, and he turned to look at the gleaming steel door. Beyond it was warmth and horror.

“Let us go inside and talk,” Dim suggested as he gestured at the door. “The cold is killing me and inside it is warm. Watch out for the bodies, I never bothered to clean them up.”

The common room was a tiny place with a few chairs, a pair of small round tables, a bookshelf, and three corpses with wide, staring eyes. Not long ago, Dim had burst into this room and shouted, “Überraschung, Mutterficker!” Needless to say, all six of the griffons gathered in this room had been quite surprised that somepony was on their ship and he had caught them while they were preparing to board. Three had fled and three had died right away because they hadn’t fled.

The griffons had, in fact, been surprised.

Blackbird, a practical sort, began picking up the guns and the bullets scattered all over the floor, her head darting from one shiny spot to another and her talons plucking up everything valuable. Captain Melvin bent down, grabbed a dead griffon by its neck, lifted it, and examined the limp, staring corpse. Urine dribbled down one dangling leg and the captain snorted in disgust.

“I don’t suppose you’ve checked the freezer,” Captain Melvin remarked as he dropped the body he was holding.

“Ah, I see you are familiar with the advanced refrigeration storage space aboard these vessels,” Dim replied.

“Smartass.” The captain let out a bovine rumble of annoyance, kicked the corpse away from him, and then reached up to rub the spot between his horns, a common habit of thoughtful minotaurs. “All that heat being dumped from the cooling unit is why this ship is so warm. The moment that I stepped in here, I figured the freezer had to be full.”

Dim’s respect for the canny captain grew a bit, and he nodded.

“Oh, this one has coins on him!” Blackbird’s talons were deep inside the pockets of a griffon’s heavy pea-green overcoat. Multiple shinies were retrieved and she held them up in front of her snoot so that she could examine them. “I don’t recognise these.”

“Sovereigns, coins from Istanbull,” the captain muttered as Blackbird began to peel off the heavy woollen overcoat. If Blackbird robbing the dead bothered him in any way, he didn’t show it.

Still in need of a drink, Dim took off for the small galley, the one place he hadn’t yet given a thorough search. He pushed open the door that slid off to one side on brass rails, and then paused in the doorway. Of course the galley was set up for butchery. It was clean, spotless even, and smelled of strong chemical disinfectants. Disgusting primitives these griffons might have been, at least they followed good sanitation protocols when securing their alchemical ingredients.

The kitchen was all white tile and mirrored stainless steel with drains located on the floor. On one wall was all of the implements needed for effective butchery, all of them clean, shining, and maintained. Each one gleamed with fresh oil and the promise of keen blades. In the back, in a half-height space, there was a copper water heater that had a burning blue flame flickering beneath it.

Near the back, close to the water heater, there was a steel cabinet and Dim turned his piercing gaze upon it. His magic, both a pale pink and a swirling amber colour, cast a glow around the handles as he pulled the double doors open. Inside, there were a great many cans, some big, some small; glass jars of all shapes and sizes; and on the top shelf, Dim found what he had hoped to see.

“What do we have here?” he asked himself as he took a few steps closer. He pulled out something labeled ‘Feigling,’ a curious concoction. A drink suitable for cowards? Squinting, he pulled out the stopper, smelled the overpowering scent of figs, and then he tried a tiny sample.

After swishing it around inside of his mouth for a bit, Dim swallowed, and then proceeded to guzzle down the entire contents of the bottle. His ears sagged a bit and his breathing was ragged as he struggled to gulp down some much needed air after he pulled the emptied vessel away from his lips. One rather aristocratic belch escaped and then Dim stood there, looking quite pleased with himself.

“Oh, hey, that’s a nice little pig-poker,” Blackbird said from somewhere behind Dim. “Huh, it’s weighted for throwing. Nice! And it has a wing sling.”

Setting the empty bottle of Feigling down upon the counter, Dim had himself a better look inside of the pantry cabinet. Many of the canned goods were things that Blackbird would no doubt like to eat; sardines, anchovies, oysters, and crab meat. A great many cans of clam chowder had been stocked; again, a perfect meal for Blackbird. He found canned fruit and pie fillings, things that he could eat, and all manner of canned desserts. Griffons had a taste for sweets—who knew?

His eyes came to rest upon a bottle of spirits that had a most intriguing pink glow emanating from its pale green glass. Dim sensed magic, but not harmful magic. Tilting his head, he saw the label. ‘Himbeergeist.’ This was not a word that he was familiar with, but there were many words he wasn’t familiar with, not being a native speaker. Raspberry ghost?

Overcome with Blackbird levels of curiousity, Dim pulled down the bottle, removed the stopper, and had a sniff. The overpowering and somewhat cloying stench of raspberries filled the room, and a luscious, labial pink mist oozed from the curvy neck of the bottle he held. With only a little hesitation, he put the bottle to his lips and tried a sip.

It was like drinking raspberry syrup that had been set on fire. The burn was considerable and he shuddered while making an ‘I-just-drank-schnapps-and-I-regret-it’ face. One hind leg kicked, wobbled, and twitched, all while Dim felt his scrotum draw tight. His eyes fell upon some fancifully-scripted numbers just beneath the name and it read, ‘146.’ It was a safe assumption that it must be the proof.

Then, filled with an overwhelming compulsion, Dim stuck out his tongue, puckered up his lips, and blew a rude, slobbery raspberry. Cross eyed, he watched his own tongue flapping around like a weather-watcher’s windsock and he was powerless to do anything until the magical compulsion had passed.

Cursed by the ghost of a raspberry, Dim stood there making flappy-farty sounds.

“Dim? You okay?” Blackbird asked from behind.

Turning about, Dim tried to respond, but could only blow raspberries. Never one to keep the misery to himself, he held the bottle out to Blackbird and gave it a gentle shake. More of the luscious pink mist rose from the opening while Dim stood there making the most obscene, most disgusting noises. If he had to suffer, then Blackbird had to suffer. It was only fair.

Much to Dim’s surprise, Blackbird was stupid enough to take the offered bottle. He waited, still making rude noises, though it was starting to die down. She sniffed the bottle and Dim’s eyes narrowed with impatience. One sniff was enough to make her shudder and she tossed her head from side to side, slinging her mane to and fro.

Then, with the sort of bravery that only the foolish, the stupid, and those who kept demented companions possessed, Blackbird took a long pull. Right away, his partner trembled, shuddered, and her tail went slashing in all directions. Dim saw regret and Blackbird too, now had the ever-so-amusing and oh-so-delightful, ‘I-just-drank-schnapps-and-I-regret-it’ face.

Then, just as expected, she began blowing raspberries, and Captain Melvin let out a grunt of annoyance.

“I’m standing in a room full of corpses on a Black Hand Finger ship and you two are drinking novelty liquor. Neither one of you are right in the head. Damn.” The captain shook his head and his horns almost scraped the ceiling. “Don’t you feel bad at all for killing these griffons?”

Though Dim could not see his own face, he turned to face the captain with an almost foalish expression, and his mismatched eyes were still glassy from the Himbeergeist’s ferocious burn. The spell of compulsion had passed, leaving Dim free to respond. “I had promised to keep you safe in exchange for passage. These griffons threatened the integrity of my word. Also, I had to keep Blackbird safe.”

“So you don’t feel bad at all?” Captain Melvin stood akimbo with his hands resting on his hips.

“Should I?” Dim blinked a few times, confused, and was tempted to drink another bottle of Feigling to help clear his head.

“If you don’t feel bad, what makes you any better than these butcher birds?”

“Well, I… wait… what do… no… why must… no…” Dim stammered, and try as he might, he could not come up with a worthy response.

Meanwhile, Blackbird stood there, blowing raspberries while somehow also looking concerned about the subject matter. Still holding the bottle in her right talons, she held it up waved it at Dim, a silent request that he take it back. Reaching out with his magic, he did, and then he set the bottle down upon the counter, right next to the empty bottle of the figgy liquor.

“My killing was justified and necessary.” Dim found himself slipping into a defensive tone, and he hated his own reaction to the captain’s question. Still, doubt remained. Should he feel bad? Should he feel remorse? He was just doing his job, just as these griffons were doing their job. In the sky, they had met, the both of them intent on doing their jobs, and ultimately, one of the parties had to fail at completing their task.

It hadn’t been Dim.

Should a pony feel bad about a job well done?

“Both of us could not be right.” Dim could not help but feel that there might be some flaws in his logic, but he wasn’t sure what they might be.

“Killing is fine, when necessary, but you should feel bad about it.” Captain Melvin raised one hand, which trembled a bit, and he pulled his pipe from his weathered, leathery lips. “I’ve killed more than my fair share in my day. Feeling bad about it is what drove me to be a cargo captain. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel some remorse about what I’ve done.” With his thumb, he closed the cap of his pipe with a click and he stuffed it into his pocket.

The entire time that the captain was speaking, Blackbird blew flatulent raspberries.

Unable to think up a suitable response, Dim changed the subject. “What do we do? With this ship, I mean. It seems like a valuable vessel, but also dangerous if the sight of it might cause an attack. What do you recommend that we do, Captain?”

“I’ll have my bulls strip this ship of anything valuable and then we’ll scuttle it.” The captain grimaced, shook his head, and then looked Dim right in the eye. “We’ll leave behind the contents of the freezer, but we’ll take everything else. The engine if we can, the refrigeration unit, valuables, and the contents of that pantry.” Reaching out his beefy hand, he gestured at the cabinet behind Dim.

“Sounds like a plan.” Dim offered a polite nod. “Blackbird will enjoy the work, I think. She’s stronger than she looks and you can trust in her strength. Also, she’s quite good with tinkering. I will also help as much as I can, once it warms up a bit.”

At last, the compulsion spell had run its course and Blackbird slurped her tongue back into her mouth, looking relieved.

Captain Melvin held out his hand in Dim’s direction for a moment, then reached up with it to stroke his chin. “Whatever profit we make from salvaging this ship, we’ll split, even and fair. The turbine is probably worth a small fortune. If you do half of the work, you deserve half of the payment.”

“That sounds even and fair, thank you, Captain.”

“Don’t mention it. Stay here, where it is warm, Dim. Sun is rising and it’ll be a bit warmer soon. Maybe Blackbird can do something with these coats the griffons had. I didn’t think the cold would be so brutal for you. My boss would have my head if something happened to you because of the cold.” With a turn of his head, Captain Melvin addressed Blackbird. “Are you ready to get started?”

“Sure am!”

“Good, let’s go.”

Author's Note

Pinkie Pie needs to teach Dim how to throw a proper surprise party.

Catastrophuck

Very much against Dim’s will, Blackbird had used him as a cutting torch to chop off much of the rear hull plating of the Black Hand Finger ship so that she and the minotaurs could gain access to the vessel’s mechanical heart. His magic had cut through the light armor plating with relative ease and she had flown with him from point to point, so the job could be done in safety.

Now, he sat on the deck of the minotaur freighter eating delicious scrambled eggs off of a tin plate while watching the others perform open-heart surgery. It was a fascinating sight to behold, really, but Dim still had reasons to complain, even with a delicious plate of scrambled eggs and a can of sour cherry pie filling. For one; he was eating like a hobo, which was worse than eating like a disgusting primitive, and two; Blackbird had pinched his cheek while serving him his eggs and had said something about his Dim-ples, with an emphasis being placed upon his name.

The only suitable revenge that he could think of was eleven or so months of pregnancy followed by a voracious parasite exploding out of her nethers in a shower of scarlet blood. Of course, said parasite would inevitably consume and destroy both of them, but Dim wasn’t one for half-measures and was willing to go out in a ginormous fiery explosion visible from the next planet over if necessary. Of course, this was only one of the dangerous things he could do with his dick.

Then again, dicking an apex predator that could eat him was already suitably crazy.

Armed with a spork, Dim devoured his eggs, while watching the Finger ship getting dismantled and trying not to think about how gauche it was to be eating scrambled eggs with an implement that was neither a fork nor a spoon. It was, however, something that Dim desperately wanted to kill something with, because he wanted to be able to say that one of his foes had been dispatched with a spork.

A pony had to have aspirations, and Dim, being an ambitious sort, had many.

Never was there a more maladroit eating utensil than a spork; the spoon part was useless, because it leaked—it dribbled—and left a mess on one’s chin, and the tines were too short to stab anything with and hold it securely. Yet, for some reason, sporks existed and Dim was almost certain that it was part of some vast conspiracy to drive him mad. Those whom the alicorns wish to destroy, they first arm with sporks… and give them aspirations of defeating a worthy nemesis.

Blackbird had immense strength and Dim watched with curious interest as she laboured. She was just as strong as the minotaurs, by his own estimation, and by the looks of it, she wasn’t afraid of hard work. The big hippogriff-lion-eagle-horse-creature was a disgusting primitive through and through, but that was okay, because she had redeeming features that he found worthwhile, like being sweaty, and glistening with sweat, and heavy breathing while sweating.

When his eggs were gone, Dim opened the can of sour cherry pie filling with a bit of magic and then dug in with his spork. The cherries were every bit as sour as advertised on the can, and the thick, congealed syrup the cherries were packed in was as sweet as his feelings for Blackbird, whom, at the moment, was lifting up a massive mass of metal without the assistance of a crane. He could hear the sounds of metallic screeching from where he was sitting and beneath his floppy brimmed hat, his ears waggled at the dreadful sound.

With the help of several minotaurs, the big hunk of metal was moved into position and secured on the crane hook. He watched, waiting, alert, ready to use his magic if need be should something go wrong. The spork, a fundamental flaw given shape and form, failed him and cherry goo ran down his chin, leaving it sticky.

Full of figgy liquor, scrambled eggs, and an attraction to dangerous, sweaty, predatory females, Dim approached some sort of catharsis…

It couldn’t even be noon yet and all that was left was a rather valuable hulk. Blackbird and the minotaurs had stripped the small vessel of pretty much everything and now, without electricity, it would soon begin to sink. Of course, Dim had no plans to allow it to sink, no, he had been tasked with obliterating what was left.

Off to his right, Captain Melvin stood smoking his pipe with both hands folded behind his back. Dim was puffing on a clove and cannabis cigarette, his cigarette holder drooping from the corner of his mouth. On the deck behind him, minotaurs were trying to cram things into the hold, which was quite full at this point.

“What is Aurora?” Dim asked now that his mind felt a little more settled.

“It’s the worst thing in the world, for a unicorn,” Captain Melvin replied.

Dim thought of the captain’s reaction upon seeing the body in the cell, the quiet sigh of disgust followed by a snort of anger. Yes, looking back on that poor soul, Aurora certainly seemed like the worst thing in the world. Puffing away, Dim watched as the hulk gained a little distance, now free of its tethers.

“It is addictive and terrible,” Captain Melvin continued. “One use will have you hooked. The Black Hand use it to turn unicorns into slaves. They… they make them breathe in the dust and that’s when the addiction starts. The withdrawals are always fatal and there doesn’t seem to be a cure just yet. You’ll find out more about all of this soon enough… when you get to Istanbull.”

Of course, Dim found this unsettling and as the remains of the Finger ship gained more distance, he began to think of what sort of fireball spell to use for this rare opportunity to study. Now was probably the perfect time for the delayed blast vortex fireball, a draining spell that would no doubt leave him depleted and weak, but he would recover. The chance to learn, to experiment, to try and to do, this was a fortuitous circumstance. Grinning, Dim removed his hat and his horn started to build a charge as he concentrated upon the foundational underpinnings of the spell framework.

Even as the spell began to coalesce into its embryonic form, waves of weakness washed over Dim and he felt his knees wobble. This was an unwelcomed, unwanted reminder that he was not as powerful as he would have liked to be, and that truly exceptional magics would be forever beyond him. Still, he persisted, striving for the pinnacle of his art. A little touch of gravity manipulation, a smattering of hydrogen collection, a matrix to create Solestium plasma to maximise the burn, and a basic candle-lighting spell as the source of ignition.

The biggest and most powerful spells were really just a collection, a series of smaller spells chained together. Dim pushed harder and didn’t stop to think about trivial concerns, such as his nose bleeding or having a fatal brain aneurysm from strain. These were occupational hazards, like being shot in the hat, or griffons having a poor reaction to your sudden appearance. It grew difficult to even hold his head up and his mouth went dry. The tip of his horn glowed like the sun now and he could feel considerable heat upon his face. Raw aether blazed around him and danced along the length of the rail, causing Captain Melvin to take a few steps back.

“Tartarus alive, I ain’t seen nothing like this,” the captain said as he retreated, taking another step backwards.

With a gasp, Dim let go and the spell drifted away with exquisite slowness. This was unexpected, and when it was just a few yards away, he could feel the gentle tug of the gravity it exerted. Curious. He hadn’t expected for it to give off gravity at this point, it should have done that at its target destination. Something had gone wrong, of this, Dim was certain.

“Captain, we should go now. Go now. Go fast now. Fast.”

“FULL STEAM!” the captain bellowed, and a second later, the ship lurched.

The malfunctioning spell crept forward and Dim could sense the hydrogen being sucked in. The floating orb was gaining mass now—though not much yet—which meant that parts of the spell were working as intended. Dim could feel his blood freezing in his veins as panic gripped him with its icy, clawed fingers.

“No, I don’t think you understand, Captain Melvin, we must go faster.”

“GIVE IT A JAR OF LIGHTNING AND A GOOD KICK IN THE PANTS!”

Nothing seemed to happen and Dim watched as his spell rolled across the sky like some horrifying marble escaped from the fiery pits of Tartarus. It was now making ominous crackling sounds and bands of light that pierced through the clouds seemed to bend around it, creating beautiful, brilliant streams of impossible curvature. Dim couldn’t recall if beams of light should bend like that, and he suffered a dreadful moment of worry when he thought about what the sun’s owner might do to him for wrecking her perfect sunbeams.

She already tortured his very existence with her sun and there would be no living with her now, not after this.

The whole ship thrummed, the deck vibrated, and the airscrew motors now screamed with effort. Dim watched in fixated horror as his spell continued its serial killer pace towards the drifting hulk. Panicked shouts could be heard as all those on deck scrambled to keep their balance. This promised to be interesting, to say the very least, and Dim was going to make himself watch so that he could gather every possible observation.

A few things could already be discerned. The gravity portion of the spell needed a lot of work, though Dim was uncertain what he had done wrong. He would have to try again at some point in the future, if he lived through this that is, and make adjustments. Creating the perfect fireball spell was a process, an exercise in learning, and for learning to happen, mistakes had to be made. Mistakes like this one.

There was more shouting, mooing, and bellowing as the ship picked up speed while the minotaurs were clearing the deck. Some ran for the door, others dove into the cargo hold. Almost all of them were uttering vulgarities spawned from polluted streams of conscious thought, and Dim regretted that he could not give it more attention. Only one minotaur stood resolute, and that was Captain Melvin.

“Are we going to die?” Captain Melvin asked in a rumbling, masculine baritone.

“Oh, from the looks of things, we won’t feel anything… maybe a slight burning sensation, but that’s it,” Dim replied in a reedy, aristocratic manner that was in no way filled with panic. Nope, not at all. Nobles were expected to remain composed.

“Before I die…”

“Yes?”

“Dim, you are a creepy bastard, and you give me the willies.”

“Thank you, that is very kind of you to say.” As Dim spoke, the orb, now with some distance, seemed to be shrinking, which was peculiar, and the curvature of the light around it was now more pronounced. “I wonder what Blackbird is doing during our final moments?”

Goggles secure, Dim made ready to spend what was sure to be his last moments in aggressive observation. Something was wrong with the plasma creation matrix as there were weird, squiggly lights that went zigzagging away from the path of the orb as it rolled through the sky at a snail’s pace. No doubt, electrons were running about willy-nilly and this was about to become what Dark Chocolate—one of his many magic tutors as a colt—called a ‘catastrophuck.’

With his knees knocking together from advanced magical fatigue, Dim was almost in no condition to watch the end when it came. As the orb drew near the hulk that had been set adrift, pieces of wood and metal were ripped free and sucked into the voracious mass. The debris crumpled, folded up like paper, and compressed within the tiny, adorable little singularity that Dim had created through the sheer force of his own will.

Did it perhaps have Dim-ples, just as its creator?

There was a horrendous screech as more metal was torn free and Dim struggled to remain upright. His exhaustion was overpowering him, he needed his rest, his time to recover. One spell was almost his undoing. The ship beneath his hooves lurched and was still undergoing massive acceleration, though not being a sleek vessel, it had to punch air right in the face while telling it to fuck right off and get out of its way, because damn, it was in such a hurry.

Now, the lift nacelle was being devoured, sucked in, and compressed. The air around the orb had a most distressing wibble to it—it looked like heat rising up from a sun-soaked rock—and Dim was pleased to discover that the vortex portion of his delayed blast vortex fireball appeared to be working just fine. Suck everything in, blow everything up.

Then, with explosive suddenness, there was a second sun the size of a pinprick in the sky for a span the length of an eyeblink. An indescribable sound swallowed Dim; he was surrounded by tumultuous, turbulent fury, which threatened to do what his many enemies had not, and he felt strong hands grab him. For a time, all was chaos, an unimaginable explosive catastrophuck.

When the catastrophuck began to clear a little, a cute little mushroom cloud rose in the distance, billowing with the very fires of Tartarus. Purple-blue bolts of lightning crackled in all directions from the epicenter of the blast and there was nothing left of the Finger ship. Dim, limp as a ragdoll in the captain’s beefy arms, wept unabashed tears of joy that pooled within his goggles. It was not a success, but it was not a total failure, either. It gave him direction, it filled him with purpose, and he knew that he would continue to try and perfect the fireball spell.

He would live to try again and upon having this realisation, Dim began to laugh…

Author's Note

Wordsmithing is hard...

Istanbull, not Cowstantinople

Wrapped in a striking patchwork woollen overcoat, Dim stood on the deck of the freighter and watched the lights blink into existence on the distant horizon. Istanbull glittered like a magnificent jewel, a diamond lodged in the rocks. The jagged peaks of the Starhome mountains rose around it, a sea of rocks on both sides, with Istanbull being the gateway to the Midreach. It was the only decent land passage available and as such, this made Istanbull a city of great importance.

For reasons he could not say, Dim suffered from an overabundance of excitement.

Eight long days in the air, most of which had been quite uneventful. Blackbird had sewn him a new coat and he was actually quite impressed by her skills as a seamstress. It seemed that anything Blackbird did with her talons, she was exceptional at. Mechanical tinkering, weaponsmithing, sewing, she had an impressive array of talons-on skills that seemed to come to her naturally, and Dim suspected it had something to do with her griffon heritage.

Behind him, Blackbird paced along the deck, impatient, and it was obvious that she was ready for this journey to be over. She too, wore a brand new overcoat made from recovered scraps, and somehow, she made it look magnifique. Like Dim’s, the different bits were all different colours; greens, dark blues, greys, charcoals, blacks, browns, but somehow she had assembled it in such a way that it was breathtaking.

Both coats also had a plethora of pockets, which Dim appreciated.

The peaks of the toothy mountains were buried in snow, which chilled the air that howled around their feral-looking points. This air sank down into the valley, leaving it in a state of near-perpetual winter. It was cold here, Dim had already been warned, and now, more than ever, he was grateful for his companion’s skills.

As the ship descended, dropping lower, snow began to swirl around the deck and the lift nacelle. Dim shivered a little, more from seeing the snow than feeling the cold, and he puffed away on one of his last few cigarettes. He would need to replenish his supply in Istanbull. With each inhale, the cherry of his cigarette glowed a rosy pinkish-orange and each exhale filled the air with thick blue smoke that reeked of sweetness and cloves.

“I think I’m tipsy,” Blackbird said, her words murdering the pleasant silence. “Dim, I have a confession… I killed off the bottle of Himbeergeist and had a good time. I was bored. Bored. I was so bored and I couldn’t find a good place to rub one out with some privacy, because I make horsey noises when I get worked up. And sometimes I caw. My tongue feels numb from all of the raspberries.”

Dim’s cigarette bobbed up and down in its holder when he smiled a secretive, smirky smile, an act that destroyed his dimples. Blackbird’s happiness was now his own, and her contentedness caused him some sort of mild hysteria that he had trouble explaining, like now. Lightheadedness, an urge to smile and or laugh, the sensation of butterflies in his stomach, and an utterly terrifying lack of motivation to kill things or go on sprees of spectacular ultraviolence. This unnatural state of being was distressing—but he somehow endured it.

“Hey Dim… Dim… Captain Melvin told me that when Istanbull was ruled by a matriarch, they called it Cowstantinople. I learned something about the local history, Dim. Ain’t that neat?”

In response, Dim’s manic grin intensified and the corner of his right eye began twitching.

“I am a horse-bird-lion creature,” Blackbird said, rambling aloud, “And griffons lay eggs but ponies squirt out live young, and somehow, I ended up with four teats. When it gets cold, they really sting sometimes. Why do I have four teats? What kind of milk will I offer, I wonder?”

“Blackbird—”

“Sometimes, it feels so good to pinch them.”

Whatever it was that Dim was about to say was now forgotten.

“I don’t have a cloaca, so I keep wondering if I have a horsegina or a liongina. I lie awake at night and think about these kinds of things. I mean, I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at pony parts, at least not up close, so I really don’t know what I ended up with back there. It’s hard being a hybrid, Dim. So many questions.”

Just as Dim was about to say something, Blackbird added, “I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at lionginas either. I just haven’t had the opportunity and sometimes, I feel really insecure about myself. How can I be beautiful if I don’t know which standard of beauty I am judged by?”

Now, Dim had questions, and this irked him a great deal.

“I have hooves in the back and horsey hind legs, but I also have a lion’s tail and I don’t even know what my hips are, but they are super flexible and I can put my hind legs behind my back and touch my hock-thingies together. I don’t know what I am and there are times like right now when I start to worry.”

“Blackbird, you’re drunk.” Dim’s aristocratic assertiveness compelled him to state the obvious.

“No I’m not.”

Sighing, Dim rolled his eyes and puffed away at the shrinking nub of his cigarette. “Blackbird, you are wasted.”

“Am not. I could probably fly if I had to.”

“That proves nothing. Flying into the ground or perhaps a mountain would prove something though.” Ahead, Istanbull grew larger. If Captain Melvin could be believed, it was a city of a half a million or so souls, and Dim had no reason to think that the good captain was a liar. Blackbird on the other hoof…

Wearing a heavy greatcoat, Manfrit approached with his hands folded behind his back. Dim thought the giant looked rather reserved, dignified, but was still a disgusting primitive. Like Captain Melvin, Manfrit smoked a pipe, and he puffed away on it now. Reaching out with one hand, his flesh and blood one, he pulled his pipe away from his lips and coughed.

“Down here, at the southern end of the Worldwall Mountains, we have the Sea of Granite. Make no mistake, this is a sea like any other, and just as dangerous to cross. It’s not safe to sail over these mountains… the only real safe passage is this long valley and Istanbull.”

“Why are the mountains dangerous?” Dim asked.

The older minotaur smiled and his eyes gleamed with the faint city lights as they grew closer. “Stories. Stories make them dangerous. There are weird places in the mountains, places where ships don’t fly and begin to sink. Places where strange lights will attack all things living and strip the flesh off of their bones. There are all of these fantastic stories, and almost all of them have some grain of truth to them, some terrible fate promised to those who violate the skies. A long time ago, stories were told about a place called Skyreach. Nothing that ever went there returned. Those stories proved true, and the Howling Peaks, the location of fabled Skyreach, is now a scorched crater miles wide where nothing grows.”

The roach of Dim’s cigarette burned from existence and turned to ash on the wind.

“Starhome used to be a city of the alicorns,” Manfit said as he waved his smoking pipe around. “You’ll see soon enough. We minotaurs took the city a long, long time ago, but it was abandoned when we found it, a ruin filled with monsters. Mostly eye tyrants… gazers. These mountains were overrun with chaos. The most twisted, most terrifying monsters you could imagine roamed these peaks and these valleys, and many still do. This is not a safe place… there is only the illusion of safety.”

“No offense meant, but how do minotaurs fight gazers?” Dim asked, incredulous.

“A good question,” Manfrit replied with a chuckle. “Mirrored shields. The different rays of the eyebeasts can be reflected with mirrored, magical shields that we minotaurs can forge. It took us over a hundred years to claim the city and it cost the lives of tens of thousands. This is why we minotaurs believe that we own this land now, that we are entitled. We paid for it with blood. However, as you will soon see, Istanbull welcomes all who would live in peace. It wasn’t always like this though… but these are things that you will learn more of later.”

Now, the view of the city was breathtaking and Dim stood in awe of what he saw. Vast walls went from mountain to mountain, blocking the valley pass, and beyond there were more walls, securing the city front and back. As for the city itself, it was built into the very cliffs on both sides, with an enormous, sprawling urban cityscape spread out in between the cliffs and the two walls. Dim could see rookeries along the highest parts of the cliffs, the places where griffons and pegasus ponies built their homes.

Parts of the city glittered with electric lights—a testament to its modernity—and Dim could see construction cranes from where he stood. It appeared as though the old was being replaced with something new and modern. Even now, in the middle of the night, work was being done. This was a city that did not sleep and Dim was entranced by what he saw.

Outside of the city wall, the closest wall, the wall that they approached, there was a shipyards of sorts built into the cliffs and Dim could see the distant sparking of arc welders. These were crude factory shipyards by the looks of them in the dark, but they were shipyards. It occurred to Dim that this city, this place, it truly was a major power and somepony here held an interest in him.

“Welcome to Istanbull,” Manfrit said in a soft voice filled with pride. “It’s not Equestria, but we strive to make it that way.”

Down below, Dim could see the foundations being laid out for another wall. The city was expanding, it seemed, with a second wall, an outer wall, the city would have a new section. Dim could see buildings dotting the ground, but had trouble making them out. Almost overcome with curiousity, Dim found that he wanted to explore this place, to know it, to walk through its streets and see everything that there was to see up close, in the flesh.

It was at this moment that Dim saw it—a gleaming white hand rising up out of the middle of the city. It was stone, near as he could tell, with the thumb and four slender fingers forming graceful towers. The sight—breathtaking; the beauty—beyond words. From where he stood on the deck of the freighter, the fingernails on the finger-towers were vast panels of what appeared to be stained glass.

From beside Dim, Blackbird gasped, and then he heard her say, “So beautiful…”

He was inclined to agree. Several small tugs appeared on either side of the massive freighter and Dim watched as they connected tow cables. The ship was descending with great rapidity now and he could see a vast gathered crowd near the landing stall where the ship would be docking. Somehow, there was order to all of this chaos. No ships collided, nothing crashed together, nothing went wrong.

“Dim!” As Blackbird shouted his name, Dim felt his neck being grabbed and his head turned. He was about to ask what the big deal was, but then he saw it, he saw it and it stole his words away. Off to the left was a sleek warship that had to be at least two hundred feet long. It was not yet completed, vast sections of the hull were still missing, but the steel skeleton he saw was impressive like nothing else. Massive cannons were being lowered into place with complex-looking cranes so that the ship could be built around them.

“Is there going to be a war?” Blackbird asked while she clung to Dim.

“It seems likely.” Manfrit’s voice was filled with noticeable regret. “If there is, I’ll follow Captain Melvin and do whatever he does. He’ll do what’s right. We’re a crew and there is a lot to be said about sticking together through thick and thin.”

“Dim and I are a crew.” Blackbird tightened her grip around Dim’s neck just a little as she spoke. “He came back for me. I’d come back for him too. Even if he says I’m drunk. Pfft, as if. Pfft. Pfft. Hey, my lips feel numb.”

In the distance a horn sounded, causing Dim to jerk his head in its direction. After a moment of jittery panic, he pulled himself together. The unknown was out in force and growing in number, with no telling what was about to happen next. If this was an elaborate trap, he doubted that he could fight his way out of it. The best that he could do was leave behind a big mess and a whole lot of inconvenience.

Removing bodies teleported into walls was an inconvenience.

“Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.”

“Blackbird, I must demand to know what you are doing.”

“Mouth queefing. You wouldn’t understand, you don’t have a grippy vulva.”

Manfrit the minotaur turned and strode away, snickering, leaving Dim alone with Blackbird. Dim, flabbergasted, had no idea how to respond, so he turned away from Blackbird to look at the city instead. For good measure, he slipped his goggles over his eyes to protect them from the bright lights.

“Pfft.” The sound came more from behind Dim, and he began to back away while giving Blackbird a sidelong glance. Wasn’t much of a grip if it couldn’t hold on to that.

“Change in altitude,” she said with a dismissive snort and a wave of her talons. “But hey, they do kinda feel the same, now that I can compare them. Maybe this is why creatures with lips kiss each other. It feels kinda nice. Better than a beak, I figure. You can’t kiss with a beak.”

There was a thump followed by the creaking of metal as the ship settled into its cradle. Istanbull awaited and the area around the harbour was bright as day in the middle of the night. It was time to go and face whatever came next, though Dim was distrustful of whomever had gone through so much effort to bring him here.

When armored pegasus ponies began to land upon the deck, Dim knew it was time to go.

Author's Note

What... stop looking at me like that.

Orchestral Oppression

It was all too much; the moment that Dim began his ascent of the gangplank, an overwhelming number of things happened all at once, battering his senses, assaulting his awareness, and destroying his ability to concentrate. The sights, the sounds, the smells, everything, it was all too much. As was often the case with these sorts of things, it all began with a voice, an amplified voice that tore right into his ears and left them ringing, robbing him of his ability to reason.

“PRESENTING PRINCE DIM OF HOUSE DARK! ALL HAIL THE PYROCLASTIC PRINCE!”

Frozen in place, Dim had a million thoughts all at once, all the different ways to refute this, to deny this, all of the reasons why he didn’t deserve this aggrandised title. But before he could give voice to any of his thoughts, his reasons, his objections, a band began to play. No, not a band, an orchestra; strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, all of which were loaded into enormous wagons ready to be drawn by stout, stocky earth ponies.

The music was dark and foreboding; the percussion pounded, and seemed to echo from mountainside to mountainside. Horns blared, but the music was not cheerful, optimistic, or hopeful. It was ominous… drastic… and made the hairs along Dim’s spine stand up. It was the very sound of domination, of authority, and it terrified Dim how much it thrilled him to hear it. The strings were screechy, sharp, almost painful. This music, the feeling, it could only be described as the Orchestra of Oppression. Tyrannical tuba blasts began to happen in earnest, rapid fire, and as Dim stood frozen in place, every creature present bowed their heads.

It took a shove from Blackbird to get him moving, and the cape of his greatcoat fluttered out behind him. Compelled by forces that he did not understand, Dim lifted his head high and struck a regal, aristocratic pose. The months of living as a shabby vagabond fell away from him and his face contorted into a cold, callous sneer with practiced ease. He moved; not as a derelict vagrant that skulked from place to place, some tramp, some transient fugitive from hygiene and civilisation; but as the noble aristocrat that he was born to be.

In a fantastic moment of understanding, of awareness, Dim understood his purpose and his place. As a noble, as an aristocrat, with the strength of nobility that he had been born with, it was his duty to bear a burden that these collected souls could not. The Tubas of Tyranny, the Totalitarian Trombones, the Strings of Subservience, this Orchestria of Oppression, the music did not play to put the gathered crowd in their place, no; this music was a reminder and it put Dim in his place. He had been born with exceptional power and he owed the endangered masses his service; if necessary, his life.

The music had transformed Dim in some way that he could not quantify.

Dim remembered what House Dark had long ago forgot.

This crowd had gathered, prepared for his coming, because they expected something from him. What they wanted was unknown, but as Dim marched down the gangplank, he was prepared to give it to them. Right now, they needed a noble example, the idealisation of their hopes and dreams, so he gave them that. The calm, confident protector, cocky and ready to fight, to do what was right, what was necessary. Every book that Dim had ever read about knights errant swirled in the depths of his consciousness, coalescing into something that he had no comprehension of.

His head turned from side to side, making a regal sweep of the crowd, and he saw what had to be thousands of faces, faces of all kinds, faces all looking at him with a heartfelt expression. Was it hope? It might have been, but Dim was too overcome, too uncertain of himself to identify it. Had he thought about it, Dim might have reached the conclusion that this moment was too absurd to be real: an Equestrian aristocrat—a prince—an exile from his home, emerging from the junkiest cargo freighter in existence and then being welcomed with all of this.

At the bottom of the gangplank, the music came to an abrupt halt as an enormous minotaur kneeled down upon one knee before Dim, who halted and waited. From behind, Blackbird bumped into him, and Dim’s mouth went dry as the minotaur laid a terrifying mace upon the ground.

“Your Majesty, I am General Maksimillian, and I am to escort you to the Royal Palace.”

Just as Dim was about to respond, the music exploded again and the orchestra-laden wagons began to move. The crowd parted as if by magic, revealing a road of smooth cobblestones leading to the gatehouse and the open gate that welcomed him into the city proper. The minotaur picked up his mace, raised it high, turned on his hooves, and began to march. Dim fell into line behind him, and soldiers seemed to materialise out of the crowd all around them, forming a protective phalanx.

Dim, having been crushed by ceremony and circumstance, was rendered powerless. Now, there was no choice but to follow—to obey—and the wagons with the orchestra led the way. It was a grand spectacle and Dim understood the purpose; it had been done for the sake of the subjects of this city. Pomp was a great restorative of morale, a great replenisher of the soul. His arrival was being exploited as some reason to celebrate. Who was behind this—and why—remained to be seen.

Ahead, the white hand grew ever larger, and Dim wondered if this had something to do with the Black Hand that he had learned about. There was magic here, raw, strange, primal; it left his horn tingling and the air felt like a lurking thunderstorm could manifest at any moment. Blackbird was devouring this attention, waving at the crowd, and the phalanx had to move her along when she stopped.

The many towers within the city were topped with minarets and elaborate domes. All around him, there was a surprising amount of colour, with much variation in the stone. Mosaics were everywhere, and vast murals, one of which was still being constructed. Even though he had to march with the phalanx, Dim tried to see what it was.

A stylised unicorn could be seen, and it was surrounded by minotaurs. Swirls representing magic could be seen, and the minotaurs had weapons of all kinds. The mural depicted minotaurs fighting minotaurs, with a particularly large one being struck down by magic, arrows, and what appeared to be gunfire. It was a magnificent mural, and though unfinished, it appeared to have been constructed with a great deal of care.

Something about the mural spoke to Dim, though he could not say why.

What was this place and why would alicorns have built it? Why a hand? What purpose could this place have served? When had this place been built? What sort of hand was this? Why was it reaching skyward? The hand was so big that Dim wasn’t sure how large it was. It had to be more than five-hundred feet tall, but not more than maybe seven-hundred and fifty. For a construction of what appeared to be shaped stone, it seemed to be impossible in scope and scale. It was leaning a little and each of the fingers had a curve to them. Why hadn’t the structure crumbled or fallen apart during the no doubt thousands of years it had stood?

Dim’s magical intuition screamed at him that this structure was old.

The base of the hand was clever construction; what appeared to be a gold bracelet was wrapped around it, and two ornate doors that mimicked a clasp could be seen. As the procession approached, the doors swung open, and Dim was filled with an unknowable dread. The music was still blaring, drowning his senses, making it difficult to concentrate or think. Somepony had gone through a great deal of trouble to make all of this happen, perhaps too much trouble just to kill him, but it was hard to be certain.

Soon, he would cross a threshold and perhaps it would be too late to turn back.

Passing through the doorway, Dim found himself in a curious room. It was far too big, far too inviting to be secure, making this an odd palace. There was a fountain at the center, a place to wash ones hooves, or feet, paws, or whatever the case may be. A bad case of the jitters overcame him as the door was shut behind him, but thankfully he had Blackbird as a distraction. Before he could stop her, she dove into the massive ornate fountain and began to splash around.

The room was populated by several minotaurs, a few diamond dogs that were not quite diamond dogs, a few unicorns of no importance, and one cloaked, hooded unicorn of terrifying power that dwarfed his own. Dim removed his hat and noticed that the room was rather, well, dim, which seemed odd for such a welcome, or perhaps they knew about the peculiarities of his vision, the weakness his eyes had for the light.

Cawing with pleasure, Blackbird did more than wash her hooves and talons: she rolled over in the shallow water and began to flap her wings, wetting them. Dim was mortified, but what could he do? One of the minotaurs began to laugh, and another joined him. The cloaked, hooded unicorn let out a chuckle as well, and in doing so, revealed that she was a mare.

“Welcome to the Palace of the White Hand,” the unicorn said as she pulled back her hood to reveal herself.

Dim saw… himself. For a moment, he thought about killing her, as it was all too obvious who and what she was. The mismatched eyes, the dark grey pelt, the black mane, she was everything the Dark Ideal demanded and in his panic, Dim had trouble breathing. For a second, his horn flared to life, flickered a bit, and then blazed with brilliant intensity.

“If he kills me, he is not to be harmed. Am I understood?” the mysterious mare said to all present. “Go on, Dim. Do as thou wilt. Continue as thine heart commands. I will do nothing to stop you.”

She had no protections that Dim could sense, no defenses, she had left herself vulnerable when she had presented herself to him. Confused, Dim took a step backwards and for just a brief second, he gave serious consideration to killing her. The last thing he had expected to find was a fellow Dark, but here she was, and here he was, and now everything was awkward.

“Had I actually wished you harm, I think you know that you’d be dead by now,” the mare said in a voice of cool calm and she began to close the distance between herself and Dim. “I am Eerie Dark, and I was, and still am, your mother’s sister. I’ve waited so long to see you in pony… face to face… I have longed to have family again. It’s been so long.”

“I do not know you,” Dim said, and he was troubled by just how much his voice cracked and wavered.

“But I know you… and I have been watching you for a long, long time now. I have watched you as you have begun to recover… just as I had to recover. I too, crossed the world, fleeing in fear of what I left behind. I too, tried to outrun my hurts. I found friends, companions, and over time, I began to heal. Now I want more than friends… I want family again. You have proven yourself worthy.” Eerie lifted up her hoof in a sweeping gesture and continued, “There will be proper introductions later, when you are a bit more settled, but these are my friends and I trust them with my life. No one here wants to harm you, Dim.”

In the fountain, the-certainly-not-drunk-Blackbird continued to roll and splash around.

“I need a little time to myself.” Dim looked into the eyes that mirrored his own and felt a chill in some part of him that wasn’t physical. He pulled the goggles from his eyes, held his head high, and attempted to stare into the soul of Eerie Dark. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave?”

Eerie’s ears fell, her eyes closed, and her head dropped level to her body. “I grew tired of my father and my uncle’s nightly visits to my bed.”

Upon hearing this, Dim was uncertain of what she meant; her father and her uncle, or her father, who was also her uncle? With the Darks, after what he had learned, it was hard to tell. He took a cautious step closer and discovered something odd within himself, a peculiar condition where he had a sincere desire to comfort her. This was odd, confusing, and made even worse when he realised that she had answered him in front of all those who were watching and listening. When her eyes opened once more, Dim found that he had trouble breathing.

“Why didn’t you get help?” he whispered and the sound of his own raspy voice was almost too much for him to bear. “Why didn’t you go to Princess Celestia? Why?”

“Why didn’t you?” Eerie replied.

Why didn’t he? Why hadn’t he? He had ran away. Blind, terrified of Princess Celestia and her rumoured fury, he had ran away. Fearful, afraid, shamed, manipulated by the words of his mother, Dim had ran away rather seek out help. He could only assume that Eerie had done the same. It bothered him in some horrible, fundamental way that he had this understanding. Even worse, Dim suffered several rapid fire epiphanies that were almost too much to bear.

“Come, let me show you to your room, Dim. Maybe we can talk a little more along the way. I hope you can forgive me for being impatient, but I really want to know you. I’d like to have your trust and your affection—”

“Why do you want these things?” Dim demanded.

A sad smile spread over Eerie’s face as she lifted her head. “Because I am desperate to heal…”

Author's Note

Blackbird. :facehoof:

A slave no longer

“It is a matter of overcoming my fear and hatred of what you represent, and by doing so, setting myself free. I will be a slave no longer, nor will I let you remain that way. I will save us both somehow, Dim, if it takes me a lifetime. Look at what hatred has done to us. The very sight of you fills me with revulsion and fear… terror even… and I wish to break this spell. I will be a free mare.”

These words—Eerie’s parting words—tumbled around inside of Dim’s head as he paced the floor of his palatial room. Blackbird was warming herself by the fire while trying to figure out where the smoke went as it was sucked into a grate in the floor. As he paced, Dim wondered where the pink voice was, as she had been silent for a while now. Maybe he had traveled too far and was now out of her reach. How far away from home was he now? He didn’t know. Equestria was a world away.

Yet, even with Equestria being as far away as it was, Dim had found one of his own. There was a story to be told here, Dim was sure of it, and he was curious as to the reason why Eerie Dark was now a major power on the other side of the world. It occurred to him that he could do the same. While he held only a fraction of her obscene potential, he was powerful enough to carve out his own kingdom, his own empire—but this was not his heart’s desire.

Why shouldn’t it be though? He could be a benevolent tyrant, the kind that brought prosperity and peace. What sort of ruler was Eerie? Dim was afraid to ask. No doubt, she was the one who had been placing geases on those who served her, like Captain Melvin and Jolie Rouge. Yet, as tyrannical as that might seem, Captain Melvin and Jolie Rouge both seemed happy. They were happy to do their jobs, and in the case of Jolie, she seemed to enjoy hunting slavers. Not to mention that Jolie took a surprising non-lethal approach.

What had he stumbled into?

“Blackbird, I am troubled.” As he spoke these words, he came to a halt atop a fine Abyssinian silk rug.

Turning about, Blackbird stared at Dim with wide, curious green eyes. He looked at her, and she back at him, and it was at this moment that he was filled with a most distressing need: more than anything else, he desperately wanted a hug. Shocked and appalled by his own desires, Dim shivered with revulsion at this betrayal by his mind.

“I am too, Dim, I’ve never shared a room with a prince before, and I’m nervous.”

Sighing, he thought about losing his temper, but couldn’t muster the effort. Instead, he withdrew inwards and gave up on conversation. Losing his temper would feel good—it would be cathartic—but harming Blackbird in any way, shape, or form would be dreadful and he didn’t think he could live with himself afterwards.

“Blackbird, I am not a prince. Well, I am, but I’m not… it’s complicated.”

“Sounds confusing, Dim.”

“It is.” Sighing, Dim did his best to put the pieces together. “We Darks descend from royalty and we like to think that we are far more royal than we are. We maintain the belief that we are royals, and in a sense, we are, because Princess Celestia acknowledges our claim. Or did. I don’t know, maybe at one point, we deserved it, but things went wrong. Things have gone so very wrong and we Darks have fallen from grace.”

With a supple, fluid motion, Blackbird sat down, folded her wings against her sides, and curled her tail around her hind legs. She was solemn now, somehow, or at least she was trying to be, and Dim was touched by her efforts. Standing on the fine rug that was worth a princely sum, he stared at her, unabashed, and let the sight of her nourish his soul.

“A year ago I was still convinced of my own superiourity,” Dim confessed and he felt an aching in some place beyond physical touch. “We Darks were a family that could do no wrong. I was thoroughly convinced of our rightful place… at the top… equal to the princesses in prestige, power, political position, precedence, pre-eminence, primacy, and prominence.”

“Your family hogged all of the ‘puh’ words.” Somehow, Blackbird delivered this line with absolute and total seriousness.

“We used our past glories like a shield,” Dim continued, shaking his head from side to side as he let Blackbird’s comment slide. “But I never heard anypony ever talk about what marvellous things we had done lately. It was all past glories and ancient accomplishments. I think that is when it started, actually… when I came to this realisation.”

“When what started?”

“When I began to feel like a prisoner. But it is more than that. It is hard to say. I reached a state where I had no joy. No happiness. Everything felt so empty. I could find no reason to do anything beyond existing. I had no prospects of accomplishment when I lived in the Dark Spire.”

Falling silent, he recalled one of the last conversations with his mother, discussing how his uncle Dire Dark had committed treason. Somehow, his family had gone from being the deranged champions of Equestria to the agents that had sold it out to its enemies. Dire had helped Mariner. His mother, Desire, was loyal to Grogar. Yes, things had gone wrong.

“Dim, I’m very sorry, but I must go to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“Go to bed, Blackbird. I’ll keep watch.” In silence, Dim returned to his pacing.

The two Darks sized one another up and Dim could not help but think that if he struck now, he could take her. He thought about what she had said before leaving last night, about breaking the spell and being free. At a loss for what to do, Dim tried to swallow the lump in his throat and found that he couldn’t; the pain was such that he whimpered even as he failed.

In her bed, Blackbird rolled over and clutched her head while moaning,

“Why?” Dim asked, his voice aristocratic and reedy. He saw Eerie’s eyebrow arch, an eyebrow very much like his own.

“I abhor weakness,” he heard her say in response. “My irrational fear of you represents a weakness. For the longest time, I feared having friends, and I am sure you can guess all of the reasons. I was fearful of males… pretty much all of them. This fear was untenable, this mistrust posed as a disgusting vulnerability. I am the conquering Dark—in time, I made friends, some of them male even, and now, the final test is having family again. You are blood, Dim, my blood, my flesh, and you are male. Do you understand?”

Even as she said these words, Dim found that not only did he understand, but he respected her for saying them. There was so much that he did not know or understand about himself. Was he mistrustful of females because of his mother’s machinations? Would this get in the way of his friendship with Blackbird? Dim was everything that Eerie feared—and the reverse was potentially true as well—with Eerie being female and family.

“The two of you are so much alike…” Blackbird’s voice was a pained, hungover moan. “Dim always looked sort of feminine, but now that I see you and how much the two of you look like one another, it’s confusing and I don’t know the right word to describe the two of you.”

“We’re androgynous, darling Blackbird… it is a product of the inbreeding.”

Chewing on his lip, Dim could not refute Eerie’s statement.

“I feel like I know you,” Eerie said as she moved to Blackbird’s bedside. “I’ve been watching you for so long now… the both of you as you’ve traveled together. I’ve watched you as Dim took care of you and didn’t take advantage of you. It satisfied some great need of mine. I’ve watched you be his friend, when so few would. Yes, I am aware of the circumstances—”

“Wait, do you know where my mother is?” Blackbird asked, interrupting.

When Eerie froze in place, Dim’s eyes narrowed and he studied his mysterious relative. She had an answer and at the moment, appeared to be thinking of what to say, how to say it, and each second that passed left Blackbird in agony. A puddle of rage began to simmer in the depths of Dim’s soul, as he did not care for Blackbird’s emotions being played with.

“I lost track of her,” Eerie answered in hesitation and she shook her head from side to side. “I knew Starling… she stood with me here, in this very room. She went to Menagerie… I tried to tell her not to go and we fought… we bickered. I thought about stopping her… forcing her, but in the end I let her go and not a day goes by that I don’t regret it. I am sorry, Blackbird, but I do not know your mother’s fate. If she is alive, she is in Menagerie, and beyond my sight.”

“Dim?”

“She’s telling the truth, Blackbird, near as I can tell.”

“Well, we need to go save her,” Blackbird said, murmuring the words so she wouldn’t upset her hangover.

“Such a thing is not possible… not on your own. You would need an army, which is what I am building, coincidently.” Eerie’s smile was of the nervous variety, as far as Dim could tell, and if she was lying, she was extraordinarily good at it. Being a Dark, of course she would be. “It is part of the reason I wanted you brought here, the both of you. Starling would kill me for dragging you into this, Blackbird, but the necessity of multitudes outweigh the desires of one.”

“I think Dim can do it—”

“Dim does just fine when facing off against disgusting primitives,” Eerie replied, refuting Blackbird’s words. “But against the magic and might of Menagerie, he would be crushed.” There was a long pause and the unicorn mare stood breathing through her nose with a curious expression upon her face. “A plan is in the making and there is one who would stand against the magic and the might of Menagerie. I would love to tell you more, but the two of you are not yet trusted. There is simply too much at stake for me to tell you everything. The lives of many hang upon my ability to make good decisions.”

Blackbird started to say something, but Dim cut her off by saying, “We understand, Eerie. It seems that we must come to an understanding of mutual trust.”

With a whine of protest, Blackbird pulled the blankets over head and went still. Dim began to have an inkling that there was a whole lot of something going on here, and that he and Blackbird had stumbled into something much, much larger than themselves. It seemed that there were carrots for cooperation and Dim continued his intense scrutiny of Eerie.

“I do so desire for my friends to become your friends.” With Blackbird hiding under the covers, Eerie now turned all of her attention upon Dim. “They have been the best of friends… we found each other when we were all at our very worst. It is amazing that we didn’t kill one another.”

“I saw the mural,” Dim said to Eerie, and he saw her smile.

“Oh, yes, that…” Eerie laughed, a sound that was entirely too much like Dim’s own. “King Majid was not a good king. Not at all. In fact, he was positively dreadful. He was a slaver.” Eerie made a moue of intense disgust and Dim could not help but feel that he was looking into a mirror. “Majid held the White Hand and committed far too many atrocities to be ignored. My friends and I, we were shopping for a kingdom, a place to set up a base of operations for future plans, and we found this place. Mars and Modesto liked it too… Modesto wanted the White Hand, so we dropped in and said hello to Majid—”

“And by hello, you mean that you casually dropped in for tea and then eviscerated him as the kettle boiled,” Dim interjected.

“Oh, we did worse than that, Dim.. I am a Dark, same as you, and it is not enough to merely kill our enemies.” Eerie’s eyes gleamed with a terrifying inner-fervency. “You know the rules, darling Dim… examples must be made.”

“Yes.” Dim thought of Jolie Rouge and her massacre of slaver ships.

“We executed Majid in a very public trial, freed all of his slaves, dispersed all of his wealth to our new subjects, and established a new government. Now, we have our eyes set on the Black Hand. Mars desires it and I aim to see that he has it. He deserves it, seeing as how he and his brother Modesto are the rightful princes to the city. But that is a long story.”

Sighing, Dim hoped that he would not regret this as he said, “It is a story I would like to hear…”

Author's Note

Shopping around for a kingdom? Check the foundations.

Bushwoolie boogie

This was like having the constipation sweats from too much opium, but somehow worse. Dim’s asshole couldn’t possibly clench any tighter and it felt like dull knives were being shoved through his bowels by some lazy butcher that cared nothing for his job. All of this tension made him jittery and his dyssynchronous blinking became far more pronounced, more exaggerated.

From the looks of things, Blackbird wasn’t faring much better, cringing with each click she made upon the floor with hoof or claw. Did he trust Blackbird? Could he trust Blackbird? Or was he like Eerie, a slave to his own fear? His biases? Had his mother forever poisoned him and his future relationships, using Darling as a living, breathing, soul-possessing toxin against him? To purge himself, he had killed her. Darling’s fate was not a kind one. First, he had broken her heart, and then, for good measure, he had laid her soul and body to waste. In those final moments, the shadows had come for her. It was, for all intents and purposes, a poison that he was all too willing to keep drinking, so had been forced to spill the cup that had contained it. It wasn’t by his hoof that Darling had been transmuted into a vessel fit for poison delivery, but his mother’s.

As Dim’s complex thoughts overcame him, he found himself staring at Blackbird, and his face was leaking again.

The brief journey ended in a small, intimate dining room of unequaled opulence. There was already food on the table and the perfumy fragrance of tea was heavy in the air. No chairs stood crowded around the low table, but cushions, a great many wonderful cushions. Something hairy was backing away from the table and it smiled at Dim as it retreated.

“What’s that?” he asked of Eerie as she sat down upon a cushion.

“One of my bushwoolies,” she replied. “When we took over the city, they were everywhere. Treated even worse than slaves. They are a naturally servile race and couldn’t seem to help themselves… so I passed laws for their protection and now they serve as my eyes and ears around the city. A simple act of kindness has made them fiercely loyal to me.”

Wary of the strange, hairy creature, Dim too, sat down.

“I must ask that you never harm them,” Eerie continued as Blackbird sat down. “The penalty for doing so is harsh… a public flogging. I will not tolerate their abuse from anyone. The laws here are very strict. It is my job to enforce them.”

“Hi.” Blackbird sounded subdued when she greeted the bushwoolie bearing a loaded plate creeping up beside her, and everything about this encounter was ridiculous, with Blackbird being far too big and the bushwoolie being far too small. When the tiny, servile creature held out a plate of kippers, Blackbird took it with a bow of her head. “Thank you.”

The bushwoolie, bashful, almost seemed to melt upon the spot, and it swooned from the kind words. Turning, Dim saw Eerie watching Blackbird out of the corner of her eye, watching and waiting. Trust was a difficult thing, he reckoned, and if Eerie was fond of these little hairballs, the help as were, it would be a good test of character to see how he and Blackbird treated the help. Yes, Dim felt that he had a good grasp of what was going on.

Seeing no point in tact, Dim gave voice to what was on his mind in a direct question: “What is your position here, Eerie?”

“I am Princess Eerie, of Istanbull.”

Eyes narrowing, Dim poured himself a cup of tea, which smelled like some sort of black tea blend with blackcurrants. A localised blend? Perhaps. It was fragrant, exotic, and the scent of it made his mouth water. Well, that was rather rude, she hadn’t answered his simple question at all, and Dim’s upper lip curled away from his teeth in a fine, aristocratic sneer.

“I do whatever is necessary of me,” Eerie said with a hint of laughter in her voice. “I am first and foremost, the Spymaster. I am the Wazir to Prince Modesto. My magic holds this city together and I manage an extensive network of geases to keep our interests guarded. Because of my position, I coordinate the efforts of the various heads of the city, such as the Merchant’s Guild, the Farmer’s Trust, the Science Ministry; suffice it to say that there are many groups in the city and I keep them all playing nice.”

“The farmers have a trust?” Dim dribbled a bit of honey into his tea and then stirred it with a fine silver spoon, which clinked against the fine porcelain.

“Headed by an earth pony. A former slave. She’s brimming with ideas on how we can do better and she was elected to her position by the farmers. Slowly but surely, she is revitalising the land with careful crop planting and with each growing season, we are seeing larger yields. Someday, we might not need to buy food from the outside to sustain ourselves.”

Democracy was not something that Dim expected to find here, and he lifted his teacup up to his lips while Blackbird savaged her plate of smoky, salty kippers. The first slurp was almost orgasmic, and it took considerable effort to not melt into the cushion he sat on. On the table before him was enough wealth to make a Grittish prince or princess giddy and Dim hoped that Blackbird wouldn’t filch any of the ‘shinies.’

Having an earth pony head the Farmer’s Trust made sense to Dim, far more sense than having some unicorn that had no idea how farming worked. He had seen far too much of this in his travels, and it had always left him feeling a little disgusted. A bureaucratically minded unicorn would strive for results and would live or die by their abacus, while never truly understanding their job. Yields would be demanded without a real understanding of the land. Yes, Dim found himself approving of this system of governance, even though he was appalled by the very idea of democratic rule. Why not just appoint a skilled farmer to the position and be done with it? What if the disgusting primitives voted somepony else in and in doing so, botched everything?

“Goodwoolie, be a dear and go and fetch more kippers for our guest… she is famished.” At Eerie’s command, a purple-grey bushwoolie went sprinting off—grunting with effort at every step—to do her bidding. Ears pricked high, Eerie turned her imperious gaze upon Dim while she began to prepare her own tea with a slow, graceful display of fine manners.

“When I found Modesto and Mars, they were beggars. Their hands had been cut off—this is a grotesque bit of minotaur culture, you see, taking a limb from a defeated foe or those guilty of a crime. Modesto and Mars’ parents had been killed by Masoud, a usurper who now poses as a king.” Eerie paused while stirring and Dim could see that her eyes were misting over.

“I don’t know what moved my heart… it was pity, I suppose, but after hearing their story from another, I took these two orphaned calves under my care. I secured for them crude prosthetics and I began to educate them. I taught them how to read, how to write, I expanded their minds with philosophy, art, culture, I did everything I could to broaden their horizons. Over time, they became everything that I hoped that they would be. I guess I needed a hobby, a distraction from my pain. I don’t know why I did what I did to be honest, Dim, but it felt good to do it. It dulled the ache in my soul to be selfless.”

Though he listened to every word spoken, Dim said nothing. A quick glance at Blackbird revealed that her muzzle was greasy from her meal and she had made a mess of things. With her being a disgusting primitive, he could not fault her. If anything, Dim admired her enthusiasm and the gusto she had for eating.

“In time, others joined our little ragtag crew of merry mercenaries. There came that magical moment of realisation that we could do more together than we could ever hope to accomplish apart. And that, that lead us here, to this place.” Eerie gestured at the room around her. “There is a princess in Equestria that loudly proclaims that friendship is magic… and she might be right, Dim. Such sappy, sentimental drivel might actually be true.”

Very much against his will, Dim found himself smiling, but only just a little, and it made his face ache.

“The Black Hand rises as a major power, Dim. They seek to rival Menagerie for all of its glory. Masoud emulates Menagerie in everything he does. In time, he hopes to overthrow Menagerie and grow the size of his kingdom. Right now, he builds an army, just as Menagerie builds an army—”

“And you seem to have something of an army as well,” Dim interjected.

Eerie smiled, a warm, affectionate sight. “We all race towards our goals… if Menagerie takes the Black Hand, if they take the Black Gate, they will come for Istanbull next, and with the entire Midreach conquered, they will spill out into the north, lands that are ill prepared for such an invasion. Istanbull stands as a choke point, because of the weirdness of the Sea of Granite. Our days are numbered, Dim… one of the two rival powers will come for us.”

“So then we obliterate this Black Hand—”

“No!” Eerie’s voice held surprising volume and Dim’s ears pinned flat from the sudden sound. “Mars and Modesto both agree that the city of Black Gate must be taken with great care. Mars, the firstborn, is the rightful prince and he wants a kingdom… not an empty city and a vast sea of graves.”

“I see.” Dim gulped a good portion of his tea, sighed, and he began to eye the food on the table to see if anything interested him. A bushwoolie was giving Blackbird another plate of kippers and he shivered in disgust at the thought of eating flesh.

“We have allies,” Eerie continued while Dim searched for something to eat. “There are those who would stand against Menagerie and are willing to help us take the Black Gate. Dim, the fate of this entire side of the world hinges upon whatever happens next. Menagerie stands to become the next Equestria, but without mercy, morals, or ethics. Masoud and the Black Hand, should they get lucky, might one day conquer Menagerie, and then flush with power, he will turn his eye upon the rest of the world around him.”

“These are not good scenarios.”

“No, Dim, they are not.” Eerie, her eyes narrowing, leaned forwards. “Masoud has Aurora… it is a powerful, dangerous drug that does terrible things to unicorns, Dim. Menagerie wants this drug. Conflict is inevitable. If Masoud wins, he will use Aurora to subjugate all unicorns to do his bidding… and potentially alicorns as well.”

Dim’s magic fizzled and he almost dropped his teacup, the contents of which sloshed out and spilled down his barrel, soaking him. Snarling in frustration, he set his cup down upon the table and with a few simple cantrips, he began to sort himself out while his mind reeled from what Eerie had just said.

“I will not be made a slave again.” Dim wiped himself with his fetlock to see if he was now dry and then he made an annoyed wave with his hoof. “Does this disgusting primitive know who he is dealing with? Does he not understand that one does not meddle with the Darks? I will help you kill him, Eerie, on principle, and not out of any moral or ethical obligation. Just who does this disgusting primitive think he is? Where is he, so that I might melt his face off?”

“One time, when Dim was all worked up, he threatened to boil a minotaur named Grenadine in his own semen. But Dim didn’t boil him in his own semen, no, he set this guy on fire! And then Grenadine’s gun went off and it blew off his leg and at some point while all of this was going on, Dim said I had a perfect ass, and that made me feel really good about myself, and anyway, Grenadine fell over into the ocean, and the ocean caught on fire, and Dim might have burned down the entire island of Tortoise-Tuga because that’s kinda what Dim does. I hope Black Gate isn’t flammable.”

Dim felt a moment of intense, almost orgasmic satisfaction from the look on Eerie’s face. Shock, revulsion, surprise, horror—and then, Eerie was laughing. Wide-eyed, whooping, her mouth open with a grin that stretched from ear to ear—a grin that made her cheeks bulge upwards and push into her eyes—Eerie was overcome and Dim too, felt himself start to chuckle.

It felt good to laugh, of course it did, but being shot in the throat had left Dim with scars on the inside, the worst sorts of scars—much like mental damage—the ones that could not be seen. Now, overcome with the same dreadful, manic laughter that had possessed Eerie, Dim’s peals of maniacal mirth made a terrible sound—an ack-ack hacking sound. Bushwoolies scattered as fast as their fuzzy little feet could carry them, fleeing from the madness that was two Darks having a laugh together, as a family. It was the worst of sounds, it was the very thing that insanity sounded like.

Even Blackbird seemed to sense that something was wrong, and she shied away with her plate of kippers as the dreadful laughter continued. The creaking, tight-throated, ack-ack or maybe ach-ach hacking that sounded as though the very spirit of laughter was being throttled to death for shits and giggles.

Laughter brought ponies together, so it was said.

Author's Note

Laughter is the best medicine, but what if one overdoses on it?

As a drug, it should be regulated!

The water beckons

The many passageways of the White Hand seemed somehow labyrinthine, and for some reason this seemed fitting. While there were places with stern right angles, there were other places such as the hallway where Dim was now that was all gentle, sloping curves. It was rather round, with no straight lines, and the type of stone that made the walls was unknown. It hummed with magic and was quite fascinating, however.

They seemed to be descending, but Dim had a hard time telling, because there was the most powerful sensation of going upwards even though the passageway had a downward slant. This place was disorienting and Dim suspected that it had something to do with the strange magic that permeated everything. He would need a thaumaturgical map to know for sure, but he was almost certain that ley lines crossed one another in this location, and the White Hand was acting as some kind of focus-locus for hocus-pocus.

Behind him, the soft voices of Blackbird’s bushwoolie brigade caused his ears to twitch, as did the sound of Blackbird’s sudden explosive fits of the giggles. His fatigue was catching up to him because he had been awake for far too long, but nothing could be done about that now, as there were things to be done and introductions to be made.

Eerie made a sudden turn to the left and in a loud, clear voice of command, she said, “Down!”

She vanished from view with a whoosh, a rush of wind that blew Dim’s mane back from his face. No stranger to lifts, Dim too, stepped out onto the nothingness and said, “Down.” He too, was sucked down by a powerful blast of air and he hoped that Blackbird could figure this out, or she would be left behind.

Craning his head, he looked up just in time to see Blackbird being shoved into the shaft by her bushwoolie friends. She did not go quietly to her doom, as there was much flapping and cawing done in protest of being thrown down a dark shaft. Before Dim even registered what it was that he was doing, he was snickering at Blackbird’s cruel fate.

As Dim dropped down, he was grazed by an updraft, and a pretty minotaur calf wearing a maid’s outfit went shooting up past him, her ribboned pigtails whipping about in the crosswinds. He nodded, because he saw no harm in being nice to the help, and also because she was friendly and had waved at him while she went careening upwards.

The drop, as it had turned out, was short, and Dim soon found himself standing on a landing with Eerie. The two of them stepped out of the way together just as the first of the bushwoolies landed, and then Blackbird came crashing down in a tangle of wings and limbs.

“I was almost gored by a minotaur!” Blackbird shouted in alarm. “Her horn almost went right up my bum!”

“Stay off to your side the next time,” Eerie replied as the corners of her mouth kept twitching. “Keep your wings in, tuck in your legs, and for the love of the stars above, hold still. Have you no dignity?”

“No, it seems not!” Blackbird tried to pull herself back together as her collection of bushwoolies swarmed around her. “Why must creatures with horns be so threatening?”

Dim’s senses suggested to him that he might be underground now, down beneath the White Hand. It was confusing though, because it wasn’t musty and dank. The air was fresh, pleasant to breathe, and rather warm, all things considered. Dim examined the walls, which were now some dark colour of some unknown stone, and they appeared to have been shaped with magic. Doorways were rounded, but not perfect circles, and it was as if the entire passageway had flowed into existence. The stone shaper’s magic still resonated, was still strong, and Dim’s magic sense suggested that it might not have been a regular pony who had shaped this place. Was he sensing alicorn magic? He didn’t know and it was too difficult to tell.

Everything vibrated with a thaumaturgic hum and Dim could see wisps of aetherfire flickering in and out of existence. He had power here, immense power, he could feel it welling up inside of him and it seemed as though any feat of magic might now be possible for him. What was this place and why did it exist?

Moving like a mare possessed, Eerie trotted down the hallway with her head held high, humming a happy tune to herself…

The first thing Dim noticed was the vomiting alicorn statue. Okay, maybe it wasn’t vomiting, but water did pour from its mouth into a wide pool, causing ripples to spread along the surface. Music was playing in the circular chamber and there was a minotaur conducting a four piece string quartet. The ceiling above was a somewhat damaged fresco that portrayed a group of alicorns battling some shapeless monstrosity made of eyeballs and tentacles.

Overwhelmed, there was too much to take in all at once and Dim took a moment to compose himself. The music played by the string quartet was sad, surreal, and rather otherworldly. Looking down, he saw the floor beneath his hooves also told a story, and like the alicorns above, they battled a terrible foe, some kind of flaming demon creature made of smoke, fire, and shadow. The pool of water was round and the edges of it had mountains, the profiles of cities, and after a few moments of outright staring, Dim realised it was the representation of a planet.

Even more curious, he saw a white hand, the White Hand, and not too far away was the Black Hand. Above the two hands was the demon beast made of darkness and flames. Feeling eyes upon him, Dim looked up and into the eyes of Eerie Dark, who seemed to be studying him. He turned his attention back to the fiery demon on the floor and thought that his eyes had to be playing tricks on him, because it appeared to be burning as tiny flames flickered along its profile.

Eerie walked away from Dim and towards the minotaur, her head swaying in time to the music. Looking up from the floor, Dim had a better look at the minotaur, and began to study him. He was tall, but slight of build, much like Modesto. Also like Modesto, this minotaur had two mechanical hands, complete with the odd crystalline structures along the forearms. He was a dark sooty grey with patches of midnight blue along his face and ears. Dim concluded that this had to be Mars, but he said nothing so he would not interrupt the music.

To satisfy his curiousity, Dim strode forwards, stopped at the edge of the pool, and looked down at the water. At first, he saw nothing but ripples, but light and shapes began to form in the inky blackness. The water smelled like a thunderstorm and tiny motes of aether could be seen twinkling in the dark unknown.

The drowned visage of Darling Dark rose up in the water below him and Dim ceased breathing and blinking. Her eyes were milky, dead, lifeless. They held no warmth, no lusty affection, and he saw nothing of the pony he once knew within them. Would she sing? Dim forced himself to blink before his eyes dried out and when he made himself draw breath it sounded like a death rattle.

“Come away from the pool, Dim… you are not strong enough of will nor magic to control it, and it will only show you your regrets and what hurts you most.”

It took a surprising amount of effort to tear his eyes away from the drowned corpse in the water and Dim made himself look at Eerie. He had loved Darling once, perhaps it was a twisted love, a corrupt love, but he had loved her, if it could be called that. Whatever affection had been there was choked by weeds of hatred and contempt though, and when the time came… he hadn’t saved her. No, he had struck her down.

“Come away, Dim… your very nature is chaos and this pool is touched by the magic of the ancient alicorns, beings of supreme order. You are their antithesis. I fear what the pool will do to you.” Eerie made a gentle come-hither gesture with her hoof and her kind eyes were inviting. “Blackbird, pull Dim away from the pool if he will not move on his own.”

A vague sense of panic welled up in Dim’s barrel when he realised that he could not move his legs and was frozen in place. He wanted to look into the water once more and the compulsion was so powerful that he failed to notice that the music had stopped playing. Just one more look… one final look into Darling’s dead eyes so that perhaps he could beg forgiveness. The crest of his mane became saturated with sweat in mere seconds and Dim noticed a dreadful tremble that was all too familiar… the same tremours that came with the need for coca or opium laced salts.

Just a final glance to say goodbye…

The urge to throw himself into the water and join Darling was powerful, and Dim was powerless. A strong foreleg wrapped around his neck and a much larger body brushed up against his as a wing wrapped around his eyes, blinding him. A part of him wanted to kill Blackbird for interfering, but a much stronger part of him allowed her to save him, to pull him away.

“Curious, I had not expected this reaction, though I should have. Blackbird, do not look into the pool, no matter how tempting. You too are a creature of chaos, because of your hybrid nature.” Eerie’s voice was commanding, and also filled with concern. “Mars, we should all talk elsewhere.”

Away from the pool, Dim’s legs gave away beneath him and we would have fallen to the floor if Blackbird hadn’t held on to him. She was whispering something into his ear, but he couldn’t make out what it was because of the rushing sound of blood pounding through his head. Still blinded, still covered by her wing, Dim shook with overwhelming terror and the all consuming need for a fix, a need that had been dormant for quite some time, a need that he thought he had been somehow cured of.

Heaving a worried sigh, Eerie said, “Come, let us be away from this room… I think Dim will need time to recover.”

Dubious, Dim eyeballed the cup of coffee set down before him and thought about the warning he had been given about Istanbull coffee. A lot of confusing words had been thrown about, such as sade, orta, and şekerli, all of which determined how much sugar went in while the coffee cooked. When he sniffed, it smelled spicy, and the colour was quite unlike any other coffee he had ever seen. It was foamy and appeared to be more sludge than coffee. It was like somepony had poured too much water into a flowerpot and then allowed the dirt to float to the top.

Shivering, he was glad to be away from that dreadful pool, whatever it was, and he had some faint understanding of how Eerie had been watching he and Blackbird from afar. Whatever powerful magics the pool possessed, Dim was denied their exploration. Was he so far removed from harmony? Something about this knowledge bothered him, though he could not say why.

So lost in his own head was Dim that he failed to notice the opulence of the room around him, or the silk cushion he sat upon. The walls were covered in rich, heavy tapestries that were free of dust and lint. A crank operated phonograph sat in the corner, silent, unused. Overhead, stars and constellations had been frescoed onto the ceiling. In particular, this fresco showed the Zodiac Houses of Equestria, the lineages said to have come from Princess Luna, with the most prominent being the Lion and the Dark Guardian, both of whom held up the moon in the middle of the ceiling.

“Mars is a composer, Dim,” Eerie said as she hovered next to him like a worried mother hen. “He’s quite skilled… he wrote the music that welcomed you to our fair city. I told him to create something that would remind you of who and what you are, and would inspire you to take up the mantel that you were born to bear.”

Lifting his head, Dim had the presence of mind to remember how the music had made him feel. Even in his discombobulated, disconnected state, he was impressed beyond measure by what Mars had done. The music had, in fact, reminded him of who and what he was. It had awoken something deep within, some vital part of him that had lain near death for far too long.

“Alas, poor Mars, he can’t play instruments, due to his hands being the way they are, but he can compose music. When I began his tutelage, he took to musical composition in very much the same way a duck takes to water. I had to hire better instructors to nurture his talent and I—”

“Eerie, stop, you flatter me,” Mars said, making a gentle interruption. Turning to Dim, he rested one of his mechanical hands upon the table and worry was visible upon his face. “Composing music and battlefield tactics are the same thing, I find. It is all about starting the right section at the right time, and doing so in such a way that you achieve maximum impact with what you have. Fine orchestration works just as well on the battlefield as it does in a concert hall.”

Feeling emboldened, Dim lifted his coffee cup, took one sip, and then almost swallowed his own face. Blackbird’s tittering filled his ears and his vision fuzzed over for a moment. After a few seconds spent recovering, Dim downed the rest of the his coffee, then he put his cup down upon the table, and afterwards, he shuddered for a bit. In the bottom of the cup, there had been a fine silt of coffee grounds, and he had just drank most of them. He could still feel the strange but pleasurable texture on his tongue.

For a brief fraction of a second, Dim heard the hum of the universe, and was enlightened.

“I think I can feel my brain stem wiggling,” Blackbird remarked in a matter-of-fact sort of way. “That coffee made me feel strange. My claws feel funny and my hooves… my hooves feel all jittery on the inside.” Then, after a prolonged silence, she added, “Also, I’d like to report that my big pettable kitty clitty seems to have its own heartbeat now. What’d that coffee do to me?”

A brave bushwoolie seemed to materialise out of nowhere to pour more coffee, and while it went about its task, it shot furtive glances at both Dim and Blackbird. Eerie was making strange faces, but she had said nothing. Meanwhile, Mars was sniggering and snorting in a way that only a gargantuan bull-creature could, while also avoiding Eerie’s withering, decidedly-maternal gaze of displeasure.

It was time for a strategic subject change, but what?

“Mars… tell me about the Black Hand…”

Author's Note

This has been only somewhat edited. A better version might be uploaded later. That is all.

Flatulent technology

As it turned out, Eerie was a busy pony with a great number of duties. Something had come up—though Dim had no idea what—and Eerie had gone off in something of a tizzy. Dim had been left in a curious space, though he wasn’t quite sure what this room, this place was. It appeared to be some kind of creative commons; this place was filled with artists, writers, musicians, those of a creative bent. Why had Eerie left him here? What purpose did her actions serve?

About a yard away, an older minotaur cow—a painter—had found a subject in Blackbird, who sat at a table playing poker with bushwoolies. Though he could not say why, Dim knew the painting was going to be a smash success—a fad—and soon the world would be flooded with paintings of a hippogriff playing poker with bushwoolies. It was simply too surreal to resist. Even unfinished, Dim could see the appeal of such a work of art.

The White Hand seemed to be a bastion of refinement, culture, and art. This place was every bit as civilised as Equestria, though probably nowhere near as safe nor secure, but danger held its own appeal for artists. Dim was almost certain that these artists had patronage, and they were free to lounge about in an opulent room within the palace, which was shaped like an enormous white hand reaching for the sky.

Yes, Dim could understand why this place might appeal to artists.

A jasper jackal—Dim had learned the names of the strange looking diamond dogs—made strange faces while writing something in his notebook. What made the dog-creature so curious was the fact that his pen never ceased moving and words seemed to flow like magic. This was fascinating to Dim, who could only be creative in bursts. The writer seemed completely lost in his own thoughts.

There was a smell to creativity, to inspiration. A hint of body odour from those too busy to shower or bathe, the pungent smell of ink, the noxious and often unpleasant scent of paints, many of which no doubt had heavy metals or toxic ingredients for their peculiar pigments. An artist had to suffer for their work. Papier-mâché left behind a wet, musty smell that made Dim want to sneeze. A whittler carving a minotaur marionette filled the air with the aroma of fresh-cut wood and little curlicues of wood shavings fell to the floor around his hooves.

No one seemed to mind the mess.

“Your Majesty…” This was followed by a careful throat clearing and Dim turned his head to look. A minotaur calf stood nearby, looking apologetic. “Prince Dim, there is someone who wishes to speak with you. Captain Melvin awaits in a nearby private room.”

“Oh,” Dim replied, and he wondered how Captain Melvin was doing. “Why thank you. Show me to him at once.”

“As you command, Your Majesty.”

“Dim!” The big captain’s face split open with a wide smile as the door opened and there was a warm twinkle in his eye. “Getting settled in? Do you like Eerie? Are you comfortable? You look well. Do I need to apologise for my subterfuge? Where is Blackbird?”

“She is playing poker with some bushwoolies,” Dim replied, then, much to his own surprise, he felt his cheek muscles tighten and he smiled. The sudden, unexpected action made his face ache and his ear muscles began to twitch from the annoying cramping. He stood in the doorway for moment, looking up at Captain Melvin, but this ended when Dim felt another pair of eyes upon him. Melvin had a companion, a young looking unicorn that appeared to have just entered the gawky, awkward stage, that point where the body just could not decide what it should grow next.

“This is Marlow—”

“What a peculiar name,” Dim said aloud, interrupting without meaning to do so. It was just too interesting not to comment and Dim’s impulse control departed upon a sudden, unannounced vacation. “For a unicorn, I mean.”

The unicorn, Marlow, stepped forwards, and in a creaky voice he introduced himself thusly, “My name is Marlow and I am a monocerus raised by a minotaur.”

“You use the ancient ancestral name for unicorns,” Dim remarked in reply and already, a question surfaced within his mind. “How does a unicorn get raised by a minotaur?”

“Um…” Marlow squirmed a bit and the sounds of Melvin’s heavy breathing filled the room. “Uh… well, you see, Mirabella was a grieving widow in need in comfort and company. She purchased me—”

“She bought you?” Dim’s sudden question was proof that a deadpan could, in fact, sound incredulous and still be a monotonous utterance.

“It’s not like that! I was never a slave to her!” Marlow’s voice cracked and the colt looked panicked. “I wasn’t a pet or a slave to her… she was kind to me… she was already on trial once for her ownership of me and Eerie was merciful when the truth was revealed. Mirabella was sentenced to be my mother for the rest of her days.”

“I see.” Dim’s eyebrow lifted, dropped, and then lifted again as he thought about everything said. So, Eerie had placed citizens on trial for slave ownership. This was interesting, and revealed much. She was also merciful and just in her dealings, which he did find just a tiny bit surprising, because it could be said that the Darks had an allergy to mercy.

“Yes, as I was saying, this is Marlow and he’s an apprentice within the Merchant’s Guild. He came with me to act as their formal emissary. We’ve come bearing gifts, and a payment.” With a broad, sweeping movement of his massive hand, the minotaur gestured at some boxes on the table. “Your Majesty, Prince Dim, the Merchant’s Guild of Istanbull welcomes you.”

As fascinating as all of this was, Dim’s curiousity was piqued. “So Mirabella purchased you as a foal to ease her loneliness? What of your birth-mother?” The colt appeared crestfallen, stricken even, but Dim was so eager to know more that he failed to notice or even care about the colt’s plight. “Most of the time, when somepony is grieving, they buy a cat, or a dog, or even a bird… purchasing a unicorn seems extraordinary by any rational measure.”

“The wealthy and well-to-do purchase unicorns for domestic work and as something of a status symbol.” Captain Melvin reached out and patted Marlow on the head. “Well, they did, at one time, but Eerie, Mars, and Modesto put an end to that practice.” Melvin’s big calloused fingers gave Marlow’s ear a gentle tug and the colt slipped into complete foalishness for a moment, though again, Dim failed to notice.

For a moment, Dim was about to say something, the words were even on his tongue, but then he thought better of it. He understood all too well how a unicorn could be made subservient and turned into a slave. With his eyes hidden behind his goggles, he stood thinking about his own comfortable prison as well as all of the niceties that had kept him shackled. With much care and effort, he had been educated, his horizons had been broadened, and Dim liked to think that he was somewhat enlightened, naive as he had been, but one thing stood out. He had been a slave and his entire existence was to serve the agenda of House Dark.

Was all of Eerie’s kindness just a ruse to leave him indebted to her?

Unsettled, Dim thought of Marlow’s amicable relationship with his purchaser and was filled with far too many dark, uncomfortable questions. This sense of affection, of course it existed, he had been raised by this minotaur cow. Something about Eerie’s acknowledgement of it disturbed him, the very fact that she had embraced it. No doubt, Marlow’s mother was owned by another family, and like a dog having puppies or a cat having kittens, Marlow had come along into the world. Or perhaps she was owned by some slaver guild or similar agency. It didn’t matter to Dim, not really, the end result was the same; a mother and her foal had been separated, with the foal becoming a grieving widow’s distraction. A unicorn, a pony in general, was about the right size for a minotaur’s pet, and they could be oh-so-very-cute when they were young. He thought about Blackbird fawning over him and how cute and tiny he was, and the diminished feeling he had suffered.

The very thought of it caused Dim’s lip to curl back from is teeth in disgust.

“The turbine we recovered was quite valuable,” Captain Melvin said, dispelling the uncomfortable silence that had settled in. “The Merchant’s Guild bought it outright and they were quite excited to get their hands on Black Hand tech. It’s an odd engine, it doesn’t run on coal, but works with methane. Never heard of an engine that works on farts before.”

Marlow, who was still mighty uncomfortable, let out a nervous giggle.

“The guild paid a mind-boggling amount of wealth for it, of course, the kind of payout that cannot be easily counted into coin. Your fair share is mostly diamonds and similar stones of extreme worth. It was valued at a little over twenty-thousand of our local gold coins, and the sheer weight of the payment would have been over a thousand pounds in coin.”

“Oh?” Dim’s attention was now on the captain and one eyebrow arched like a curious inchworm.

“‘Oh,’ you say… for me, that’s about a year’s pay all in one go. And you… you don’t look the least bit excited.” Melvin snorted, rolled his eyes, and then shook his head from side to side, his horns almost—but not quite—touching the ceiling. “They’re all losing their minds… none of them know what to make of it. It is entirely new tech and is years ahead of what we have. Even Equestrian turbines aren’t this advanced… those run on refined coke—”

“This is a big deal,” Marlow said, interrupting the captain after having recovered himself and his composure from the upsetting topic. “We’ve never managed to actually capture one of the newer models of the Black Hand ships before… usually, they self-destruct before they can be taken, and now it makes sense how and why. No doubt, they blow up the methane reservoir… the tank, in event of capture.”

“Just what is it that you do in the guild?” Dim asked and the suddenness of his inquiry caught Marlow off guard. “You are an apprentice, yes?”

“Technological acquisition.” The colt took on a gawky, yet somehow dignified stance. “Mirabella saw to it that I had a fine education and after the liberation of the city, I was able to openly attend a polytechnic school without consequence. Somehow, I caught the eye of somebody within the guild and Mirabella was sent a formal request from the guild… she was very happy… she cried a lot.”

“Fascinating.” There was a surprising lack of sarcasm in Dim’s response, and he was, in fact, quite fascinated. “After you acquire tech, I suppose you reverse engineer it and then begin manufacturing?”

“Something like that, uh-huh.” Marlow’s head bobbed up and down in a dorky adolescent display of agreement. “I’m actually going into negotiations and accounting, so I have to know what the tech is, how it works, and then I have to figure out how to value it for both acquisition and distribution. After the appraisal, I will be responsible for estimating manufacturing costs and determining if something is a worthwhile acquisition.”

Perhaps the most curious thing of all was, this colt had no mark. This puzzled Dim, it intrigued him, this colt was planning out the entirety of his life without even knowing what he was good at, what his purpose was, or what his gifts, his talents might be. It was baffling, disturbing even, as life was something that one planned after one’s mark manifested. The very idea of it both titillated Dim and made his thoughts curdle like milk facing Princess Celestia’s furious noonday sun.

“Tell me more about your guild… I would like to know more about how it operates.” Hearing the sound of his own voice, Dim was struck by the sincerity it held, the actual genuine interest. Under most circumstances, he held little to no interest in the lives of others, mostly because he was too focused on his own thoughts, his own musings, the things that he concentrated upon.

Author's Note

This chapter is an odd one. I'm still kinda iffy about the pacing. No action has happened in a while and the overall pacing of the story has become sludgy. This will change, but it does feel off to me. Sorry.

Groin-gunner

“Miss Coffyn… a moment of your time, if you please. My name is Yuny and I apologise in advance for any intrusion into your privacy.”

Wary, but still in a good-natured mood, Blackbird sized up the jasper jackal addressing her. These canids were quite distinct from diamond dogs; thinner, smaller, the jackals did not appear to be subterranean brutes like their cousins. Yuny was armed and wore a uniform, a padded khaki jack and trews. His sidearm had seen excessive polishing and maintenance, Blackbird saw it plain as day because she was also obsessive about these tasks.

She chose to be friendly with her response. “What do you need, Yuny?”

“I represent the Royal Guard.” While he spoke, Yuny bowed his head and lifted one paw with claws that had been manicured to perfection. “I have come to inquire about your relationship with Prince Dim of House Dark. This is a matter that must be discussed for his protection, and perhaps yours as well.”

“You know…”—Blackbird drew in a deep breath—“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” She put her cards down and then rested her talons on the table, both of them, as the eyes of the bushwoolies around her became anxious. “There is no good reason to complicate this.”

“But we are going to talk about it,” Yuny replied, keeping his voice down so others would not be disturbed. “I take my job seriously. Already, you have sized me up and no doubt, you have noted my meticulous nature. Prince Dim is a member of the royal family, and I am tasked with his safety, his happiness, and his security.”

Annoyed, irritated, a bit of Blackbird’s friendliness slipped away. Her right talons began to drum on the table, her claws clicking with each touch, and her left talons began to twitch. “Something tells me that you waited until Dim was away before you approached me. That doesn’t strike me as being particularly brave.” While she spoke, Yuny’s ears twitched and she saw his nostrils flare. Yep, she had struck a nerve, and took a bit of pleasure from her petty satisfaction. She did not appreciate this unwanted intrusion into what she felt was her business, her prerogative. What her relationship was with Dim was private.

“I did not wish to cause a scene with His Majesty—”

“But you are willing to cause a scene with me, is that what you’re saying? So his peace of mind is worth something to you, but mine is not?”

“Madam, please, right now, I am trying to discern your relationship with Prince Dim so I can sort out and potentially prioritise for your protection as well. I understand that you are his travelling companion, but if there is something else there, if you are, perhaps, someone he has an eye on as his consort, I am obligated to look after his interests.”

“Did you just ask if Dim was fucking me?” Blackbird demanded and the sheer volume of her voice caused many heads to turn and look in her direction. The room around her quieted and, perhaps sensing danger, the bushwoolies began their hurried exodus. “That word… ‘consort’ that you said… is that the nicest way you could think of saying ‘fuckbuddy’ or something?”

Sighing, the jasper jackal’s ears drooped as his tail sagged.

Nearby, a pitch black Abyssinian put down her mandolin, rose up out of her seat, and then stood with her paws akimbo. Blackbird watched from the corner of her eye, but she kept her focus on Yuny. With each passing second, it felt as though her neck grew hotter, and Blackbird could not remember the last time she felt so thoroughly insulted. The Abyssinian’s companion, a wan looking earth pony, was now also watching.

“Yuny… you have no skill whatsoever when addressing the fairer sex,” the black Abyssinian said in a husky voice that was thick with feminine intensity. “I seem to remember that you set me right off… why, as I recall, I threatened to kill you.”

“That you did, Miss Sable.” Yuny rolled his eyes, made a dismissive gesture with his paw, and let out a sigh.

“I have since become your friend,” the Abyssinian continued, “and I marvel at how inept you are. When dealing with issues of the heart, you have no tact. Period.” Purring, the felinoid strode forwards, her hips sashaying from side to side, and her long tail swishing in a way that suggested amusement.

Almost right away, Blackbird decided that she liked this stranger, but she remained wary of Yuny. Her neck was still far too hot, as were her ears, and she just wasn’t ready to think about the relationship she had with Dim, as it was all far too confusing for her to deal with. She didn’t know her own feelings, but there were feelings, and Yuny had pretty much requested a public confession, an outpouring of her heart.

“There is just something about Yuny that makes a girl want to throttle him,” the Abyssinian said in a throaty, almost purring voice. “My name is Bombay Sable and I’m going to do you a favour, new friend. Just agree to become a bodyguard and all of this can be sorted out with no headaches whatsoever. And ain’t nobody need to know what a prince and his bodyguard be doing when no one is looking.”

Blackbird’s cheeks caught on fire and she found herself turning away to stare down at the table. Could she be a bodyguard? Sure, if one ignored the fact that Dim had saved her on more than one occasion. All of this only highlighted the fact that she wanted to impress Dim, because it just wasn’t enough to have his attention—she wanted his awe and maybe just a bit of his adoration, if he was capable of such a thing.

All of this brought her parents to mind, and she was curious about what her father must have seen in the dangerous creature that was her mother. He was gone, her father, and she would never be able to ask him for his advice, or hear his opinion on Dim. Would he approve? Maybe… Dim had saved her, and that had to count for something. Surely her father would approve of that.

“I haven’t been too successful in keeping him safe,” Blackbird muttered and her right talons clenched into a tight fist. “Couldn’t keep myself safe, either. I was brought down with pepper bombs and Dim… Dim just goes off and does his thing… killed the whole damn army… the things he did…”

“Perhaps with Bombay’s help, we can start over,” Yuny offered while his eyes darted in the direction of the Abyssinian. “Or, at the very least, we could talk… all I ask is that you give me a chance to have my say…”

The raki, also called lion’s milk, had done much to improve Blackbird’s mood. Yuny wasn’t a bad guy, not really, he was just utterly inept with it came to dealing with females. This raki stuff was delicious and the addition of water or ice to the strong liquor made it turn milky as if by magic. She had two new friends now, wonderful friends, Bombay Sable and Pâté au Poulet—she had found a long lost cousin, which was just her luck. Pâté was simply known as ‘Bard,’ or ‘the Bard,’ however.

“So… lemme get this straight”—Blackbird’s vision slid in and out of focus, and she cast a wary glance at her half full glass as she tried to get the world back in focus—“you want me to join the royalist of guards and then I’ll start getting training to help keep Dim safe?”

“No one is ever safe,” the Bard muttered and he made a dismissive wave with his hoof. “Trust me, I know from experience. They will come for Dim and they will try to steal part of his soul, just as part of my soul was stolen. It is only a matter of time. Belladonna is a dangerous foe and you’re going to need some help if she comes calling.”

“Belladonna came here, to Istanbull, and she tried to forcibly recruit Eerie,” Bombay continued and she made a sour face as she spoke. “It was the second time I had to face her… me and many, many others. Eerie was not alone, but Belladonna was, and it was a fierce battle. Everything was almost lost… a great many unicorns and others who rose in Eerie’s defense were slain that day. I wish my magic was stronger, I might have done more.”

“The point, if there is a point, is that we fought together and we trusted one another with our lives… and perhaps our souls.” Yuny poured himself another drink, a scant inch in the bottom of his glass, and the liquid changed colour as it poured over what remained of the solitary ice cube. “We exist in defiance of a great and unworthy enemy.” After lifting his glass in salute, the jackal tipped his head back and drank it all in one swallow.

One thing troubled Blackbird and she had some difficulty thinking about it in her current state. Pushing her glass away from her, she twisted around in her seat to have a better look at Bombay. “Why would Belladonna be interested in the soul of an earth pony named ‘Chicken Pot Pie?’ I don’t get it. With Dim, I understand, but this I don’t.”

“Dim and I both were meant to be something else,” the Bard replied in a fatigued voice that sounded as though he was in dire need of sleep. “Eerie has only told me a little of what she knows, and I don’t know the specifics… what I do know is that I, the Bard, was meant to be… had the potential to be…”—at this point, the Bard slumped over in his seat and looked crushed—“the Alicorn Prince of Love. I coulda been somepony. My gift to inspire others might have been just what the world needed… inspiring others with romance, with great acts of love.”

“Oh… the world certainly needs some of that.” Blackbird, now eyeballing her glass, was tempted.

“Oh, it does.” The Bard reached out and touched Bombay, who sat beside him. “I just want the world to stop fighting and start fucking. Is that so wrong? Maybe with a fine meal, some wine, and a song. But since having part of my soul stolen, I can’t seem to write a song to save my life.” A dark look crept over his face and he looked Blackbird right in the eye. “I have seen visions of a world without love or uplifting music… this is not a future we want.”

Bombay unslung her mandolin and then leaned back into her seat as she cradled it in her arms. Her whiskers twitched, they quivered with each breath she took, and Blackbird knew just enough about feline faces to see the keen regret in her eyes. At some point, while staring, she realised that Bombay and the Bard were a couple, and what an odd couple they made.

“Learn to fight,” Yuny said to Blackbird, pulling her attention away from her profound realisation. “Learn to exploit Dim’s strengths and cover his weaknesses—”

“How?” With a turn of her head, Blackbird stared at Yuny while thinking about what remained in her glass.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Yuny shrugged and waved his paws about. “Dim could make things dark and you could shoot somebody in the dark if you remembered where they were. Stuff like that. There is more you could be doing. You just need to apply yourself and spend a bit of time training, if you can.”

Blackbird’s cunning told her that this was a brilliant tactical move and she was now ashamed for having not thought of it herself. It seemed so obvious in hindsight, but this had never occurred to her. If she and Dim were to be partners, if they had to fight together, moves like this one would benefit them both. Now, she just felt stupid, and feeling this stupid, she no longer felt like drinking.

“I’m glad I didn’t unscrew your head from your neck,” Blackbird said to Yuny.

“I’m… glad… too?” Yuny blinked once, twice, and on the third time, his ears folded back. “I’ve grown rather fond of having my head where it currently is. I worked very hard to survive a change of regime and I feel it would be a real shame to lose my head now just as I have started to show some real promise.”

What had she stumbled into? Blackbird was uncertain. She just wanted to find her mother, but now that was looking difficult, or even impossible, and she could feel something deep within her tugging at her, demanding that she do more. A fight was brewing—a big one—and she was a powerful hippogriff creature of gargantuan proportions. She didn’t even work out, not really, and she was every bit as strong as most minotaurs, she had proven that.

“So, how did you two end up here with Eerie?” she asked of the Bard and Bombay.

“Oh, we were part of her adventuring company… we all took the city.” Bombay smiled, revealing one crooked fang and she rested her paw upon the earth pony beside her. “When Eerie demanded Majid’s surrender, he was rude… disgusting even, so I shot him in the dick.”

“Baby, you gotta stop shooting others in the dick,” the Bard whispered to his groin-gunning companion.

“I can’t,” Bombay whispered back, “there’s just too many dicks needing to be shot.”

Author's Note

Leave no groin ungunned.

Den of poets

Once again, Blackbird had made friends, and Dim was mystified by her ability to do so under what seemed like any circumstance. He himself had made acquaintances, it could be said, or maybe future associates, but Blackbird had made friends. Perhaps it had something to do with her being a Pie, or in this case, a Coffyn. Though he would not admit it, he was a teensy-weensy bit annoyed by her success, but could not say why.

Bombay Sable was intriguing to say the very least. Armed with a pistol, a sword, a dagger, and a wand; Dim had her sized up as a credible threat, a triple threat of firepower, cold steel, and magic. While Bombay was interesting, to say the very least, Pâté au Poulet held Dim’s fascination in a vice-like grip. More than anything, Dim wanted to know more about the enigmatic earth pony, but the Bard—frail, wan, and fragile—appeared to be having trouble staying awake.

Within Dim’s breast there was a curious feeling of pity that he could not shake, and it left him unsettled. He puffed away at a new cannabis blend—a gift from the Merchant’s Guild—and found it to his liking. It had cloves in it (which soothed his fragile lungs, thus making it easier to breathe) but it also had a strange fruitiness about it, which he found appealing. It was the local flavour, and what a fantastical local flavour it was.

Though he was hesitant to admit to it, Dim had found a kindred spirit in the Bard.

The apartment that Bombay and the Bard shared could only be described as exotic. Books were scattered everywhere—an indication that these were creatures of higher learning—and there were a number of musical instruments, mostly stringed ones. The room was lit with candles stuffed into empty wine bottles, (Dim knew the evidence of romantic poets when he saw it) rose petals littered the floor, and what had to be hundreds of charcoal drawings festooned the walls, almost all of which were of the Bard in various poses.

“Home for now,” Bombay said as she made a gesture with her paw and her far-too-fluffy tail swished from side to side, tugging on her tattered, poofy pantaloons. “Make yourselves comfortable. Read a book if you’d like, we don’t mind.” Sashaying across the room, she went to the cluttered table, picked up a bottle of wine, uncorked it, and looked inside.

Upon finding that it was empty, she let out a heartbroken meow.

“Don’t even try to blame that on me,” the Bard muttered to his feline companion.

Frowning, maybe pouting, Bombay set the bottle back down upon the table, meowed once more, and then just stood there with her paw resting upon her sword pommel. “We should do something… pleasurable.”

Something about how she purred the word pleasurable was intriguing to Dim, and without him realising it, his eyebrow raised. Catching a sidelong glance at Blackbird, he saw that she was every bit as interested as he was. Also, Blackbird seemed a little tipsy, but Dim had a hard time telling how tipsy. It wasn’t even noon yet.

“Blackbird… why do you go on all fours?” Bombay asked while her claws tapped against the jeweled pommel of her sword. “Most of the griffons I know, they’ve adopted a bipedal stance… keeps the hands free. I mean, it can be hard to use a sword or gun when you’re down on all fours. It’s time to evolve, Blackbird.”

Blackbird seemed taken aback and Dim watched as she struggled to respond. Yes, some griffons had adopted a bipedal stance, but many continued to walk around on all fours. Now, Dim found himself curious about their reasons, as going bipedal would give them a considerable advantage in any number of situations.

“I like being down here with my fellow ponies,” Blackbird blurted out. “All my friends are down here. If I stood up, I’d be as tall as a minotaur or maybe taller and all my friends would be way down near the floor. How could I make new friends if I couldn’t see them?”

Reclining on a cushion, the Bard let out a low fatigued chuckle.

“Here, in Istanbull, you will find that almost all of the griffons walk on two legs.” Bombay sighed, her tail swishing, and she began to pick lint from her doublet with her free paw, the one not resting on her sword pommel. “We Abyssinians once walked on all fours, but then we stood up and became civilised. Kept our paws clean. Our society flourished.”

Dim, a habitual quadruped, found that it was disorientating to adopt a bipedal stance.

“Perhaps we should visit the baths,” Bombay suggested. “My poor little Pot Pie doesn’t look well. His malaise seems awful today.”

Pâté au Poulet closed his eyes, rested his head on his hooves, and replied, “A symptom of having part of your soul stolen. It has left me a pale shadow of myself.”

“And the soul thief is still at large.” Bombay inhaled—so much so that her girth seemed to expand to almost twice its size—and her copper eyes flashed like lightning strikes with intense hatred. “Killing her seems almost impossible, and if I did somehow find a way, she’d probably just turn into a lich and nobody wants that.”

“Battling that one lich with Eerie was awful and unpleasant.” The Bard’s eyes opened for only a moment, he shuddered, and then closed his eyes once more. “What was his name? Something something Lizardo… even though he was dead he kept doing that thing with his tongue. Repulsive.”

“So you’ve been at this adventuring thing for a while.” Blackbird sat down upon the floor and made herself comfortable. “I bet you have lots of stories to tell.”

“Yes, but I’ve lost my knack to tell them well,” the Bard replied.

“It’s funny… since having part of his soul stolen, he can’t seem to use his gifts, his splendid gifts, but he still has the means to inspire others… just not himself. It seems like a cruel fate.” Bombay turned her head to gaze at her companion, and Dim could see the worried wrinkles crinkling her face. “‘Tis a cruel fate indeed.”

“Pâté au Poulet… it feels crazy to even ask… but have you ever seen a paper pony?” Mid sentence, Dim saw the earth pony’s eyes flutter open and his ears struggled to rise. “She weeps tears of ink… I can hardly remember her, but I do remember her.”

“I’m not crazy…” The Bard fought to lift his head and he moved as if he was elderly, of some great advanced age. “You’ve seen her? She shows me sheet music… she said my life was written in sheet music. I’ve had such strange dreams about her. She told me that my real talent is bringing out what is beautiful in others and inspiring love with that beauty.”

Dim’s ears perked until the curved, pointed tips were touching one another and he stared at the chestnut earth pony laying on a cushion. Bombay seemed frozen in place, not even her tail was twitching, and Blackbird remained silent as time seemed to stand still. Dim thought of his strange dreams and how an empty vessel was still a worthy vessel. Suddenly, he had so much to say, but no idea where to start.

“The paper pony saved me… she saved me… because of her I had the courage to keep going. Even though I can do nothing for myself, I still have some faint glimmer to inspire others, and that sustains me. Bombay… she is capable of such beautiful music. For all of her talents, for all of her skills, for all of the things she is capable of doing, she is first and foremost a musician. After I rescued her, after I gave her the gift of her own freedom, I gave her the gift of music.”

Meowing, Bombay swiped at her eyes with one paw while hiding her face with the other.

Now looking at Bombay, Dim noticed for the first time the bare patches around her neck, her wrists, and near her hind paws. Yes, all of the signs were there, just like with Fancy Chancy. No doubt, there was a story here and Dim was actually curious to know it. A blow needed to be struck for freedom, but how? Eerie seemed to have a plan and Dim was determined to hear her out when the opportunity presented itself.

“We should visit the baths”—Bombay’s voice sounded strangled with each word she spoke—“because I think we could all use a good soak for what troubles us.”

The lilac-scented water was hot enough to sting, and Dim hissed as he yanked his hoof out to keep his tender frog from being boiled. His companions were doing much the same, each of them reacting as they dipped various limbs into the steaming water. There was only one way to get into a bath this hot and a sly sneer made Dim’s lip curl upwards in amusement. This was certain to shock his companions and Dim was fine with that, because he wanted them to be shocked.

With a burst of magic, Dim set himself ablaze and his whole body was consumed by fire. His grullo pelt went from being an indiscriminate brown-grey-black, to the vibrant colours of a burning log that was turning into embers and coals. His pitch black mane and tail became roaring, crackling curtains of fire that dazzled the eyes. Uncomfortable with being a source of painful light, Dim turned his talent upon himself, snuffing out the light from the flames, which all turned into spooky black whisps.

Ablaze with black flames, Dim appeared to be something that the Abyss had vomited out in disgust.

With a sizzling hiss, Dim threw himself into the water, which extinguished some of the dark flames that engulfed his body, but the protection of the heat continued to linger, and he reveled in his companions’ wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock. This was an old trick from foalhood that had even impressed his mother. Dim was thoroughly and completely fire aligned, so much so that it was a detriment when casting other spells.

“Dim…”—Blackbird breathed his name—“is this how you survived that battle with Snowbird and his army?”

Not wishing to reveal all of his secrets, Dim did not respond, but let out a smokey, crackling chuckle that sounded like a log being rolled in a fire. The weak, the feeble minded, the superstitious, there was only one thing that they feared more than the dark, and that was the fire that lit up the night. That fateful night, he had showed them the worst of both.

“I once knew a unicorn that could self-ignite,” the Bard remarked as he submerged his hoof once more into the water.

“Oh?” Blackbird too, dipped her talons into the steaming pool and she cringed as she did so. “What happened to him?”

Dim’s smirk vanished and his flaming mane flickered as the Bard replied, “He died, crushed by a blizzard and tons of ice.”

Biting her lip, Blackbird slipped into the steaming water in a lithe, feline manner, yowling only once, and then she settled in beside Dim, who was sitting in neck deep water. Once she was, she was fine, and her body adjusted to the hot water. Too curious for her own good, she poked at Dim’s flaming mane and then jerked back her talons with a hiss when she was burned by it.

With a splash, Bombay plopped into the water and immediately transformed as if by magic into a drowned rat. As it turned out, she was more fluff and fuzz than anything else, and being wet caused a radical change of appearance. Then, before Dim could react, the Bard fell into the pool with a startled cry. He went under and it was Blackbird that pulled him up, yanked him around, and put him down in a sitting position.

“You are now a hot Chicken Pot Pie,” Blackbird said as the Bard sat gasping to fill his lungs with air. “So, tell me, one of you, what sort of pony is Eerie? Is she on the level? Is she a good pony? She seems like a good pony, and I find myself wanting to like her, but then again, I find myself wanting to like Dim too, so my judgment might be faulty.”

In protest, Dim shouted, “Hey!”

“Eerie,” Bombay began, “is a good pony, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she is a good pony. She is devoted to harmonic order… perhaps a little too much so for my tastes. Eerie will most certainly go to extremes to achieve her agenda. She can be rigid and inflexible at times. But hey, that’s what we’re for. Between the lot of us, we usually reach a consensus. Eerie is aware that she is an extremist. Modesto is the peacemaker and diplomat of our group. He tends to stay neutral but leans towards good. Mars, he’s like Eerie, in that he is rigid and inflexible, but like his brother, he leans in the direction of actual harmonious good. Mars and Eerie argue a lot about what is good, what is harmonious, and what is order. If they start bickering, don’t worry, they really do care about one another, and once the steam blows off, everything will be fine again.”

“Huh.” Blackbird blinked once and then was silent.

“Pot Pie and I sort of fall in line with Modesto… we try to do what is good, most of the time anyhow, and we leave the extremes for others with better heads,” Bombay continued as she pulled the Bard into a soggy, water-logged embrace. “Ah, this feels good. I’d better enjoy this while I can, because all of this easy living is about to go away.”

“Eerie is planning something.”

“Yes, Dim, she is. And I’d love to tell you, but I can’t. Not until we’re all one-hundred percent certain that you can be trusted.” Bombay seemed apologetic and she offered Dim a drenched smile.

“I don’t know if I should be trusted,” Dim replied with a wry smile in return, “or Blackbird for that matter, as we are both disharmonious creatures.”

“I try to do good,” Blackbird whined as she gave Dim a gentle shove. “But Dim here… he’s like a forest fire. You can trust a forest fire to burn down the forest and not much else.” After giving Dim a teasing smile, she leaned a little closer, put one foreleg around Dim’s neck, and pulled him to her. “That said, I trust Dim implicitly and without reservation. He came and he rescued me, and he didn’t have to do that. He could have just saved himself. I think it is safe to say that Dim can be trusted to look after those who matter to him.”

This close to Blackbird, Dim wanted nothing more than to lean in the rest of the way and kiss her, but he wasn’t sure if his advance would be accepted. Anxious without understanding why, all Dim could think about was the fact that he cared about what Blackbird thought of him, and he didn’t want to violate that fragile sprout of trust. After everything that had happened, everything that had brought him to this point, this trust was something of infinite, unfathomable value to him, something dear, something precious.

“Look, let me just lay this out… I’ll do anything… anything that gets me closer to my mother, Starling. If it means joining some army, I’ll do it. If it means having to prove I can be trusted, I’ll do that too. I just want my mom back, that’s all.” Blackbird, trembling, pulled Dim a little closer, then, without warning, she crushed him against her with so much force that she made him cry out and then she blew out his flaming mane like blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

“I knew your mother, Starling,” Bombay replied, “but I didn’t know her like Eerie knew her. We only a met a few times and we basically just knew one another’s names. Starling didn’t want to be patient, she didn’t want to wait, and against Eerie’s wishes, she flew off to pick a fight. I’ve never seen a creature so consumed by revenge. Don’t take this the wrong way, Blackbird, but your mother was consumed.”

“I know…” Blackbird’s voice was foalish and wounded. “I know… and I worry that I’ll get consumed too. It’s really, really hard to be patient and to wait.” Sighing, Blackbird squeezed Dim even harder, and she slumped over while almost suffocating him.

Unnerved, squirming, Dim demanded to know, “How did you extinguish my mane?”

“Easy,” she replied, “I just blew it out, silly.”

Author's Note

But putting drip candles in wine bottles is tres cool.

Family secrets

The gaiety and conversation came to an abrupt halt when Eerie strode into the room with her face contorted into a frustrated scowl. Each step caused her hooves to click and clatter against the tile floor, and when she came to a halt there was a profound silence. Dim felt Blackbird’s foreleg slip from around his neck as she pulled away, and he felt a keen sense of longing for her, wishing that she was close again.

“I’m afraid that there has been something of a change in plans,” Eerie said as she stood at the edge of the tub. “I have received word of a serious problem in Fancy… in the province Gasconeigh—”

“That’s one of the places where my mother went, Grimy Rich said so,” Blackbird blurted out, and then she clamped her talons over her mouth when she realised that she had interrupted Eerie.

Eerie’s hard expression softened a little as she looked down at Blackbird, and Dim saw… kindness? Was it kindness? There was something within her anger, something good, but Dim had never seen this on a Dark face, so he had a hard time discerning what it was. But it was something profound, something meaningful, and seeing it shook him to his core. Even in her agitated state, Eerie had what Dim could only call compassion for others, and in seeing it, in witnessing it, the observance of it made him wish to be a better pony. The Darks could change, and Eerie was proof.

“Fancy has formally requested our help, and as a measure of our friendship, we are going to help them. I have agents in Gasconeigh that are supposed to be helping us with the Black Hand, but they can’t budge right now. A group of pseudo-alicorns are terrorising the countryside and threatening the city-state of Gasconeigh itself. They call themselves the Ascension and they are quite dangerous. I need you to go to Gasconeigh, find these pseudo-alicorns, and obliterate them so that our agents can leave in good conscience. I am putting together a team.”

“You don’t need to even ask,” Bombay replied and she poked at the Bard with her paw finger. “While we’re in Fancy, we should pick up some red wine and cheese. You know, stock up while we can.”

“Dim… I’d like to trust you.” Eerie’s piercing gaze locked upon Dim right through her mirrored shades. “I really, really want to trust you. More than anything, I want to trust you. Will you help me, Dim? Our agents will not leave while the province is in trouble and this puts a crimp on future plans. These pseudo-alicorns are powerful and strong, but they are also flawed, deeply flawed, and I think having you there will tip the odds in our favour.”

Lowering his gaze down to the water, Dim gave it some thought. It felt as though so much hinged upon this moment, this decision. Fancy was trying to strengthen diplomatic ties with Istanbull no doubt, and by extension, this would affect the relationship with the Fancy Foreign Legion—a potential boon for Eerie’s plans, whatever those were. Establishing trust was important; trust between nations and trust between family members.

Without lifting his head, Dim replied, “I will help, if Blackbird agrees.”

“I’ll do it if it helps me reach my mother somehow.”

Eerie let heave a sigh of relief and her rigid body slumped. “The Ascension are strong foes. Dangerous. They have the strength of earth ponies, the flight of pegasus ponies, and the magic of unicorns… but never all at once. If they go to use magic, they will fall out of the skies. If they try to be strong, their magic flees them. When flying, they lack strength, endurance, and magic. They are all quite unstable and suffer from varying degrees of insanity.”

“You know, having traveled with Dim, I can say that he doesn’t suffer from his insanity—”

“Blackbird,” was Dim’s sharp interjection, as he was about to warn her that now wasn’t the time, but he never got the chance.

“—in fact, I think it’s safe to say that he enjoys every minute of it.”

When Eerie began to chortle, Dim’s scalp tightened as his ears couldn’t decide what to do next. Glowering, he turned his head and did his best to convey his dismay with Blackbird in wordless silence. Undaunted, she reached out, pinched his cheek between her talon-finger and her talon-thumb, and then gave it a gentle tug while Eerie’s chortles turned into mirthful snickers.

“Oh, he’s grumpy. Look at those dimples!”

Before Dim could contemplate his revenge, Eerie continued, “Thank you, all of you. Dim, I would very much like to speak with you, and soon, if it is possible. I apologise for not having been a better host, but we are in crisis.”

“I understand,” Dim replied as Blackbird gave his thin cheek another tug. “And we can talk right now, if you’d like.”

A most curious statue dominated the room, and from it emanated a magic that Dim found distracting. Four alicorns—two stallions, two mares—stood rump to rump with one another, wings out, and resting upon their wings was a planet. He was almost certain that each of the alicorns was facing a cardinal direction and as for the planet, it held exquisite detail that left him breathless. The oceans were filled with actual water, which somehow clung to the map, and above them, clouds could be seen flitting about.

“It even turns,” Eerie said to Dim while he stared, dumbfounded. “Some very old scrolls we found suggest that it had a moon, but it seems to have been lost, or perhaps destroyed. I have spent hours trying to discern what it does, but alas, all efforts have been for naught.”

The room was round and the ceiling overhead was somewhat domed. Below him, the floor was covered in worn tiles that appeared to have once held some manner of artwork, but had long since faded away into obscurity. There were chairs along the walls, overstuffed chairs upholstered in heavy textured silk brocade that Dim knew would be an orgasm of tactile stimulation to sit in.

When Eerie gestured at these chairs, Dim broke away from the curious statue so that he could sit down, and she followed with him. Just as was anticipated, sitting was an experience, the chair threatened to swallow him, and Dim knew that he would experience keen pangs of remorse upon rising. While she sat, Eerie was removing her mirrored round shades so that her eyes could be seen, and Dim could see that the temples of her glasses had little black cloth curtains to keep the light from creeping in from the sides.

“I am terrified, even now, just sitting with you in this room, alone,” Eerie confessed, and her sudden expression of vulnerability caught Dim off guard. “But I have seen how you are with Blackbird. It isn’t even that you are a stallion, it is because you are a Dark and I know all too well our unnatural appetites.”

“We were made to be monsters,” Dim replied as he settled back into his chair and rested one foreleg upon the broad, overstuffed arm.

“More than you know.” Eerie’s eyes, now narrowed into paper thin slits, somehow managed to stare into Dim’s soul. “You and I in particular, we were more than just merely conditioned, Dim. We’ve been altered. I know all about Desire’s attempt to transform you into an umbrum… I fear I must ask you for your forgiveness, I aided my sister with her research. It is something that I deeply regret, and it now pains me.”

Something inside of Dim prickled, and he didn’t know what to say.

Eerie was silent for a time, in pain, her troubles manifesting as a great many wrinkles on her face, and when she was ready to say more, she shook her head from side to side. “I too, was altered, and as an experiment, I was considered a failure. We Darks were trying to awaken psychic potential so that we would have an upper hoof against the Wardens and those with psychic powers that exist beyond magic. To this end, I had a serum made from eye tyrants injected into my head going as far back as I remember.”

At this, Dim was thoroughly disgusted, but he was neither shocked nor surprised.

“Nothing happened… until after I left home… and then, not only was I out in the big scary world trying to survive, but I had to face all of these changes alone, and without aid. Without a caretaker for when I was too overwhelmed, too sick to move or care for myself.” Eerie seemed to collapse beneath the weight of her own grief and her straight neck bent as her head sagged.

Of course, Dim had a million questions, and under most circumstances, he would demand to know answers so that he could be satisfied, but something about Eerie’s pain pierced through his stony exteriour. He very much wanted to know what had been done to him, and this manifested as a powerful, selfish voice that echoed in the back of his mind, demanding that Eerie was thoroughly interrogated until he had the answers that he sought.

Not knowing how to comfort Eerie, and not wishing to reveal his own emotion, he changed the subject. “How did you manage to get in contact with Fancy?”

Blinking from the sudden distraction, Eerie recovered herself with remarkable aplomb and she gazed into Dim’s eyes with something that resembled gratitude. “I have a zebra soothsayer,” she replied as she came around and her ears perked into a somewhat more cheerful position. “She can pop in and out of the astral realm on a whim and through her, I can communicate with others over vast distances. Every smart, capable ruler keeps a zebra soothsayer close by, even the mighty Princess Celestia.”

“Intriguing.” Dim pulled off his own goggles so that he and Eerie might look one another in the eye. He felt luxuriantly clean, his skin felt softened, supple, and his pelt was left sleek. Sometimes, a good soak was better than a shower, oh yes, and it felt good to be back in high civilisation once more.

“Smoke and fire… shadow and flame…” Eerie’s voice was distant, almost disconnected somehow, and her eyes were strange. “Terror goes before him like a plague and he will be a great destroyer, a devourer of hope and the steadfast nature of virtuous defenders will he consume… he shall sup upon their every mortal fear and he shall be made stronger by their loss...” Her words trailed off and her body was wracked with powerful shudders that rocked her chair.

“Eerie?” Dim leaned closer and it appeared that the stricken mare was on the verge of a seizure. The claws of panic gripped his flesh, sinking into him like icy hooks, and he could feel strange magic radiating from Eerie herself. He watched as one trembling hoof was lifted and she began to rub her temple.

“I have these spells, sometimes,” she said to Dim in a weak voice. “The past and the present bleed together. You shall have to forgive me.” Closing her eyes, Eerie pressed harder against her temple and her breathing became shallower. “Much was promised about you. I was present during several of the conjurings. Even though I was young, it was seen as beneficial for my magical education. The demon, Thrennog, had much to say about your creation and your coming. Of course, there was a price to pay. Though, something tells me that he offered faulty knowledge or even lied outright when he explained how to bind and control you.”

Silent, Dim thought of his sister, Doomed Dark and he suspected that he now knew the name of her father.

“He was so powerful that we had to bind him with purified iron shavings and salt,” Eerie remarked, and her soft-spoken words caused Dim’s ears to perk. “No doubt, he is probably having a good laugh after you turned upon Dark Desire and were loosened upon the world. He was a prankster, that Thrennog.”

Sighing, Dim found himself in some barren emotional wasteland with no idea of how he should feel about what it was that he was hearing from Eerie. He found it odd that he felt no malice towards her—in fact, he felt only pity—and there was something about the fact that Eerie was also a victim that brought him comfort.

With this pity, with this insight, Dim had an inkling of why Eerie had sought him out and why she wished to connect with him. A sneer appeared on his muzzle, a manifestation of his shrewd, calculating, methodical nature, and within his analytical mind, thoughts were already transmuting into words.

“For your healing—for your own sake of mind, you seek to do with me what your sister, my mother, Darling could not do with magic, manipulation, and all those things that she applied and tried to bind me with.” Something almost registering as panic passed over Eerie’s face, but only for a fraction of a second before it was gone. “You wish for me to do your will, and to this end, you now try to ply with me with kindness, friendship, and generousity.”

“I do confess to trying to manipulate you to act for the benefit of good—”

“I bear you no malice for what you are doing,” Dim said, cutting in with calm words of reassurance.

“You were meant to be a powerful force of change, Dim. A means to upset the scales of power. Our damnable house had high hopes of using you to shift the odds in their favour during the coming conflict. You have all of this potential… just like Pâté au Poulet, you had a surplus of potential and the means to bring great changes to the world around you. Desire wanted a slave and a new bloodline of royalty that would ascend to power during Grogar’s rule. She was obsessed with knowing if the experiment had worked, and if the power that you were possessed with would be passed along with your offspring. You were to be the first of many, Dim, a revived race of umbrum, devoted and loyal to Grogar’s cause. Darling was created so that you could sire umbral offspring. Like you, she was a vessel that Desire put all of her hopes in.”

Eerie sucked in a sharp breath before she continued, “I thought that perhaps I could assuage my own guilt for my own contributions into your creation by steering you towards what I believe to be the greater good. I desperately need to know if you can be saved, if you can do good, if you can pull back from the brink of the Abyss… for I too, am damned.”

These words struck Dim like a slap to the face and left him shaken.

“The guilt is destroying me, Dim. I have since devoted my life to the pursuit of order to atone for my sins… I want to save us both.”

Nodding with acknowledgement, Dim replied, “And I too, wish to be saved…”

Author's Note

This may need some editing still... problems were encountered at my end, my apologies.

Chicken

After his long talk with Eerie, Dim was confused, conflicted, and at a loss for what to do. Eerie, she had wronged him, she was one of the ones who had foisted this cruel fate upon him, and there was a part of him that wanted to kill her for what she had done. This was a vocal part of him and Dim found it difficult not to entertain these morbid thoughts of vengeance.

Weighed down by his troubles, Dim thought of Darling, another who had wronged him. She had so little choice in anything that she did and rather than try to help her, he had killed her. It was one of many things he could have done different, but hadn’t. Why, and for what reason? He didn’t know. Killing Eerie wouldn’t accomplish anything and there could be no doubt, doing so would only make him feel worse. Whatever feeling of satisfaction or instant gratification he would get for killing her now would be offset later with the many morose hours spent reflecting upon hindsight.

The clink of glass distracted him and as his eyes focused he realised that he was staring down at his food, which he had not eaten. He was tired, in need of sleep, and had reached that jittery phase of sleep deprivation. His tablemates were far too busy stuffing their faces to notice his suffering, and he felt a tiny but hot spark of resentment within his breast towards them for this. Eerie was not present for this sumptuous spread because she had vanished once more, off to do whatever was necessary of her.

“Hey, Pot Pie, you have a strange looking cutie mark. I’ve never seen one like that on a pony before.” Blackbird said all of this around a mouthful of food, but Dim was too distracted to sneer at her or complain about her being a disgusting primitive. “I recognised the chicken leg, but what’s that other thing it’s crossed with?”

“A lute,” the Bard replied and then he bit into a chunk of crusty, oily brown bread.

“That’s a little peculiar. The chicken leg I mean.”

“Indeed it is, for a pony, but chicken pot pie is a marvellous meal for romance.”

“It is?” Blackbird’s head tilted off to one side, and she swallowed the contents of her mouth.

“I believe it to be so.” The Bard’s right eyebrow arched and his nondescript brown mane was rustled by the sudden jerking of his ears. “It is a culinary masterpiece, the chicken pot pie, and even with part of my soul stolen, I can bake the best pies.”

Dim’s revulsion almost made him gag, but he somehow maintained his composure. Lacking any sort of appetite, he decided it was time to excuse himself. “If you will pardon me, I really must get some sleep. Excuse me. Blackbird, I think we are safe enough so there is no need to stand watch as we had planned.”

“Aw… get some sleep, Dim. You need it. I’ll check on you later, okay?” Warm concern could be seen in Blackbird’s eyes, and something else, something unknown to Dim. “Maybe I can scrounge up some eggs and fix them for you later.”

“I’d like that,” he replied as his stomach did flip-flops. “Now if you will excuse me, I must be going.”

Holding a chunk of greasy bread in her talons, Blackbird watched Dim go, but wished that he would stay. This was a wonderful time, and wonderful times had been in short supply as of late. As he shuffled for the door, his hooves almost dragging, she sat in her chair, almost holding her breath but not realising it, with her claws sinking into her bread.

Then, with a soft click of the door, he was gone and it was hard to breathe for a time. With a faint mewling sound, Blackbird blinked a few times, slumped down in her seat, and then she focused upon the bread she was holding. It was strange stuff, this bread, and she had never tasted anything quite like it. Oily, greasy even, the bread was almost meaty in flavour.

“What is this stuff, anyhow?” she asked.

“Hemp bread,” the Bard replied while he refilled his glass with wine. “The climate here is rather cool, so not much grows. The hemp grows in defiance of everything, we have cabbages, and plenty of root vegetables. It isn’t enough though, and we still have to import food from elsewhere, on occasion, which bothers Modesto to no end. He strives for self sufficiency.”

“I like it.” Then, without further ado, Blackbird crammed the entire greasy brown hunk into her maw and began to chew.

“He fancies you, you know,” the Bard said as he lifted his wineglass. “But he has a broken heart that is still quite raw. In fact, it might never heal. I have a sense for these sorts of things.” Then, he put the glass to his lips, closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and drank it all down in one long swallow.

Smacking her lips, Blackbird wanted to respond, but her mouth was so full that she couldn’t even try. Was it that obvious to everypony, or was it the nature of the Bard to know these things? She watched as the brown earth pony belched and patted his own barrel while she continued to chew on the difficult to eat bread. Or maybe it wasn’t hard to eat at all and she had just put too much of it into her mouth.

After belching a second time, the Bard pursed his lips and fanned away the sour air with his hoof. He eyed the wine bottle for a time, and then Blackbird saw that he was looking at her once more. His expression was one of curiousity—at least she thought it was curiousity, it was hard to tell—and his eyes glittered with mysterious drunken wisdom that could only be found after one had reached the bottoms of a great many bottles.

“I bet my fatty liver would make for a fine pâté to spread on crackers,” he muttered. Reaching out, he grabbed the bottle in his fetlock, but he did not pour himself a glass, no. Lifting the bottle, he had himself another drink, smacked his lips, and then a crooked smile graced his face. “It probably isn’t safe for me to return to Gasconeigh. I left there in a hurry. I first sampled the tender blossom of the Sheriff’s daughter, found it to my liking, and then I tapped her bung. Of course the Sheriff overreacted, and he and his posse hunted me for quite some time.”

Bombay Sable began to titter and she speared a fig with an extended claw.

“I have no idea how Bombay puts up with me.” The Bard lifted his wine bottle in salute to his companion, and then poured what was left down his throat.

“It is good to be in love and to adventure,” Bombay said as she turned to face Blackbird, her fig still on her claw. “In my opinion, these are the ideal conditions for love to flourish. Being in danger creates just the right situation for the truest of love to develop. A couple that has never been in battle together will never truly know what it means to be close.” When she was done talking, she popped her fig into her mouth and gave it a hearty chew.

Ears pricked, Blackbird swallowed everything in her mouth, and it travelled down her gullet in a hard, dense lump. “I don’t know how I feel about Dim yet. He… he scares me just a little, he scares me in ways that I have trouble putting into words. I don’t want to fall in love, I want to find my mother. But here I am, getting distracted, because Dim and my mother are so much alike in so many ways, and it is easy to like him because he reminds me so much of her. Once I find her though… well… I might just do whatever it takes to wrap Dim around my little talon-finger. But I can’t let anything happen until after I find my mother. Them’s the rules. I don’t want to become complacent and give up. I need motivation so I don’t give in to lazy kitty urges.”

“Lazy kitty urges are the worst,” Bombay said around a mouthful of chewy fig.

“Dim is just so… intense, you know? I mean, sure, he’s quiet, and he scowls a lot, and there are times when I wish that he would talk more, but there is this intensity in him that is just like the intensity my mom had. The way her eyes would flash when she was sizing up a situation or how she would move to intercept some threat that put our community in danger.” Sighing, Blackbird felt something tighten around her heart, and it was painful. “I keep wondering if she is torturing herself because of my father getting killed and I worry that she feels even worse because she let our whole community down. Mom held herself to a high standard and after my father died, I think she fell a long way down. When Dim came back to Pteroșani to rescue me, he had that same murderous intensity that my mother had… seeing him like that, it kind of helps to keep my mother’s memory fresh, if that makes any sense.”

“Why don’t you tell us everything that happened,” Bombay said to Blackbird, “because your mother didn’t have much to say. She had a frantic bloodlust when we knew her. It robbed her of reason and made it difficult to deal with her.”

“I wish I knew where to begin… I used to know, but things have become so muddied...”

Laying on his back, Dim stared upwards in the direction of the ceiling that he could not see. The room was dark, as dark as his namesake, and he was comfortable, so why was sleep so elusive? The need was there—along with fatigue as well as exhaustion—but slipping from this realm to the next was proving problematic.

There was a dull ache in his guts, but he wasn’t sure if it was hunger. Sometimes, pain just happened during his more anxious states and the only thing that had helped was the opium. That was no longer an option now, as Dim had no desire to be a slave to such a terrible master. Just about everything else was fine—his smoking habit caused him no real problem—but the addiction to the coca and the opium had been downright crippling and he knew it.

When he thought of being in a hammock with Blackbird during the journey to Istanbull there was a pleasurable tickle-prickle that began in the region of his navel and worked its way downwards. With this sense of almost-arousal, there was also fear, a profound fear that caused Dim to break out in a cold sweat. This fearful arousal, this terror-filled excitement, this scarousal, it filled him with outright panic that made his heart race and each breath was bottlenecked in his too-tight throat.

His blood turned to ice in his veins and his aborted erection caused his cock to retreat even further into his sheath somehow, all while it felt as though there was a great weight crushing his testicles. Squirming in the bed, he rolled onto his side, curled into a fetal position, and then made a dedicated effort just to keep breathing.

Right about now, he needed the pink voice in his head, but she was silent. Dim suspected that he knew why, too, but wasn’t sure how to approach Eerie about it. He thought of the Sea Witch back on Tortoise-Tuga and how he had suffered after the massacre of Shepherd’s Shore. Perhaps he needed a zebra soothsayer to help him with his troubles.

Sweating, his sheets now soaked, Dim could not enjoy his luxurious bed. Writhing, he somehow managed to roll over once more and knew that he would have to confront Eerie about this and it galled him. Would it start a fight? Would she be angry? Would his own anger get the best of him? The fear of the situation deteriorating into something volatile made Dim shiver, as he was already rather anxious about having to deal with Eerie wronging him, and her part in his dreadful existence.

Snarling, Dim pulled himself up out of his bed like a stubborn corpse climbing up out of its grave. Half-in and half-out of the bed, he stumbled and took a tumble down to the floor. Down on the floor, he grumbled, cursed, and thought about setting everything around him on fire. Forcing himself to be calm, he went still and tried to collect his breath while his hind-half remained tangled up in his bedding.

It was time to confront Eerie and clear the air.

Author's Note

So... how does an earth pony get a cutie mark like that, anyhow?

PINK

Dim’s unannounced presence in the library seemed to cause quite a disturbance. Eerie stood at a table surrounded by creatures of all kinds, including a few dragons. Small ones, but dragons nonetheless. A librarian, an ancient, shaggy unicorn with creaky knees, was attempting to be polite and to somehow impede his progress, but Dim would not be deterred from his committed course of action. Some of the unicorns present had curved horns, a curious condition that Dim found intriguing, but he was in no mood to be distracted.

“The library is closed at this time,” the ancient, shaggy unicorn said to Dim in a voice that crinkled like crumpled paper.

“Papyrus, leave him be.” Eerie’s command made the unicorn’s ears pin back in submission, and the old, almost doddering mare stepped aside.

“I will not be turned away,” Dim said, announcing his intentions. “I have come to resolve a family issue that is troubling me a great deal. Refuse me at your own peril.”

“Leave us.” Eerie, looking apologetic, met the eyes of those around her. “Motte, Bailey, continue the preparations for the coming trip to Fancy. I trust the two of you to complete this task. Protect what is most precious to me.”

Two unicorns—one male, one female—both bowed their heads and then departed in a hurry. Dim noticed something peculiar about them, as both of them had identical marks, which was fascinating. Each had a chess piece, a rook, a tower crowned with crenulated battlements. It was quite odd, to say the very least.

Watching, waiting, Dim stood still while the others filed out. One of the dragons watched him and did nothing to hide the fact that she was staring. Six legged, she walked on four legs with her two front legs lifted up off of the ground to act like arms. She lacked wings and she did not smoke, but rather, she steamed. He had heard of steamer dragons, but this was the first time he had seen one up close. As she stomped away, her claws clicking against the floor, she flashed him a terrifying smile.

With the library now empty, save for Eerie and himself, Dim leveled his sleep-deprived gaze upon his relative and began to choose his words with great caution and care. Forgiveness was something that remained undecided, but Dim was willing to be cordial—for now. Eerie had been kind to him, and he was hesitant to do anything rash.

With one eyebrow arched just-so, he began: “I feel that if we are going to be family, we should have boundaries with one another. Things that we don’t do. Things that are off limits.”

Eerie shifted and Dim saw her nostrils flare, but he could not see her eyes behind her mirrored shades. Her face was unreadable, her mood was difficult to discern, and he felt as though he was at a disadvantage. She was making it hard on him, but then again she was a Dark, and he would be disappointed if she had acted otherwise.

“We shouldn’t fuck each other,” Dim said to Eerie in a Dark deadpan.

This broke Eerie, and she laughed. Nervous laughter was still laughter, and her outburst turned into snorts, which she tried to suppress. This was good, he had disarmed her, just as intended, he had rolled over and showed a bit of belly as a sign of good intent. Still, they were both Darks, so the vaguest hint of a threat remained, something that Dim felt a deep sense of regret over.

“I can agree to that, Dim.”

“Good,” Dim replied, “now stop fucking me so I don’t have to kill you.”

Raw ozone could now be smelled in the air—a sneezy, distracting smell, the indicator of a unicorn who had power incontinence—and Dim watched Eerie, looking for any sign, any indication of treachery, anger, or displeasure. Almost holding his breath, he waited for her to respond while all of his senses and instincts screamed at him to strike first. Much to his relief, Eerie’s ears sagged into a more submissive pose, but Dim did nothing to relax his guard.

For all of his tough talk and threats, Eerie could obliterate him in an eyeblink, and he knew it.

“There is a presence in my head, a voice—”

“An invader!” Eerie spat.

“Ah, I see. So you are aware of it and you are no doubt blocking it.” Dim watched as Eerie’s breathing changed into something that was almost a pant. “Cease this at once.”

“She is using you, Dim… I don’t understand how her magic works, but she casts spells through you. This is manipulation of the worst sort! I’ve never seen its like. I can’t even begin to comprehend how she is channeling her power through you. Princess—”

Dim’s head exploded with a furious sound and his ears rang with an impossible volume. The bookshelves all seemed to curve, to bend; beneath him, the floor rose and fell like choppy waves on the ocean. He staggered, struggled to remain upright, the room wibbled around him and just as he was about to fall over, he was seized by powerful, but gentle magic that wrapped around him like a cocoon. He found himself looking into Eerie’s eyes, as she had removed her mirrored shades.

“Dim… Dim, speak to me. It’s been almost been ten minutes and you haven’t responded. Focus on my voice.”

“Ten minutes?” Confused, Dim shook his head, trying to regain his senses. “Seconds have passed. A minute maybe.”

“You don’t remember.”

Eerie gave him a soft shake and Dim became aware of the fact that his upper lip was damp. When he licked it with his tongue, he tasted coppery saltiness and could feel a faint trickle of blood coming out of his nostrils. His legs felt far away, too far away, and he wasn’t certain if he could stand on his own.

“Look what that meddling busybody has done to you, Dim. This is what I was trying to prevent.”

A powerful wave of nausea almost overcame Dim as the taste of his own blood clung to his tongue. As he regained his senses, the worry over the slow but steady trickle of his nosebleed became more pressing, and everything became far more confusing than he was capable of dealing with when Eerie pulled him close. Against his face, he could feel her hot breath and for some reason, he thought of Darling.

“Dim, I was trying to help… I wasn’t trying to hurt you, honest. I didn’t know about the name. Please, please, please don’t hate me for what I’ve done. Maybe I was wrong to meddle, but I did it out of a sincere desire to protect you. You are very dear to me.”

Things began to come back into focus and the ringing sound in Dim’s ears made a gradual retreat, dissipating into nothingness. Eerie’s voice—frantic and worried—was too distraught to be anything but sincere. Something wet splashed down upon his muzzle, making him blink, and then he felt it again. Eerie was… crying?

“I was scared and I let fear affect my judgment,” Eerie whispered into Dim’s ear, causing it to twitch to and fro.

Feeling the warm body pressed against him, Dim shivered a bit, but not from any sense of cold. Terror gripped him and freezing sweat soaked his belly as more blood trickled over his lips. A feeling of great pressure popped between his ears, a sensation so powerful that it felt as though it might push his eyes out of their sockets, and then, before he had a chance to recover, his vision took on a familiar pink tinge.

Heat flooded through his body, a warm, wonderful pleasant sensation of what could only be described as life. More of Eerie’s tears splashed down upon his face, and rather than be annoyed by being dripped upon, Dim was filled with a feeling of concern for the mare clinging to him, who was more than some mere irritating raincloud. A flood of emotion pooled inside of his mind, then spilled out and went crashing through his body, crushing him, leaving him limp and helpless.

Before Dim could say anything, the room exploded with a vivid, labial pink light.

A phantom pink alicorn stood in the library, looking cross, worried, and rather matronly. Enormous in size compared to the two cowering ponies on the floor before her, she looked down at them while bathing them in a brilliant pink glow. She stood stiff, her long, graceful neck unbent, her spine rigid, and her wings outstretched, spread wide from her sides.

“Forgive me, for I have never projected myself this far before,” the tall figure said as she flickered in and out of existence. “My worry, fear, and love has given the power to do that which I did not think possible. Greetings to you, Eerie.”

“Y-y-you are not welcome here,” Eerie stammered as her grip on Dim tightened. “I kept you out for a reason! You killed us! You ran us down in the streets and slaughtered us like rabid dogs! You turned the Dark Spire into a puddle of slag! I’ll not let you use Dim as your assassin to destroy me!”

Silence. Be still, little pony, and let not your heart be troubled.

A buzzing, crackling shield appeared around Eerie, who now looked up in bold defiance. Having collected her wits, having overcome her shock and surprise, her horn blazed with a fierce intensity. Baring her teeth, Eerie hissed and tried to cover Dim with her body. The spectral pink alicorn stood unmoving, her expression now sad, one might even call it grief-stricken, and she folded her wings against her sides, relaxing her intimidating posture.

Dim, still trying to collect his wits, thought back to what Eerie had said during their first meeting. If he kills me, he is not to be harmed. Am I understood? she had said to all present. Go on, Dim. Do as thou wilt. Continue as thine heart commands. I will do nothing to stop you. The words rang in his head like echoes in a canyon and he knew that Eerie had feared for her life even then, though perhaps not just from him.

I have no desire to harm you. I wish for renewal and reconciliation from this reunion. Princess Luna was gravely wounded within her soul after having to purge her own flesh and blood. But not you. You, you will live so that Princess Luna’s happiness might one day be restored. I come not as a messenger of doom, but as a healer and an agent of restoration.

The strange voice thundered and left Dim with a feeling of cavernous emptiness inside him. It burned his ears, seared his soul, and set his mind ablaze. Eerie jerked and quivered against him, and at last, having recovered some of himself, Dim tried to squirm away from her. Lifting his head, he looked the spectral pink alicorn in the eye.

“Who are you?”

I am that which burns eternal. I am the driving force for wars and the reason for peace. My essence fills hearts with music and minds with poetry. What I am brings light to the darkest sense of despair. I am the compulsion to create new life and fill vast emptiness. From life comes purpose, from purpose, harmony, and from harmony, order. Through the force of my will, entropy is pushed back and this universe persists in defiance of those who would destroy it on a whim.

The voice burned him, it seared his very soul and left his heart ablaze. Almost deafened by the sheer force of it, Dim’s mind reeled. Now, he felt small, foalish again, when the world was so much bigger and everything was taller. Eerie’s tears splashed upon his face and he could feel her thin, frail, bony body pressing into his.

“You killed them… you killed all of them! They were wicked and they deserved death, but you slaughtered each and every one of them without a shred of mercy! Could none of them be saved? Redeemed? Are we all wicked to the last?” Eerie’s voice was a ragged, broken shriek, a wail of agony.

The phantom alicorn lowered her head and there was great sadness in her eyes. This time when she spoke, her words were far less thunderous. “They conspired against us and did great harm, more than you know. New diseases and plagues infect Canterlot and indeed, all of Equestria. It was with great sadness that we acted, but we did what had to be done. There are still Darks in the world and even now, we move against them before they can regroup and make a concerted effort against us.”

“And this is why you used Dim to sneak into my domain?” Eerie demanded.

“None of us have any desire to bring harm to you, Eerie, as I have stated. You will live. Dim will live. I am attached to Dim for other reasons, reasons that go far beyond whatever concerns you might have. This was never about you.” The pink alicorn lifted her head once more, and she struck a regal pose. “Reasons that will not be explained, not at this time. But there is much at stake, as I am sure you know.”

“I don’t want Dim hurt… your name—”

The alicorn cleared her throat and Eerie went silent. Then, she spoke: “That was unintended. The spell was new, experimental. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Who and what I am was supposed to be shielded from intrusion, so that I could not be removed. It was never our intention… all of us who had a part in this, to cause Dim psychic trauma. This is a regrettable mistake, an accident. Animancy is at work here and much is still unknown.”

“Soul magic.” Eerie’s voice was low, quavering, and fearful.

“Yes.” The pink alicorn lowered her head once more. “As a gesture of good faith, I offer you this promise. We have the means to heal Pâté au Poulet. We know who and what he is. We also know that he had a portion of his soul stolen. Recently, we suffered a plague of soul-thefts. Princess Celestia can heal him. He can be restored. If he comes to us, she can make him whole again, but we’ll need a donor soul. Do not worry, when given freely, when given with love, trust, and willingness, the tiny sliver of soul that is needed from the donor will self-restore. It is like when two ponies create a foal; at that magical moment, a tiny portion of both their souls are given to the new life they have created, and this new life becomes an amalgam of its parents.”

“He… he is a dear friend. You would do that for me?”

Dim could hear the fragility in Eerie’s voice, and it tore away at something deep inside of him. Her tears, like raindrops fell and much to his dismay, his own eyes were leaking. Clinging to Eerie, but also squirming to get away from her, Dim’s conflicting needs tugged him in two different directions.

“All of that and more. It is my fondest wish to see Princess Luna made happy again, whole of mind and body, so helping you aligns with my own better interests.” The spectral alicorn moved closer to Eerie and Dim, and her hooves made no sound, they didn’t even touch the floor. “I grow weak and weary. I cannot keep this up for much longer. To be honest, I am still shocked that I have done this at all.”

“I will consider your offer,” Eerie said to the glowing pink figure that now stood mere inches from her. “I will speak to Pâté au Poulet about being restored. I don’t know if I trust you, but I suppose that I can trust that you will look after your own interests first and foremost.”

“Eerie, there is one thing that you must know before I depart—”

“And what is that?”

“Like Dim, you are loved. You are not beyond redemption. Your heavy heart tips the scales of recovery in your favour. You may never know peace, not in life anyhow, but you are not lost to darkness.” Raising her head, the pink alicorn offered a glorious smile filled with warmth, with love, and with promise.

Then, before Eerie could respond, the Alicorn of Love fizzled from existence.

Author's Note

And Princess Cadance reveals herself as a major power...

Why do this to myself?

Author's Note

Mood music to put the chapter into perspective. This music shaped the chapter and made it what it is.

Why do this to myself?

The sight of his old room filled Dim with a strange panic and he struggled to control himself. This place was haunted with old, unwelcome memories and pain. All of his old things and all of the memories associated with them. His dusty bookshelves, full of treasured books, with everything seeming to be right where he left it. The alchemy table was covered with notes, inkwells, and curious, bulbous roots. Everything was so much larger than he remembered it, or maybe he was smaller and couldn’t tell.

Glancing about, Dim found one thing that was most certainly out of place: a tiny stuffed Luna doll. It was blue, made of velvet, had black button eyes, and a glittery mane and tail made out of electric indigo coloured yarn. It sat on the top shelf of the bookcase by his bed, right where an old unicorn skull once sat. Thinking back, Dim realised that he had never asked about the skull, where it came from, or who it might once have been. Eyes narrowing, he gave the Luna stuffy a suspicious stare, and could not remember his bookshelf being so tall.

Beneath his hooves, his floor was scorched and left rough in some places; old experiments, failed conjurations, successful conjurations, and spells that had gone wildly out of control, all of these things had left their mark. Dim knew this place all too well, and seeing it brought old, troubling thoughts to mind, awful, disorientating thoughts such as what if the inside of the tower hadn’t been dimensionally stretched to accommodate the entirety of the family, but, what if instead, the family itself had been shrunk down to live inside of an all too-cramped tower?

Nothing his family had done could be trusted, reality could be altered—he himself had done it—and nothing was ever quite what it seemed to be. Just like this place, this dream. Hearing hooves, he whirled about to face the doorway, but remained mindful of the strange Luna doll right behind him. The heavy ironwood door had a familiar creak from its hinges, the sound of trouble coming to his room. Most of the time, it was Darling or his mother, and that creak now carried dire connotations that left him with uncontrollable trembling.

But it was not his mother, nor was it Darling. The cheerful pink pelt was out of place, it didn’t belong within these walls, and the mere sight of it caused Dim’s blood to freeze within his veins. Princess Cadance was enormous compared to him, and he tried to make sense of why he only came up to her knee. What trickery was this? Was this real or was she a construct?

“You are far too large,” he said, too distracted to make a proper greeting.

“And you are an adorable little foal!” Princess Cadance paused mid-step, one front hoof still raised as she looked down at Dim with her face aglow.

Feeling the searing fires of indignant outrage, Dim made his feelings known with a ferocious, dimpled scowl and a protruding, parchment-thin lip. “Why must you demean me in this manner?”

“I’ve done nothing of the sort!” Cadance, hoof still raised, lowered her head down to be closer to Dim’s eye level. “This is your dream. You are in control here. I am powerless and at your mercy. If you wanted to do so, you could set me ablaze right now and I would suffer horrendously. The psychic backlash might even give me physical wounds. I am trusting you, a pony not known for mercy, to be merciful.”

Still cautious, still suspicious, Cadance’s response did nothing to alleviate any of Dim’s concerns. He found himself wanting to trust her now, even though he was still somewhat resentful of her intrusion. Magic made things complicated, but he was quick to fall back upon his well-honed sense of reason. Cadance hadn’t done anything to hurt him, that he was aware of. Because of Cadance, Dim had his first true friend, which had the potential to be so much more. All of those truthful, heartfelt confessions, those moments when he had bared his soul, Cadance was responsible for these moments of weakness, these dreadful reveals of vulnerability—the very things that had endeared him to Blackbird.

“Celestia and Luna, they worry much about saving others, as it should be”—Cadance brought her maternal gaze to bear upon Dim—“and when we made plans on what to do with you, I asked both of them about who will save you?” With her wings fluttering against her sides, the pink alicorn’s eyes filled with a sadness that Dim could not bear to witness, and he turned away from her. “Celestia and Luna both are good ponies, the very best of ponies, but sometimes… sometimes… there are times when the lives of individuals become as mere details, lost within the bigger picture—”

“As it should be.”

Blinking, Cadance appeared to be stunned and it took her several long, confused seconds to make her reply, which she stammered out, “W-w-what?” After making a sharp inhalation, she continued, “But the lives of individuals matter!”

“Not so much,” Dim replied as he glared up with foalish defiance. “History is built upon the broken backs of a countless number of forgotten lives, each spent trying to achieve some greater good, some goal, some purpose, some great monument, some cause. I am a unicorn… you are an alicorn… act like it. Stop being a disgusting primitive.”

“Why, I never!” Cadance let out an indignant sniffle-snort and stomped her hoof against the floor. “I stuck my neck out for you! I risked everything for you, as an individual who has been swept up in these events! I pitied you!”

Dim, his lip curling back from his teeth in an aristocratic sneer, responded with, “You idiot.”

“Why must you try so hard to be unlikable?” With a snort and a toss of her head, Cadance sashayed away, her ears bobbing from her bouncy, almost flouncy gait. Whinnying, she threw herself down upon the end of his bed, made an impromptu nest from his bedding, and then settled into a ponyloaf position. Then, she focused her commanding stare upon Dim.

“Come here and let me huggle on you for a while.”

“No.”

“Dim, this is your dream. All of this is your making. I am the way I am because this is how you choose to see me. You are the way you are because this is either what you wish to be, or what you really are on the inside—an emotionally stunted stallion-foal whose internal development was crippled by his mommy-issues and intense emotional scarring.”

Dim’s thunderous silence was deafening.

Undaunted, Cadance plowed forwards. “Do you plan to find a way to kick me out?”

“No.”

“So you want help? You want to be better?”

“No.”

“No?” With a perplexed look upon her face, Cadance patted the makeshift nest with her wing, inviting Dim to come and be with her.

“What I really want to do is fuck Blackbird and to listen to her whorish moaning while I rail her tight little kitty-slitty. I want to know if she’ll yowl like a common alley cat.”

Cadance blinked once, her eyes went wide, she swallowed, and a gulping sound could be heard. Her ears pivoted forwards, turned a much darker shade of pink, and her pupils became pinpricks. For a moment, it appeared as though she might say something, her mouth opened, her lips moved, and her tongue pressed against her teeth, but no words came out.

“Here I thought you appreciated honesty,” Dim said with a snark that could only be described as cauterising. “I mean, all those embarrassing, awkward things that I could not keep to myself, the things I said to Blackbird. How I bared the darkest corners of my soul and confessed even my most vile deeds. I could keep no secrets from her and I was forced to endure such painful, agonising honesty.”

“Touché.” Cadance, not giving up, patted the bed beside her with her wing once more, all while doing her best to recover from her sudden, unexpected shock.

“I do want Blackbird,” Dim continued, and rolling his eyes, he looked up at nothing in particular on the ceiling. “I want her in a way that I never wanted Darling. There are confusing moments when I want to be a better pony, in the hopes that she finds me more agreeable. These moments leave me filled with shame.”

“Why be ashamed, Dim?”

Shrugging, he did not have an answer. “I dunno.”

“Dim, just so you know… since we are being honest... I had part of my soul and my consciousness splintered just for you. It’s happened once before, as I was learning animancy, and I was able to put a tiny part of myself into a construct. It was part of my advanced lessons. When and if you come back to me, I’ll be able to withdraw it from you with but a touch. Hopefully, this part of me will have stayed with you long enough to learn the true nature of this… this… shadow curse you have, this corruption of your cutie mark. Celestia and Luna both have learned much already, but there is still much that isn’t known. We don’t understand the mechanics of it, not yet, and while we all fear what you might become should this curse consume you, I, personally, have a vested interest in saving you.”

“Am I to be some kind of project? A learning experience? Something you have to do to graduate?” Dim was startled by the lack of ire in his voice, and the sardonic snide that was typically present was—at the moment—nonexistent. “You are already a princess, so am I to guess that this is for self-enrichment?”

“Self-betterment.” Cadance sighed, inhaled again, held it for a time, and let it out in a huff. “I started off as a pegasus. My total lack of magical control lead to some real embarrassment with Queen Chrysalis. After that… after almost losing everything I held dear to me, I threw myself into my studies. Luna splintered off a tiny piece of herself to act as my instructor in dreams, because my days are already busy and long.”

In respectful silence, Dim listened, something he was rather good at when the mood struck him.

“I am a Princess of Equestria, and the Empress of the Crystal Empire. I am also a magical dud.” Pouting, Cadance tucked her wings against her sides and then just lay there, staring at Dim.

“I too, am a magical dud—”

“Dim, are you mad?”

“Well, yes, actually, I am, but that doesn’t—”

“Magical dud?” Cadance gave her best incredulous look, and Dim felt a growing frustration.

After grinding his teeth for a moment, Dim tried to express himself once more. “I was only above average! I verged on the exceptional but my mother was all too happy to always remind me that I was not the pinnacle of Dark perfection! Some spells were out of reach for me, spells that came so easily to others. But some magics I did excel at… I guess… but I was forever hearing my failings on what I couldn’t do. The truly powerful magics exhaust me if I can even cast them at all… my mother on the other hoof… and Eerie… I am a gnat compared to them. I am insignificant. I am nothing!”

“Dim—”

“This is why I threw myself into alchemy. Anypony can be great in alchemy, with enough drive and ambition. Alchemy only respects hard work, not whatever you are born with. I can do things with potions that even skilled wizards would have trouble replicating with spells. I lived in the dark shadow my family cast, and I found my own self-worth in alchemy.”

While he took a moment to catch his breath, Dim saw a curious expression pass over Cadance’s face. She was thinking, so she was, and the tip of her left ear sagged in distraction. Something that he had said had left behind an impression, and for whatever reason, Dim hoped that it was a good one. Within him, there was an inexplicable urge to have Cadance like him, and he wanted her friendship, though it galled him to acknowledge this.

“I too, feel like I have a lot to prove,” Cadance confessed and her countenance became one of intense worry, at least, this is what it appeared to be to Dim, though he could not be certain. “Compared to the other princesses, I feel so mundane sometimes. Twilight has her powerful magic and her studious nature. I struggle with concepts that she takes to like it was breathing. Celestia’s studies into animancy blaze new trails. She is exploring a whole new frontier. Luna has her dreams. And when I compare myself to them, I just feel so plain and so common.”

“So you allow a part of yourself to be placed into the mind of a demented psychopath so that you might prove yourself. You take risks just so you can say that you’ve taken them.” Overcome with a strange compulsion, Dim took a few stiff-legged steps in the direction of his bed, and then halted when he became aware of what it was that he was doing.

“You shouldn’t say that.” Cadance’s eyes focused on Dim, her mouth drew into a tight pucker, and her ears pricked straight up, no drooping.

“But I am—”

“You saved Blackbird. You didn’t have to do that. Mind you, this happened after you cut down Darling Dark with no mercy. I had some doubts about you, I’ll admit, and Shepherd’s Shore made me wonder for the state of your soul. It pains me to say it, but I started to ask myself if perhaps I had seen something that wasn’t there. But then, you saved Blackbird, at great risk to yourself. You felt something for another living, breathing being and it was so strong, so overpowering, it overcame your own powerful, selfish sense of self preservation.”

Why had he saved Blackbird? This question plagued him, it echoed in his mind, and the more he thought about it the more it ate away at him. It was still selfishness, because Blackbird was something he wanted, something he craved. Could one say that one had done something for good when they had done something for themselves and their own justifications? What was the nature of redemption? What made him worthy? Cadance’s words suggested that by saving another, one could save themselves, but he was uncertain about the validity of this.

Dim’s thoughts were interrupted when Cadance asked, “Why don’t you come over here with me?”

Blinking, Dim, in a little foalish body, shook his head from side to side.

“Why are you so resistant to something you want? You made this dream, this room, you created your own self image and everything that I am right now, all of it is your creation. I am nothing more than a psychic sliver, a protrusion that can on occasion project my voice into your thoughts. I am not even sure if the real me is awake and aware of myself right now. For all I know, the real me might be sleeping, she might be disconnected, or she might be sitting on the potty after having to judge yet another cheese log competition that my subjects are so fond of. For them, freedom means having cheese log competitions on a whim.”

There was a brief pause when Cadance sighed, and then she continued, “All of this is your doing. Your magic, your own special connection to the dream realm, it has interacted with my little sliver in ways that I had not anticipated. All of the words that I am saying now are things you want me to say. I am the voice of reassurance that you need.”

“Why tell myself this?” Dim demanded.

“Because, this is wish fulfillment and the honesty you crave.” Once more, Cadance sighed and rolled her eyes. “I honestly don’t know where I end and you begin. One day, when I reabsorb myself, I will become cognisant of this knowledge and everything that is done here. If anything, I will be super-embarrassed to discover that you and I had a cuddle in the bed together. You clearly want something, something you are starving for, so why not come and get it? Enjoy the fruits of your labour.”

“This feels like trickery.”

“Really, Dim?”

“Oh, I would most certainly play tricks on myself.”

“Why would you do that, Dim?”

“I adore schadenfreude, my own most of all.”

“I thought that meant taking pleasure in the misfortune of others.”

“Ah…”—Dim raised one small hoof as he made his point—“but right now, I am watching myself, and no doubt enjoying my own self suffering. I exist as a separate entity at this point. I would most certainly explore my own duality if it meant that I could watch the part of myself that I hate suffer.”

“Come here, you little weirdo, and let me hug you.”

“No! Never!” Now, wallowing in his own delicious-but-crippling fear, Dim began backing away.

Why had he done this? Why create his old room? Why visit these memories? What could possibly be left for him in this place, other than pain and the memory of pain? The ghosts of old hurts and wounds from the past. Turning about, he faced the tiny stuffed doll that was Luna, and he stared up at her. Using his magic sense was useless, as everything here was constructed from magic, and nothing was real. What truth could be had within the illusion of dreams?

Turning once more, Dim whirled to look at Cadance once more, and he shouted, “This is Eerie’s doing!”

“Dim, that’s paranoid, even for you,” Cadance responded.

“No.” Shaking his head from side to side, Dim knew he needed to try again if Cadance was to understand. “Eerie’s ceaseless and relentless need for affection, she’s triggered some fear inside of me, or some need within me. She’s awoken something that must go back to sleep if I am to ever know peace.” When his words made Cadance frown, he feared that this would not end as planned.

“You were shown the wrong sort of love, Dim. It scarred you. It hurt you. You suffered in a way that I can barely even comprehend. But you can’t run and hide from love, Dim. It’s like sunshine—well, that’s not a good example for you, but you get my point, I hope. You’ll die without it, or worse, you will shrivel, whither, and become something else, a fate worse than death.”

“No.” Dim’s utterance was little more than a frantic moan and he felt his resolve weakening.

“Eerie already recovers, Dim. She knows the truth of it.” Cadance’s words burned Dim’s ears and turned his desire to retreat into an overwhelming compulsion. “She has torn off the scabs, drained the infection, and now she heals. Such remarkable resilience. Surely you could do the same. This fear of intimacy will be your undoing, Dim.”

“NO!” Fear, pain, and rage restored Dim’s failing resolve, granting force to his protest. The walls crumbled, the books fell, the floor beneath him shattered, becoming little more than gravel. Like snowflakes, the debris fell for a time, until it transmuted itself into motes of light. These motes of light went streaking off in all directions, and became stars suspended in a sky of black velvet.

Cadance, now thoroughly transformed, was a constellation with a spectral pink outline to her body. Reading her face, Dim could only conclude that she was broken-hearted. Glittering stardust poured from her wings as she took flight to come to him, and he had no means to escape. Try as he might, he could not move about the vacuum of whatever space this was.

“Behold, Dim, look and see the truth. This is you as you are. With all of the illusion stripped away, with all of the layers of the dream peeled back, this is what you really are. This is where your growth halted, Dim. Look…”

This body was too tiny, too small, and looking upon it made him want to wail in frustration. Helpless, tiny, Dim ground his teeth together as he protested his plight. When it occurred to him that he was a foal pitching a fit, a colt lost to a tantrum, he ceased his struggle and stared at Cadance, pleading with her for help in silence, unable to say the words that might save him.

A short distance away, the constellation of Cadance stopped and extended her hoof to him. Her eyes were the nebulas where stars were born, galactic nurseries that spawned cosmic life. She spoke without her lips moving and her extended hoof pulsed a curious light that throbbed in time to Dim’s own heartbeat.

“This is all you,” Cadance said and her voice seemed to echo in the emptiness. “This is your doing, not mine. You are tapping into my healing magic. I don’t know how, but through dreams, you have found a way to draw upon the tiny sliver of me hidden within you. Be brave, Dim… take what you need. I will not turn you away.”

Extending his own hoof, Dim reached for the hoof held out to him and willed himself to cross the vast interstellar distance of his own soul. As he began to move, the cold deadness of his own existence became too much to bear. Craving warmth, still reaching for Cadance, Dim ignited himself and like a newborn star, he filled the void around him with radiant light. Straining, struggling, and seeking reassurance, Dim reached for the hoof held outstretched for him…

Uterine uprising

When Dim entered the room, time seemed to stand still for Blackbird, who could not take her eyes off of him. He was showered and had been groomed—his pelt was sleek, shiny, and perfect—but most of all, there was something about his commanding gaze that made the muscles along the insides of her thighs quiver. A bottle of wine floated just beside him, along with a platter of cheese. Flexing her talons, she almost couldn’t stand just how appealing Dim was at this moment.

“Dim would make for a stunning mare,” the Bard remarked with dry, refined wit.

“He’s certainly in that weird in-between place, just like Eerie.” Bombay nudged her companion in the ribs and nodded her head. “It makes you wonder just how many creatures had to go and have a good think about their sexuality after looking at him.”

Before any further distractions could take place, Blackbird remembered her duties and shot Munro a sidelong glance out of the corner of her eye. The calf looked nervous and was trying to hide it, but doing a lousy job. Dim could be every bit as intimidating as he was attractive and Blackbird began to wonder if poor Munro was attracted to Dim or just afraid of him.

“Dim, this is your valet. His name is Munro. Also, earlier today, I was sworn in as your royal guard.” This seemed to get Dim’s attention, and Blackbird felt her heart skip a beat when he turned to look right at her, even though she couldn’t see his eyes. When his lip curled back from his teeth in a sneer, she felt her wings twitch against her sides.

“He’s a calf,” Dim deadpanned in a reedy, nasal drone.

“Yeah, well, he’s learning how to be a valet, sort of like how you’re learning how to be a prince.” The new expression on Dim’s face gave Blackbird pause, because if looks could kill, she knew that she’d be dead right now. His fury was exciting and she felt a moist heat growing deep within the cleft of her nethers. Knowing that he was all bluster, she continued, “You know Dim, maybe you could ask Munro for pointers, he has fantastic manners.”

The cheese on Dim’s platter seemed to soften.

While Dim seated himself on a silk brocade chaise lounge, Blackbird felt her insides twist into knots. Everything about his everything caught her eye. The way he moved, the way he sat down, the way he drank wine from the bottle—it left her hot and bothered. When she thought about running her talon-fingers through his mane, she had to fight back her girlish giggles.

“I’ve never had a valet before and I’m not sure that it is necessary.”

“But… but I need hands-on experience!”

“Are you a valet or a masseuse?” Dim asked and then popped a bite of softened cheese into his mouth while the platter hovered near his head.

“Uh, do you need your back rubbed?”

When Blackbird turned to look at Munro, she saw him staring at her, pleading with her with his big bovine eyes, and panic was edged deep into his face. Dim was being Dim, which was expected, but Blackbird wished that he would be a little nicer sometimes. Lounging, Dim chewed his chewy cheese while his nostrils flared in some fabulous, imperious way that Blackbird found enthralling.

“You know, out of all of the answers that you could have possibly given—”

Blackbird held her breath, waiting for Dim to unload, and she feared that this would be unpleasant.

“—you somehow chose just the right answer for a subservient underling. Consider yourself in my employ, whatever your name is. A good toady is so hard to come by.”

With a huff, the breath that Blackbird was holding escaped and it felt as though she was deflating. This was the one thing she hadn’t expected from Dim at all, and off to her right, where Bombay and the Bard were sitting together, she heard snickering from the both of them. Dim seemed almost… cordial? At least, for the moment.

Fickle. Dim was fickle. Taking a deep breath, Blackbird took a moment to remind herself of that while Dim noshed on cheese and wine. Munro would at least be looked after, because Dim saw him as valuable. At least, this is what Blackbird hoped. It was hard to say what might come next between Munro and Dim, just because Dim was so damn fickle. Yuny had said that behind every good creature, there was a great valet, which meant that these two needed to work together. Dim was a difficult pony to get along with and at any given moment his whims could change.

“You will call me Dim. Nothing more. Although, if you are feeling a need to ingratiate yourself to me, you may call me ‘Your Vizardness’ or something to that effect.”

“Yes… of course.”

Munro’s voice sounded frightened to Blackbird’s ears, and she wanted to comfort him, but doing so right now would probably embarrass him to no end, and might even trigger Dim’s ridicule. Princes—royalty in general—seemed to be fickle or eccentric, at least in Blackbird’s limited understanding, and it was probably for the best that Munro learn how to deal with extreme personality quirks. Life with Dim was interesting, to say the very least.

Reaching out, Blackbird snatched up a startled bushwoolie and began stroking it. After a moment, it quieted and went still, content to be petted. Somehow, Dim made eating cheese interesting, doing things with his lips and his tongue that she found oh-so-very-distracting, and the back of her head felt sweaty. She could feel her ears jerking to and fro while the sweat trickled down the back of her neck, tickling her, and when Dim wrapped his lips around the top of the bottle, her guts began doing somersaults, flopping up against her navel from the inside. No doubt, her uterus was conspiring against her, and she would have to be on constant watch for betrayal.

When the cheese was gone, Dim conjured a fat joint, which he then stuck into his mouth. Blackbird, holding her breath again without realising it, watched as he pulled the joint out, slowly, and with great care, leaving the yellowish paper moistened with his saliva. Then, he popped it into the end of his long silver holder, placed that between his lips, and lit his nail on fire. When he took his first puff, Blackbird almost succumbed to lightheadedness, and she sucked in a ragged, wheezing inhale when she remembered that breathing was vital to life and living.

“You know,” Dim began, speaking between puffs, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I woke up a while ago and I realised, I am going off to Fancy to potentially take part in a covert operation that I have no clue about, for reasons I cannot comprehend, for a cause I don’t even understand. I only ended up here because I wanted to help Blackbird find her mother. I am mystified by all of this.”

In deadpan, the Bard responded, “There is wine and cheese aplenty.”

Inhaling great lungfuls of smoke, Dim nodded and exhaled these hazy words: “That’s reason enough.”

“Bombay, I like this pony.” When Bombay began to titter, the Bard leaned forwards in his seat and made a gesture at Dim. “Dim, Fancy is a fantastically dangerous place. Inside the cities, you will find thoroughly modern civilisation. Some of the most advanced, most modern cities in the world can be found in Fancy. But… you step outside the walls of the city—”

“And you travel back in time?”

The Bard nodded, a lazy gesture done without much effort. “City dwellers seldom leave the safety of the city walls. Criminals, the undesirables, the poor, the peasants, they all live outside of the walls, and are forced to fend for themselves. There are terrors that stalk the night and brigands operate in the open during the day. The more important farms have a garrison of guards, but those less well-to-do must pay the brigands for protection.”

Blackbird watched with intense interest as Dim puffed away.

“Eerie was the one that kept us safe from the worst of threats, but she’s going to be here, planning for whatever comes next with the Black Hand. She’s an illusionist, Eerie is, and her powerful protections allowed us to maintain a low profile.” The Bard lifted his own wine bottle, took a swig, and then let out a thunderous belch. When he recovered, he continued, “It will be important to maintain a low profile. Killing a few brigands here and there, that’s not so terrible, but starting an all-out war would be detrimental to our cause.”

Shaking her head, Blackbird knew that the Bard was destined for disappointment. Her father, Stinkberry, had an expression for situations just like this one, and thinking of it caused a terrific flood of memories to go rushing through her mind. Might as well tell a fart not to stink, her father would say, usually a response to somepony telling him to do something to control his wife or daughter.

“And this, I am guessing, is why you left home?” Dim pulled out his cigarette holder, but only to chug some wine. The sight of the lump within his throat moving up and down with each swallow made Blackbird’s mouth go dry even as her nethers moistened.

“That was such a painful decision. Stay at home and be a peasant. Leaving home meant taking my own life into my hooves, because worse fates awaited. I knew what happened to earth ponies and slavery did not appeal to me.” The Bard lifted his bottle, waved it around a bit, and then with a weak sigh, his raised foreleg fell as his strength failed him. “But leave home I did. One thing lead to another, and I ended up in a Bard’s College. My natural raw talent was somehow enough to get me in. An earth pony in a company of adventurers has better odds, some might say.”

“I would suppose so,” Dim remarked.

“In time, I would meet Eerie and the others. She wasn’t always the pony that she is now. When I first met her, she was far more broken. The wounds were still fresh, I reckon. With Eerie, I accomplished amazing things. I have stood on the soil of another world and looked up into an alien sky to see strange constellations that I did not know. I have met humans, and in an even more fantastic turn of events, I have been human. I have walked along a span of stars, a bridge that connected this universe, this realm, to a tangent universe that sadly, no longer exists.”

“A tangent universe?” Dim’s eyebrow raised and this caused his goggles to sit crooked upon his face.

“A special place that no doubt broke off from some other reality, perhaps even this one. Their world was flat… a disc. I would not have believed such a thing was possible, but having seen it with my own eyes… it was a profound experience. Eerie saved who she could, the very last of what remained of a resistance. We fled with them across the span of stars… Eerie called it the Galaxy Bridge, but naming such a thing, it just feels trite.”

Blackbird was too entranced with Dim to catch even half of what the Bard was saying.

“Going home will be hard for me.” Leaning over onto Bombay, the Bard allowed himself to be held by his companion and he closed his eyes. “Even the earth ponies that are allowed to live within the walls aren’t well off. Some are soldiers, but most serve as labour. Pulling a cab within the city walls is still a pretty sweet life compared to life outside the walls. Hauling, pulling, delivering, doing the jobs that nopony else wants to do. Carting around nightsoil. Ugh.”

After a deep inhale, Dim blew out an airship made of smoke. It sailed through the air, propelled by his breath, and its existence was short-lived. Blackbird watched with near-breathless anticipation, wondering what he might do next. Was he in a playful mood? A good mood? Was he happy? She wanted him to be happy, because most the time, Dim was miserable.

“It is a problem with no easy answers, no quick, fast solutions,” the Bard continued, crestfallen. “We breed faster than the other tribes, and there are only so many jobs within the city walls. Sure, an earth pony could be an accountant, but the issue here is, a unicorn has a much harder time pulling a wagon. There are too few unicorns in Fancy… the ones that have any sort of magical ability at all go elsewhere to seek their fortunes, and the ones with spot on the wall talents just try to exist. There is this precarious balance that has to be held, so most earth ponies are made to live outside of the protection of the city walls. Jobs are preserved for those best suited for them. The system works, it has allowed Fancy to survive as a nation for a very long time, but it is gross, it is unjust, and us earth ponies get the worst of it.”

“So, shake things up,” Dim suggested with a ne’er-do-well’s grin that left Blackbird flustered beyond description.

When Blackbird turned to see the expression upon Pâté au Poulet’s face, she saw fear and doubt while he shook his head from side to side. “Fancy is already in a precarious position. We ceased to be a united country a long time ago. We are little more than a confederation of city-states that barely tolerate one another so that the old treaties with Equestria might be exploited. See, that’s the rub… the treaties are with Fancy, not with individual city-states. Shaking things up would be the end of us.”

“You know,” Bombay interjected, “rather than being all mopey, we should get out and do something.”

Author's Note

I almost feel bad for torturing Blackbird. I don't know if she deserves this.

Gute Nacht, mein Fräulein

Istanbull was a city that never slept. Bright lights burned round the clock, whistles blew announcing the end of one shift as well as the beginning of another, and the streets never ceased being crowded. This was a place alive with purpose, so much so that Dim could feel it. Makeshift factories churned out weapons of all kinds. Ore was smelted into useful metals, which were then turned into boilers, weapons, hulls, and useful consumer goods. This had ceased to be a city and had become an organism, pregnant with purpose.

Creatures of all kinds cooperated with one another, each working towards a common goal, the same common goal that had united so many throughout history: war. Istanbull was gripped with the feverish fervency of war. Posters were everywhere, left on walls, nailed to door frames, secured to light posts, each one a message pleading for unity against the Black Hand. Newcomer though he was, Dim found himself caught up in the spirit of things, the sheer romance of it all, and he knew—he knew—this was a place where heroes could get their start.

The overall effect was intoxicating.

Sitting in a wrought iron chair on the deck of a rooftop bistro, Dim looked out upon the city and nibbled upon his greasy hemp bread while listening to Bombay as she tried to coax a tune from her mandolin. Blackbird was watching Bombay’s claws, which plucked at the strings, and Munro—no doubt up past his bedtime—struggled to stay awake. Pâté au Poulet, the Bard, he was finishing a chicken pot pie with a sleepy, relaxed expression upon his face while watching two lovers canoodling behind a potted fern.

A cold wind tore between the peaks on both sides of the city, but Dim was warm enough in his jacket. The outdoor rooftop bistro stood as a bold testament to the spirit of the city, the patrons enjoying themselves in courageous defiance of the bitter, bleak, wintry wind—the wind of summer. In the middle of the city, the white hand towered over everything else in the city, a dominating silhouette that drew the eye with some indescribable, irresistible force of compulsion.

“There is hope here,” Bombay Sable said to Dim, intruding on his thoughts. “Do you feel it? Modesto, Mars, and Eerie, they have brought hope to this place. The Midreach and beyond, all of it, it has fallen on hard times. But hope burns like a flame, and Eerie wants to set the Midreach ablaze. She made promises, Dim… big promises, and she told everyone that when you came, you would light our way forwards.”

“But… I… why would she do such a thing?” Dim demanded.

“Eerie has hopes too. All of us have to believe in something, Dim.” Bombay strummed on her mandolin, her ears twitching at the sound, and her whiskers quivered. “I think, and this is just what I think, mind you, is that Eerie wanted to inspire a bit of hope in you. Dim, she sees your potential, she talks about you constantly, and she wants nothing more than to redeem the Dark family name. I think it is her way of moving forwards from everything that happened, and you… you’ve become central to that. She believes in you. Dim, she sounds as though she’s your mother at times—”

“I don’t understand why this would be.” Dim put the heel of his bread down upon his pale blue plate and looked Bombay in the eye.

“I don’t understand it either, but this is one of her driving motivations.” Bombay’s paw traveled up and down the neck of her mandolin and from her other paw, a sweet tune began to form as her claws twanged the strings. “Eerie… she thought that Starling might be her lightning bolt—”

“Lightning bolt?” Blackbird leaned in until her muzzle was inches away from Bombay’s ear. “What do you mean, lightning bolt?”

“A single lightning bolt can burn a forest down,” the Bard muttered and then he smacked his lips.

“Yeah… she had hopes that Starling might be her lightning bolt, her catalyst for change, but poor Starling was consumed. She had the drive, she had the ambition, she had the motivation, but she was in no position to inspire others. Her grief… it consumed her. It left her unable to think about much else.” Bombay pulled her paw from the neck of the mandolin, reached out, and touched Blackbird. “Don’t get consumed, Blackbird.”

Blackbird’s sudden vulnerability was too much to bear and unable to look at her, Dim turned away. When he heard a sniffle, all of his muscles tensed, so much so that it hurt him, and both of his ears pivoted to face her direction. What was she feeling right now? How much did this hurt? Was there anything that he could do? Lifting his hat, he reached into it, pulled out a cigarette, and his long silver holder.

While Dim was lighting up, he heard the Bard say, “Ah, to know such a love. Even at the risk of the pain of separation, it is a blessing to have such love. A great gift. To give yourself over to it, to allow it to consume you… if only such love was far more common. Alas, the world is not given to such love as far too many only wish to satisfy lust.”

“Oh, there was a lot of lust satisfying,” Blackbird remarked while she wiped her nose with the back of her left talons. “I want to know a love like theirs, but to do that, I think I’ll need to know when to call this off. For now, I’m not giving up… but… but I’d like to think that I have something to live for. I wish my mother had felt that way… about me, I mean. I wish she’d felt that way about me. I hope she’s okay.”

Dim found himself wanting to comfort Blackbird, but he had no idea what to say.

Something did not seem right about her companion because Dim was acting weird. Well, more so than usual, that is. Somehow, he was even more quiet and reserved than was typical and Blackbird wondered what was going on with him. Several times, she had glanced to look at him, only to find him staring at her, and then turning away when he noticed he was being watched.

Ignoring Dim for a moment, Blackbird watched a gaffer—that is to say, someone who works with glass—perform her trade. An older jasper jackal bitch with a few singed bald patches and a great many grey hairs made glass beads over a hissing, spitting flame. She was quick, making skilled, deft movements, and it was obvious to Blackbird that the old jackal had been doing this for a long time. Nearby was a display shelf covered in her wares, but Blackbird ignored these, fascinated by how the gaffer plied her trade.

For the briefest of moments, Blackbird wished that she had learned a trade. What was she? It was hard to tell. A tinkerer? A dairy farmer? She knew things, useful things, but she wasn’t sure if some of the things she knew could be considered a trade, unless of course she called herself a locksmith. There was no way that she was a mercenary, was she? So far, the most impressive part of her life was that she had been present for a full-scale massacre.

At least the gaffer knew peace—probably.

Casting a sidelong glance at her companion, Dim, Blackbird knew that she was heading towards war, a conflict, and if she kept going this way, she would be swept up into it just as her mother had been. Dim would no doubt be fine, she was confident about that after what she had seen, but she wasn’t so self-assured about her own abilities.

Having been awake for far too long, Blackbird yawned and then told her companions, “I don’t mean to ruin a good time, but I think I’d like to go to bed.” Tired as she was, she wasn’t in the mood to sleep. No, what she really wanted was a quiet place to do a little thinking so she could sort out all of the troubling thoughts bouncing around on the inside of her skull.

“You know,” the Bard replied in his malaise-stricken voice, “I think I’d like to do the same. Also, poor Munro is pretty much dead on his hooves.”

As Blackbird’s head settled upon her pillow, Dim felt a strange sense of fondness for her. She seemed tired, but also anxious, perhaps; something felt off but Dim didn’t think that now was the time for subtle interrogation of his companion. With his head so far up in the clouds, it was easy to drift closer to Blackbird’s bed without realising that he was doing so.

“Dim...” Blackbird said in a low, somewhat muffled murmur as she pulled the blankets up to her chin. “Dim, come’re, come closer to me.”

Much to his own surprise, Dim found himself far closer to Blackbird than he had anticipated, no more than a yard from her bed. This was exciting, which was silly, because he and Blackbird had slept in a hammock together, and he couldn’t figure out why being so close thrilled him—but it did. He was tempted to climb into bed with her—for an entirely innocent snuggle. Things were going well and he had no desire to risk losing her friendship.

“I’m scared, Dim… scared I’m gonna lose my way.”

“I don’t know if I ever had a way,” Dim found himself replying, and even though it kept happening—time and time again awkward words just poured out of his mouth—he was left shaken by his own honesty.

“I left home to look for my mother. Now, I find myself getting pulled into a war. I want to do what is right, but at the same time, I don’t know if I have what it takes to survive a war. After what happened to me… being captured… my confidence isn’t what it was. You see, Dim, I had this moment where I realised I was a hippogriff, and I was big, and I could throw my weight around, and I could scare those smaller than me, and then right after that happened, I got pepper-bombed and I found out just how weak and helpless and useless I am in a fight. It was humbling, Dim, and I’m having a hard time with it.”

What should he tell her? Dim didn’t know. She was staring at her own hubris, and Dim was still mired down with trying to sort out his own. Comforting others was not a strength of his and he knew all too well how wretched it felt to face down one’s own shortcomings. What could he do? What could he say?

“I watched a gaffer tonight, Dim, and now I keep thinking about my life. My skills. I don’t think I have a trade and I don’t know if I have a career, unless hunting down your parent counts as one. You’re a vagabond but you are also a vizard for hire. I don’t know who or what I am, Dim, and it feels like everything in my life is coming into doubt. Feels like I have a crisis coming on, and it scares me. I don’t wanna lose my nerve.”

“There is no shame in being a soldier, Blackbird.” Emboldened by the earnestness of his words, Dim nodded and continued, “War is a trade all of its own. This conflict is a chance to learn much. To train and gain skills. Your mother learned the fine art of conflict but still managed to settle down and live a somewhat normal life. You can do the same.”

“That’s… actually pretty helpful,” Blackbird replied as she tugged on her blanket, squeezing and pinching the edge of it between her talon-fingers. “What’s your plans for the rest of the night, Dim?”

“To study.” Dim thought about salt for a moment, and cold iron, but then held his mind in check before he become distracted. “It was nice going out with the others. That is not something I am accustomed to, but I found that I enjoyed myself during our outing.”

“It wasn’t a date.”

Dim nodded, noticing the distress in Blackbird’s voice. “It wasn’t a date. Just an outing.”

“It feels wrong to have a good time while my mother’s fate is unknown.”

Again, Dim nodded. “It feels wrong sometimes to have a nice time while my mother still lives. Well, continues her unlife. I killed her, she is no longer among the living, but now exists in an undead manner. I feel obligated to put her down, but I don’t know how. Perhaps Chantico will reveal some means, some method of extermination to me as a reward for faithful service.”

As Dim was speaking, for some reason he thought about salt licks and how much ponies loved them. Was there, perhaps, some deeper meaning or purpose? Ponies needed salt, just like any other creature, but what if there was some deeper meaning, some greater purpose? Ponies were intensely magical creatures and what if salt purified them in some way? Cleansed them? What effect might it have?

“Stay with me while I drift off?”

“Sure.” For the third time, Dim nodded.

“Thanks. Good night, Dim.”

“Gute Nacht, mein Fräulein.”

Author's Note

Fimfic needs an Eigengrau theme, ja?

The butterfly effect

Looking to be the very epitome of bored disinterest, Dim watched Blackbird with his lip curled back into a fine aristocratic sneer. For about the past week or so—he had lost track of the days, quite honestly—training had been hard, fast, and furious. While Blackbird was amazing with pistols, she was incredible with the massive revolving ten gage she had procured. Few creatures had both her strength and her hand-eye coordination; this allowed her to rapidly acquire targets, draw a bead, and pull an anvil-heavy trigger that unleashed the very bowels of Tartarus. The long gun revolving configuration of the ten gage suited Blackbird—a unique gun for a unique creature.

The scariest thing however, was that she could fire it one-handed.

It occured to Dim that Blackbird hid a lot of her strength, either holding it in reserve or just flat-out pretending that it didn’t exist. Having been raised around ponies, little ponies, perhaps Blackbird wished to appear gentle, or maybe she didn’t want to scare them. Either way, Blackbird was a colossus, a half-breed titan, a creature whose physical strength knew no bounds, no restrictions.

At the moment, she was sweating, glistening from her repeated efforts, standing on two legs—a feat that she did without struggle. Her hooves and stout legs allowed her to be a biped with ease. Standing up on a balcony, Mars watched and Dim wondered what the minotaur must think of Blackbird. Dim had spent the week or so getting to know Mars and Modesto better and he wasn’t sure whom he liked more; Mars was one for action while Modesto could hold a conversation far, far better. For Dim, it would be nice if they were one minotaur, rather than two.

Modesto was cautious—wary—to the point of frustration, and this drove Dim nuts.

“Blackbird”—Mars’ voice rang out through the firing range—“why don’t you take a break. Dim… rather than sit there and exhaust yourself while looking so smug, why don’t you show us what you can do? Surely a vizard of your calibre can do something. So far, all you’ve done is laze about, and we don’t do that here in Istanbull.”

The nerve of some disgusting primitives. Dim had been improving his mind and trying to unravel arcane mysteries—and not lazing about as had just been so insultingly suggested. Pulling off his hat, Dim fished around inside with his magic, reaching, searching, until he pulled out a spear, which was far too long for such a short hat. Ah, yes, the spear would do.

And then, without further ado, Dim began chanting: “Incertus pulcher imperio—”

The effect was quite sudden and immediate. Blackbird spread her wings and flew away with all the haste she could muster. Munro sprinted away as fast as his legs could carry him, lept over a retaining wall, and the young minotaur hunkered down under protective cover. Other soldiers scattered, some of them even dropping their weapons; meanwhile, Bombay Sable lifted the Bard in her arms and hurried away as arcane energies began to form a nexus over Dim’s horn and crackled along the length of the spear.

Only Mars remained where he stood.

“—Facio! Voco! Fero!” Dim’s words held a terrifying resonance.

Dim’s heterochromia was more than just a pretty look, something more than fuel for his vanity and ego. Two distinct streams of magic could be seen flowing around the spiral band of his horn—the signature magic of the Darks. Dipolar thaumaturgy was a rare thing indeed, in unicorns, a creature evolved with a natural mono-emitter device sticking out of their foreheads. Sepulchral pink mingled with ambient amber arcane aetherfire, forming snapping, popping ribbons of energy.

“Klaatu, barada, nikto!” Now, the locus forming between his horn and the tip of his spear burned like a second sun and Dim’s voice had an ethereal, otherworldly reverberation to it, as if he was speaking from the plane right next door. “Scio! Didici! Pecto!”

Even the bravest had fled now as shimmering bands of heat rose in a wide area around Dim. Tiny arcs of lightning could be seen leaping through the strands of his mane, like dolphins frollicking in the waves—or porpoises in the surf. On his balcony, Mars waited, squinting, his eyes dazzled by the light show.

A beautiful butterfly—a creature made of fire—formed over Dim’s head. Like any butterfly, its wings fluttered and it took off, flapping. Dim willed it to fly towards a distant target, and off it went, trailing popping sparks and crackling embers. It was a thing of beauty, a spell cast for art, fire given form. Lifting his spear, Dim directed the butterfly with his weapon, coaxing it along, his face was that of orgasmic rapture.

Dim had made a butterfly, constructing it from death and destruction. The very air around him thrummed, the ground shook, and squiggles of strange light could be seen streaking away from the butterfly as it continued on its graceful journey towards the distant target. Blackbird was now with Munro, hunkered behind cover, and there was no sign of Bombay and the Bard. The vizard and his butterfly were too beautiful—too perfect for these disgusting primitives, and they had fled like superstitious rabble before some unfathomable god.

Eerie crackled into existence beside Mars, a look of astute alarm etched upon her features, and right away, she raised a powerful shield that pulsed both pink and amber. As the butterfly continued its meandering journey, Dim ignited himself so that he would not become a mere pile of cinders and he raised a shield to protect himself from any physical debris that might go flying about.

More hurried protections were cast by Eerie, who did her best to contain the coming blast.

After a long, fluttery journey, the butterfly landed on a distant iron plate pockmarked with potshots—and nothing happened. Dim waited, watching, as the butterfly changed colours, a beautiful, mesmerising bit of magic that was impossible to turn away from. The flames burned orange, pink, yellow, blue, green, a splendiferous rainbow inferno that spat out brilliant multihued sparks.

An arsonist’s sneer—contemptuous of life—could be seen on Dim’s face as he muttered, “Ich bin ein Gott unter Insekten.”

“Mars… you idiot… you just had to provoke him! I told you not to do that! Didn’t I tell you not to do that? I specifically told you not to provoke Dim! Verboten!”

“It’s just a butterfly, he’s showing off. Stop overreacting—”

At that moment, the butterfly exploded and the world was bathed in both heat and light. A roiling concussive wave radiated outward as the atmosphere itself ignited. The iron plate on a pole liquified, boiling away in the span of an eyeblink, and the dirt on the ground became like a bubbling pot of runny gruel. A mushroom cloud in miniature rose from the butterfly’s detonation and the concussive wave pummeled Dim’s protective shield as the searing flames washed around him.

Ablaze, Dim reveled in his own power, thrilled by the artistic destruction of it. Standing amidst scorched earth and with much of the firing range radically transformed, Dim hollered in a reedy, nasal whine, “Schau auf meinen Schmetterling, sieh zu, wie er die Welt zerstört!”

From the balcony, now blackened with soot, Eerie shouted, “Dim! Die Welt ist nicht dein, sie zu verbrennen!”

And Dim, in response, “Wenn ich es verbrennen kann, gehört es mir!”

There were times, like right now, when Blackbird wanted nothing more than to slap some sense into Dim. His casual act of destruction had left her singed and parts of her felt as though she had a sunburn. Smacking him, while no doubt satisfying, wouldn’t do much good, because he was just too fragile and frail. Even Eerie, who adored Dim, seemed irritated with him right now and was giving him a well deserved stink eye. But as a target for Eerie’s ire, Dim was not alone; no, Eerie seemed every bit as irked with Mars for egging Dim on and the sulky minotaur avoided the gaze of his mentor.

Munro had suffered the worst of it though and had to go and change his breeches.

Motte and Bailey worked to restore the shooting range, which Dim had glassed. Interesting word, glassed. It was a term that Blackbird had just learned, but somehow seemed so fitting for what Dim had done. She watched the two unicorns as they tidied up, fascinated by them, because they were the same unicorn. Not brother and sister, as she had first thought, no, Motte and Bailey were the same unicorn but from different existences.

Dim too, watched as Motte and Bailey worked, while smoking one of his cigarettes.

Huffing slightly, Modesto arrived on the scene but didn’t seem concerned by the evidence of wanton destruction. Shoving his brother aside, he kneeled down to be closer to Eerie and he said, “Jolie is coming in with captives and she’ll be here before sundown.”

“About time she reported back,” Eerie replied as she looked up at the pale minotaur kneeling before her. “I was starting to worry. Get everything ready for restock and resupply. I want her off to Fancy as soon as possible.”

“Her ship has damage—”

“Then repair it!” Eerie snapped, revealing her state of agitation. “Just do it with all haste. I have a bad feeling about Fancy and I want Dim there yesterday to deal with it. Something feels wrong. I keep having these confusing precognitive flashes. I don’t like it.”

Blackbird’s ears pivoted around to face Eerie, and she found herself listening, wondering what might be wrong.

“The Ascension, or the Ascendancy, or whatever they’re calling themselves right now, they pose a real threat. By themselves they are incompetent boobs pretending to be alicorns, but I fear that Grogar’s minions have nefarious plans for them. Killing the pseudo-alicorns and reviving them as undead or liches might fix a lot of what is wrong with them.”

“What can be done about it?” Modesto asked and the bull had a look of profound concern upon his face, an expression that filled Blackbird with dread. Modesto was not one for dramatic reactions. “I mean, what can we do about it? How do we stop them from doing such a thing?”

“We send Dim to kill these pseudo-alicorns and burn them into ashes before they can be captured and assimilated into Grogar’s undead horde. If there are no bodies, then there is nothing to be revived. We can rob Grogar of a potential resource.”

“So… you are sending Dim to just murder them?” Modesto stood up, flexed his mechanical fingers, and then stood there, grim, while looking down at Eerie.

“The entire world is at risk while they still live, or while their bodies exist. It is too dangerous to allow their existence to continue. It is a harsh measure, but necessary. They have taken to banditry, so no one will mourn their loss.”

“Eerie…” Modesto folded his arms over his chest and shook his head.

“Modesto?”

“This feels… it feels—”

“Wrong?” Eerie shuffled on her hooves. “The lives of a few misguided souls mean nothing when you’re trying to ensure the survival of all life on this planet. The risk is far too much. Each and every one of the surviving members of the Ascendancy must be hunted down and exterminated for the safety of us all. It is unfortunate, but necessary.”

“Dim too, poses a great threat to all life, because of his transmuted flesh. Why allow him to live?” Modesto extended his arm and gestured in Dim’s direction. “Why take this risk? Wouldn’t it be safer for us all and for the continuation of all life as we know it to be rid of him, by your logic?”

Reaching out, Mars placed one of his mechanical hands upon his brother’s shoulder. “While Dim is not a good pony, not by a longshot, he is not actively aiding the enemy. He stands in resistance to Grogar with no allegiance to anypony but himself and maybe Blackbird, from what I’ve observed. Dim is potentially a danger to everyone around him, but to Grogar and his minions most of all. For now, Dim remains useful.”

Snorting in disgust, Modesto pulled away from his brother and turned to face Dim. Blackbird watched, all of her muscles twitching, and she wondered if Dim was listening. If so, what was he thinking? How did he feel about this? Was he off in his own headspace thinking about new ways to set things on fire? Blackbird found herself wanting to take Modesto’s side about this, well, except for the whole part about killing Dim. She didn’t want that. But she could see Modesto’s point.

“Dim isn’t any better than the ponies you’re sending him to go and kill. He is utterly amoral, his moral compass? Nonexistent. He’s a hedonist who thinks only of himself and seeks to only serve his own needs. His only interest in Blackbird is for his own eventual self-gratification, no doubt. The entirety of his existence seems to be for nursing his ego, which has to be of incalculable proportions. Eerie, I’m sorry, but he is your complete opposite. I admire your adherence to order, even if it frustrates me sometimes, and even now, I can appreciate your pragmatic thinking on dealing with our enemies. You are making a mistake though and your emotions are clouding your judgment. So long as you court Dim as an ally, the moral high ground is lost to you.” Taking one last look at Eerie, Modesto then hurried away, slapping away his brother’s outreached hand as he departed.

“Modesto—”

“Mars, let him go,” Eerie commanded.

“Always what is moral with him,” Mars remarked as his brother stormed away. “I admire my brother for his convictions, but sometimes… sometimes… he sounds so pompous. So full of himself. Before Dim’s arrival, he seemed hopeful for Dim’s help. But now… something feels off. He was eager for Dim’s help, saying we needed somebody that could do skullduggery and dirty work. But to listen to him talk now… confusing.”

“He’s jealous because of how Eerie treats Dim.” It took several seconds, but Blackbird realised that it was she who had spoken these words, and everypony was now staring at her, including Dim. Why had she said what she had just said? What had made those words leap out of her mouth? “Before Dim came along, Modesto probably felt that he was hot snot on a silver platter, but now, he’s cold boogers on a tin plate. I mean, it all goes back to our first meeting in the study that day when Eerie gave that whole born to rule speech, and I suspect that Modesto might have some doubts if he’s really born to rule, and Dim, for all of his many faults, and he has a lot of them, Dim knows stuff. Dim’s educated and Eerie used him to teach Modesto, and I think Modesto is a little miffed that somepony like Dim might actually make a decent ruler. Maybe. I don’t know. Wow, everypony is staring at me and I don’t like it. Look, I’m not a stupid ditz, okay? I pay attention to stuff. I’m no birdbrain.”

While she let out a hiss, Eerie’s tail swished from side to side, and she chewed on her lip for a moment. Then, shaking her head, she said, “Excuse me, I have to sort out Modesto.” With a crackle, Eerie vanished.

“Blackbird is an exceptional observer. Duly noted.” Folding his arms behind the small of his back, Mars bowed his head somewhat, gave Blackbird a nod, and then strode away, his mechanical fingers twitching. “You have surprised me, Miss Coffyn, and I am not a minotaur given to surprises. I shall have to reconsider what I think of you.”

With a turn of her head, Blackbird watched him go.

“Hey, Blackbird…”

“Yes, Dim, what is it?”

“After that impressive bit of magery on my part—”

Blackbird sucked in a deep breath, already knowing what Dim was about to ask.

“—I am left famished. Would you, could you, maybe fix me some eggs?”

“Of course, Dim… I can fix you some eggs. Come on, let’s go have lunch.”

Author's Note

It's cold. That is all.

Happy New Years!

Bends to the will

The strange dragonfly-like ship towed behind it a vessel that had seen better days. Dim stood waiting, along with many others, as the pair of ships descended down to the docks. Armed guards formed a protective wall in front of he and Eerie, and Dim had been drafted into the ‘welcoming committee’ to deal with the new captures. The instructions were simple: be himself and do nothing else until instructed.

At the moment, the winds were being treacherous and a small host of flying creatures circled overhead, each of them ready to assist if the situation demanded it. The last rays of the sun poured in from the west and soon it would sink down below the mountain peaks in the distance. From the south, clouds were blowing in, grey ones, ominous in nature, and pregnant with rain. After watching them for a few seconds, Dim wondered if flooding was an issue here in the mountain pass. The city was blocked off by walls on both sides, with sheer mountain cliffs, and Dim wondered where the water drained. Surely it was a problem that had long since been addressed.

“Look,” Mars said while he pointed with one shiny brass finger, “the Solar Stinger has a damaged sail wing. That’s no easy fix, Eerie. Repair spells won’t work on anything that complicated.”

“Why is it so complicated?” Dim asked, intrigued by Mars’ words to Eerie.

“Solar fabric.” Mars lowered his arm and his finger curled into his fist with a tiny puff of steam. “We barely understand how it works, but it draws both magic and energy from sunlight. It took us forever to recreate it and our very best boffins are still trying to figure out how and why it works.”

“And where did you steal such a miraculous fabric from?” When Dim turned his head to look up at Mars, he did so just in time to see Eerie smirking.

“We didn’t steal it, we recovered it from a centaur vault. It was absolutely ancient, but it functioned. There were even pictographs explaining the purpose of the strange, translucent fabric. We also found the modified silkworm eggs in a still functioning stasis field.” Mars let out a snort, but did not look down to meet the gaze of Dim, who had an incredulous sneer on his face.

“Dim, the Solar Stinger has no combustion engines,” Eerie began in a low voice. “It flies above the sky, where there is almost no air, and it stays quite safe up there. It is powered entirely by daylight and it is the first of its kind. We copied a schematic etched into a metal plate for its general design and had to figure out how things worked as we went along. Soon, it is my hope to have a whole fleet of ships of that design, but the cost in resources is considerable.”

“Like a submarine, but up above the clouds instead of down in the ocean?” Now, more than ever, Dim was curious. A ship that could stay aloft and refuel with sunlight? That changed everything and Dim’s attention collapsed under the weight of his own thoughts. What happened when it was dark out? Storms weren’t too much of a concern, as one could fly far above where storms existed, where the sun shone brightest. High altitude flying would explain why most of the weapons on the ship pointed downwards.

It was a brilliant design, by Dim’s own estimation.

“Yes, Dim, like a submarine.” Eerie cleared her throat. “Did you know that the Darks owned a shipyard that manufactured ironclads and submarines? That is how we paid for our fantastic life of privilege, Dim. We have a brilliant knack for war… and Equestria was all too willing to exploit that. To exploit us.”

With that, Eerie went silent and her face appeared troubled when Dim cast a sidelong glance at her. Dim had a vague awareness that the Darks had owned many factories for many things; airships, tanks, boats, but he had never given much thought to these fantastical machines, because his own studies were far more important. Technological prowess paled in comparison to what could be done with magic… or alchemy.

Dim felt a cold metal finger tap the side of his head and for a moment, he entertained the amusing notion of tearing it off. While Dim grew annoyed because he didn’t like being touched, he heard Mars say, “I wonder sometimes… what’s in that head of yours. If you’re anything like Eerie, you have a head for war and probably it’s machinery too. It’s uncanny, she’s never had formal schooling as an engineer, but the stuff she imagines… the engines of war that she conceives… it leaves me curious about what you might do, Dim Dark.”

Again, Dim thought of how mere weaponry was nothing compared to what could be done with magic.

With a flap of her wings, Blackbird took to the air and then sped away to assist, because the crosswinds were picking up. Eerie sighed, shook her head, and let out a sad little snort, all while Dim tried to understand what was going on. It wasn’t until Mars poked him—again—and Dim thought about tearing off Mars’ finger—again—that an explanation was offered.

“Blackbird is supposed to be protecting you, Dim,” Mars said and it almost sounded as though he was about to chuckle. “She’s not to be taking off on flights of fancy.”

Try as he might, Dim could not hold back his scornful, snide laughter, a dry, nasal, aristocratic sound that was as mocking as it was contemptful. It hurt to laugh this much and a wheezing, whistling sound could be heard in his lungs. His outburst quieted a bit as Dim pulled out a cigarette, slipped it into the end of his holder, and then lit it with a mere thought. The overpowering scent of cloves filled the air, along with the sweet, cloying scent of cannabis. After a few puffs, the wheezing whistle in Dim’s slender barrel went away, but the occasional chuckle continued.

“Laugh all you will, but we do certain things for a reason. Rule of law and order allow for civilisation to flourish. While my brother does not yet see your value, you are beneficial to our cause. There is a tremendous bounty on your head and you are wanted. Protecting you is reasonable and logical. You should not be so quick to laugh. If the enemy can reach you, they will take you, or take from you whatever it is they need or want. Just look at Pâté au Poulet.”

When it was put that way… Dim’s chuckles died out and he lifted his head to cast his silent stare upon Mars. Dim said nothing, but puffed away. The Bard’s fate was a regrettable one, but Dim wasn’t sure what Blackbird could do if the enemy made a hard push to claim him. Buy him time, perhaps? Suffer mental domination, then turn around and cripple him? For the first time, Dim considered casting mental wards upon his companion just to prevent this sort of mental fuckery. It was funny when Dim did it, but the idea of such a thing being used against him… unpleasant.

Turning away, Dim thought about the grim implications of having to kill Blackbird while the Solar Stinger was tugged into its berth.

Blackbird was truly a powerful creature, either on land or in the air, and Dim marvelled at her strength. While there was a powerful attraction that existed between them, something else could be felt, something that Dim could not name. Mars had struck a nerve—something damnably annoying—and the slow, creeping realisation slithered up on Dim that he valued the life of another creature for reasons beyond mere exploitation.

The very idea of Blackbird being hurt filled him with unspeakable rage, but the mere notion that he might be the one to hurt her crushed him. It was almost too much to bear thinking about. He thought once more about the massacre he had committed—a killing spree that made Shepherd’s Shore pale by comparison—and a new, dreadful anxiety overcame Dim while he puffed away on his joint. If Blackbird died, he would suffer a profound unhappiness and his life would go back to being a wellspring overflowing with ennui.

But it wasn’t enough to protect Blackbird, no. Blackbird had friends, creatures whose lives she valued—and while Dim suffered a calamitous jealousy that gnawed upon his reason (as well as his sanity, perhaps) he valued Blackbird’s happiness with a measure equal to his covetousness. If something happened to Bombay, the Bard, Munro, Motte, or Bailey, Blackbird would be heartbroken—and that would be intolerable. Blackbird was the sort that got weepy eyed if a bushwoolie stubbed its toe, and he had witnessed this with his own eyes. The only solution seemed to be to remove all threats.

Ash piles were the least threatening thing in existence, save perhaps the fact they could cause such a stinging to the eyes.

Now, Dim could see the damage done to the ship, and while it looked pretty bad, he had seen worse. The other ship—the one the Solar Stinger had been towing—was peppered with holes in its hull and the rear section of the ship where the engine lived had seen extensive damage, so much so that it was now almost nonexistent. The lift nacelle had been patched, but the slack in the fabric said much about the condition of the ship. He wondered how it was even getting the electricity to stay aloft with the engine in its dismembered state.

Jolie Rouge and her crew were greeted with a hero’s welcome, but Dim paid them very little attention. No, his eyes and most of his attention remained focused on the line of prisoners bound in chains. Quite an assortment was clapped in irons: ponies, minotaurs, a diamond dog, a half-dozen griffons, and one caribou that seemed quite out of place. Some looked scared, some appeared apologetic, but a few remained defiant. All of them shared one thing in common; each of them showed evidence of a truly epic beatdown. Gratin—and Dim had no doubt that Gratin had to be responsible for some of this sadistic barbarity—did fantastic work.

When Dim moved closer, Munro followed, not behind him, but beside him, and the back of Dim’s consciousness found himself appreciating the attentiveness of his faithful, fanatical toady. As the line of prisoners was dragged along the docks, one in particular stood out with confident defiance.

“I am a Grittish citizen! Remove these irons at once! I am Captain Hoarfrost of the great Grittish Navy and I demand a trial on my home soil as is my right! You have no right to detain me! I want restitution for my ship and lost crew, damn you!”

While Dim watched, the soldiers parted, allowing a pegasus to come forward. For a moment, the older stallion seemed to be studying the outspoken, defiant unicorn captain, and Dim saw deep furrows appear in the pegasus pony’s brow. The unicorn was quiet now, and seemed to take notice of the pegasus, leaving Dim to wonder if the two of them knew each other somehow. Something was going on, but what?

“I am Commodore Guillemot of the Tradeship Seadog and the duly appointed representative of the Crown of Liverypool, sent to this region to establish trade and safe, secure passage. Is this your ship? Were you transporting slaves?”

Captain Hoarfrost’s response was a sneering scowl, but nothing was said.

“Answer me at once, Captain. Were you trafficking in flesh?”

The wind ruffled Commodore Guillemot’s feathers and the pegasus cut a noble figure in the light breeze. Dim recognised all of the signs of good breeding and knew without hesitation that this pegasus was a noble of some sort. He waited, along with a great many of the assembled guard, for the unicorn to respond.

“I was fulfilling a contract for payment,” the unicorn replied with angry defiance. “I had to find some way to recompense my crew after the Crown ceased to pay us what we’re due.”

“The various Crowns of the Grittish Isles are experiencing difficulty at this time,” the pegasus said in a calm voice devoid of any feeling or emotion. “There is a brief period of anarchy, but that is no excuse to peddle and traffic in flesh.” With a quick snap of his head, the pegasus turned to look Dim right in the eye, and then commanded, “Kill him as you see fit, the rest will get whatever proper trial Istanbull sees fit to give them.”

Dim wasn’t too keen on being told what to do, but now was not the time to argue. An example had to be made, and Dim was all about making fine examples. Shrugging, he called forth to mind a spell that he had only practiced a few times, a complicated spell, a spell too tricky to practice in deadly combat, but now was the ideal circumstances to attempt it.

A muted pink glow was cast from his horn as Dim began to weave the necessary magics together. The unicorn captain squirmed, he tugged against his chains, and sparks flew from his horn, but no magic came forth. Lost in the rapture of his own thaumaturgy, Dim felt an almost orgasmic flow, but he could not lose himself in the moment, because this magic was almost beyond what he was capable of.

Channeling as much magic as his body would allow, exploring the furthest reaches of what his body could endure, taking careful aim, Dim opened his mouth and chanted the words that would give focus to his spell: “Exitiale compressionem… extremum spiritum!” When the magic ripped itself free, Dim let out a barking chain of strangled, raspy, phlegmy coughs and his knees wobbled, but somehow, through sheer force of will, he remained upright.

The bound unicorn fell over with a shriek, and then began to writhe around on the dock while his fellow prisoners retreated from him as far as their bonds would allow. Again he shrieked, and this was followed by another as his body appeared to bubble. His skin became rashy, welts appeared around his joints, his eyes went bloodshot, and his tongue appeared to be swelling in his mouth.

When he tried to shriek again, it came out as an agonised, soupy gurgle.

“A pitiful, ghastly condition, but not undeserved,” Commodore Guillemot muttered while he took a step back. “What have you done to him?”

Dim, buoyed by pride, recovered himself and lifted his head while donning his cruelest, most tyrannical smirk. “I transmuted a vast quantity of the oxygen in his blood and turned it into nitrogen bubbles—”

“You gave him the bends?” Commodore Guillemot asked while one incredulous eyebrow lifted into an aristocratic expression of disbelief.

Captain Hoarfrost thrashed on the dock, his movements feeble, and his eyes bulged in their sockets. A bright scarlet flood poured from his nostrils, and trickled from the corners of his eyes as well. Dim watched every horrid moment, fascinated by what he had done, exploring an unknown frontier of magic. While the captain’s legs made feeble kicks, his ears seemed to be swelling, as was the base of his horn.

There were moments where it appeared as though something was crawling or slithering beneath Captain Hoarfrost’s skin. One prisoner shrieked in terror, then another, and with all of them chained to the dying unicorn, panic gripped them, crushing them, breaking their resolve with terrific, tyrannical force. It wasn’t long before all of them were screaming, wailing, and thrashing against their bonds.

This torture was almost too good to be true and Dim chortled with sadistic glee.

With a sudden wet splat, the unicorn’s horn burst like a cyst under pressure, which sent a geyser of blood spewing out of the brand new hole in his forehead. Unknown greyish-pink chunks came tumbling out, causing many of the onlookers to turn away, including Commodore Guillemot. One of the guards, a jasper jackal, vomited over the edge of the dock, and cries of disgust could be heard from far down below.

“Munro, this has gone on far enough.” Eerie’s voice cut through the chaos like a fine blade and the gathered guard all snapped to attention. “End this unnecessary misery at once.”

The young minotaur hesitated only for a moment, and then drew the nickel-plated revolver from the holster strapped to his side. He advanced, his hands trembling, and his ears twitched in anticipation of the dreadful deed he was about to commit. Mindful, he sidestepped the blood, took aim while squinting one eye, and squeezed the trigger while making an audible exhale.

Echoes of the single shot reverberated off of the cliff face and sounded like a volley of gunfire. Birds flew from their hidden roosts and white streaks rained down from the fleeing flocks. The unicorn’s head popped, leaving behind a bloody neck-stump that squirted from far too much pressure in the body. All of the prisoners hollered and whimpered, each of them knowing that a similar fate awaited them.

A few fell to the dock and begged for mercy.

Overcome by his own horrendous act, Munro staggered away, gagged, and then vomited while somehow holding his pistol out away from him. Eerie snatched it from his hand—lest he suffer an accidental discharge—and then whirled around to face the prisoners with a blank, unreadable expression on her face.

“Such is the fate of slaver captains,” Eerie said and not an iota of emotion could be heard in her voice. “Those who have no mercy or compassion for others will be shown no mercy or compassion. The rest of you will be tried. Confessing your guilt would be wise. Defiance and insolence will only make things worse. I will give you to Dim for him to do as he pleases.” Tossing her head back, she nodded to the gathered guard. “Take them away…”

Author's Note

This chapter almost didn't happen. It felt awful to write a character backsliding, and it felt even worse to have a family member exploiting another family member so callously. Dim has made so much progress... even in this very chapter... only to take a huge step back.

Feels bad, mang.

Trying times

Nine. Not eight, nor ten, but nine was the number of justice in Istanbull. Two from the Farmer’s trust, two from the Merchant’s Guild, two from the Science Ministry, two soldiers, and one crowned head, which just so happened to be Dim, much to his surprise. Eerie had slapped a silver circlet on his head and told him to get to work. He was the tiebreaker, should the issue come up, and thus far, the issue had not come up. It was easy to get five votes to condemn a creature to die.

The votes counted though, determining the method of death. There was the vote of ‘guilty; merciful,’ which had one sentenced to a swift, clean death by poison potion. Then there was ‘guilty,’ which brought about a far worse fate: death by exsanguination or by slow hanging, prisoner’s choice. So far, these had been the only votes, with not even the single suggestion of innocence.

Of the many creatures given trial, most of the votes had been ‘guilty; merciful,’ but a few prisoners showed no remorse and remained defiant. These prisoners were given the death they so rightfully deserved—but at the end of the day, death came for them all. Execution by poison potion seemed wasteful to Dim, but it appeared that Istanbull had a well-stocked treasury that could afford the cost of mercy.

Much to his own surprise, Dim found that he liked these proceedings and he wasn’t bored by them. He was able to pay attention—mostly—and he didn’t feel inconvenienced by fulfilling the role he was born to perform. For the most part, all he had to do was sit here, look menacing, and by doing so, scare some poor creature into submissiveness so that mercy might be shown as justice was administered.

The room was an imposing one, made of stone, enormous beams of wood, and clay brick. A massive table stretched from wall to wall, with Dim and eight others sitting on one side, while prisoners approached from the other. Dim was in the middle, sitting on an austere throne, with four fellow justices on each side of him. As for the table itself, it truly was gigantic, as it was made for minotaurs, not ponies, and the seat of Dim’s throne was at a dizzying height so that he might see over the edge of the table.

Munro shuffled away after bringing the cup of tea that Dim had demanded and there was a bit of a commotion as a new prisoner was lead in. Commodore Guillemot was sitting in a spectator’s alcove meant for honoured guests, in the event that any of the prisoners demanded to be tried by Grittish law. Dim watched him at times, noting the pain and anger upon the stern pegasus’ face. It was one of the few times in Dim’s life where he found himself respecting a total stranger and he wondered how the commodore was dealing with the decline of the empire he championed.

The prisoner, a diamond dog, had a remarkable calm about him as he dragged his irons on the floor behind him and was presented to the nine justices. He walked with a limp but had a proud air about him. Dim could not see fear in his eyes, but there was… something, something that showed keen intelligence.

“You there,” the minotaur bailiff said as he jerked the diamond dog the few final steps forward. “You’ve been charged with the trafficking of sapient flesh and brought before the Council of Nine. Is there anything you wish to say on your own behalf before sentencing?”

“I was following orders,” the diamond dog replied while standing straight.

“And do you believe that excuses you?” an earth pony from the Farmer’s Trust asked.

“Failure to follow orders might’ve got me thrown over the rail.” The diamond dog’s ears perked. “What choice did I have in the matter?”

“Codswallop!” Commodore Guillemot shouted. “You knew what the mission was! Before disembarking on a voyage, the mission objective is always laid out for the crew. You could have refused and stayed behind in whatever port you departed from. You had options!”

Dim listened with passive interest to Commodore Guillemot’s outburst and was moved to emotion by his sheer, spitting rage. Sipping his tea—which was good and strong, perfect even—Dim waited for his fellow justices to say something to continue the proceedings.

“Others too, have tried to assert that they were merely following orders.” A beefy minotaur cow from the Science Ministry slapped her broad palm down upon the table. “While following orders is commendable, and obedience is required to maintain rule of law, you followed bad orders. You showed poor judgment.”

“I obeyed orders,” the diamond dog said in a soft voice. “I was loyal to my captain and to the interests of the great Empire which I serve. It is not my place to question his orders, only to obey them.”

“Presenting yourself as both a loyal and obedient dog, faithful to your master will not save you.” A bespectacled unicorn took a moment to adjust his glasses, and then said, “Guilty.”

Now there was fear in the diamond dog’s eyes, and Dim watched as the prisoner flinched. For a tense moment, Dim believed the condemned sailor might put up a fight, but there was a clink of iron as the bound hound slumped over. It didn’t take long for others add their own judgments, and Dim knew that this was over.

“Guilty.”

“Guilty.”

“Yes, guilty.” One of the soldiers, a jasper jackal, leaned forwards over the table and shook his head in dismay.

“Guilty!”

“The Council of the Nine has found you guilty of the crime of trafficking sapient flesh,” the big minotaur cow from the Science Ministry said to the prisoner. “How do you wish to die? Slow hanging or exsanguination?”

In response, the condemned diamond dog offered a sorrowful sigh.

“Silence will not save you,” the minotaur cow continued and she gestured to the guards who stood near the door. “Take him away and have him drained. Give him plenty of time to think about the cost of his loyalty. Next prisoner!”

The last prisoner was a griffon with a somewhat owlish face. When brought in, he was meek, submissive, and stared down at the floor while keeping his tail tucked down. After a moment of intense scrutiny, Dim realised that this griffon was young—perhaps still a cub. He slurped his tea and his eyes narrowed as the bailiff yanked the young griffon forwards.

“Be brave, boy,” the bailiff said as the griffon was lead before the Council of Nine. “Son, you have been charged with the offense of trafficking of sapient flesh and now you face the Council of Nine. Any last words before sentencing?”

“I was press ganged,” the griffon said while staring down at the floor and there could no longer be any doubt—this was a cub. A big cub, perhaps, one that might be an adult soon, or would, if he lived that long, but that was no longer a concern. The cub spoke again and Dim took note of a somewhat peculiar accent. “I was told that I could join the crew or I could be a slave. I was scared and I didn’t want my wings burned off like Captain Hoarfrost said he’d do.”

Dim’s tea took on a bitter taste in his mouth and he had trouble swallowing.

“Why were you press ganged?” an earth pony off to Dim’s left asked.

“I speak Fancy,” the griffon replied, sounding as meek as possible. “I speak several languages, I have a knack for it, and Captain Hoarfrost wanted someone who could give the slaves orders.”

“Sprichst du die Sprache des Krieges?” Dim asked, and his question caused a number of eyebrows to raise. Up to this point, he had been totally silent, save for his demand for tea.

To which the griffon replied, “Ja, tue ich.”

“Warum so viele Sprachen?” Dim put his teacup down upon the table.

“Mein Vater war Kaufmann.” The griffon lifted his head, but did not look Dim in the eye. “Captain Hoarfrost tötete ihn wegen Widerstandes.”

“What is being said?” the outspoken minotaur cow demanded.

“Captain Hoarfrost killed this boy’s father for defiance,” Commodore Guillemot said and there was a faint tremour in his voice.

“Oh.” The minotaur cow leaned back in her chair and both of her big, beefy hands curled into white knuckled fists. “What do we do? We can only administer guilty verdicts.”

The bespectacled unicorn from the Merchant’s Guild squirmed in his seat while rubbing his front hooves together. Like Dim, he was a tiny pony sitting at a table meant for giants, and his frantic anxiety made him appear even smaller and somehow foalish. “I wish to withhold my vote, as is my right.”

One of the soldiers, the jasper jackal who had been quite outspoken for the entirety of the trial, folded his forelegs over his girth and his ears pricked in attentiveness. “Boy, when Captain Jolie captured your ship, did you fight back or resist in any way?”

“No, sir, I did not,” the griffon replied while his talon claws tapped on the stone floor. “I shamed myself, sir. I hid inside of the potato bin and was found after the melee ended. Captain Jolie’s griffon guard pulled me out by the scruff of my neck and I was too scared to fight.”

Reaching up, the jasper jackal soldier scratched at his muzzle with his paw and studied the chained griffon down on the floor before him. Dim watched, waiting, wondering, curious about what might be done, and if mercy, if such a thing were possible, might be shown. The silence became oppressive and the little sounds, the sounds that took place in the background, the clink of iron chains, breathing, the sound of fuzzy bodies rustling, all this noise was now amplified and Dim’s ears pivoted to take it all in.

After what felt like a dog’s age of silence, the jasper jackal had this to say, “Guilty… lenient.”

“I’ve never heard of this,” the minotaur cow said while she extended her hand in the griffon’s direction.

“Do explain,” an earth pony demanded.

“It is a verdict that requires indentured servitude—”

“Slavery?” The minotaur cow shot a distasteful sneer in the general direction of the soldier.

“Indentured servitude,” the soldier repeated. “Slavery is not permitted here, but leniency is. This is the very definition of extenuating circumstance. We can only dispense a guilty verdict, but doing so now would not be serving the spirit of justice that we wish to uphold. A crime has been committed… this griffon could have fought back, or become a slave. He made a conscious choice to join the crew, but he did so under duress. He has also shown himself to be something of a coward… he could have fought back when his ship was boarded, but he hid. A coward should be made to live with their shame.”

“Yes…” The minotaur cow drew out the word with hissy sibilance. “He should.”

“In the old days, we might have branded him with a coward’s mark—”

At this, the griffon gulped.

“—but that has fallen out of fashion. Put him to work. Make him pay his debts.” The soldier gestured at the cowering griffon with his paw and turned to look at his fellow councilmembers. “Killing him will accomplish nothing. Geas him and put him to work.”

Waving his hoof about, the bespectacled unicorn from the merchant’s guild became quite animated. “I wish to change my vote to guilty; lenience.”

“Guilty; merciful,” another councilmember said.

The other soldier offered up his vote: “Guilty; merciful.”

“Guilty; leniency!” the minotaur cow from the Science Ministry was quick to say.

Dim, moved to pity that he didn’t realise that he had, was quite surprised by the words that lept out of his mouth: “Guilty; leniency.” He was even more surprised when everybody turned to look at him, some with shock, some with surprise, and others with blank faces. “Did I speak out of turn? Am I to only exist as a tiebreaker? Have I no say?”

“Guilty; leniency,” a minotaur down at the far right of the table called out. “I believe that is five.”

“We have reached a verdict,” the jasper jackal soldier said, “but now we need a sentence. Prince Dim, this is why you are here. If you would, please render a suitable punishment for the condemned.”

Rather than feel relieved, Dim found himself quite uncomfortable with the outcome. What did he know of justice? He himself was guilty of so much. The back of his neck grew sweaty and when he sipped his tea, it did not satisfy. He existed as more than a tiebreaker, but as an actual judge, and he wondered what Eerie might do. She was one given to extreme order, not him, and Dim found himself resenting her for putting him in this dreadful situation.

Eerie was testing him, the sneaky old tart, and he planned to have words with her later.

It would be easier to pass out a sentence if his throat wasn’t so dry. Dim gulped down the remainder of his tea and set his teacup back down upon the table. His nostril became itchy, but he could not scratch it, not now. He suffered a slow, dawning realisation that his word was law and that he could do anything right now, and there would be nothing to stop him.

Commodore Guillemot was staring at him, pleading with him with his eyes, and when Dim stared back, he knew that he was seeing a pony far more than he was. Guillemot was a good and just pony, at least, from what little that Dim knew, but he carried himself with a regal bearing. Reflecting upon this, Dim was seized with an idea…

Dim found a way to do the right thing, but also to absolve himself of this tyrannical responsibility that he found himself being crushed beneath. Everypony—and everybody—was looking at him, waiting, many ears were pricked, all of them wanting to know what he would do. Feeling the pressure, Dim chose his words carefully before he said them, and gave his judgment some careful consideration before saying it.

“Release the condemned into the custody of Commodore Guillemot,” Dim began, and there were gasps from around the room, including from the chained griffon. “Five years of required service. Perhaps working as a cabin boy beneath the esteemed Commodore Guillemot will give the boy a sense of conviction and courage. He is to be geased, of course, and I shall want a writ from Commodore Guillemot stating that the boy is to be spared cruel treatment.”

“Five years?” The jasper jackal soldier let out a wheezing gasp. “That’s harsh, but fair, I suppose.”

For a brief moment, Dim wondered if perhaps he had gone too far, but after thinking about it, he thought that ten years might be better. Too late now. Dim regretted that he hadn’t given a little more thought to his sentencing. The griffon had five years of a good life with Commodore Guillemot, five years to become educated, five protected years to finish growing up and to perhaps, grow up and become a good griffon, a better griffon, the sort of griffon the world needed.

“I accept custody of the condemned,” Commodore Guillemot said while bowing his head. “I shall do my utmost to prove myself worthy of the trust I have been given.”

“Take the boy to Eerie to be geased,” Dim commanded of the bailiff. “Now, if you will excuse me, I am in need of more tea. Do whatever it is that needs to be done to adjourn this court.” With that, Dim excused himself by winking out of existence, leaving behind his empty teacup.

Author's Note

I could use a cuppa...

Blackbird's understanding

Blackbird knew that not only would she forever associate the sweet, heady scent of cloves and cannabis with Dim—but also with her attraction to him. Dim seemed out of it, more so than usual, and she attributed it to the fact that he might have overexerted himself today. He kept blurting out his thoughts, some of them understandable and others incomprehensible. Dim spoke of morals, of exploitation, and the duties brought upon oneself because of good breeding.

“Can a slave ever truly be saved?” Dim asked while his cigarette holder hung slack in his lips. His pink eye glittered with the reflection of the glowing red cherry that blazed at the end of his joint. “What does it mean to be saved? What is the nature of freedom?”

Not knowing how to answer, Blackbird stared at Dim as if he had grown a second head. He now seemed far more lucid than he had been just a few minutes ago. He was coming around and now the tough questions had come, queries whose answers eluded Blackbird.

“Bombay was, at one time, a slave… is she still a slave? Could she ever truly tell the Bard no and mean it? He loves her, I’m pretty sure of that, but was she ever in a position to be able to refuse him? Could she deny her rescuer? What is the nature of freedom and free will? We mean well when we liberate a slave, but is setting them free really what is best for them? What if they end up exploited again? What if we exploit them, intentionally or unintentionally?”

Hunched over in the steaming water, Dim puffed a few times, and Blackbird, who had been overcome by his train of inquiries, snatched the silver cigarette holder from his lips. Inhaling, she drew a good long pull on the tight-packed joint, savoured the sweet, spicy smoke, and felt her head rising up from her shoulders. Unable to think of any suitable response, Blackbird fell back on a reliable standard.

“Dim, you’re wasted.”

“I have been a slave.” Dim’s eyes narrowed in a dangerous way—a way that made Blackbird’s butt bones tingle in alarm—and his delicate nostrils flared while drawing in Blackbird’s exhaled smoke. “I have been a slave and I have been exploited. After setting myself free, I gave myself over to dangerous new masters, and my whims were controlled by coca and opium. At best, my judgment is suspect, at worst, it shouldn’t be trusted at all and I should not be left in charge to determine the fate of others. I fear I am still a slave… much like Bombay and all those poor creatures you were trying to help. Can I ever truly say no? What free agency do I have? Do I want to help Eerie because it is something I desire, or is my inclination to help Eerie because I have been conditioned to be a good, obedient slave to my Dark masters?”

Fighting back the need to cough because of the faint tickle in her throat, Blackbird passed the silver stem holding the joint back to Dim. She didn’t have an answer, and this bothered her a great deal. If she couldn’t help Dim, her friend, how could she possibly help those poor wretched creatures that had just been saved? Just thinking about it caused her confidence to wither and a dreadful sense of paranoia gripped her. The sudden burst of anxiety caused her nethers to clench in an unpleasant way, and even though she was sitting in a hot bath, she suddenly felt dry down there, which was awful.

“How does a rape victim ever have meaningful coitus ever again?” Dim blinked a few times, puffed a few shallow puffs, and then made a powerful inhale that caused almost a half an inch of the clove and cannabis cigarette to vanish. “They’ve already been broken once. Forever they live in fear of being broken once again. It is easier to say yes and sort out the shame of unwanted coitus later than it is to say no and be forcibly taken yet again. Sex and violence is so much worse than just sex. So it is also for a slave… all consent is suspect. Any denial made is done with the spectre of violence looming, real or imagined, and it is easier to say yes and have things go well for you. Those creatures rescued, they will forever say yes to anything that seems promising with the hopes that things will go well for them… and Bombay will forever tell the Bard yes because of the fear of what rejection might bring. As for me…” Dim’s words trailed off as he exhaled a massive cloud of smoke.

When Blackbird realised that she couldn’t keep up with half of what Dim was saying, she was terrified by her own inadequacy. Now, her mouth was dry, her guts clenched tight, and she felt rather sick to her stomach. Everything coming out of Dim’s mouth was horrifying, just horrifying, and she couldn’t even understand most of it. The sound of water splashing offered no distraction, no reprieve from the existential horror creeping though Blackbird’s mind. It dawned upon her that with cruelty, one could conceivably alter another creature’s existence, leaving them forever broken and unable to be fixed. There were injuries that could not be healed, and no amount of good intentions or well-wishing could make them better.

Of all the dreadful things that Blackbird had learned since leaving home, this was the worst.

After a few wretched moments of fighting back wave after wave of queasiness, Blackbird understood her mother, Starling. Some things couldn’t be fixed; some things couldn’t be made right. There were some hurts that couldn’t be undone—but there was revenge. A tiny black seed found purchase in Blackbird’s tender heart and her talon-fingers twitched as the first sprout of hatred found fertile ground. Perhaps those poor refugees might never know real freedom—but those who might prey upon them and do them harm could be put down. Now, her mother’s actions had a sort of dreadful sense to them. No amount of killing would ever bring the love of Starling’s life back—Stinkberry was gone—but those who stole away the love of others could be hunted down like vermin.

Those who stole away the freedom of others, those whose thefts included free agency—they could be dealt with. Staring at her companion, Blackbird now wondered if she understood him a little better. Dim had killed Zinc, and later, Grimy Rich—Blackbird now had an inkling of Dim’s motives, or at least she thought she did. Dim had allowed their depravity to flow out of them, and when it was obvious the sorts of creatures they were, he killed them.

No… perhaps they had killed themselves; they met Dim halfway, after all.

Was it wrong to pursue Dim in a romantic way? He had been abused, manipulated, and left vulnerable. No matter how good Blackbird’s intentions might be—and she really did want what was best for Dim—any romance that occured between them had the shadow of his past casting a dreadful pallour over whatever it was they might have together. Everything that Dim had said—what little she understood of it—also applied to whatever it was that blossomed between them. Could love—real, meaningful love—grow beneath such an oppressive shadow, or was all hope of future romance doomed?

If Blackbird wanted to tend this precious, tender rose, she would have to brave the venomous thorns.

“You got quiet,” Dim remarked while smoke poured from his nostrils.

To which Blackbird replied, “You made me thoughtful.”

“I always thought reading those dusty old philosophical treatises was a waste of time.” To Blackbird’s ears, Dim sounded wistful and maybe a bit forlorn. “Dark Chocolate and others were insistent though, and punished me harshly for my insolence if I did not keep to my studies. I wished to immerse myself in my lessons of magic and alchemy, like a foal who only wishes to eat sweets and dessert. Looking back, my masters unwittingly gave me the keys to my shackles… if only I had paid more attention, or held more love for the subject. If only I had eaten all of my supper and had grown strong, I might have been a better pony.”

Blackbird wanted to tell Dim that he wasn’t such a bad pony, but that would be lying and she knew that Dim would unleash the full brunt of his sarcasm on her. Dim was just a pitiful, damaged, confused soul with poor impulse control and a penchant for arson. There were worse flaws to be found, to be sure. After some time, the humour of Dim’s statement sunk in and Blackbird managed a half-smile, even with her current discomfort.

“Everything’s gone pink,” Dim muttered while the glowing roach in his cigarette holder began its alteration into ash and nothingness. “Look, I don’t know why I did it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, what do you expect of me? One day boredom will be my undoing. That’s how all of this started, anyhow. When I get bored, I make my own excitement.”

Hunching over in the water, Blackbird’s lips puckered with worry while deep furrows spread across her forehead. “Dim, you okay?”

In response, Dim focused his feverish, manic gleam upon her and replied, “As it turns out, my mind is not a popular travel destination, Blackbird. Cease your screaming, Pink One! There is a fine, fine line between genius and insanity, and during the battle for my mind I lost track of the relevant border.”

“Uh, Dim…”

“Pink One, make no effort to understand my insanity with your logic, for it is like setting off on a fantastic journey to find darkness with a torch!”

Reaching up, Blackbird rubbed her chin and nodded while saying, “The madness must be contagious, because I understood that and it actually makes some sense. Dim, what have you done to me?”

From Dim, there was no response and he had gone still. Blackbird waited, worried, and while she watched, Dim flicked his silver cigarette stem back into his nearby hat. If one wanted to find darkness, all one had to do was turn off all of the lights. Dim was still now and his face had a peculiar duality to it, annoyance and grief. It was an expression that only Dim could make and Blackbird heard him sigh.

“Pinkness has departed from me. ‘Tis a pity, I was looking forward to her visit.” Dim’s head rolled around on his neck and a crackle could be heard from the fine, thin bones within. When he recovered, his near-delirious gaze was focused on Blackbird, and she shivered from the sight of him. “I am in need of rest. Would you stay with me, at least until I am asleep?”

“Of course, Dim. Ya wanna eat something before you go to sleep?” When Blackbird asked her question, she saw a perplexed expression pass over Dim’s face.

“No.” He shook his head from side to side and once more, annoyance and grief existed side by side upon his face. “I fear what dreams may come,” he murmured, “but I fear a sour stomach even more. What dreadful demon is bad digestion, who leaves such dreadful crepitatious vapours in his wake.”

Something about Dim’s poetic madness touched Blackbird and ignited something within her soul. She slid forward in the water-filled basin, dragging her haunches over the stone, and rather than a dry, painful clenching in her nethers, she was relieved to feel that her usual state of moist, grippy, squishiness had returned. Perhaps she’d do a little of the old pinch-‘n’-pull on her filly knob later, but for now… she had something else in mind.

It was a mistake, no doubt, but Blackbird was young and allowed to make mistakes. For now, she had to stake her claim and make her intentions known. The bathwater sloshed and splashed around her, smacked the sides of the basin, and caused Dim to sway from side to side. Something within her belly blazed, some terrific secret fire that belched its hot, searing exhaust right out her kitty slitty. For a moment, she worried about her own self control, but she had already thrown caution to the wind.

Reaching out with both her right and left talons, Blackbird seized Dim by his head and neck. Beneath her talon-fingers, she felt his muscles tensing, jerking, and she had a keen awareness of his frailty. Such was her strength that if she was careless, she would break his neck: the fragile bones would shatter like window glass. There were inches between them now and she gazed down whilst he looked up, due to the considerable differences in their respective torso lengths.

Blackbird’s heart pounded against her ribs and thudded within her girth, while a second heart hammered away at the quivering flesh hidden between her hind legs. Somehow, she maintained her self control even as she gave herself over to wanton desires. She would get what she wanted, but later. For now, she wanted to make her feelings known and this seemed like just the right moment.

Bending her spine and neck to an unnatural angle, Blackbird lifted Dim’s head while she herself ducked down. Turning his head of to one side, she stroked and caressed him with her talon-fingers to reassure him while her fang-filled maw lingered close to his delicate, chiseled face. Closing her eyes seemed like the right idea, but then how would she see what she was doing?

Right then, she kept her eyes open while moving in for the kill.

With her lips protruding like a ridiculous duck bill, Blackbird made an awkward connection with the corner of Dim’s mouth, and then she smooshed her face against his. Never in her life had she felt more vulnerable while also feeling empowered and predatory. With no idea what she was doing, she made a wet smack that no doubt almost deafened poor Dim, because she felt his whole body go rigid.

His sudden stiffness and tension filled Blackbird’s mind with awful thoughts, and she was far too curious concerning parts of him that she longed to discover, parts that could be rigid and stiff. No—NO—she had gone too far as it was and that exploration would have to come later, after she had found her mother. For now, this would have to do, and after a clumsy second kiss, Blackbird crushed Dim to her in a sodden, steamy hug that was, perhaps, a bad idea, at least in hindsight.

“Please don’t make me regret that,” Blackbird whispered.

Dim’s response was silence, but the fact that he had done nothing to escalate the situation was reassuring. Now all she had to do was calm down somehow and find some way to release the tension building between her thighs. Right now, just sitting down was torture and it took all of Blackbird’s willpower to behave herself.

Blackbird had no idea what she had changed between herself and Dim, but was confident that she had done the right thing. Dim squirmed a bit, slipped a wet foreleg around hers, and their soaked pelts clung together. Blackbird was so hot and bothered that the air around her now felt cool by contrast, so when she began to shiver she had some trouble determining the cause.

All of her hopes, all of her dreams, all of her emotions and feelings that she kept bottled up, her fears, her doubts, the incessant worry for her mother—everything came for her all at once to exploit her girlish moment of vulnerability. Her kisses—both of them—proved to be her undoing, and her moment of triumphant sexual awakening turned into a hot mess of adolescent awkwardness as she began to blubber while clinging to Dim.

Sitting in the steaming bath, clinging to her best and most trusted friend, Blackbird lost herself.

Author's Note

Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night

Our darkest teatime hour

“I have no idea why Blackbird was worried, because you seem fine.” Eerie sniffed and her teacup sloshed with the sudden movement. “Dim… the only thing I can think is that alchemical concoctions might work on you differently… due to the fact that you are not quite a pony. The fact that you have been altered might introduce some unintended side effects.”

Listening to Eerie, Dim did not look up from his mortar and pestle, but he nodded to show that he was paying attention. Her theory made an uncomfortable amount of sense. He thought back to the day he had left home, and how his mother had poisoned him. A tiny blackish-green leaf was dropped into the pasty mixture and the sound of stone against stone could be heard while he continued to grind.

“Dim, if I may say, you look unusually well rested. You must have slept well, and that’s always a good thing.” Eerie leaned in a little closer, almost to the point where she was peering over Dim’s shoulder at his work. “Something strange happened, I did sense something, but everything seems to be fine. I’m sure that it’s nothing.”

For something that was nothing, it sure had an effect upon him. Probably just a peculiar side effect. Lifting up some long-handled tongs, Dim focused a tiny amount of magic upon one end. These alchemist tongs were exceptionally long, made to be held at one end by magic with enough distance and damping across their lengths that the magical field would not contaminate the gripping surface. They required a delicate touch, but were critical to prevent anything from changing the final results of the alchemical process Even with the extended length, a unicorn had to mind one’s magic, lest one cause disastrous contamination.

Using the tongs with great care, he lifted a spider from a nearby glass jar, a fire widow, an arachnid that had a glowing bright orange hourglass on its plump, hairy abdomen. A curious creature, it spun silk that couldn’t be burned, but Dim had no interest in that. No, Dim wanted the spider’s venom, which made a creature particularly vulnerable to burning and fire, even creatures who might have been otherwise protected against flaming, fiery conflagration. He didn’t want his enemies resisting his primary source of damage, because such a thing would not stand.

“Dim… I don’t understand what you are doing. I’ve never seen such a recipe. What are you making?” Eerie was too close now, and brushed up against Dim’s neck, which caused his whole body to jerk a bit.

“Insurance,” Dim replied while his lip curled back into a sneer of annoyance.

“Delightfully cryptic. Insurance!” Eerie, perhaps realising that she was too close, took one petite step away, and continued to watch Dim work. “I’ve never even heard of some of these ingredients, Dim. I do hope that Istanbull’s alchemy shops are to your liking. We try to source obscure ingredients that do not require the exploitation of others. We’re trying new things. Exploring new options. An alchemical renaissance is taking place here, Dim. Perhaps you could teach some of our alchemists your secrets.”

“No.” Dim’s sneer intensified at the very thought of sharing his hard work and study.

“Dim… those dried blue caterpillars, they feast on poison joke and they are very dangerous—”

“I know.” Dim was amazed by his own patience and wondered how and why he had not snapped at Eerie. If it were anypony else, he might have set them on fire by now. Was this affection? Why this strange, abominable tolerance? It was disgusting and unnatural. “My use of them is very clever. If I mix them into a potion, they’ll cause instability and a wild number of side effects, but I have found a way to keep a tincture made out of their extraction separated from my poison. The caterpillar tincture disrupts and nullifies magical protections, allowing a second poison to take effect. It weakens the fire resistance of mine enemies.”

Eerie’s lips transformed into an intrigued pucker, and she leaned in close once more. “How?”

“Tiny slivers of metal,” Dim responded in a whisper almost as dry as old, brittle parchment. “I paint on a ring of sealant wax around the middle, and then apply the two different alchemical mixtures to both ends. In a fight that demands it, I can hurl a multitude of these tiny metal slivers at a foe and incapacitate them. They are useful for fighting unicorns, as you might imagine.”

“Wie hinterhältig.”

“Tatsächlich.”

“And the distilled poison joke tincture from the dried caterpillar helps to bypass magical protections, allowing the metal slivers to be effective. With enough thrown, one of them is bound to work. Chance is on my side.” Eerie stepped up to the table and peered down into Dim’s mortar. “The Equestrians would never allow for such weaponised alchemy. It would be verboten.”

“Kein Scheiß.”

With great care, Dim used an alchemist’s knife to open a seed pod, peeling it back, and allowing the pale green-yellow seeds within to fall into his mortar. A bitter, acrid stench filled the air, which made Eerie retreat. As for Dim himself, he was fond of this smell… it was the stench of future victories.

“I can also shrink the metal slivers with a spell, and they can be inhaled. Many of my foes have filled their lungs with the means of their defeat. It is taxing on me, but it is far worse to be dead.” Dim disposed of the now empty seed pod and began to grind the seeds he had added.

“Dim, when you are finished, we need to discuss some important issues. Perhaps over tea. You sound parched. For now, I must be going, because I need to find Jolie. Come and find me, Dim, when you are done.”

“Bestimmt.”

Mere moments after Eerie was gone, Dim had trouble concentrating. He was alone again, his prefered state of being… except that right now, it wasn’t. With a sneer of disgust, he had the realisation that he rather enjoyed Eerie’s company, and she wasn’t that bad of a pest. Blackbird could certainly be worse, but truth be told, he didn’t mind her company either and tolerated her incessant, endless questions.

Holding himself to task, Dim would finish his job and then go seek out Eerie’s company once more…

The door opened in silence and Dim stepped through the doorway. This was a room he was familiar with, it was Eerie’s prefered tearoom, and it was a small, intimate, cosy space that was always kept rather dark, not that he ever complained about that. This room was round in shape, had a somewhat domed ceiling covered in frescoes obscured by the everpresent shadows, and the walls had shelves covered in what Dim knew to be trophies of past victories. Helmets, bits of armor, battered, dented crowns, jeweled sceptres, and all manner of finery, all of which had been taken from their previous owners dying clutches or cold, dead bodies, as was the understood terms of surrender.

In the center of the room was a hexagonal table covered in a seer’s hexagram and it was around this cosy little table that Eerie had guests. Commodore Guillemot was spilled into a chair, relaxing, and appearing nothing at all like his formal, starchy self. In the faint, scant light, his dark pelt made him little more than an ambiguous pair of eyes hovering over a row of gleaming pearly whites. He puffed on a pipe of zebra make and eyeballed Dim as he entered.

Beside the commodore was Jolie—little, dwarfish, foal-sized Jolie—and Dim had entered when she was mid-laugh. Now, she had a reckless, perhaps even murderous grin, and she too watched every move Dim made whilst he approached the table. Jolie belonged at this table, given its occupants, Dim decided, and she fit right in. Being an earth pony made her no less dangerous and clearly, she had earned her captaincy.

When he drew near, he caught an intoxicating whiff of Blackbird, who was a bit disheveled. She stank of gun oil, of gunpowder, and of leather in the sun, the accoutrements of her chosen trade. Blackbird had a new bandoleer and she seemed quite comfortable in it. In her left talons, Blackbird held a teacup, and her right talons had white bandages around several knuckles. Dim worried—though he did nothing to show it—and eased himself down into an empty chair beside his wounded companion.

“So glad you could join us,” Eerie said while she busied herself with pouring Dim’s tea. “I found Jolie and she was catching up with an old friend. And then along came a Blackbird…” Eerie began tittering, a refined, polite sound, and she placed a square of pineapple-cherry cake on a delicate, square porcelain plate.

In response, Dim grunted and then took off his hat. He began to fish around inside of it, distracted, and pulled out several items. A fresh joint, somewhat moist with exotic oils, his cigarette holder, and four enormous brass ten gauge shells. These he set down in front of Blackbird, whose eyes went wide, and then he tossed his hat onto a sofa behind him without looking.

“Ooh, what a thoughtful gift,” Jolie said, her voice bubbling with laughter. “I told you, Blackbird, he’s a keeper. Diamonds might be a girl’s best friend, but they can’t keep you safe.”

“Dim, what do these do?” Blackbird asked while she set down her teacup and then picked up one of the ridiculously large shells.

“Keep them from getting wet,” Dim warned while he lit up. “For best results, fire into a crowd.” Satisfied with his answer, Dim turned his attention to Commodore Guillemot, and while studying the pegasus’ eyes, he asked, “And how is your young charge?”

Before responding, the commodore puffed on his pipe a few times, and there was a rustle of feathers as he shifted in his seat. “He is saying goodbye to his mother and his sister. You did him a kindness, Dim, and I’ll not forget that. Poor lad is still pretty shook up, but I dare say he’s happy about the outcome.”

“‘Twas no kindness on my part.” Dim too, now puffed, and he exhaled a flock of fleeing birds, all made of smoke. “But was justice that motivated me.” When a teacup was set down in front of him, Dim wasted no time. It was hot, somewhat citrusy, and the strong scent of vanilla was almost cloying. He pulled his cigarette holder from his lips and took the first sip, hoping it was cool enough for consumption. Try as he might, Dim could not contain the sigh of relief that escaped him, and that first swallow did much to satisfy his parched throat.

The clove oil killed the painful tickle that had plagued him for so long—and had been made worse with his recent injury—while the tea eased the dreadful dryness. Somehow, Dim allowed himself to relax, and he slumped over in his chair, looking very much like a worn out aristocratic vagabond.

“The world needs more justice,” Commodore Guillemot said while he too relaxed a bit more in his chair. “Istanbull stands out as a beacon during these trying times—”

“You say that because I pay your salary.” Eerie’s voice was teasing and she batted her eyelashes while she grinned at her guest.

The pegasus cleared his throat, puffed on his pipe for a bit, and then pulled his pipe away, holding the bulbous bowl in his fetlock. “That in itself is a justice. I’ve been able to keep my crew paid and active. They’re good sailors and I’d hate to see them lured astray due to desperation. These are troubled times.”

“Does the Crown not pay you?” Dim asked.

At this, the pegasus looked troubled and he squirmed in his seat. Beside him, Jolie’s smile vanished, and Eerie, a helpful, considerate sort, gave the commodore another slice of pineapple-cherry cake. Dim waited, sipped his tea, and beside him, Blackbird was stuffing away the brass shells into a pouch on her bandoleer.

“At this point, I’m not certain if there is a Crown.” The words pained Commodore Guillemot, and each of his words lingered as smoke. “A while back, there was quite a massacre. Two centuries worth of guardsponies went to a town called Shepherd’s Shore. Somepony called the Shade Lord or the Lord of Shades or some such nonsense… that was the day he set off his bloody rebellion. Slaughtered the guards… not so much a killing, no… he slaughtered them to send a message. From what I understand, he turned their armor into a boiling mass of liquid. The horror of it all defies description.”

Dim felt his blood freeze in his veins and somehow managed to hide his reaction.

“Since then, this Lord of Shades has been hitting us where it hurts. Massacre after massacre. Some of the Royal Families have been killed. Our Empire was left weakened after the collapse of colonial rule and now, everypony is fighting over what little is left. The Isles are divided. Civil war is brewing. Old families who suffered political slights or were outed, they see this as a time for revenge. We’re undone by past sins and mistakes.” The commodore’s eyes were watery now and the foreleg that held his pipe trembled. “The sun has finally set upon our mighty empire.”

Dim discovered that Eerie was looking at him—she was staring right at him—and even worse, he realised, she knew. For a moment, he panicked, though he did not show it, and there was a pain in his heart from the sudden anxious fluttering it did. If Eerie knew, why hadn’t she told the commodore? What game was being played here? Caring nothing of the consequences, Dim gulped some of his tea, and it burned all the way down. Was Eerie going to hold this over his head to blackmail him? If he moved right now, he might take her by surprise and kill her, but getting out would still be tricky. He had a hat full of tricks that might help, but he was tired, fatigued from working, and now was not a good time for a bloodbath.

Clucking her tongue, Eerie gave Dim a nod. “Darling, you look famished. Do eat your cake and try to relax a little, okay?”

The commodore, it seemed, had more to say, and he did so with great sadness. “I stuck to my mission and followed my last clear, concise order... establish good relations with Istanbull for the purposes of trade and goodwill between nations. It was part of the Celestia Directive. If the Isles could somehow establish a sense of goodwill and trust after the collapse of our colonies, we could gain prefered trading status once again.” The pegasus sighed, a defeated sound, and shook his head. “I don’t see that happening now, but I will continue following the last orders given to me.”

“And I will continue paying the salary of your fleet,” Eerie said in a voice of calm reassurance. “Dim, do try to eat something. Your condition is distressing.”

Jolie reached over—which, because of her short, stubby legs, it was a long reach for her that required her to shimmy her body—and she patted the commodore upon his foreleg, which rested on the arm of his chair. It was an odd sight, a pirate comforting a commodore, a naval officer that by all rights, should have been the pirate’s bane.

Trembling, Dim didn’t want to remember that day at Shepherd’s Shore. It was almost too much to bear. He had been so addled, so full of grief. Darling Dark had just died and he had witnessed the private grief of two sisters. It had been an accident and he had been confused. The sights and the smells of that day haunted him now, and the sounds… his ears began a mad dance as they pivoted to and fro, listening to the phantom sounds of butchery.

With nothing that he could do, and no means of escape, Dim began to nibble on his cake which now tasted like ashes upon his lips. Somehow, he managed to swallow some with the help of some tea, he took a few puffs on his joint, and then continued to eat the delectable treat that he couldn’t enjoy.

“Blackbird, you should show Dim the new toy that Jolie gave you.” Eerie’s voice had a thin veneer of aristocratic command and she made a gesture in Blackbird’s direction with her hoof. “Mind those tender knuckles of yours, darling. Punching someone in armor is a foolish endeavour, wouldn’t you agree?”

Flexing her bandaged talons, Blackbird shrugged. “I still coldcocked that smarmy bastard right into the dirt.”

“Darling, it was a training exercise.” Eerie tittered again—a sound that Dim found quite grating now—and she poured a bit more tea for Blackbird, as well as placing another slice of cake upon her empty plate. “He was supposed to get you to react, and I suppose you did. Though I don’t think anyone saw that dreadful suckerpunch coming. Now show Dim your new toy. It’s very exciting.”

Blackbird reached under her wing, fiddled around for a moment, and when Dim saw the cannon inches away from his nose, he almost choked on his cake. He coughed a few times, and cross eyed, he tried to focus on the gun that appeared as though it should be mounted on the deck of a ship. Even in Blackbird’s large talons, the gun appeared monstrous in size and the barrel was the size of a mineshaft.

“It is a little something I traded for with a dragon,” Jolie said, still patting the commodore upon his leg. “Gratin tried firing it once and it almost broke his talons. No one on my crew was strong enough to fire the damn thing. The dragons have started making firearms, can you believe that? It’s well made, too. Dragonsized. It’s a four bore—”

This time, Dim did choke, and he saw stars in his vision while the hunk of cake in his gullet made up its mind to go up or down. Sputtering, Dim felt the painful lump go down, and then he gasped to fill his lungs with some much needed air while Blackbird set the massive cannon on the table in front of him with a clank of tableware.

“—and the dragons somehow even got the rifling of the barrel right. Sorta. It’s accurate enough, I suppose.” Jolie pulled her hoof away from the commodore, flopped back into her chair, and didn’t seem worried at all that Dim was having difficulties breathing. “The dragons still have a long way to go before they’ve perfected weaponsmithing. I suspect that this was one of their finest pieces, and it was traded away so it would be talked about and admired. It’s just too damn big though, and too impractical for anybody other than Blackbird or some big brute.”

“I’m a brute,” Blackbird said in a singsong voice. “I’ve never owned a gun that fires a quarter of a pound chunk of lead before. Dim, Jolie gave me some shells that she calls grapeshot, but I don’t think there’s any grapes in there, though I do think there would be a lot of whining if I fired a grapeshot load into a crowd.”

When Blackbird began to laugh at her own joke, Dim had recovered enough to groan.

There was something on the barrel of the cannon, and Dim leaned forward to have a better look. Etched on the barrel was a boar—there were four of them—and it seemed as though dragons too, were enamoured with puns. Dim coughed a bit more, swallowed some of his tea, and kept looking at the terrifying weapon. For a moment, Dim’s eyes strayed towards Eerie, then the commodore, and then he gazed upon the polished nickel barrel of the fantastic portable cannon once more.

“Well…” Eerie’s sudden words caused Dim’s ears to prick upwards. “Now that we’re all here and comfortable, there is much that needs to be discussed about the situation in Fancy. I’ve had some updates about the situation and with greater understanding, the situation is far more dire. The Grittish Isles might already be gone, as darling Guillemot has mentioned, but we have a chance to save Fancy from suffering the same fate. There is much that needs to be said, so settle in, all of you, and I will tell you exactly what I expect from each of you.”

The commodore, confused, shook his head. “Why am I here for this?”

“From you, I need a distraction,” Eerie replied in a voice of cool, calm, command. “Don’t worry, it is nothing that will besmirch your sterling reputation. In fact, you will be viewed as a hero once this is done. You have a fleet, but I am going to give you an armada, and you are going to liberate the former colonies of Fancy from the rule of pirates and slavers. You will offer no quarter, I demand this. There are no conditions of surrender. I require obliteration, I need an example made, you see.”

The commodore seemed doubtful, in Dim’s eyes. “That is quite a task—”

“It is time for the world to see Istanbull’s new gunships… our dreadnoughts. I don’t have many, mind you, but the few that I have should be enough to get everyone’s attention. I want the whole of the world to be holding their breath and perhaps shitting themselves in fear. I have in my possession guns capable of firing over the horizon—guns so powerful that to fire them and hit your target, you have to calculate the curvature of Terra Prime. My biggest issue right now is that I have more of these guns available to me than I do creatures capable of the calculations.”

“How is such a thing even possible?” Commodore Guillemot asked and his body went rigid while he leaned forward in his chair.

“The barrels of the guns take up the entire length of the ship,” Eerie replied, still calm, cool, and in control. “The ship is built around the gun… the barrel of said gun is a little over one hundred and sixty feet in length. It fires a thirty four inch wide shell that is over thirteen feet in length and has a range of about twenty five miles.”

Dim had trouble comprehending Eerie’s words, but he understood the gist well enough: Eerie was about to announce a new era in warfare, and that the old era would be relegated to the history books. How had she done this? Dim realised that it didn’t matter how, that was irrelevant. What was far more important was that she had. This was something that would get the attention of the entire world—including Equestria. He couldn’t help but wonder what sort of game Eerie was playing.

“Fancy will offer their former colonies protection, but will also offer a guarantee of autonomy and free rule. This is a gesture of goodwill, done with the hope of soothing past hurts.” Eerie poured herself more tea, added a splash of cream, and then turned her commanding gaze upon Dim. “For Fancy to be able to do this, there needs to be stability. Your job will be to deal with the Ascendancy as you see fit—”

“Which means that you want them dead,” Blackbird deadpanned.

“Why… yes… that is exactly what I want.” Eerie gave Blackbird a nod of confirmation and then returned her attention to Dim. “This might not be a solution, but it will be a start. Fancy needs to unify again. The sleeping giant must awaken. Dim, you will be in charge. I give you command of this operation. I will also give you two capable advisors, Bombay and Pâté au Poulet. The Bard is a native to Fancy, he speaks the language, and he will know the local customs. You would do well to heed his words and listen to his counsel. Bombay has a marvellous head for tactics, but is dreadful at command. She is wily and capable of great treachery though.”

“This is quite a plan—”

“Blackbird, where others see the world crumbling apart a piece at a time, I see opportunity.” Eerie’s eyes narrowed and the flickering flames of the candlelight could be seen reflecting in them. “I intend to use this unique situation as a catalyst for rapid change. Modesto had much to say about this, and a fair bit of this is his plan. I had the initial idea, but Modesto sorted out many of the fine details, and Mars saw the opportunity with the former colonies of Fancy, because we knew that we needed a distraction while Dim did his job. Dim is bound to make a mess, so we need the world’s eyes focused elsewhere.”

“And I’m supposed to haul Dim over to Fancy and drop the bomb upon those poor unsuspecting bastards, I guess?” Jolie rested both of her short forelegs against the edge of the table and looked like a curious, overexcited foal that was a bit too happy about having tea with the adults.

“Jolie, I need you to be Dim’s eyes in the sky. The Ascendancy proves elusive, very much so. You and your ship will be allowed to operate in Fancy, but you may not use any of your ship’s weapons. It was difficult to get Fancy to agree and I had to make promises… token gestures of goodwill. Dim’s destruction will be bad enough, so we don’t need a warship raining down death from above—”

“I daresay that Dim is worse than my cute little boat,” Jolie said while resting her chin on her forelegs.

“Fancy is scared of your warship, but they don’t know about Dim,” Eerie replied.

“And when they do know about Dim, it’ll be too late.” Jolie rolled her eyes and let out a snort. “Eerie, this might backfire on you.”

“Of this I am painfully aware.” Eerie leveled her commanding gaze upon Dim and tried to burn holes right through his skull. “This is why I am trusting Dim. I am trusting him as family to do right and to try and show some restraint. I already know this is going to be a debacle and I am fully ready to make some formal apologies. Modesto is busy scribing them even now. But this is a job that needs doing and it remains to be seen how Dim will do it.”

“So you’re gambling that Fancy will be so happy about the removal of instability that they’ll turn a blind eye to Dim’s destruction—”

“Jolie, eat some cake or something.” Eerie’s head turned in Jolie’s direction and her lip curled into a leering smirk. “Stating the obvious is such an annoying habit. Just do something to occupy that mouth of yours.”

The little mare began to giggle, licked her teeth, and then burst out laughing when Eerie slid the entire remains of the cake in her direction. Dim meanwhile, understood how much of this rested upon his withers, and how he handled himself. Commodore Guillemot too, had to be feeling some pressure, and Dim looked down at the Four Boars, still resting upon the table in front of him.

“There has been much ego stroking and mutual masturbation,” Dim remarked, “for which I am grateful. My shaft has been suitably stroked. But what of Blackbird? Is she to get no satisfaction? You brought up Pâté au Poulet and Bombay, yet they are not here at this meeting, but Blackbird is. Why? Share the love, Eerie.”

Jolie, still snickering, began to cram cake into her mouth as fast as her little hooves could scoop it up, and she did this with much licking, lip smacking, and gusto. Meanwhile, Eerie now had her terrific deadpan expression locked on Dim, and the commodore had resumed smoking his pipe. Dim too, was puffing away, his joint was almost gone now.

“We Darks are so talented at magic… as a family, we’re some of the most powerful unicorns in the world. We’re so gifted, so capable, there is nothing we can’t do. Except for Dim. Alas, poor Dim. He received only a pittance when it came to portioning out the family’s magic, and Fate, being no great compensator to the misfortunate, having no sense of fairness, gave Dim quite a different gift altogether: Fate decreed that Dim was to be an asshole… perhaps the greatest asshole in all of existence, and all of the world would clench in fear of his assholery.”

Across the table, Jolie choked on her cake and Guillemot was forced to start pounding the filly-sized mare on her back. Blackbird chortled and clamped her uninjured talons over her mouth to try and hold everything back. Eerie’s deadpan expression seemed unbreakable, and Dim stared at her, wondering how love and hatred could hold such equal measure in his heart.

“Blackbird, your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to counter Dim’s abhorrent assholery. You will counteract his odious, objectionable, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, repellent behaviour, his reprehensible, intolerable, atrocious nature, and you will do what you seem to do best. You will make friends. You will earn trust. It is my sincere hope that you will find some way to counteract Dim’s detestable, deplorable, degenerate, disgusting demeanour, or else this mission might very well be doomed. I am placing all of my faith and hope into you, my dear, beautiful girl, and you must try to be a countermeasure to Dim’s unpleasantness.”

“You ask the impossible,” Blackbird quipped.

With a snarl, Dim threw himself back in his chair and let out a dismissive huff.

“We all have our jobs to do,” Eerie continued, “and now, we shall get down to the finer details. I have some goals I wish to accomplish, and each of you will have a list of tasks to achieve. Settle in, darling dear ones, we’re going to be here for a while…”

Author's Note

Dim needs some burn cream.

The best of intentions

“Dim”—Blackbird tugged on Dim’s tail to get his attention—“before you get busy again…”

“Yes?” Dim stopped, then turned around in the narrow hallway, while keeping himself pressed off to one side so that others might pass. He was an asshole, sure, but he wasn’t the sort of asshole who blocked traffic during a conversation. With a nudge of his hoof, he encouraged Blackbird to follow his lead and she pressed her bulk against the curved wall.

“Finding my mother is important… but so is what we’re doing. Those dragons were supposed to help, Prominence and Scalio—”

“Who goes by Thod,” Dim added.

“Yeah.” Blackbird nodded and shifted her weight off of her injured talons. “They were supposed to come and help do whatever it is that needed to be done with the Black Hand. These two dragons had duties and obligations and responsibilities and all those things, but they stayed behind to help the ponies of Fancy during this crisis. I didn’t even know that dragons could help others, I’ve always heard stories about what jerks they are, how mean they are, and how teenage dragons are little more than bandits, pillagers, and raiders. But clearly, these ponies and their struggle means a lot to them—enough so that they refuse to budge until something is done to help these ponies. And for some reason Dim…”

“Yes?” Dim waited while Blackbird’s mouth moved, but no words came forth.

“It’s reassuring. I want to believe that the world is good, Dim. I want to believe that you are good. Dim, I want to believe that you are going to actually help these ponies and do right by them. I don’t want that kiss I gave you to be a mistake, Dim. I’d hate to have to beat your ass like I did that soldier earlier, but make no mistake, I’ll do it. This is too important, Dim, and I’m not gonna let you mess this up. I hope that Eerie made it clear, this is no lark. I am delaying the search for my mother to do this, and if you ruin this, it cheapens what I’m sacrificing. Do you understand me?”

Angling his head upwards, Dim looked into Blackbird’s eyes, and gave her the time she needed to realise that he was doing so. There was something girlish and vulnerable about Blackbird at the moment, and she seemed far more foalish than her ginormous hippogriff body suggested.

“I give you my word that I will treat this with the seriousness it deserves.” Dim hesitated, knowing how much he valued keeping his own word, and he resented Blackbird just a little bit for dragging this out of him. “I will not cheapen what you are sacrificing to do this. For you, I’ll get results.”

“Thank you, Dim.” Blackbird smiled and for the first time, Dim noticed a slight swelling just beneath her eye. It seemed as though she had been thumped on a few times during her rigorous training. This was good, it would toughen her up. He was distracted by what he saw until he heard her say, “I have shooting practice and you gotta do whatever it is that you’re doing. Wizard stuff, I suppose.”

“Ja, Amsel. Ich würde dein Sklave für deine Küsse.”

“What?” Blackbird’s ears perked and her eyes darted from side to side while trying to read Dim’s face.

“I merely said yes.” Dim savoured Blackbird’s frustration and drank in as much as he could.

“You said more than that,” Blackbird insisted while her eyes narrowed and her ears revealed that she was putting some real effort into thinking.

Dim shrugged and longed to see Blackbird’s murder face. “Vielleicht.”

“Fine, Mister Mysterious. You go do your wizard stuff and I’m gonna go shoot stuff.”

“Leb wohl, Walküre.”

A bizarre purple radiance of warmth took over Blackbird’s black face and she paused, her tail swishing like an agitated serpent having a hissy fit. “Okay, what the Tartarus was that? That sounded affectionate. Were you flirting with me?”

“Ich werde es nicht verraten.”

“Fine, you jerk.” Now fluffed, Blackbird huffed, turned about, slapped Dim in the face with her tail, and then she flounced off. Her exaggerated departing gait caused her hooves and claws to clatter against the floor with her rump swinging from side to side.

Dim, whose eyes lingered on her swaying hindquarters, smiled and spoke to himself in a low, almost inaudible whisper, “Leb wohl, Walküre.”

Bombay Sable was a whole lot of everything that Blackbird wished that she could be. The Abyssinian was small, sleek, lithe, slinky, and just so very awesome. Plus, she had magic, which somehow amplified her apparent awesomeness. Blackbird couldn’t even begin to imagine using magic, because it baffled her so, but Bombay did little things that made magic seem so helpful.

When fighting with melee weapons, Bombay could pull out her wand at any moment, cast a spell, and dazzle the eyes of her opponent, blinding them, and leaving them vulnerable to what Bombay called ‘surgical strikes.’ When fighting with guns, Bombay could wave her wand around to reload her pistol, thus allowing her to keep her eyes focused upon the enemy.

Worst of all, Bombay made adopting a bipedal stance so damned tempting.

“Blackbird, you punched out Captain Narmer and left him with quite a headache.”

“Is that his name?” Blackbird squinted, preparing herself for the sudden sun, and waited while Bombay threw open the door. “He was rude—”

“He was testing you,” Bombay replied while she stepped aside and made room for Blackbird. “You left the good captain with a concussion, a contusion, and a good impression. He likes you. He told me that you’d make a good soldier.”

Shaking her head, Blackbird stepped through the narrow arched doorway and into the bright afternoon sunlight, which stung her eyes. “I don’t wanna be a soldier, I’m happy just being Blackbird, the lovable rogue and sometimes mechanic.”

“Blackbird… girl… this world is rough and I think you’re finally starting to see that. I don’t care who you are, everybody becomes something that they don’t want to be. A courageous creature can become a coward. A craven creature can be a hero. A pacifist can be a murderer and a murderer can save a life.” Bombay too moved away from the door and allowed it to shut behind her. “This life we live… sooner or later, we all become something we hate, so it is better to embrace it now.”

“I don’t know if I hate the idea of being a soldier…” Blackbird didn’t quite finish her sentence because of how Bombay was looking at her, her front paws akimbo, and her narrowed eyes glinting in the sunlight.

“Responsibility scares you—”

“That’s not fair!” Blackbird shrieked and then she sucked in a deep breath of shock when she realised what she had done. Looking up at Bombay, she scowled and shook her head from side to side. “I’m willing to do my part, but I am not responsible for—”

“Catshit!” Bombay spat out the expletive and her whiskers bristled. “You’re bigger, stronger, and more capable than just about everybody around here. You are a fucking colossus and you hide on all fours so you don’t cause a stir! You hide in plain sight and you slink from place to place hoping that others don’t notice you! The world needs creatures like you and you dismiss everything because you say you’re looking for your mother… there’s a whole lot of creatures looking for their mothers and they could use your help! Some of us had to watch our mothers get shipped off in chains and that happens because good, capable creatures sit back and do nothing.”

The words stung, more so because Blackbird couldn’t think of a way to refute them. She wanted to say something, she wanted to argue, she wanted to holler at Bombay, but she didn’t want to dismiss her friend’s suffering or her experiences. Blackbird chomped down on her lower lip and only eased up when she was about to draw blood.

“I am a fucking slave still,” Bombay continued, but now her voice was quieter. “My brain is still fucking broken. It’s hard for me to fight… to resist… even now, especially right now, I have been thoroughly conditioned to avoid conflict. To be as meek and submissive and nonviolent as possible and what I’m doing right now turns my stomach.”

Still gnawing on her lip, Blackbird thought about everything that Dim had said on this subject.

“The world has gone grey… it has. Everybody is so busy fighting about what is right and what is wrong, but nothing is being done to fix anything. All this time and energy spent talking and so little doing. That’s why I follow Eerie. It’s why I do what I do. It is why I deal with the jittery butterflies in my stomach and the constant panic and I do whatever is necessary, because I don’t want to see the world devoured by the grey. Eerie didn’t waste time with debates about what was moral, and right, and pure, and good, no, Eerie, she do. She is willing to attack other nations that do wrong. Live and let live will only get you so far in life, Blackbird, and talk can only get you so much.”

Try as she might, Blackbird found that she had nothing to say.

“Dim gets it.” Bombay’s paws came to rest upon the pommel of her sword and the grip of her pistol. “He’s swept up in the grey. He just responds and does whatever needs to be done in the moment, and he sorts out morality later, if at all. I don’t wanna say that Dim is right, but at least he can be counted on to do something. He’s gonna go to Fancy and he’s gonna wreck some shit and maybe, if we’re lucky, when those pieces get picked up and put back together again, things might be a little better. But for now, fuck them. Let them break. Burn that shit to the ground.”

“Others will be hurt.” Blackbird found her voice, which was now husky and squeaky, and she hated how fillyish it sounded. “Look, Dim is damaged—”

“You don’t think I don’t know that?” Bombay’s notched ears twitched and her whiskers bristled again. “I’ve watched him from afar, with Eerie and the others. Dim is no hero. He’s more like a forest fire. Sure, a forest fire seems bad, but a lot of good comes out of a forest fire.”

“It feels like Dim is being exploited.”

“Dim is gonna do what Dim is gonna do. We’re just pointing him in the direction of those most deserving.”

Hearing this, Blackbird couldn’t help but feel that there was something wrong with all of this. “I feel like this is reckless and might do more harm than good—”

“Then help us,” Bombay pleaded. “Help us point Dim in the right direction. You know him better than all of us. Yank his chain and do whatever is necessary to get him to do what he does best, and try to direct his fury. You might be able to minimise some suffering.”

“I dunno about this…” Blackbird squirmed inside of her own skin, uncertain and unsure.

“For now, let’s get you shooting. Let’s just forget about all of this. We’ll talk again, later, when we’ve both had a chance to clear our heads. Sound good?” Bombay’s tail curled into a feline question mark and she waited for Blackbird’s response.

Not knowing how to respond, Blackbird told Bombay what the cat creature wanted to hear for the lack of anything better to say. “Sure. I guess. We’ll talk later, Bombay.”

He was supposed to be working, but Dim found that he couldn’t concentrate upon his studies. Spells could be studied at any time, really, and he had a long flight ahead. Perhaps he would spend time in study then. What did hold his attention was the class of unicorn students. He sat up in a high, lofty balcony, just the sort of place where a master might come to see if there were any promising apprentices about—not that Dim wanted an apprentice. Why, the very idea was revolting.

These unicorns were quite different than anything else he had encountered elsewhere in the world. Rather than act as individuals, to cast spells and channel magic as a lone, singular entity, these foals were learning how to work in unison, as one collective organisation. Individually, each one of these foals were weak—pathetically so—and Dim couldn’t sense a single one that held even a modicum of power. But together, casting in harmony, they were impressive. Eyebrow raisingly so. Just as a blessing of unicorns had once raised and lowered the sun, these foals were learning to become a thaumaturgical collective that was greater than the sum of its parts.

“The Equestrians have abandoned this method of study and focus instead upon the scholastic success of the individual.”

The sound of Modesto’s voice behind him didn’t startle Dim at all, and truth be told, he was pleased to hear it. Saying nothing, Dim made a gesture for Modesto to join him, and the minotaur did. Modesto peered over the rail down at the students below, while Dim peered through the struts supporting the rail.

“We actively weed out unicorn foals that cannot harmonise well with others,” Modesto said in a low, throaty whisper. “This is done to preserve shared strength. We are not alone, this is how much of this side of the world operates. You, Dim, are a powerful, gifted individual. Those you see down below? They are a powerful, gifted group. Our finest. We combed the city looking for the very best, and then searched the surrounding lands.”

Intrigued, Dim nodded and decided that—for now—he would humour Modesto.

“I might have allowed cultural bias to colour my opinions of you… I kept thinking about what I said, and I know how narcissistic that sounds, so forgive me, but I kept thinking about what I said about you singing your own song. The world needs both, Dim. A soloist can be just as beautiful as a choir, but for different reasons. Those foals down there, they will achieve a fantastic level of harmony with one another and they will go on to do great things—but so will you, Dim. I must confess, no matter what I do I cannot understand you.” He gestured down at the foals below, and turned to look at Dim. “I understand that completely, but you remain a mystery to me.”

Down below, the foals were bending what appeared to be a steel girder. It was something that could be done with a metal shaping spell, but the foals were doing it with telekinesis and nothing else. Some held the girder, preventing it from moving, and applying more pressure in the middle, while others pushed on the ends. Dim understood the exercise, even if he was annoyed by the inefficiency of the act. The goal wasn’t to bend the steel beam, after all, but to learn how to work together.

Modesto extended his hand, curled his fingers, and the crystals protruding from the back of his mechanical forearms began to glow. In between the tips of his fingers and thumb, a ball of aetherfire blazed, and this had Dim’s attention. It seemed as though Modesto and Mars had been keeping secrets. The pale blue flame was weak, but burned steadily.

“Eerie wanted this knowledge kept from you, and Mars believed that you would figure it out on your own sooner or later.” Modesto inhaled, held it for a moment, and with a heavy sigh that made his thin shoulders sag, he exhaled. “I feel that I am a hypocrite now. Try as I might, I cannot harmonise my magic with that of another. I exist as a soloist. I cannot even harmonise the magic in my right hand with that of the left hand, as both exist on different frequencies. The crystals have their own hum. Even though it is my heart’s fondest desire, I cannot harmonise with them.” With his other hand, Modesto gestured down at the unicorn foals below.

“How does a minotaur use magic?” Dim asked, his voice reedy and thin.

“All minotaurs have magic,” Modesto replied in a hushed whisper. “It flows through our bodies and our hands. It comes out passively, in our crafts. Our sewing, our metalworking, our alchemy, almost everything we do has an element of magic to it. Eerie seized upon this knowledge, and found a way to focus the tiny trickle of magic we have into something more direct. Mars and I were the first… that I know about, anyway.” With a flexing of his fingers, the magic vanished into a glittery, smokey poof.

“So this is like a focusing staff or wand… those crystals in your arms… and the magic is focused like a sunbeam through a magnifying glass—”

“Eerie used that exact same analogy,” Modesto said, making a gentle, inoffensive interruption. “How is it that you and Eerie can be so alike, yet so different?”

“We’re Darks…” Dim’s words held no ire, no sarcasm, just an honest, forthright response. “We’re not so different than those foals down there. We were isolated, held apart from others, and made to act a certain way. We become the Ideal Dark… or we become nothing at all. Foals that didn’t fit the ideal were shipped off to orphanariums.” Pausing for a moment, Dim reflected upon what he knew; foals were used for other purposes as well. “I suppose we learned to sing a different song together. Every aspect of who and what I am was shaped like clay, either through ritual, through study, punishment, manipulation, or fear. Eerie is no different. I do not doubt that in some ways, Eerie had it worse than I did, being female. I must confess, I’ve been reflecting upon her pain and suffering lately, as well as mine own.”

“She seldom talks about it, but when she does, she is troubled.” Modesto sighed again, adjusted the collar of his robe, and turned to look down at the foals. “When she is lonesome, she seeks the company of other mares. In time, I’m sure you’ll notice. It bothers me—”

“It bothers you?” Dim asked, his voice a hot, scratchy whisper.

“Oh, let me finish,” Modesto began, and his shoulders rose and fell. “It bothers me that she takes no joy from her relationships. She forms no lasting bonds. From my observations, she relieves her physical needs but makes no lasting connections. This saddens me, Dim… for I so very much want to see her happy.”

Dim tried to say something, but his words faltered and failed him. He had almost made a hasty judgment, and for some odd reason, he felt bad about it. This was the sort of thing that one apologised over, but Dim was determined not to do that for Modesto. Not now. Maybe not ever. Apologies had to remain precious things, and lost value with each one given.

“Mars says it is none of my business, but it is my business. Eerie raised me. She educated me. She gave me hands and taught me magic. Because of her, I have a kingdom. Her happiness is paramount and remains in the forefront of my mind. All I have and all I am is because of her—she gave me all of this.” Modesto gestured at everything around him, trying to include it all.

With a profound sense of sadness, Dim now knew that he had misjudged Modesto. Not that Dim wished to be sappy or sentimental, but Modesto’s sincere, heartfelt desire for Eerie’s happiness did something to Dim’s heart—something dreadful—something grotesque. Repulsed by the warm fuzzy feeling that existed within his ribcage, Dim scowled and wished that it would go away, because it was worse than indigestion. His current state of being was truly revolting.

“Come with me, Modesto, and let me see if I can teach you any magic,” Dim offered, and he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth.

It seemed that Modesto couldn’t believe them either, and the minotaur’s face was a mask of incredulity.

“I have this spell… it is complicated, but doesn’t take a great deal of magic to cast. Just a profound understanding of magic, which I am positive that Eerie gave you.” Dim cleared his throat and then continued, “It turns beams of light into focused gravity. This has a multitude of uses, and while the overall effect is rather weak, the illusions it creates are impressive and it can add some pizzazz to your spells. When you weave it in with your castings, it causes quite a show. It has other practical, physical uses as well.”

“Turning light into gravity?” Modesto’s mouth transformed into a tight, thin, straight line, and his chin protruded in thought. “Telekinesis adds physical force to photons, allowing them to push—”

“And I have found a way to make those photons exceptionally heavy in a limited field.” Dim’s lip curled back into a sneer, revealing his perfect white teeth. “I can use them to bend light and create a dazzling array of effects. I am even figuring out how to best use them offensively.”

“Eerie said I am not to take lessons from you, because you would corrupt me.” Modesto stammered out these words while taking a step backwards from Dim, bumping into the rail.

“Do you do everything that Eerie tells you?” Dim demanded.

“Yes, more or less. I do not wish to incite her ire, for I have seen her anger.”

“Very well then”—Dim sighed these words, and then turned to go—“suit yourself.” When he reached the door, he pulled it open, and was halfway through when Modesto had a change of heart, just as Dim knew he would.

“Wait for me,” Modesto whispered in a frightened voice, “and whatever you do, don’t tell Eerie!”

Author's Note

Quite a lot happens in this chapter...

Adoration

Dim Dark was a pony that hated goodbyes, and as such, he avoided them. He had tried to slink away unnoticed, but Eerie had ambushed him. After yet another struggle—as much as their weak, frail bodies would allow—Dim had found himself yet again the victim of her snuggles. Though he would never breathe a word of admission about it, not even under torture, there was a certain pleasantness that came with wholesome family affection.

The cabin was small—even by pony standards—which meant that Blackbird would find it cramped. There was a bed, a cubby hole of a bed that one had to climb into and there was a thick, insulated curtain that could be closed to help retain body heat. He and Blackbird would have to share this bed somehow. Just thinking of it put a snide grin on Dim’s face that made his muzzle ache. Below the bed there was a storage locker and that was it for storage. The floor was about a yard wide, and there was a padded bench built into the wall at the far end of the room opposite the door. A small folding table came down from the wall where the bench was, and Dim was pleased; it would be useful for study.

At about three yards in length and a yard wide, the room was beyond cramped. While the bed was narrow, it was long by pony standards, though Dim wasn’t sure how comfortable a minotaur would be. Curling up would be necessary. There was no window and the room was absolutely bare. It wasn’t the worst room that Dim had stayed in.

Opening the storage locker, Dim began to stow his gear, and being the nice, considerate pony that he was, he left some room for Blackbird. Some of his possessions he would stow beneath the bench, just to make sure that Blackbird’s many firearms had a safe, secure place to be put away. Watching her disarm and divest herself of weapons was a source of amusement for Dim, because it could take awhile.

“This is your captain speaking…” The tinny speaker hidden inside of the light fixture overhead crackled a bit and there was an ear-piercing bit of feedback. “Some of you are new here, so let’s talk about the rules. My ship, my rules. This is not your standard airship. We fly above the skies where the air is almost nonexistent. It’s really fucking cold up there and while the ship’s life support systems and batteries keep the temperature above freezing, it is advised that you bunk up with somebody.”

Something about Jolie’s voice was endearing—cute, even, and Dim had a lovely mental image of the little mare shoveling cake into her mouth.

“If you do bunk up with somebody, there’s bound to be fucking, and as your captain I would be remiss if I did not bring up the following topic: cum inside, damn you! The stink! It’s abominable! It travels through the air re-circulators and the entire alicorn-damn ship smells like swamp-ass and mushroom soup! I don’t wanna smell that, and trust me, neither do you. So no fucking cumshots on the face, or on the bed, or anywhere really. Swallow that shit, you fucking perverts! Fire it right up the poop-chute! I don’t care what you do, but I don’t want my ship stinking!”

The corners of his mouth twitched, and Dim found it hard not to laugh.

“When at higher altitudes, there will be no access to the deck, because there’s no fucking air. The doors will be sealed and locked to maintain pressure. Sorry, but you are going to be stuck inside for most of this trip. Once we head out, we’re going up and staying up for as long as we can. The dining area seats eight so we’ll be eating in shifts. No food in the common area, because you fucking assholes are pigs, and I don’t want my ship smelly!”

Jolie’s message ended with a squeal of feedback, or he thought it did, but there was a final, parting message: "This is your captain speaking... we're all going down... we're all going down on each other." Then, silence.

When the ship lurched, Dim was ill-prepared for it and almost tumbled over. This thing was fast and he could feel the rush of acceleration as it picked up speed. Nothing he’d been on had ever moved this fast. Bracing himself, he made his way over to the padded bench, sat down, and folded down the desk. Blackbird was off making friends, no doubt, either that or she had failed to board. He wasn’t sure because he had teleported aboard to avoid the crowd.

Since he had some quiet, he intended to make the most of it and study. He stowed some of his gear beneath the bench, and pulled out several books, some of which he had ‘borrowed’ from Eerie’s library with the plans to return them when he was done. One book was on the alchemical properties of iron and its many possible infusions, one book was about salt, and one book was his own private journal.

An eyeblink left the world with a pink cast and Dim was more relieved than anything when he noticed the pinkish hue in his vision. No strange thoughts stirred in his head, not yet, but there was a profound sense of peace. Princess Cadance was a welcome addition in his mind and no part of him rejected her or resented her intrusion. As such, Dim knew that this made the connection stronger.

Then, he heard a voice between his ears say, Dim, I’m sorry.

To which he replied, “Sorry? Sorry for what?” Just as he was about to ask a third question, the profound peaceful sensation overcame him, and Dim felt just like a sleepy foal at bedtime. His body was warm, comfortable, nothing hurt, and he noticed that his horn was glowing pink, but it wasn’t his pale pink magical aura. This was far too bright, obscenely bright, no self-respecting Dark would ever illuminate their horns with this horrendous hue.

I’ll just be a moment, Dim, I promise, and no harm will come to you.

Blinking, Dim tried to get his eyes to focus, but it was difficult. His head hurt just a little, but nothing too bad. It felt like magical fatigue and wasn’t too bothersome. There was a funny taste in his mouth, almost like roses and copper, and he needed a drink. When some of the fuzz left his vision, he saw his journal and upon one of the pages was a message written in a script not his own. No ink, the words were burned into the fine parchment pages, and he could sense magic in the words, but not his magic.

The pink cast in his vision was gone and he could sense nothing in his head. Poor Cadance must have burned herself out reaching across the world like this. Dim was impressed by this feat of magic and he continued blinking to clear his vision so that he might read what had been written.

Dim,

I am so sorry! I didn’t think I’d be able to do this at all, but I surprised myself.

Here is something that I hope helps you. While I do a science-related job, I am not the most scientific of ponies, so apologies if some of what I say doesn’t make sense. You’re smart, so you’ll sort it out. You’ve been studying salt and iron, their magical affinities, and their crystalline properties. I’ve been communing with the crystals of my empire and they’ve imparted some of their knowledge. My understanding of crystalline-based control magic is pretty good, I can shape and align crystals in a variety of ways, but I have trouble understanding it.

For the purpose of purifying and concentrating magic, crystals must be compressed and the crystalline lattices must be aligned in just the right way. I don’t fully know or understand these ways, and so you’ll have to figure that out. But I do know that you have to shrink the crystal to gain more focus from the lattice-structure. The denser you can make it, the better. Salt will gain immense purification abilities if you can make compressed salt structures.

Once you have sufficiently compressed crystalline structures, you can focus streams of thaumatons through them, which changes the nature of the thaumatons in some weird way, but I can’t say how. It acts like a filter of some sort, and I am positive that you can make sense of what is a mystery to me. Iron behaves in a similar way, but I understand it even less.

Celestia said that if you compress iron in a certain way and achieve a certain density, it becomes magic-disruptive and cancels thaumaton fields. She doesn’t understand the workings of it, but she says it probably has to do with the lattice alignment and the direction that the crystals fit together. I’m not certain what she means by that. She said that you would figure it out though. Also, if you align iron another way, it becomes a hyper-conductor of thaumatons and allows for super-excited particles. This adds volatility and some instability, but also allows you to condense a great deal of magic into one teeny, tiny area. Try taking that concentrated magic and pushing it through condensed salt crystals!

Good luck,

Don’t blow yourself up,

Hugs and friendly kisses,

Pink.

Reaching up, Dim rubbed his temple with his hoof while staring at the words on the page. Clever Cadance. These were more than just words, but a whole series of spells, all of which burned and tickled his brain while he read through her loopy, scrawling script. It would take time, concentration, and meditation to understand what she had left behind, but this really was one of the most clever uses of magic he had ever seen. It was such simple magic, used in such a complex, advanced way—very much like his own style of magic and how he did things.

A message within a message. Spells embedded in a letter. It was practically something a foal could do, yet Dim had not seen anything quite like it. In general, the Darks held a deep disdain for simple magics, and overlooked them. And yet, in simplicity, Cadance, and he himself, had found a certain level of perfection. Not only had Cadance used his horn to cast her magic, but she had written the words of a spell and a written message at the same time, using his horn as a transmitter.

And while what she had to say was somewhat confusing—he had trouble comprehending it—the spells included with it, spells that were quite literally whole thoughts, concepts, the ways, the means, and the hows, he could gain understanding. To so cleverly include thoughts with simple words… Dim almost gushed over the brilliance of it.

Blackbird was his best friend, but in Cadance, Dim saw a kindred spirit. If this letter was any reflection of Cadance’s true nature, then Dim had found another pony much like himself, one that prefered simplicity and practicality over the complex and unwieldy. The letter had won him over and left him with a lingering sense of affection. He longed to talk to Cadance about these ideas in pony, face to face in some wonderful animated discussion, but that was not possible.

For now.

Dim resolved to figure out as much as he could, and when he did return home, if he returned home, he would share what he had learned with Cadance. She would appreciate it, no doubt, and maybe, perhaps, he might also gain knowledge from the exchange. Dim’s own paranoid and pessimistic nature crept in, and his thoughts told him that the other alicorns might be dismissive of Cadance’s magical talents, because alicorns were powerful beings—but there was overlooked power in simplicity. Where others of Cadance’s kind might dismiss her abilities, he held deep appreciation.

With a sudden scowl, Dim realised that he was gushing, which caused him to pause, shake his head, and let out a disgusted groan. It was gross and sickening what he was doing—but that didn’t change the fact that Cadance showed brilliant simplicity. Now sneering, Dim began to read again, slowly this time, allowing his eyes to linger on each letter, because each letter was a spell, a thought, a concept. She had buried entire volumes in just his name alone. Lost in concentration, he began to study.

What Dim failed to realise was that, with but one simple act, the Princess of Love had enraptured him, enthralled him with adoration.

Author's Note

And now we truly begin the Fancy Arc.

At what cost

A hint of cold—a suggestion of cold—could now be felt in the air and it was enough to cause an annoying tickle in Dim’s lungs, making it be a laboured effort to breathe. Still, somehow he studied, trying to make sense of Princess Cadance’s transmitted spells. New information had blossomed into his mind, opening, blooming, revealing hidden secrets. She had given him payment, something meaningful in return, something for his continued cooperation. Contrary to what many might believe, Dim had his own sense of loyalty, odd as it was, and Princess Cadance had secured it.

So had Eerie.

Then there was the matter of Blackbird…

Lifting his head, Dim’s neck flared with pain and he leaned back with the hopes of easing the ache. Seeing only the dull grey walls of his room, he closed his eyes, no longer wishing to see something so plain and featureless. He understood the reasoning; paint was heavy and so aesthetics were sacrificed to reduce weight. The tickle in his lungs worsened and his ears needed to pop, so he began yawning in an effort to combat the growing pressure.

Mid-yawn, he heard the door open and when he opened his eyes, he did not see Blackbird as was expected, no, he saw Jolie. A born pirate she was, Jolie. Clever, wickedly smart, and tiny. Little Jolie was a brain packed into a tight, trim, compact, space-saving body. She was a captain that reflected her ship and Dim had some valuable insights into her nature.

“Bonjour, mon camarade mercenaire,” she said, offering up a polite greeting while also sliding the door shut behind her with her hind leg.

“Ich spreche nicht die Sprache der Romantik,” Dim replied, having no idea what she might have said. “Nur die schöne Sprache des Krieges. Warum ficken, wenn du töten kannst?”

“I have no idea what you just said, Dim, but now my skin is crawling and I’m pretty sure that I don’t wanna know.” Jolie stood before the door trying to blow her dark crimson mane off of her bright scarlet face. “I came because you and I have to have a heart to heart, Dim. Nothing personal, but I don’t trust you and I need to trust you, so we need to have a chat.”

After taking a moment to think about it, Dim chose to humour the little mare. “Very well.”

“Let me get right to the point, Dim.” Jolie advanced a few steps and Dim realised that this small cabin must feel so much larger for her. “I don’t understand your motivations. You chose to help Eerie and I don’t understand why. I am trusting the safety of my Gratin, my crew, my ship, and myself, all of it, everything, to you. This is no good, Dim… no good at all. I need to understand why I’m doing this.”

From these words, Dim observed a number of things, but one thing stood out. “You speak of the order in which you value things…” Nothing was said right away in return, but Jolie’s eyes narrowed, her ears angled forwards over her face, and the sudden wrinkles made her appear wizened. “Do not cross me and you have nothing to fear from me. I am given to fits of temper when I feel betrayed.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The tiny mare’s hooves rang out against the thin wooden floor as she approached while she kept her eyes focused on Dim. “Look, I’m gonna pry. I really need to know what your deal is, because I am being forced to trust you with an awful lot, and I’m not happy ‘bout that.”

Sighing, Dim realised that there would be no making her go away, and that he was going to have to commit to a conversation. The tickle in his lungs had grown unbearable, and was now in his throat as well, a wet, clinging sensation that felt like it was robbing him of air. With a pale flash of amber light, he conjured up his smoking supplies, slipped a clove and cannabis cigarette into the long silver stem, placed it between his lips, and lit it. Almost right away, the tickle began to subside as he puffed away, while studying the mare standing before him.

“You need to get your lungs checked, Dim… you sound like you’re dying.”

“Maybe I am,” Dim replied while exhaling sweet, clove-scented smoke. “How many will I take with me before I go I wonder?”

Jolie did not laugh, no, she scowled, and Dim saw that his humour had fallen flat.

Dim, a slick mercenary, moved to reassure her. “I am loyal to Eerie’s cause. We have come to an understanding, she and I. Her cause is just—”

“Minotaur shit.” Jolie spat out the words and flicked her tail in a rude, impertinent way.

Sighing, Dim performed yet another conjuration and held up a coin in his magic. Leaning forward, he looked down at the mare before him, watching her rude tail flicks with hidden amusement. “Eerie paid for my services.”

“That’s a grain penny,” Jolie grumbled and she shook her head. “That’s worth a measure of grain. Either you got swindled or you’re a fool.”

“I know what it is.” Dim unsummoned the coin and it vanished back into his hat. “Vizard has to eat and after all of this killing, I am bound to be hungry—”

“Don’t fuck with me, Dim!”

“I don’t care about the value.” Keeping his voice low, Dim kept his own temper in check. Jolie was geased, helpless, so attacking her would bring no satisfaction. “I only care about the intent behind it. If I do something, I get paid. It is the difference between a slave and a free pony. When I explained this to Eerie… she was kind enough to humour me and she understood.”

“Aw… that’s kinda sweet.” All of Jolie’s ire vanished, the mare bounced on her tiny hooves, and then, before Dim could protest, she was climbing up onto the bench with him, slipping easily beneath the fold-down table. Tiny as she was, there still wasn’t enough room, and ignoring Dim’s snarls of revulsion, she began to hug him. “I understand… I think.”

“There is a disgusting primitive clinging to me like a parasitic life form—eeeugh.”

“You’re like a foal needing a cookie for reassurance!” Though her legs were short, Jolie gripped Dim’s ribs and clung to the frail, wheezing unicorn, squeezing him hard enough so that smoke came billowing out. “I still don’t trust you, but I can sympathise with you. I think we can work together, Dim.”

A thousand horrible things lingered on the tip of Dim’s tongue, and he said none of them. Puffing away, he allowed Jolie her affection, but did nothing to return it. She was warm and there was a certain pleasantness associated with her touch, even though Dim was repulsed from being groped by a commoner. After a few moments, she went still against him, and he could feel her ear pressed against his side.

“This sounds really bad, Dim.”

“The Grittish Isles did not agree with me,” was his dismissive reply. “The pollution in the cities offends my poor constitution.”

Pulling her head away, Jolie’s lips made a pouty pucker and she looked up at Dim with stormy cerise eyes. She was attractive enough, for a commoner, and Dim saw some appeal in her face. Jolie was expressive, and while she was pleasant enough to look at, there was nothing else, no stirrings from within, no real desire was stoked. Dim found himself in an odd place, unsure of how he had arrived here, feeling feelings that he was ill-prepared to feel.

Suspicions aroused, Dim wondered what she was up to and why she was doing this. As for her behaviour… most peculiar. By her own admission, she didn’t trust him, yet she was being kind. Nice. What strange game was this? Even worse, she was touching him, an act that he found utterly reprehensible. Of course, Blackbird’s touches were no less confusing, though Dim was learning to forgive her.

“I’m gonna share something that maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m gonna do it with the hopes that you and I might be able to trust one another.” With each word, Jolie’s ear twitched against Dim’s ribs. “I’ve shared a bed with Eerie, Dim, and she’s told me what sort of nightmarish shit goes down in that tower you called home. It messed with my head pretty bad to hear what was done to her, but she didn’t need fucking, she needed straightening out so she could unfuck herself. She’d been fucked plenty already.”

Now, Dim was too confused to even try to respond.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, Jolie continued, “I know about what happened to you, Dim. Eerie told me about you. Long before you even arrived on the scene, Eerie spilled her guts right there onto the sheets and she told me what she’d done wrong. It was like lancing a wound, Dim. She told me about you… she told me about Darling Dark… and she asked me how broken did she have to be to ruin the life of another female in the same way her own life had been ruined.”

Lost in the past, Dim thought of Darling.

“I can’t be certain, Dim, but I’m pretty sure that Darling was Eerie’s daughter. It’s the way she talks, you see… Eerie talks like a mother mourning her foal.” Coughing, Jolie waved clove-scented smoke away from her with her hoof and looked up at Dim who sat in shocked silence. “So there’s my grain penny, Dim, my token gesture of payment to secure your loyalty. If you ever use it to hurt Eerie, I swear, I’ll find some way of hunting you down and killing you.”

Taking a long, deep toke, Dim filled his lungs with the deadening smoke, held it, and then posed a whispered question, to wit: “Can I be unfucked? Can Eerie?”

Jolie’s ears fell into a more submissive position. “Gosh, I hope so Dim.”

Without realising that he was doing so, Dim slipped a foreleg over Jolie’s withers, and then in silence, he held her, too stunned to realise that his body had betrayed him. If Eerie was Darling’s mother, it would explain a great many things. Eerie knew that he had killed Darling Dark… and now… things were awkward. While holding Jolie, Dim thought of the uncomfortable struggle that had taken place when Eerie had held him. Had she been seeking comfort from him?

“Blackbird is very dear to me. I need to know if I can be unfucked.”

“Hmm”—rubbing her chin against Dim’s side, Jolie seemed thoughtful—“most of it falls on you, Dim. You have to want to be unfucked. Blackbird is pretty infatuated with you, Dim. If you take advantage of that, if you fuck her, you’ll fuck her, and then she’ll need to be unfucked. And when two ponies in dire need of unfucking continue to fuck one another, bad things tend to happen. Both you and Darling needed to be unfucked, if you need an example.”

Dim felt his skin go cold everywhere except for the parts touching Jolie.

“I tend to fuck those in dire need of unfucking,” Jolie remarked while cuddling against Dim. “No idea why, just works out that way. I’m cute, and little, and harmless, and unassuming, and I am totally non-threatening, so once somebody gets over their hang ups about how I look like a filly, they get totally turned on by how sweet little me makes their dick look enormous. Well… and I guess I’m not intimidating to other mares. Poor Gratin needs unfucking and it’s looking like it might be a long-term project.”

“So you fuck others to help them?” Dim asked in a quiet, reedy voice.

“I find it helps,” Jolie replied.

At a loss for words, Dim found himself with nothing to say.

“I’m an earth pony, Dim, and fucking is what I’m made for. I speak the language of romance, but also the language of bone-deep-in-pone. Sex is more than just fucking, it is how I learn the secrets of others. How I read their hearts. How I coax out all of the things that need to be said, and aren’t. Tongues wag during pillow talk, but you have to fuck away somebody’s inhibitions first. and that takes more than regular fucking… it has to be special fucking. As an earth pony, this all comes as natural to me as breathing.”

Dim still had no words.

“You… you’re a unicorn, and you speak the language of war. That’s a different kind of fucking. It’s a lot more violent and the orgasms leave whole cities in crisis. Where I woo others and work to get them to open up to me, you show up and surprise sex happens. We’re very different ponies, you and I, but the world needs both of us.”

“I see,” Dim somehow managed to say, but the truth was, he didn’t see much at all.

“I try to unfuck others the nice way. You unfuck others the hard way.” Jolie patted Dim on the ribs while offering him a sweet, sincere smile. “When we get to Fancy, there’s a lot of unfucking to do, Dim, a whole lot of the old smash-bang-rape.”

What a curious little mare sat beside him—Dim looked down at her while she looked up at him and a million crazy thoughts ran rampant through his mind, each crazier than the last. It was difficult to imagine having friends—but it was far more difficult to imagine having female friends. For Dim, the whole point of being on familiar terms with a mare was so that one might fuck them… otherwise, what was the point of expending all that effort to achieve familiar terms?

It was his experience with Darling, Dim realised. She had been the closest thing he had to a friend during his foalhood, and there had been no boundaries. The thought left his eyes curiously moist, a sensation that he found most unpleasant. And yet, for all of his thoughts, he seemed to be making friends with a number of females; Jolie and Bombay, first and foremost. It was too confusing and painful to think too much about.

“This is not your captain speaking,” a mock-solemn voice said over the intercom and Dim looked up at the source of the sound.

“Oh no,” Jolie gasped while doing the same and her whole body went rigid against Dim, her muscles turning as hard as rocks.

“I have an announcement.” Blackbird spoke a bit too loud into the microphone and it caused no end of cracking, popping, crackle, and static. In the background, there was laughter. “Semen!”

Jolie lept from the bench, flying right over the fold-down table, and while in mid-air she said, “I’m gonna kill that rotten Gratin sonuvabitch!”

Before the flying red mare hit the floor, Blackbird repeated herself over the intercom: “Seeeeeeeeemen!”

Shocked at first, Dim had no response and watched as Jolie hit the door running. It slid open along its hidden tracks with a bang of metal-against-metal and the frenzied mare made no effort to close the door behind her. In the span of an eyeblink, she was gone, and peals of laughter could be heard from the tinny speaker overhead.

Feeling better, Dim allowed himself to smile, and his face began to ache…

Author's Note

It's like the Good Ship Venus all up in there.

A tale of two kingdoms

Blackbird hadn’t come to the cabin. She hadn’t come to stow her gear. The big black hippogriff hadn’t come to keep him company, or to talk with him, or to help him pass the hours, and Dim… didn’t like it. Nor did he much care for this odd sensation of loneliness that he couldn’t seem to shake. Hours spent lost in study had lost some of their appeal and there was a coldness in the air that wasn’t physical.

The metal around him sang an odd song, creaking, and the wood had joined in to form a discordant harmony. How long had he been sitting here? Long enough to get hungry. It had been hours since Jolie had paid him a visit and then… he had been alone. A solitary equine, a herd of one. Admitting to this loneliness was almost too much to bear, and the very thought of it dealt his pride a near-crippling injury. Having been around others, having been close to others, it had left him with a curious dependency, a need, a dreadful addiction.

Though pride prevented him from seeking out Blackbird’s company, that didn’t mean that he had to be alone. Reaching out with his mind, he conjured the Spear of Chantico and pulled it to him. It was as black as ever with a wicked point and what appeared to be curious bloodstains. Holding it in his magic, Dim felt a glorious, heady rush of power, but also the crushing weight of responsibility. Like Blackbird, this was something he was serious about, one of the few things that held any meaning or value for him.

The wicked would burn…

“Chantico,” Dim said and he allowed the word to roll off of his tongue, saying it the way that Chantico herself might say it.

At first, nothing happened, so Dim waited. For several long minutes, nothing happened, but then his patience was rewarded. The scent of paprika filled the air, then woodsmoke, and the tip of the spear ignited with vivid, labial pink flames, a fire that would not burn him, but would sear others. No smoke rose from the flames but the obsidian spearhead glowed as if lava flowed within.

For Dim, it was hypnotic.

Chantico appeared as a spectre, flowing out of the flaming spear tip. Her body did not form, but her face could be seen, and her eyes were like two volcanic calderas. Each tooth in her fearsome maw was a tiny volcano in miniature, spewing lava, smoke, and ash. When Dim looked upon her, his heart felt far less troubled.

“My Precious One, why have you summoned me?”

Leaning in closer, Dim peered into Chantico’s eyes, hoping to draw wisdom from the flames. “I am in route to Fancy, off to find the wicked. How goes your search for allies? How does the unseen world fair against Grogar? Has his shadow darkened the astral realm?”

“I have found allies and I rapidly familiarise myself with the modern era.” Chantico hesitated, she even appeared uncomfortable, and in a much lower voice she said, “I have been in contact with the one you call Celestia. We have touched minds and she has shown me much. I owe her a debt of gratitude. I am aware of your discomfort with this subject.”

“What are her intentions towards me?” Dim asked, hoping to glean some information or some insight into the situation.

“That is complicated to say the very least. The one you call Luna has taken a great interest in you. She is the source of your blood, Precious One, and she is anxious to see what you will do. Her blood is strong within you, and you, you are more like her than you know. She is healing from a great wound of the heart, and watches her distant offspring, fearful of the curse she has wrought upon them, but also hopeful to have more offspring with her attractive mate. Celestia wants you to do well so that Luna might find courage and inspiration, and so that she will engage in meaningful, enthusiastic acts of breeding.”

“That does sound complicated.” Dim basked in the ressuring warmth of the manifestation of Chantico, which eased all of his aches, cramps, and pains. “So I am cursed through my blood ties with Luna?”

“Yes,” was Chantico’s flat reply. “Many of Luna’s bloodline must first face madness, heartache, and great isolation before they achieve greatness. Luna’s great sin against the universe must be atoned for, and her wickedness echoes through the ages, greatly affecting all those who share her blood. You are but one of many.”

“And I suppose that Luna feels guilty about my condition? That she puts herself at fault for it? She is ashamed of my suffering?”

“She is.” Chantico nodded, revealing even more of her erupting teeth, which were quite distracting.

“So Celestia wishes for my success so that Luna might find some comfort.”

“She does.” Again, Chantico nodded.

Dim withdrew for a moment, leaning back, and he tried to sort out his own thoughts on the matter, his feelings, and not just his thoughts, but he conducted a quick search of his own blackened heart as well. After all of his efforts, he found he had little to say. “Celestia is not the pony I thought her to be.”

Chantico sighed, a tectonic sound, a volcanic rumble, a sound of heaving earth. “She battles to keep the astral realm safe and secure, so it will not fall to Grogar. Her manifestation of Jua, the Great Sun Spirit, gives strength to the zebras, whom Grogar fears. It is amazing how Celestia leads not one, but two nations, one through physical rule and the other through spiritual. I find her inspiring.”

“You do?” Dim found himself curious.

“I would not have said it otherwise,” Chantico replied, her voice like a log popping in the fireplace. “You ponies… you have faith in what you see, and the one you call Celestia rules from her throne high atop a mountain in a grand city called Canterlot. She keeps herself on display for all of her nation to see. And the ponies of Equestria see her and are strong.”

Dim now felt a peculiar sense of awkwardness that he wasn’t comfortable with.

“The zebras on the other paw, take faith in what they cannot see. They appreciate a great mystery, and are ensorcelled by the unknown. They know Celestia as Jua, the Great Sun Spirit, and they seek her out in the astral realms, hoping to find precious wisdom. She keeps herself elusive and secretive, and all of the great nation known as Zebrabwe holds her in great reverence. Make no mistake though, even though she denies it to all whom might ask, Celestia rules Zebrabwe as thoroughly as she does Equestria.”

It was almost as if Dim now knew a great secret, some great and precious thing, something wondrous, something that shone a faint ray of light into his black soul. Had he found something he held sacred? He didn’t know, but he knew that Chantico had given him a gift, something to ponder, something meaningful to guide him. But to what end? Dim did not know.

“This is a precious secret. You will keep it safe, yes? She told me to share it with you, as payment to gain your trust.” Chantico’s face loomed closer and her hot breath blew back Dim’s mane from his face. “As my champion, it is your duty to guard precious things. Now, I am sorry to cut our visit short, but I must go and be mysterious with zebras, so that they might know my magic. As for you, my Precious One… go make friends.”

With a fiery poof, Chantico vanished, leaving a shocked, stunned Dim Dark all alone.

Dim found Blackbird not in the common room or the dining area, as he expected, but in the cargo hold. It was colder here and Dim conjured up the coat that Blackbird had sewn for him the moment he entered. Everyone was sitting around on crates of supplies and laughing, or had been until he had entered.

Awkward.

Blackbird waved him over and skirting around the outside of the cargo bay, he went to her, avoiding the crowd in the middle of the room. Many were here, almost too many, and Dim was uncomfortable with the sheer number of bodies crammed into such a tight space. Motte and Bailey were present, sitting with the Bard in between them. Bombay Sable was polishing her wicked, curved sword, and her glittering eyes followed Dim. Munro was cleaning some of what appeared to be Blackbird’s pistols.

There was a sense of fellowship here, Dim had a keen awareness of it, as well as the sensation that he was the outsider. Strange eyes watched him, griffons, diamond dogs, and a few ponies. Jolie Rouge’s crew were easy to spot in a crowd, with murderous eyes and scarred, hardened faces. Dim knew enough about boarding tactics to know that some of the creatures present had to be either fearless or quite mad, maybe both, because one had to be to board a ship when the deck guns were blazing.

“So, as I was saying, we took up shields and formed a portable wall,” a griffon said while Dim sat down beside Blackbird. “We has ourselves this phalanx and they has all these guns, they do. We’ve already sent several shots through their engine, so they were dead in the sky, but boarding was the tricky business at claw.”

Dim pulled out a smoke and lit up.

“So we fly the wall forward and the bullets are thumping into our shields and the deck guns are blazing… shotguns and flak shooters, mostly. Even with the shields, we’re catching flak and stray shots. It’s raining blood and feathers and these slavers are putting up quite a fight. But we push forwards, because what else can we do?” The griffon flexed his talon-fingers, of which one was missing.

“Ol’ Blimey, he’s almost shitting himself, because it’s a long way down for a unicorn in his position, and when we get close enough, Blimey does his magic and he casts that sneezing spell. Absolute chaos! The sneezing fits cause the defenders to jerk about, and they start blowing holes in one another! One of the deck guns gets yanked around, and it’s loaded with grapeshot. ACHOO! The damnable deck gun goes off and the grapeshot rips through the crowd. It’s… messy.”

Munro looked up and shivered.

“By the by, I reckon Ol’ Blimey, our cook, he’s killed more souls than can be counted… or has at least been the indirect cause of those deaths.” The griffon’s eyes were lively and his breath could be seen with each word. “When we boarded, the deck was swamped with blood and it was runnin’ off the sides in rivers. The sneezes were starting to wear off and we kept the wall up. Then we just swept the deck and pushed what was left of the crew right over the rail on the other side. We were miles up and they had time to think about their wicked ways as they went down.”

“And what about the fliers?” Munro asked.

“We picked them off clean,” the griffon replied. “We sent Scuttles and Scabby to trim some wings.” The griffon looked pleased with himself and he held up his talons, the right ones, the ones missing a talon-finger. “We took the captain alive, we did. Gratin got him. Reached out, grabbed him by his scrawny neck, and then Gratin just swung him around and slammed him into the deck over and over until there was no fight left. Gratin is a big feller, he is. Only griffon I’ve ever seen that can fly with two boarding shields in front of him. I dunno how he does it.”

“How much does a boarding shield weigh?” Munro paused in his task and waited for a reply.

“Bout two hundred pounds or so. Metal. Thick. Different metals all compressed into layers. Basically, it’s armor plating for airships that we’ve fashioned into shields. Big as a door, tall and wide. And Gratin can carry two of ‘em, one in his left and one in his right. He’s a big’un.”

“I bet Blackbird could do that,” Munro said with undisguised glee.

The griffon, squinting, turned his head and glanced in Blackbird’s direction to study her. “I done reckon she might could… but she’s a hippogriff. That’s an unfair advantage, son. She’s neither griffon nor pony. Hybrids t'aint a natural sort. No offense, Miss.”

“None taken,” Blackbird replied with a wave of her left talons.

“I knew a hippogriff for a time… big feller.” The griffon reached up and scratched at his neck. “Makes yon miss look rather wee. I watched him rip a crank gun from the deck mounts and then turn it upon the crew. He held it in one set of talons and cranked it with the other. ‘Twas the damndest thing I had ever seen. He damn near cut the ship in half and then he flew away with his new crank gun to pick a fight with the other ship moving in to assist the first. Mean sumbitch took on a corvette in single combat. He won, too.”

“I watched Blackbird pick up a steam engine when she thought nobody was looking—”

“Hey!” Blackbird’s voice echoed through the cargo hold.

“A group of unicorns were supposed to come along and move it but Blackbird picked it up, flew it over the mount assembly, and dropped it into its cradle. She made it look easy.” Munro’s tone was boastful and he was quite animated now while he polished the pistol in his hands.

“How big of an engine we talking about here, son?” the griffon asked.

“The kind that goes into the back of a corvette or a cutter,” the minotaur replied.

Every eye in the hold now focused on Blackbird, and she began to squirm. “I was just trying to be helpful. Advanced alloys. It was very light. Only looked heavy.”

“Uh-huh.” The griffon nodded and his beak clicked together while his eyes narrowed. “Keep that one away from any crank guns you might find…”

Author's Note

Quite possibly one of the biggest reveals in the Weedverse, with hints going all the way back to Venenum Iocus.

Don't get Fancy with me

“Okay, listen up, you sots.” Standing atop a crate, Jolie wasn’t what one might call an imposing figure, but she had her own sense of command. “After a few weeks trapped on this tin can, we’ll be putting down in Gasconeigh. Lord Chanson Argentée has agreed to be our host. Try not to offend him, ‘cause he’s one of the few interested in saving the world. Pretty much everypony else has their head lodged up their ass.”

This got a few snickers and Jolie waited for them to pass before she continued, “Motte, Bailey, Munro, Blackbird… your job is to stay glued to Prince Dim, the Kooky Spooky. You do your jobs so he can do his job. If harm comes to him, Eerie will probably do awful things to you for failure. The Bard is your translator, so keep him safe too. Bombay, you’ll be the Bard’s first line of defense, as usual.”

“Right,” Bombay replied with a dismissive wave of her paw.

“The city of Gasconeigh has a few laws that might cause some inconvenience to you, so be aware of them. Mares, females in general, are not allowed to be out and about past sundown. This is to try and cut back on the number of rapes in the city. I think it is a backwards attempt, but they, they’re trying, right? Bailey, Blackbird, Bombay… no going out alone just to be cautious. We don’t want to start trouble with the local constables if we can help it.”

“Dim is kinda pretty—”

“Shut your mew-hole, before I shut it for you, Bombay! I will slap the purr right out of you!”

“Right, Capt’n.”

“Dim might make good bait, if we bought him a dress—”

“Blackbird, I will buck your face into next Tuesday!”

“Yeah, I gotcha, Capt’n.”

“I swear, a few weeks on this tin can travelling at the edges of space and it is like IQs just go plummeting.” The little red mare snorted, a powerful blast for her size, and she turned her steely gaze upon everybody gathered. “All of you will be travelling the countryside, spending time with the peasants and nobodies. That’s the best place to start. If anypony knows where the Ascendancy is hiding, it’ll be the the farmers. Also, we don’t know where Scalio and Prominence went off to. They’re around, but they scarpered off to help peasants rather than stay in the city.”

The captain paused when the ship shuddered and one eye squinted while she tried to get a feel for things. Satisfied that the ship wasn’t exploding, she returned her attention to the task at hoof. “Outside the city, remember the rules. No travelling at night. It isn’t safe. I don’t care what Dim is capable of, or what he thinks he can do. Find a farm and get indoors before the sun goes down. Good chance to talk to the peasants and get to know them. Don’t let the peasants be harmed. Do whatever must be done to save them if trouble starts. And let me say it again… stay indoors at night.”

“What strange goings on happen at night?” Dim asked in between puffs on his joint.

“A danger you can’t face, Dim. Even talking about this is a mistake, because it always causes more curiousity. Please, just obey the local customs, okay?” Jolie’s face wrinkled with concern and her eyes gained a strange focus. “Get indoors before the sun sets. If I even tried to explain what was going on, you'd go sticking your long nose into it and get yourself killed. And then Eerie would cause me to suffer in ways I can’t even imagine. Killing me would be a mercy, and Eerie is not merciful.”

“Mercy is not in our nature,” Dim remarked, sending curls of smoke out with his words. “Very well, I shall humour you and share your superstitious fear of the dark.”

“Dim, seriously”—Jolie was clearly frightened now—“the only thing I fear more than what lurks in the Fancy countryside is Eerie. Pâté au Poulet and I both know what is out there. Dim, I am madly in love with Gratin and I want to keep living, whole of body and intact of mind. No fooling around, Dim.”

“Bah!” Dim exhaled a massive cloud of blueish, clove-scented smoke that took on strange, disturbing shapes as it expanded around him. “I have grown fond of you, so I will do as you say… for now.”

“Thanks, Dim, you magnanimous asshole.”

Black smoke rose upwards in impenetrable columns from the coal burning power plant down far below. Gasconeigh was indeed, a thoroughly modern city, a city made from glass, concrete, and steel. A few high-rise towers rose from the middle, impressive monuments to modernity. The heart of the city was built on an island where the river split, separated, and came back together again. Walls could be seen on the island, immense walls, but this was only the heart.

As for the rest of the city, it spread out, sprawling in all directions, with everything being dense and tall. Space was at a premium, with up being the only real direction to go. Airship houses appeared common and hovered over the city. Trains wormed along tracks that wove between tight clusters of buildings. Nothing that Dim had seen could compare to this and he knew that he was looking at a marvel, a wonder of the world.

But from up here, problems could be seen. The further one went out from the island heart of the city, the uglier it became. Steel glass and concrete were replaced with brick. Buildings became rather ramshackle and dilapidated. The various walls that circled the city like rings in an old mighty tree became less and less impressive, with the outer walls being made of trash and building debris. Even as awful as it was, it was still awe-inspiring when seen as a whole.

At least a million or more souls lived down below.

“Look,” the Bard said, pointing over the rail with his hoof. “You can see the pegasus pony quarters… all of the landings and balconies, but no walkways, no skywalks between buildings. The earth ponies live at the bottom, and in the outer circles of the city. Guess who lives on the island in the middle? Go on… I’ll give you three guesses.”

Peering down, Dim scowled as the ship continued its rapid descent.

“There it is, Dim… the tower of story and legend… behold, La Corne D'argent. It was, at one time, the tallest building in the world, but I understand that there are now taller towers in Manehattan. A soaring six hundred and forty feet tall. Look at it… even the cannon batteries are architectural wonders. It has seen at least a dozen battles and it still stands.”

“The Argentée family built it and that is their corporate headquarters. Old family, good, trustworthy. Eerie has investigated them most thoroughly and has found them to be suitable allies. They operate La Société de Moteurs Stirling, and we’ve entered into a profitable tech exchange with them.” Bombay reached out with her paw and smoothed the Bard’s mane away from his face.

“Corporate headquarters is covered in hundreds of gun batteries, by the looks of it,” Dim remarked while he drank in the sight of advanced civilisation. Istanbull too, was a marvel, but for different reasons. The White Hand of Istanbull was of a similar size to La Corne D'argent, but one was a magic structure built by ancients and one was a modern building made by science. He supposed they didn’t compare.

“Hostile takeovers happen,” the Bard replied.

It was cold here, chilly, and the thick, gritty air was acrid. With all of the traveling he had done, Dim had lost track of the seasons—he wasn’t sure what month it even was—and it seemed as though fall was approaching. The river flowing into the city was a delightful greenish-blue in colour, but the river flowing out of the city was a murky, sludgy brown with a dusting of black coal dust along the top. It flowed in the same way that puddling dribbled from a spoon, or thick, tarry diarrhea rolled down the leg. Dim was almost certain that a fleet-footed creature could run across the surface of the river, if they were quick.

Griffons wearing blue uniforms and bearing rifles went flying past, heading in the direction of a flashing, strobing rooftop light. It seemed like as good of a system to signal for the constables as any. On the Grittish Isles, bells were hung by the doors in some of the bigger cities. They were valuable warnings for other citizens to stay away from an area because a crime was in progress.

In short, help rarely, if ever, arrived.

“Here comes the tugs, I think.” The Bard, looking down, had more of his mane whip around into his face. “It feels strange to be home, about to set hoof upon my native soil. I have to say, I think I prefer Istanbull. Crime is better managed and the sexes feel far more equal. This place… Gasconeigh, it is one of the largest cities in all of civilisation, and it should not be. It is ill-equipped to be. In the center of the city, you will find a bastion of modernity. But as you go outward past some of the walls, you go back in time. And out beyond the city? You go back whole eras.”

“Yeah, but these creatures have freedom,” Bombay could be heard saying while the ship descended into the heart of the city. “This is what freedom looks like. No geases. Vive l'anarchie!”

“You can barely spit out those words without sounding as though you choke on them, tart.” The Bard’s sardonic wit was biting and Dim had a fine appreciation for it, almost as if one was sampling a fine, aged wine. “Fancy… the land of laissez faire. The policy of noninterference has brought us to this. Apathy. A near collapse of the remaining city states. A nation in name only. Decay and rot in the very bones of this once great land and—”

“Colonialism and slavery was great?” Bombay tried once again to pull the Bard’s mane from his face but the wind was uncooperative.

The Bard did not respond, but chuckled; a derisive, bitter sound.

Two disgusting primitives stood on the dock, trying to figure out where the coal chute of the Solar Stinger was located. They argued—loudly—berating one another, and Dim allowed himself to take pleasure in their idiocy. This was all the proof one needed to see that unicorn superiourity was a lie. An aristocratic smirk now graced Dim’s face, but a commoner might mistake it for a sneer. This was a city of betters, he could sense it, and it awoke something awful within him.

“Sphinx!” a dock worker shouted and then he went galloping away with several others just behind him.

Dim looked around, but try as he might, there was no sphinx to be seen, only a dejected looking Blackbird, who stood in the high wind, fluffed out. It took a few seconds, but Dim made the connection; the disgusting primitives thought Blackbird to be a sphinx. Unable to help himself, Dim laughed at the absurdity of it all.

“Bonjour, chers invités!” a unicorn surrounded by guards bearing spears said, and right away, Dim began to size him up.

Born poor, or poorish, but clearly the recipient of a lucky break. If not a noble, then newish money perhaps. Well-worn hooves and a lifetime of hard living that showed in the legs. Not a unicorn that had been spoiled or pampered. He was friendly enough and now spoke with the Bard.

“SPHINX!” another pony shouted, and this set off a minor panic, which in turn caused an exodus in the dock workers just arriving.

“I’m not a Sphinx! I’m not!”

Looking around, Dim noticed that there were only unicorns on this dock, and nothing else. It struck him as a bit strange and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Maybe it was nothing but sheer coincidence. Happenstance. Still, something about it was unnerving after his time in Istanbull. Maybe this was about practicality, and magic made things practical. This was, after all, a private dock in the middle of a bustling city.

Then, without warning, the tone of the conversation changed. The unicorn surrounded by guards seemed angry, the Bard seemed offended, and the guards themselves pressed in tighter. Dim, who kept his horn beneath his hat and out of sight, began to charge up his magic while the Bard sputtered with rage.

Bombay, who had her paw dangerously close to her pistol, revealed just a little of the situation when she said, “How dare you suggest that Blackbird and I are pets and must be kept on leashes! And no, Pâté au Poulet will be staying with us, earth pony or no.”

Dim, already weary of the situation, decided that a demonstration was in order, a memorable display of power, a reminder that his affairs were not to be meddled in. He wove his magic into his words and summoned powerful forces of compulsion so that his commands would be obeyed.

“Guards, this unicorn dares to upset me,” Dim said.

The response was immediate; as if on cue, each of the unicorn guards swung their spears around and the dangerous points all pressed against their former master’s neck. A growing puddle of reeking urine appeared between his hind legs and Dim, who held the guards under his thrall, took a few steps forwards.

“You really should mind your betters,” Dim hissed, and the Bard repeated his words, translating them. “Nothing more than some upstart commoner, pretending to be a noble. Tell me, peasant… give me a reason why I shouldn’t throw you off of the edge of this dock?”

The only response was incomprehensible gibbering as the spear points pressed in, some of them drawing thin streams of blood.

“Is this how you treat guests?” Dim asked in a coarse, reedy voice and he began to wheeze a little from the pollution. “Oh… did you think that I’d share your views on superiourity? Is that it? Did you hope to rub shoulders with me and have a chance to lord over others? Did you think that you would somehow endear yourself to me and curry favour?”

Every word that Dim said was translated by the Bard, who was having trouble keeping a straight face. Bombay was glued to the Bard’s side, while Motte and Bailey stood silent, impassive. Dim allowed the Bard to finish before he continued, and he took the opportunity to pull out a clove and cannabis cigarette, as well as his silver stem holder.

“Where is your superiourity now, peasant? Wait, I think I see it. Is it perhaps that puddle that soaks into your hooves? You cannot even manage the security of your own guards. You disgust me.”

Again, the Bard translated, and Dim waited while he puffed away on his joint.

“Guards, see that this peasant is sent on his way with a stern reminder to be mindful of his betters. Once he is dealt with, take me at once to Lord Chanson Argentée.”

When the first spear butt slammed into the unicorn, Dim didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even turn to look. The beating was swift, savage, and brutal. In seconds, the unicorn was beaten down to the ground, and the guards continued to club him without mercy. Pâté au Poulet stepped away so that the guards had plenty of room to do their bloody, terrible work.

Motte, apprehensive and anxious, cleared his throat and then asked, “Dim was this necessary?”

“Probably,” Dim replied without much thought. “I do not suffer offense very well. Blackbird is not a pet. I stand in the company of equals and I will not have them insulted.”

One of the guards lifted up the bloodied, beaten unicorn and departed, heading for the massive aperture in the side of the building. Dim cast a final glance at the upstart, his lip curled back in annoyance, and he struggled against the painful tickle in his lungs. The remaining guards recovered their formation and when they too, began to march for the aperture, Dim followed, hoping that the indoor air would be kinder upon his breathing.

Author's Note

Dim's hypocrisy is showing.

Drastic measures

“Munro,” Dim barked, his voice hoarse and raspy. “Walk beside me, not behind me.”

Almost tripping over himself, the young minotaur calf hurried forwards, his long frock coat flowing out behind him and revealing the shiny nickel pistol that hung at his waist. His hooves clattered against the scuffed, battered floor and workers scattered to make way for the well-armed procession that bustled through.

More cries of sphinx could be heard, much to Dim’s annoyance. Blackbird was big, to be sure, but she looked nothing like a sphinx. The disgusting primitives needed better taxonomy lessons, but he didn’t have the time nor the inclination to school them. What was so bad about sphinxes, anyhow? So what if they liked to ask a few questions? Everything that Dim had read suggested that sphinxes were excellent conversationalists if you were learned.

If you were stupid, you might get eaten, so that might have something to do with it.

“Somebody beat the boss bloody,” a nearby voice with a thick Windian accent said.

“The boss is an asshole,” another voice with an even thicker foreign accent replied.

Ahead, an open elevator awaited.

“I suppose I have to begin with an apology,” a warm, friendly voice said as the elevator doors opened. “So, very well, I apologise.” The accent was thick, not quite Fancy, but more like the Sugar Sea Islands, the area around Tortoise-Tuga. “I warned him to be on his best behaviour. I am beset with problems, as you no doubt already know.”

Lord Chanson Argentée was a stunning shade of seafoam green with a striking mane and tail of what appeared to be the purest silver. His mane and tail he wore long, and his fetlocks too, had perfectly coiffed silver locks. A silken night-blue kimono hung from his well-muscled frame and half-moon glasses adorned his face.

Hiding beneath him was a shy filly and she shared his appearance, save for his horn.

Dim was glad that he had ordered the guards to stay behind, with their bloodied weapons. He was the first out of the elevator and Munro remained beside him. A few steps into the ornate hallway, Dim paused to study Lord Chanson Argentée, and in return, was studied. The two unicorns sized each other up and Dim’s initial impression was that he was dealing with an equal.

“Prince Dim, of Istanbull… welcome to my humble abode. Just down the hall is my apartment. Please, all of you, join me and we’ll break bread together. This is my daughter, Argentée Sonnet, and she just would not go off with her mother on this day of days. I assure you, she is very well behaved, and doesn’t bite… much. Sonnet is shy and doesn’t like leaving the apartment.”

Much to Dim’s surprise, he laughed.

“Pâté au Poulet, Bombay Sable, Motte and Bailey, so good to see you again. Going to Istanbull was quite an adventure, yes? How is Princess Eerie? Do come, all of you! This hallway is drafty and it messes something awful with Sonnet’s asthma.”

To Dim’s further surprise, he found himself charmed; Lord Chanson had a silver tongue.

The apartment was the furthest from palatial that one could think of. Everything was stark, austere, and utilitarian. No conspicuous consumption here, no blinding displays of wealth, no great fortune had been spent to decorate this place. It was almost oppressive, and would have had it not been for the paintings, which were wild, cheery things with frantic splashes of colour. In the corner, there was an artist’s easel that was just about the right height for a filly, and there was a paint-spattered step stool in front of it.

Warm, clean air wafted down from overhead vents and Dim found that he could breathe a little easier in here. Overall, he liked this place and found that it said an awful lot about its owner. Chanson stood by an oaken table that would have been right at home in some peasant’s hovel and it appeared that quite a spread was laid out. Dim ignored most of it, but kept his eyes on the prize; a wide selection of cheeses.

“Come, join me,” Chanson said to his guests.

For the cheeses alone, Dim would have made the trip, and the wine was just a bonus. Some kind of opera played in the background, something in Fancy that Dim could not understand, but found beautiful anyway. After listening for a while, he decided that he did not need to understand it to appreciate it. After a few weeks in the air, it felt good to spread out again, to sprawl out, to have the room to dine in leisure.

“I fear the city is coming apart,” Chanson said as he topped off a few wine glasses. “My suspicions tell me that one, maybe several, of the city’s lords are working with these Ascendancy types. A sentiment of unicorn superiourity has swept through the city like a devouring fire while at the same time the cry for equality has reached a fever pitch. Workers keep going on strike, and in return, the unicorn lords are finding new and devious ways to bring harm to their workers. There are daily riots and for the first time in my life, I actually fear revolution.”

Chewing his cheese, Dim nodded.

“As for myself, I am under siege and my credibility is being attacked. Wild rumours and speculation abound around the fact that Sonnet is an earth pony, and my enemies are trying to undermine my position by saying that my beloved wife should stand trial for adultery. She is not well liked, my wife, as she is an islander and her ways are strange. I had no idea when I returned home with her that sexual attitudes were regressing. It has been a real trial, I tell you. Even my zebra assistant has been accused of using hexes and bad hoodoo against my rivals, some of which have fallen ill and have even died due to some suspicious circumstances.”

“You were the governor of an island for a while, as I recall,” Bailey said with a nod of thanks. The stout mare smiled and lifted up a small bunch of grapes. “You met your wife there?”

“Yes.” Chanson seemed relieved to have changed the subject. “My beloved Pearl Fisher.” The silver-maned unicorn sighed and sent his forelock fluttering in the breeze he created. “From the first time I laid eyes on her, I knew I had to have her, but she wanted nothing to do with me. She was an islander and I… was one of the colonisers. I was forced to go about earning her respect and doing things the hard way. She made me strive to be a better pony.”

“Where is she now and why isn’t she here with us?” Bailey asked.

“She is with her students, and they come first. Even ahead of necessary affairs of state. My wife has taken her life as an islander and all of the hardship that said life entails and she has turned herself into a fine history teacher. There are those that wish that she did not teach her lessons, but she persists. Aside from history, she also teaches music, art, the equinities, and magic.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Dim began and he was hesitant to continue. “Why did you vacate your position as governor? Why return here, to this place?”

“Why, I did the worst thing in the world, Dim.” Chanson grinned while leaning forwards. “I negotiated to return the land to the ponies and creatures who held rightful claim to it. We’ll do funny, dreadful things for love. One day, no doubt, you’ll find yourself doing things you’d never imagined for love… maybe even things that other ponies might whisper as being treasonous to the better interests of your nation.”

Though Dim thought about it, he said nothing about how those islands had fallen to pirates and raiders. They were now a major part of the existing slave trade. Once the major powers had given up colonial claims, pirates and raiders moved in to prey upon the once prosperous territories. The rape and plunder of the former colonies was something that much of the civilised world turned a blind eye to.

Dim’s thoughts were interrupted by the Bard, who changed the topic of conversation and the mood. “Are Grogar’s agents in the city? Eerie tasked me with finding out as much as I could.”

“Probably.” Chanson shrugged. “I was approached by them and offered much for my cooperation. They know my word carries weight. I suspect that other noble families might have taken them up on their offer. If you want more information about them, I’d advise that you seek out the cultist compound. Off to the north, if you follow the northern spoke road, you will find the compound eventually.”

“Cultist compound?” The Bard’s eyebrow raised.

“Mostly zebras. Cultists. Some of the nicest creatures you will ever meet. They take in the infirm, the invalids, and the elderly. Care for them until their life plays out, and then, as they lay dying, these cultists stare into their eyes hoping to catch a glimpse of Death’s reflection.”

“Well,” the Bard replied, “that’s not creepy at all.”

“The zebras love a good mystery. You know how they are. I find myself admiring these cultists. They provide a valuable service and ask for so little in return. You should go there and talk to them, as they will probably have some sort of information on both the Ascendancy and Grogar’s agents.”

“I suppose that is a good place to start.” Reaching up, the Bard began rubbing his chin while he lifted his wine glass with his free fetlock.

“To help you, I secured a wagon for you, one of the best that money can buy. Modern materials. Has a fold up tent top and everything. It will help you travel the countryside, which is incomprehensibly vast. Talk to the farmers. Speak to the cultists. I am positive that answers can be found. If something can be done about these external sources of contention, I am certain that I can restore stability back to the great city of Gasconeigh.”

“You don’t have powerful wizards in this city, do you?” Blackbird, who had been silent this whole time, now turned her hawkish gaze upon Chanson. “You have unicorns, sure, but they’re not like Dim. That’s why you can’t deal with this threat on your own? You’re completely outclassed?”

Chanson did not respond right away, but when he did, it was a soft, shamed whisper. “I am a wizard of no small ability, but all my gifts are suited for negotiation, diplomacy, and governance. We are a city of clever magical tinkerers, brilliant artists and engineers, and while we excel in the magical arts, not a one of us can hold a candle to Dim. The most powerful caster in the city isn’t even a unicorn, but an Abyssinian. He battles sewer monsters so they don’t overrun the city.”

“So uh…”—Blackbird hesitated for a moment and by the strained expression upon her face, Dim could see that she was trying to be diplomatic—“I guess you’ve placed a lot of trust in Eerie. I mean, somepony like Dim could just waltz right into the city and take over. We all saw what he did to those guards, and I know all of us are thinking about it right now. You’re in a tight spot, Channing—”

“Chanson,” the soft-spoken lord said to Blackbird.

“Right, Chanson. Sorry. To deal with the threats to the city, you had to call in somepony who was just as much of a threat to the city and then hope that they do right. That’s a tough spot to be in. If it makes you feel any better, and I hope it does, but I trust Dim with my life. True story, he decimated a city’s army, like, actual decimation, or maybe it could be called a wholesale slaughter… I’m not sure. Anyhow, Dim razed a city to protect me. Maybe not razed? The technical terms for what he did elude me. But I feel safe with him!”

The gulp that came from Chanson was quite audible.

Blackbird smiled. “It’s a good thing we’re the good guys, right?”

Author's Note

Originally, this and the previous chapter were one, but I decided to break them up.

They call me Mister Jeebie

With a careful, critical eye, Dim examined their wagon and he was not alone. The fact that Blackbird was giving it a once over was reassuring, because she had a good eye for these sorts of things. Motte and Bailey were adjusting the harnesses, because they were the designated pony-power that would pull the wagon.

As for the wagon itself, it was made of lightweight gleaming metal, some wood, and most curiously of all, plastic. It had suspension, something he was grateful for because he would be riding in it, and a folding tent top that could be raised with but a little effort. The tent itself was oilskin and had a peculiar smell to it, which Dim took as a sign of being new.

It had tires, solid rubber, spoked wheels, which saved on weight, and a clever system for catching rainwater when the tent was deployed. Dim watched while Blackbird checked the various hinges and his ears pricked at the sound of the Bard chuckling in the background. When Blackbird frowned, Dim knew that the hinges did not pass inspection and something about them left her less than pleased.

“Pot metal,” she muttered under her breath, “cheap pot metal.”

“No floor drains either.” Dim looked Blackbird in the eye when she turned to face him. “If it rains and we don’t get the tent top up in time, the bed will flood.”

“Oh, good eye.” Blackbird’s claws clicked against the stone floor of the garage while her wings fidgeted against her sides. “Everything else is pretty impressive though. Skimping out on the hinges annoys me something fierce.”

Sitting on a barrel, Munro was studying a topographical map of the countryside around Gasconeigh and Dim glanced in the direction of his valet for a moment. The young minotaur appeared to be doing well—perhaps even having a nice time—and he conducted himself far, far better than Dim had hoped. Munro showed signs of being competent, and a competent servant was treasured.

“Not far from the cultist compound is a settlement of Abyssinians.” Munro began to fold up the map with his dexterous fingers and cast his glance in Dim’s direction. “It is called New Purrsia and they have a reputation as ethical meat traders. Might be a good place to get supplies.”

Saying nothing, Dim nodded.

The garage was damp and ripe with a chemical stink that made Dim’s lungs tickle. He wouldn’t be able to stay here much longer and would need to go somewhere with clean, conditioned air. It remained to be seen if the countryside would be agreeable, but he had been told that the weather was changing. They could expect warm, or even hot days, and cool, or even freezing nights. Of course, the nights would be less of a problem, because they would be taking shelter in farmhouses, due to whatever local superstition kept ponies and other creatures afraid of the dark.

For a moment, Dim lost his focus, his concentration, and his magic sense was overwhelmed. This city was rife with shadows, vile shadowlings that fed on fear. Here, they ran unchecked, or so it felt. No wonder the ponies here were so disorganised, so discontent, so eager to be at each other’s throats. If he and his friends stayed here, soon, they too would begin to bicker—that is if he left them vulnerable. Of course he had the ways and means to defend and protect against such vile infestations. Shadowlings were of no threat to Dim, and with some regret he thought of his foalhood attempts to keep them as pets.

Unable to feed on fear, all of them had died, having starved to death in the Dark Spire.

“Dim?”

“Sorry, Blackbird, I was distracted.”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

“The whole of this city needs to be purged—”

“Dim, under no circumstances are you allowed to burn the city down.” Blackbird summoned the sternest face she could muster and tried to scowl at Dim as hard as possible.

“There are dark things here,” Dim explained while admiring Blackbird’s scowl and thinking of all the ways she could do better. “Foul things. Dark things. They choke the city, hold it back, they keep the population weakened, irritable, and afraid. They are like weeds that choke a garden, only these are parasites that can impede the development of a city… or even the whole of a nation. So long as infestation exists, this city will continue to be at its worst.”

Blackbird’s face suffered a noticeable improvement: that is to say, she went from bad to worse with a truly grotesque scowl that Dim found he quite admired. It was, to say the very least, kissable. It was the sort of look that could make the blood run cold, send shivers down the spine, or maybe even clear a room. Blackbird was a magnificent creature when it came to expressing her emotions.

“So how do you fix something like that?” she asked.

“You get a cadre of capable wizards and you perform a purge,” he replied.

“Wait, hold up… does Istanbull have this problem?”

“No”—Dim shook his head—“Eerie keeps a clean house. Istanbull will progress and grow. Shadowlings are insidious and cause more harm than the common creature will ever realise.”

“That doesn’t strike me as being very fair.” Blackbird clucked her tongue a few times, shook her head, and her claws tapped upon the stone floor. “So… some places in the world have powerful enough wizards to keep them safe from these… whatever they are, but other places are just stuck suffering? Is that it? Ugh, that’s awful.”

“That’s life.” Dim shrugged. “Cities are breeding grounds for disease, for parasites both mundane and magical. Such is the nature of life. This city is riddled with a supernatural malady. A wise leader would hire a wandering wizard of considerable skill to clean this place up.”

“But the monsters would just come right back!”

“The wizard would eat very well and have a steady stream of income.”

“Life… just isn’t very fair…” Blackbird appeared to deflate and she sat down on the stone floor while shaking her head from side to side. “I don’t want to spend a minute longer in this city than I have to. Let’s get everything together that we need and go.”

To which Dim replied, “I agree wholeheartedly.”

Dawn came, dirty and disgusting, with the sun appearing to shove its way through the dingy, defiled sky like a newborn clawing its way out of a polluted placenta. Dim stood at the window, his eyes covered by his protective goggles, and he watched the coming of the sun into this filthy, undeserving part of the world while drinking the most unusual coffee he had ever consumed.

It was, no doubt, something from the islands, with spices, coconut milk, carob, and a healthy jigger of rum. There was a thickness to it, with it being more potion or concoction than coffee drink. Dim found that Pearl Fisher’s brew suited him and that somehow, it made him breathe easier. Or perhaps the rum had removed the ache from his chest, he couldn’t be certain.

“We alone, just you and I,” Pearl Fisher said to Dim, her voice husky and her every word spoken with a thick accent.

Staring straight ahead, Dim offered his response in return: “It worries a pony to hear a stallion’s wife talk about being alone. Perhaps we shouldn’t be.” It wasn’t that Dim was moral, per say, it was just that he had no interest; his mind was still pretty broken regarding these issues.

Her hooves clicking against the floor, the bold unicorn mare approached Dim from the side bearing the coffee drink in a hot, steaming vessel. She refilled his cup, topping it off, and then joined him in looking out the window while levitating the coffee carafe near her head. For but a moment, Dim allowed himself to look at her, and then he watched the hated, beloved, confusing dawn.

“My husband… he good pony and he try very hard. He have to do the impossible every day. That thin line between tyranny and goodness…”

To Dim’s ears, it sounded as though she has said, “Dat din line bedween dyranny and goodness.” Her patois was indeed, charming, but everything she had to say was quite alarming.

“I will ask you what my husband will not,” the mare continued in a low whisper while leaning in close to Dim. “He too good of a pony and you… you… are not. You are what Aunt Nancy calls a Heebie Jeebie. You’s the bad juju. A dire omen.”

Dim, watching as the sun made a valiant attempt to shine through the pollution, sighed.

“Aunt Nancy says that you’s the Heebie Jeebie King and that you’ve come to punish the wicked. A good pony, like my husband, he can't punish no wicked, because he is good. There is much that needs to be done that he can’t do. It outside his nature.”

“What do you want?” Dim asked, getting to the point.

“Heebie Jeebie King,” the mare said, her patois growing thicker by the second, “a good pony is beset by the wicked. If you save him, you can have the souls of the wicked for your dark rituals, whatever those might be. Claim the wicked as your own. That’s why you came, isn’t it?”

To Dim, it sounded as though she said, “Idnit.”

“Kill them.” These words were whispered but Dim still heard them. “Cut out the infection or this city will die. When you get to the compound, ask for a zebra named Indigo. Or maybe he’ll find you. He’ll know more of what is going on. Without your help, my husband’s position is precarious. I’ve looked through his papers… Princess Celestia of Equestria has offered him unconditional asylum and she begs him to flee. Princess Eerie also offers refuge. I don’t want to go, I want to stay… I want to fight… I want to see things made better.”

“I will do what I can.” Dim regretted the words even as he said them.

“One of the lords of the city be working with the bandits,” Pearl Fisher continued. “They place a cruel tax upon the farmers. Many are suffering through this dark menace. My husband cannot even make an accusation though, because doing so might upset his position—”

“And making a false accusation would be your husband’s undoing,” Dim said while viewing his own faint reflection in the glass. “His legs are hobbled and he can’t do the right thing for fear of repercussion. I understand. So… once I find out who is doing what and I have the irrefutable proof, then what?”

“You be the Heebie Jeebie King. I know not what wicked, vile acts you do, but Aunt Nancy says that you bring the righteous wrath of a slumbering god with you. Unbottle this wrath and let it wash over the city. Aunt Nancy says it is better to rebuild than to reconcile, because there can be no reconciliation with roaches and rats.”

This was subjectively true; you killed roaches and rats for the sake of cleanliness.

“I hear my daughter waking. I must go. Thank you. Please, you save my husband.”

“I will do what is necessary.” The bleak orange light shone through the window and revealed a city in need of saving. Dim had destroyed a few cities, because of accident or circumstance. Perhaps, to recompense, he could save one. Sipping his coffee drink, Dim watched the sun rise and felt the dreadful, horrible sting of light upon his flesh.

Munro’s map had a few additions that made it quite helpful, because the clever young minotaur had made notes. The roads around Gasconeigh had central spokes that radiated outwards with connecting roads that formed crude circles around the city. Wealthy, successful farms were located along the central spoke roads, and less successful, poorer farms could be found on the curved round roads that formed the ever-expanding circles around the city.

They would go north along the main spoke road and travel until daylight was in short supply. Dawn had come and gone, so now precious daylight was burning away. It was time to get moving and Dim intended to hustle everybody along if there was any further dawdling. They weren’t here to vacation, they were here to do a job and Dim was the consummate professional.

Chanson had marked the locations of several bandit camps on the map, or at least the approximate locations. There was one to the north, but it was more northeast. Off to the east, in a section of forest there were rolling hills and atop the highest hill was an old fort that had been taken over by bandits. Dim figured that this would be a good place to start looking for answers and it would be quite easy to do.

Walk in, kill those who resist, dominate the leaders, and ply them for answers.

If he was lucky, they would know something about Grogar’s agents or the Ascendancy.

The east was filled with lumber camps, herbalist’s ranges, some mines, and more farms that presumably grew whatever it was that could grow on hills. There were a few odd patrols along the eastern spoke road to protect the alchemical trade, but these patrols did not go out far enough to be a concern to the bandits. Dim had been up all night memorising every available note hoping to glean some important bit of information, to find some pattern that might give him answers.

It was time to go.

Author's Note

Next, we go north.

May the road rise to meet you

Motte and Bailey made for an odd pair to pull a wagon, but there was no denying their effectiveness. The two unicorns walked with their horns glowing and the packed dirt road literally rose up to meet them. Deep ruts smoothed over, loose patches firmed up, and with each step taken, the road became an ideal surface to travel upon. Even more impressive, the two earth movers did this with a minimal amount of effort; Dim could sense and measure their magical expenditure and found that they almost—but not quite—drew in as much magic from the earth as was required to move it, meaning that the resulting drain was a mere trickle.

It was impressive, efficient magery, and Dim could see why Eerie sent the pair.

The smooth road made for remarkably comfortable and easy travel. A fine, steady pace was kept and the day grew warmer as it progressed, though the wind stayed quite bitter. Another wagon followed behind them, a trader’s wagon, and it was pulled by a pair of stout earth ponies. This wagon was loaded down with pots, pans, blankets, sundries of all kinds, books, and wooden crates of unknown goods. The axles creaked just loud enough to be annoying and wore away on Dim’s last nerve.

Blackbird circled overhead, which made Dim think she was rather like an oversized buzzard; she hardly ever flapped and only spent a bare minimum of energy to remain airborne. Leaving the city, many had fled from her with cries of “Sphinx!” which left her quite upset. Now, she was no doubt pouting while she kept watch for trouble.

Bombay Sable walked on one side of the wagon while Munro walked on the other, with both of them doing whatever it was that they were doing, which is to say, they were keeping watch, but both appeared to be having a most excellent time doing so. At some point, Munro had picked up a black woollen felt beret and it sat perched upon his head just between his stubby horns. As for Bombay, she wore a ridiculous broad-brimmed hat with an ostrich plume tucked into the band—it was so absurd that Dim had trouble even looking in her direction.

Pâté au Poulet rode in the wagon and was currently asleep with a bottle of wine cradled in his forelegs. He seemed a bit more frail than usual and it might have been because he had stayed up a little too late. As for Dim himself, he should have been studying, but found it hard to concentrate; the countryside really was beautiful once one got out of and away from the city.

There was magic here, strong magic, magic that was raw and dirty. It was distinctly different from the magic of Equestria and of the Grittish Isles, with the best word to describe it being polluted. It was like taking a drink of water and finding it was off. Dim had been exposed to corrupted magic a number of times and this felt different; while there was some corruption here no doubt, this magic was just befouled… contaminated.

Sighing, Dim committed himself to study and tried to pull his mismatched eyes from the beautiful farmland all around him.

At the crossroads was a well, a couple of two-wheeled carts, a few ponies, and a gaggle of young griffons armed with what appeared to be muskets. Dim kept a wary eye on them, but the young griffons were no troublemakers; far from it, they appeared to be some kind of makeshift constabulary force or perhaps a militia. Their purpose, so it seemed, was to keep the peace around the pump-powered well, and one of them, an eager, bright-eyed youth, was kind enough to operate the pump handle for a mare hauling cabbages.

Motte and Bailey were having a well-deserved rest and a bit of lunch. The Bard continued his fitful slumber, his head resting on his bottle of wine. Munro was haggling with a pony who had a cart full of apples and Bombay watched with an amused expression upon her feline face. Meanwhile, Blackbird was showing off by juggling, and a small crowd had gathered to watch her.

As for Dim, he studied the world around him with a distinct pink hue in his vision and was aware of the presence within his mind. It occurred to him that he was essentially a spy at the moment and that by seeing through his eyes, Princess Cadance was gathering intelligence about the goings on around a well located at a crossroads in the countryside around Gasconeigh, in the country of Fancy.

Being a helpful, gregarious, social mammal, Dim tried to stare at as many backsides as possible.

“Regardez, ce sphinx jongle!” said a pony pulling a cart full of turnips as he approached.

Blackbird almost dropped her cucumbers when she reacted and said, “I’m not a sphinx!”

Having haggled, Munro was now filling his pockets with apples and the minotaur appeared to be quite choosy in his selection, taking great care to find perfect specimens, no doubt with unblemished skins. Watching this as it happened, Dim came to the realisation that he was happy, which was a strange, almost unknown state of being. His constant state of lonesome apathy had departed and he discovered a vast wellspring within himself.

It was the perfect excuse to ignore his studies and spend the afternoon navel-gazing.

In the distance, an alchemical still belched smoke into the sky. The compound was walled in and like so many other structures in the countryside, the walls were covered in fresh whitewash. A heavy wooden gate, also whitewashed, was open at the moment, allowing a good view of the potion distillery inside. From the smell of things, Dim knew they were working with something fungal, but what exactly remained unknown.

There had been quite a number of alchemical factories in Gasconeigh, and Dim found that to be a reprehensible, irresponsible practice. The dangers that alchemical operations posed were great; having them located in the middle of a vast populated city was foolish, or so Dim believed. Of course, getting workers out this far away from the city might be problematic, so Dim understood why alchemical factories existed in cities, even if he did not agree with the practice.

“Stop,” Dim commanded and he turned his eye on the walled compound. “I wish to do a bit of trading.” With a sigh of regret, Dim turned to wake the Bard, certain that his services would be needed.

A curious amount of aconitum lycoctonum was being processed here, which Dim found quite fascinating. It was a toxic plant with interesting magical properties, most commonly it caused violent magical allergy reactions in canid species. Also of note was the stockpiles of lycoperdon mushrooms, a name that when translated literally meant ‘wolf-farts.’

This entire alchemical operation produced whitewash with canid-repelling properties.

There wasn’t much in the way of supplies, which Dim found disappointing, but there was a great deal of alchemical-grade purified salts, which made the stop worth it. The Bard was busy discussing an agreement with the manager of the distillery and Dim continued to have a good look around. Perhaps there was a diamond dog problem here, or blink dogs, dire dogs, death dogs, or maybe a problem with wolves.

There were some dangerous species of magical wolves, most of which were extinct in Equestria. Perhaps there would be a chance to see something rare and exotic here in Fancy, something he had only previously seen in books. Nearby, a wagon was being loaded with barrels of finished product and Dim wondered if perhaps the distillery owner was preying upon the superstitions of the peasants to sell a product. What need could there possibly be for this odd concoction?

Did it have something to do with the warnings to not go outside at night?

Twenty-five miles, or maybe thirty-ish. Dim was impressed at what Motte and Bailey could do. It was now late afternoon, but not yet evening, and they had stopped at a farmhouse. Said farmhouse was more like a fort, surrounded by a wall as it was, and it was quite impressive. At one end of the long rectangular building was a squat tower with an aerie, no doubt for the griffons that had come out to greet them.

The wall protected the main house, the pumphouse, the mill, and what appeared to be a narrow barn. Everything was whitewashed—everything. Every wall, every surface, and even the tall brick chimneys were whitewashed, giving the farm a curious, distinctive appearance. The chimneys had metal grates over the openings, though some had a little conical roof-thing that Dim didn’t know the name of.

“Votre badigeon est-il frais?” the Bard asked.

The griffon, the largest of three, nodded. “Oui. Juste ce mois-ci.”

Dim lost track of the conversation and was now having a better look around from where he sat in the wagon. His magic sense told him that the whitewash had a touch of magic to it, not much, but it was there. One of the griffons was sitting on top of the wall, a female, and she held an ancient flintlock in her talons. Guns were dreadfully expensive here, with modern weapons having astronomical values, and glancing in Blackbird’s direction, Dim was seized with an idea.

“Offer one of Blackbird’s firearms in exchange for lodging,” Dim said to Pâté au Poulet. “I know that she has a veritable arsenal packed away.”

“Hey!” Blackbird replied in a chirpy, chipper voice. “That’s a good idea. I did keep them for emergencies and for trade afterall. I have several Webblewood Arms four-fifty-fives. Grittish-made. Common ammo.”

The Bard translated everything Blackbird had to say and the big griffon’s expression became one of surprise. Silent communication happened between the griffons, each nodding and making gestures to one another, and then the big griffon said something to the Bard, all while nodding. In response, the Bard bowed his head, and then the griffon bowed his head in return.

“We can stay,” the Bard said to his companions, his words both strained and weary. “They will feed us and keep a roof over our heads. We must get inside now, because they close and lock the gate at the fourth hour, which approaches.”

Dim could only guess why the gate was closed and locked so early.

A family of earth ponies lived on this farm with their griffon protectors, a curious relationship that Dim found fascinating. It seemed like every farm had a few griffons and Dim wondered how this mutual arrangement had been started. What did the griffons get out of it? There was a story here, no doubt, and Dim found that he was interested enough to want to hear it.

The youngest and smallest of the three griffons, the female, was fawning over her new pistol. It was not a careless act, but like Blackbird, the young griffoness handled the weapon with immense care while she examined every inch. A small herd of foals watched her, three colts and four little fillies, all of which had been brushed and cleaned up for company.

An older stallion sat near the hearth smoking a pipe and watching a younger mare while she stirred a pot that hung from a swingarm over the fire. A younger stallion was hauling in coal, enough to last the night, and his eyes lingered on the pretty young mare stirring the pot. Armed with a cleaver, a young griffon—a male—chopped up mushrooms, leeks, and little purple-red potatoes while an older mare with a stern face watched his every move.

As for the big griffon, he had returned to the aerie to keep watch.

“You are very kind, thank you,” the young griffoness known as Griselda said to Blackbird. She spoke in broken common, each word halting and said with a great deal of effort. “Guests of greatness… um… demand stay. Not give payment. Not kind. This help us.”

“I hope it does,” Blackbird replied while she counted out brass on the table in front of her.

“Too few of us left. Mama and Papa died.” Griselda struggled for more words and a look of intense concentration caused her eyes to squint. “Bandit fighting. Gavin Uncle, he work twice as hard now. Graeme not good at fighting, but good at farm work. Is hands for farm. I am to marry, find mate, and make more protectors.”

“Why do you protect the farm?” Dim asked while Blackbird set out another row of brass.

“Always have we protected this farm and this family. Is proud. Is duty. This farm not fall, never fall. Both families old. Is… matter of… pride?” Reaching up with her talons, the grey and tawny female scratched at her neck. “Is what griffons do here. Is our way. Earth ponies grow food but need hands, need protectors. Griffons need farm, is way it is. Honest griffons we are, not bandits. Not thieves.”

“So this is a matter of honour… of pride.” Dim puffed away on one of his clove and cannabis cigarettes while studying Griselda.

“Mama and Papa died here. Are in land here. Many mamas and many papas. All in land, beside ponies also in land. Earth ponies have no magic but griffons have hands.” She waved her talons about and waggled her talon-fingers. “Earth ponies need no magic with griffons around, but griffons not good at making things grow. Earth ponies keep the land alive and soil not sour. If no earth pony, soil go sour like milk in sun. Happen fast too, land around city… um… um… land around city go bad. Turn. Ruint.”

“Yes, that certainly seems to be the case,” Dim replied, “and earth ponies are probably the only reason why anything grows in this soil. It is good of you to protect them. You are keeping the land alive by doing so.”

“Yes. Oui. Is good!”

“Tell me more about the land and the customs,” Dim said, making a humble request. “Satisfy me and I will see to it that Blackbird gives you a little more ammo. How does that sound?”

Griselda’s eyelids fluttered like butterflies in a gale and her tail swished from side to side with excitement. “I am schooled, yes! Went to schoolhome. Can tell you much! Am good at words because Gavin Uncle wanted me smart to attract good mate. My words I can share!”

“And I would love to hear them…”

Author's Note

"Riddle me this, Blackbird..."

(I hope my Fancy is okay)

Recruitment

An excerpt from the Fancy Campaign…

Today, as we prepared to depart during the early hours just after dawn, a young griffoness named Griselda, who had stars in her eyes asked, “You are good guys, yes? You have come to save Fancy, yes?”

Are we the good guys?

Two rough and tumble combat engineers who are basically the same pony; one is from another world, another dimension. Both are hardened survivors, both know war. It is their bread and butter. They are shell-shocked stoics capable of doing unspeakable, unmentionable acts at a moment’s notice. I’ve watched them encase the living in shaped-stone sarcophagi and then leave them to their well deserved fate. I can still hear the screaming, just so you know.

The Jill-of-All-Trades is a murderous, stab-happy psychopath and probably an alcoholic. She watched her homeland burn and lived to see many of her kind stolen away into slavery. A terrible mix of torture, cruelty, and training as a windwarped assassin has turned her into a sadomasochistic minx. She’s downright sociopathic at times, but of all of us, she is not the worst.

A dapper minotaur might be the best of us, but I fear he will not remain sane for very long…

Alas, the Bard has had part of his soul stolen, leaving him broken and useless. All he can do is watch as this train wreck happens, and make journal entries like this one. One day, somebody might read this, and there will be questions such as, ‘Who thought this was a bright idea?’ Sorry, I have no answers to give you, but perhaps you would enjoy a nice chicken pot pie?

Our gunslinger is a happy-go-lucky hippogriff. An earth pony hippogriff, which is a mythical creature of legend. She seems harmless at first glance, but I have seen evidence of otherwise. Her aim can only be described as supernatural, her physical strength has to be seen to be believed, and she is a hippogriff. All of the magic of a pony with the raw ability of a griffon. It just isn’t fair how gifted she is.

And the worst of us? The psychopathic, pyromaniac aristocrat. Are things not on fire? Don’t worry, at any given moment, they will be! He coughs, he wheezes, and he has hemophilia. Never in all of my travels have I ever seen a creature so deeply connected to fire. He’s foul tempered, entirely too intelligent, and certifiably insane. When hatters speak of madness, they mutter about him in hushed, terrified whispers. To see him is to have one’s skin shiver.

Are we the good guys?

No. No, we are most certainly not the good guys.

Why are we even here?

I tell you, I don’t know.

I suppose I came because I love my homeland. Motte and Bailey came because they follow orders. Bombay Sable is only here because I’m here, and for whatever reason, she loves me. Munro shouldn’t be here and I fear the trip will cost him his soul. Blackbird came out of some misguided notion to do good, but at some point she is going to drop the nice act and become the death-dealer she was born to be.

As for Dim? I strongly suspect that Dim was bored. For better or for worse, he is here.

All of Fancy might burn for it.

Seeing the countryside of Fancy from the back of a wagon wasn’t the worst thing in the world and Dim was almost enjoying himself. He had wine—which he drank right from the bottle—and was having himself a pleasant, relaxing smoke whilst he took a break from his labours. Scattered across a crate in front of him were the components of his work, his labours, an enormous crystalline cube of pink-orange salt.

Assembling the crystalline matrices had been the easy part, but aligning everything until it was just so was a bit trickier. Compressing the matter into a denser form was a devilish task indeed and he had somehow taken a five pound cube of salt and compressed it into a cube that was about one and a half inches or so on each side. With a bit more effort, he was certain that he could compress it further, making it an even inch.

In theory—channelling magic through the salt cube would purify it. In practice—he wasn’t sure. It would need to be tested somehow. Initial tests produced a remarkably clean beam that his magic sense told him was comparable to the magic found down deeper within the earth, though not as pure as the magic found below the salt and chalk that he had found in the Grittish countryside.

But he was confident that this was a success. The fabled Elements of Harmony acted as a magical filter of sorts, as well as an amplifier. Dim knew of the existence of something called the Alicorn Amulet, and it was an amplifier. Did it also change the nature of the magic filtered through it? It might, but he had no way of knowing.

Staring at his pink-orange salt cube, Dim had ideas and he puffed away on his joint while letting his imagination run wild. A purified iron rod with a compressed salt crystal on the end might make for an interesting way to channel magic, a means to amplify and cleanse. Or rather than a rod, a sceptre perhaps, something a bit more fitting for his princely nature—but what manner of prince had an iron sceptre?

A smart one that knew magic, that’s who.

“When at first you began to play with invisible, unseen things in the air around you I thought you mad—”

Dim chuckled at the Bard’s words and took a sip of wine.

“—but then again, that is a terrible reason to believe you mad when there are far more compelling bits of evidence that could be recalled. What are you up to, I wonder?”

Still chuckling, Dim was about to respond when Blackbird swooped low over the wagon and he heard her say in a breathless, far-too-excited voice, “We have company!”

Hippogriffs. Big ones. A pair of them stood in the grass by the side of the road, one male, one female. Both were armed, but kept their weapons stowed for now. Dim was surprised to see them and a bit disturbed with how the two of them studied Blackbird. He didn’t like how they looked at her, sizing her up, and something about this just felt… off.

The male was enormous, a size that had to be seen to be believed, with a beak that showed scrapes and scratches, signs of recent battle. As for the female, she too was larger than Blackbird, but far less stocky. Where Blackbird was solid and heavily muscled, this female was airy and wiry. A partially healed gash could be seen on one shoulder and she had a brace of pistols that she wore in plain sight. Most curious of all, the female had a horn, leaving Dim to wonder how much magic a hippogriff might have.

“A pegasus we met told us of you,” the male said in an accent that sounded faintly like that of an islander. “My name is Garrulous and my companion is Giselle. We are emissaries of a kingdom that doesn’t exist yet, for a species still in its infancy. We have come to Fancy looking for more of our kind—because of the unusual living arrangements here with the ponies and the griffons, there are a pleasant number of hippogriffs to be found.”

Garrulous? At least his name suited him. Wary, Dim continued his study.

“Pleased to meetcha,” Blackbird said in the gregarious sort of way that she was known for.

“We hope that you will come with us,” Garrulous said, getting right to the point without wasting any time. “If hippogriffs band together, we might become our own species someday. We are building a nation and our cause is just. We don’t have to exist as freaks or weirdos or as oddities on display. No longer do we have to hide our strength or cower—we are greater than the sum of our parts, stronger than our parentage. As hippogriffs, we are vastly superiour beings and this is our chance to show the world that. Leave these weaklings and come with us.”

Dim watched as Blackbird went rigid and he heard the tendons in her wings creak.

“These are my friends,” she said, her voice no longer warm and friendly, but cold and lacking feeling. “These are my friends,” she repeated, “and they need me. Whatever it is that you’re doing, I don’t think I’m interested. You kinda lost me when you started with the superiourity talk and you called my friends weaklings.”

“If you stay with them, you will never live up to your fullest potential.” Garrulous’ eyes now had a hardness to them that worried Dim, and maybe a bit of anger as well. “Not only that, but you rob us of our potential as well. We are struggling to be established as a species and not exist as an oddity or an object of shame and ridicule.”

Bombay’s paw now rested on the grip of her pistol; Motte and Bailey meanwhile, had somehow slipped out of their harnesses. Munro now leaned his elbows on the edge of the wagon bed and somehow, Dim knew without looking that his minotaur valet had undone the leather catch that secured his sidearm in its holster. Yes, this was feeling more and more like a fight waiting to happen, as Garrulous’ silent companion didn’t look happy at all right now.

This felt a lot like trouble.

“The world treats our kind with contempt… surely you have felt this… seen this. They fear our strength—our raw ability. Envious of us, they hold us back with shackles of shame, of contempt. They smear our parentage and decry us as unnatural, disharmonious hybrids. We are never treated as equals, but rather we bear the brunt of mistrust, doubt, and suspicion.” While he spoke, Garrulous’ claws tapped and scratched in the dirt at the side of the road.

“Perhaps if you didn’t go around with a raging superiourity complex, you’d find a bit more acceptance,” Blackbird said in what could only be described as a chilly deadpan. “Dim has that problem too… he’s a rampaging asshole, but he’s getting better. See, I’m kinda busy trying to set him straight, which is why I can’t go off and join your little hippogriffs only clubhouse.”

“You are a young, capable female,” Garrulous said to Blackbird while his silent companion kept a wary eye on Blackbird’s companions. “Even lacking a beak, you are beautiful… perfect… you have an obligation to do what is right for your species—”

The sudden appearance of Bombay’s pistol in her paws caused Garrulous’ words to die off and with one paw-finger on her trigger she said, “This sounds an awful lot like a rape prep talk. Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like a rape prep talk, Bard, my beloved one?”

“Indeed it does,” the Bard replied in a voice of bored indifference.

Dim found himself admiring the Bard’s ability to stay cool under pressure.

“It isn’t rape if you talk a girl out of reasons to resist and make refusal an illogical outcome,” Bombay continued while she kept her pistol pointed at Garrulous. “In this manner, you take over a young girl’s mind, cloud her judgment, and begin the means to keep her compliant. I’m not a fan… I’d go into reasons why, but the murderous rage it would cause would only lead to me killing you. Probably in the worst way possible. So how about you fuck off and go about your merry business?”

Giselle, the silent hippogriff, gave her companion a hard stare for a few seconds and then tossed her head back in a gesture of departure. Dim waited, ready to cast a spell, ready to react, and noticed for the first time that Motte and Bailey were now armed; Motte held a quad-barreled shotgun while Bailey had some kind of dainty-looking bolt-action carbine. The air was electric with tension and Dim was rather hoping that something would happen, if only to relieve the boredom.

“Very well,” Garrulous said after a few stretched out seconds. “We shall go about our business. I am saddened that you couldn’t see reason. Perhaps you will grow sick of this life on the ground. If you do, seek the skies, you will find us there, in the place where we rightfully belong. You are young still, perhaps a bit more time in this hostile world that hates us will convince you of the righteousness of our cause.”

With that, Garrulous spread his wings and was airborne with a single powerful flap. Giselle joined him and with great rapidity, both retreated, flying westward. Dim watched them go, disappointed, and he resigned himself to a day of boredom. He saw that Blackbird too, had her eyes on them, and an unreadable expression upon her rather unique face.

Should he say something?

What was appropriate for this situation?

Was she angry?

Hurting?

Should he comfort her?

Much to his dismay, he had lingered far too long on questions. Bombay was now at Blackbird’s side, saying something that Dim could not hear. Trouble was now two specks in the distance and Bailey kept her carbine pointed in their general direction. Hearing a sniffle, he realised that Blackbird was starting to cry and something in the depths of his consciousness felt awful that he hadn’t lept to comfort her when he had the chance.

With a muffled whump, Blackbird sat down on the side of the road and began to bawl her eyes out. Dim felt a terrific tugging within his guts, somewhere around his lungs perhaps, a sensation that grew worse when Bombay hunkered down beside Blackbird and wrapped her arms around the sobbing hippogriff. It was with a certain degree of awfulness that Dim realised that he had failed in some great way—he had hesitated—but try as he might, he could not even begin to put the pieces together. He couldn’t even ascertain why Blackbird was weeping. It had something to do with what had just happened, that much was obvious, but the hows and the whys were a mystery to him.

There was a soft nudge against his ribs and when Dim turned, he saw the Bard beside him. “Go to her,” the Bard said to Dim while making a gesture with his hoof. “She needs you. This is your chance to make yourself better. Go on, do it. This is a rare opportunity.”

“What do I say?” Dim asked in a half-panicked whisper.

“Nothing needs to be said,” the Bard replied, also whispering. “This is just something that needs to be done. So go and do it. Stop being afraid. Go on. She needs you. She’s a confused girl in need of her rescuer.”

At this, Dim nodded; corking his wine, he screwed his courage to the sticking place…

Author's Note

For whatever it is worth, this was planned out long before the movie, so leave your expectations about hippogriffs at the door.

Riddles with the Dark

By the faint orange glow of the fire, Dim watched as the foals and cubs played with one another. In another life, in other circumstances, in other places, they might have been enemies, but here, in this place, in this fortified and walled-in farmhouse located in the Fancy countryside, these potential foes were the best of friends, vital to one another’s survival.

The griffons, though tiny and playful, were careful with their sharp beaks and claws. Their equine playmates, little earth ponies, were just as careful with their immense strength and hard hooves. Dim realised that playtime was really an exercise in trust—no doubt for every parent involved.

These are good creatures, Dim, Cadance’s pink voice said within his mind.

Dim found himself in disagreement. These creatures were not good, but nor were they evil; they existed and were far too consumed with their labours, the effort to survive, to be good or evil. They were just there, waiting to be exploited by those with either benevolent or malevolent intentions. These creatures were a resource that allowed heroes—or villains—to operate. The old feudalistic contracts made it clear that it took tremendous resources to field a knight or maintain a garrison of soldiers. One needed peasants if one wanted security.

Must you be so cynical?

In response, Dim thought back to the events of the day, and the hippogriffs that had tried to take Blackbird. He recalled every horrid detail of Giselle’s death and the many tears that had spilled down Blackbird’s cheeks. Garrulous’ arrogant boasts and demands were remembered word for word within his mind. With each detail, each memory, he felt Princess Cadance recoiling within his mind, he could feel her mental flinching, and found that he took no pleasure from it, as he expected that he might.

Now, he just felt bad.

Turning his head, Dim glanced in Blackbird’s direction. She was carving something out of a block of soap, using a sharp knife and her own claws. A little filly—no more than a yearling—watched Blackbird shave off curls of soap with intense, expressive eyes. Motte was playing chess with the dignified, grey maned elder of the farm, and Bailey watched the game with great interest. Whole minutes passed with no pieces moved, as any careless action was an invitation for disaster.

There is some good in you, the pink voice within his head said. It hasn’t been completely crushed. Somehow, it has survived, even with everything you’ve seen and done.

Those were kind words, but no mention was made of his moral ambiguity or the darkness that stained his soul—that was left unsaid. Dim had notions of goodness, he supposed, but they did not rule his heart and were typically the furthest thing from his mind when plotting a course of action. Looking back on it, he often thought of those moments as ones of weakness, where his resolve seemed less than ironclad.

Not far from Dim, Munro was cleaning their fresh haul of guns and weapons, a task that the minotaur calf seemed to enjoy a great deal. Where many might be bored with drudgery, or might perform a task with great reluctance, Munro seemed to be in a fine mood and was humming to himself. For the briefest moment, Dim found himself envious of Munro’s happiness, and wished that he had the same.

The calm of the farmhouse was damaged by a howl. Everyone responded in some way, and even Dim found himself unnerved by the sound. His magic sense tingled, discerning something dire, something foul. Blackbird had stopped carving, she sheathed her knife, and reaching down, she lifted the tiny yearling filly. Munro drew his pistol and then sat very still.

Sitting near the fire, the elder mare of the house shivered and said, “Le loup-garou.”

Dim had no idea what she said, but her behaviour and how she said it seemed as though it was something somepony muttered to ward off superstitious nonsense. Even the Bard was disturbed and had retreated into Bombay’s arms. Dim’s perception told him something unnatural, something abominable was close—befouled, diseased magic.

Again the howl could be heard and again, all who heard it reacted. A griffon, a big, burly female, came through the door and then sat down on the floor with the little ones. The elder stallion—trembling with fear—moved his knight, putting on a brave display. Munro lost his nerve and now sat shivering at the table, even though the room was toasty from the fire.

Dim, who hated being afraid of anything, wanted to know what was going on.

“You mustn’t go outside.” The Bard’s voice said many things, more than his words let on. He was scared, terrified maybe, but trying to hide it. “Dim, we’re safe in here. The whitewash is fresh… and what is outside cannot get in. If you go outside, you will not be safe. However powerful you believe yourself to be, you are no match for what lurks outside.”

“But… what is it?” Dim asked while he prepared a spell that would ward the house from magical fear.

“A terrible, diseased creature.” Pâté au Poulet’s eyes darted around the room, reading the different faces present. “Some call it a curse, others say it is a disease, and others still call it cursed disease. None of that matters. They cannot be killed—”

“Nonsense,” Dim said, interrupting while also shaking his head in disbelief.

“Dim… you just don’t know. Please, the less said about them, the better. Please, please, for all of our sakes, do not let your curiousity or your arrogance get the best of you.” The Bard’s eyes locked onto Dim and a silent plea was made.

A younger mare with a freckled face burst into the room, breathless, and she came to a skidding halt near the griffoness watching over the little ones. “Loup-garou.” Her words, a breathless whisper, were laced with outright terror. She sat down on the floor and scooted closer to the big, burly griffoness, perhaps seeking comfort or reassurance. “J'ai fini le dernier de mes corvées et je suis là maintenant.”

You feel that, don’t you Dim… you want to protect these ponies. It wells up within you like some powerful instinct. Luna’s blood runs strong in you. Can’t you feel it? The drive, the compulsion, the incessant need. Let this be the moral compass you seek.

Ignoring the distracting thoughts, Dim cast a powerful, complex spell, a ward against terror. Normally, he would cast this upon himself, but this one had a broad area of effect and his efforts left him trembling with fatigue. Swimmy headed, Dim closed his eyes for a moment and tried to regain his senses as best he could.

The Bard lifted his head and said to everyone present, “Reste calme, Dim est un sorcier de grande puissance. Sa magie ne te fera pas de mal. Se détendre.”

For so long, you’ve only cast magic for yourself and your own ends. This exhaustion… Dim… this is the price of protecting others. You’ve protected a farmhouse. Luna strives to protect a nation. But you feel it, don’t you? Satisfaction. You know that you’ve accomplished something meaningful—

“Yes,” Dim said aloud, which caused a number of those present to turn and look at him. “Forgive me, that was more taxing than I expected. I need rest.” This was no lie—he could feel a tightness around his heart, a constriction that he had not felt since the day of the massacre at Shepherd’s Shore. Cadance’s words echoed within his head as the feebleness spread through his body.

Was but one single casting enough to undo him?

With but a thought, Dim dismissed that notion. He had done other things this day. His magical experiments, a great deal of rapid-fire winking, killing arrogant hippogriffs, and extinguishing fires—putting fires out was always more difficult than starting them. For the first time, Dim questioned his approach to magic, his utilitarian, minimalist, low-effort approach. If he was going to have to exist in a group, if he had to protect others, he was going to need to flex his magical muscles more often so that his magical endurance could be bolstered. This was untenable and the way he felt right now—this weakness—was too much to bear.

“I need rest,” Dim said as the tightness deep within his fragile ribs grew unendurable.

The young mare, while holding a squirming colt said to Dim, “Je vous remercie.”

“Also, I need food…”—he had to pause for a moment to stave off his progressing lightheadedness—“and then rest. It has been a long day.”

The earthenware bowl was misshapen, its paint was splotchy, and the glaze had been applied in an uneven, haphazard sort of way. It was a huge bowl, not really intended for one pony, but Dim was eating alone. Here, in this place, it was common practice to share a bowl with somepony, or, one big bowl for a whole mob of foals.

Using a spoon—his own spoon, a silver one—he fished out an enormous dumpling and sighed with satisfaction. The vegetable and dumpling stew was fit for royalty, it was a divine, savoury dish that might be one of the best meals he had ever eaten, and it wasn’t just his hunger compelling him to think that. No doubt, the leftovers would be served at breakfast, or maybe lunch, but Dim hoped there would be more at breakfast.

Blackbird moved through the door, into the kitchen, and came to the table where Dim was sitting. She sat down on the floor, scooted closer to the table, and hunched down to be a little more eye-to-eye with Dim. He looked up at her, chewing, she looked down at him, and he felt other appetites within himself when he gazed upon her face. A desire for closeness, for togetherness, a need to just be in her glorious presence.

“That spell you cast worked, Dim. Everypony is calm now. The fear has passed and the little ones are being put to bed. I guess it took a lot out of you?”

After swallowing, he replied, “It did. You know, Blackbird, it has occured to me that I am going to have to change my approach to magic. If I am going to cast spells to keep all of you safe, I am going to have to be far more conservative than I was previously. Every spell cast will matter more now. My offense will suffer.”

Hearing this, Blackbird’s mouth pressed into a tight line, and her eyes glittered with keen intelligence in the faint light of the lone candle on the kitchen table. Her right talons came to rest upon the table and then she began drumming her claws against the worn, polished wood. Slumping over even more, her bulk shifted and she let out a heavy sigh that made the candle sputter.

“I don’t think… I don’t think I could’ve dealt with all of this if I was still addled with opium and coca-laced salts. The cravings are still there”—he was surprised by his own confession but felt no overpowering compulsion welling up from within him—“but they are different now. More of a mental thing. Since meeting Chantico, the physical need has mostly gone away. It has affected my magic use though… I can’t use coca-laced salts to fend off thaumaturgical fatigue.”

“You’ll have to depend on us,” Blackbird whispered.

Dim found his response to be far more honest than he liked: “That scares me.”

“My mother had to learn how to depend on others. My dad, he had to teach her how to trust. He had to school her on simple, basic decency. He told me stories, stories that made my mother squawk and get all embarrassed. She didn’t trust herself, you know. She thought she was too far gone. After she had me, she was scared of me, scared of hurting me, and she wouldn’t even touch me unless my dad was there to watch over her. She got better, of course.”

After digging around with his spoon, Dim found another pillowy dumpling, which he ate.

“I’m falling for you, Dim…” Blackbird’s eyes darted away and flitted about the room, looking everywhere but at the pony in front of her. “Because of my mother and father, I have this weird notion that loving you is the only way to make you better. And make no mistake, I want you better. I want you to be able to depend on somepony. Eerie told me that I might not ever make you good, and she said I’d be a fool to try it, but she said that I could make you better. I’ve spent a lot of our trip so far thinking about the things she said.”

This time, Dim didn’t look into his bowl and dug out an enormous pale-yellow carrot.

“Eerie had a lot to say, Dim… she has a lot of regrets. Being a Dark is troubling, I guess. She’s scared that if I knew the whole truth about you… she begged me to stay, but she also told me a lot of stuff. I think she felt conflicted asking me for help. I wish I knew what to say right now, ‘cause this feels awkward.” Now, her eyes locked on Dim with a keen predatory gaze and the flickering flame from the candle could be seen reflecting in them.

Ravenous, Dim crammed even more food into his slavering maw, his fine manners all but forgotten.

“That poor hippogriff, Dim… I shot her and she died. Killing stuff… I don’t like it, Dim. When I kill stuff, it always happens in the worst way. I point my gun and KERPOW! No neat, clean deaths at my talons, no. I always make these awful lucky shots. Somehow, I strike arteries, or vital spots, or something, and I cause the most horrific injuries. This is why I don’t like killing, Dim. I feel so bad, Dim… say something to make me feel better, will ya?”

The pink presence in Dim’s mind vanished, leaving him high and dry. Creamy white sauce dribbled down his chin and he wished that Princess Cadance was still here. She had left him—no—she had abandoned him just when he was in need of her useful input. Resentful, Dim chewed on his food and tried to think of something clever, something witty. When he swallowed, he realised that his frogs felt sweaty.

Blackbird awaited.

Left to his own devices, the most foalish thing ever came out of Dim’s mouth: “Will you be my special somepony?”

At first, Blackbird’s eyes bulged and she jerked her head backwards. Then, her eyes narrowed, and she squinted while her head bobbed forwards in some vaguely feline way. Her ears made a ridiculous number of pivots and repositions, all while the most befuddled expression settled over her face.

“Did I say something wrong?” Dim asked.

“Well, no, Dim… it’s just that… we’re sleeping together. We’re very close.”

“Our sleeping arrangements are chaste.” Dim stirred his food with his silver spoon in an absent-minded sort of way. “There is an implied agreement things will only progress once certain conditions are met. I am, for the most part, a pony of my word. Our relationship is strange to me, because the last girl I was involved with was given to me as a gift. I killed her.”

“You know, Dim, saying something like that would make most girls run away.”

“You’re not most girls,” Dim said to Blackbird, “I think you’d shoot me and I find that arousing.”

“Again, Dim, most girls would be running away with all haste right now.”

“You’re not most girls.”

“No, I’m not.” Blackbird’s talons drummed on the table, making a rhythmic sound. “You and I… we’re like two peas in a pod, Dim. The little gross black ones that nopony wants, but two peas in a pod nonetheless.”

“I feel that, if we have arranged for conditional coitus, we should have our relationship status sorted out.”

“Conditional coitus, eh?” Blackbird rolled her eyes and snorted. “You have a way with words, Dim. All that education, all those words, but no idea how to say them to another pony. Or hippogriff, in my case. So… romantic, Dim. Every girl dreams of the day when circumstances are met and conditional coitus can commence.”

For a moment, Dim began to panic, but then Blackbird chortled and his anxiety turned to confusion. She found this funny? He was trying to be serious, to sort out and establish the boundaries of their relationship, so his humour was accidental, unintentional. Talking to other ponies, other creatures, was indeed, problematic; he had spent far too much of his life in conversation with other Darks. It could be argued that the Darks might not be ponies any longer, but this was too distracting to think about right now.

“I have very specific relationship needs,” Dim said while Blackbird continued her snortle-chortles. “I have fantasies about sphinxes—”

“Oh! You bastard!” Sitting up tall and straight, Blackbird now loomed over Dim, more than twice his height sitting down. “Fine, then. Riddle me this, Dim: I come in a lot of different sizes. Sometimes, I drip or dribble a little. I smell. If you blow me, it feels really good. What am I?”

“A dick?” Dim replied, stating the obvious answer.

In the faint candlelight, Blackbird blushed. “No, you pervert. A nose. Since you failed to answer, now I have to eat you.”

“I am not adverse to that.” Dim almost started to grin, but his face cramped and he was forced to abandon the attempt.

“Fine, since you begged, I’ll give you another chance.” Blackbird leaned forwards and her pointy canine teeth could be seen in the flickering light. “You stick your pole inside of me. I must be tied down for you to get me up. I get wet with you tucked inside of me. What am I?”

“A sphinx-like creature that spends too much time thinking about perverted riddles, obviously.” A yawn threatened to break free and Dim had to struggle to hold it back. “You called me a pervert, but these riddles of yours are obscene.”

“Wrong again,” Blackbird said to Dim. “The right answer is a tent.”

Blackbird had a talent—a horrible, terrible, awful, no good talent—and Dim found himself stricken by her clever wit. What had started as an attempt at a joke had turned into something perverse and beautiful. He tore into his food once more because he needed to finish eating before he fell asleep at the table—a real possibility at the moment.

“Finish up, Dim… from the looks of things, it’s time to take you to bed…”

Author's Note

KERPOW!

(By the way, this is a link.)

The dunce and future king

A slumber-inducing drizzle pitter-pattered on the oilskin covering of the wagon and the temperature hovered somewhere near the freezing mark. Travel was slow, but Motte and Bailey insisted that they would reach the cultist compound today before it was too late. The day before was an uneventful day upon the road and today, the fourth day of their journey, had shown itself as a real snorefest.

Wrapped in a coat and a blanket, the Bard shivered and suffered in silence. He was miserable and nopony or nobirdy that he had spoken to had seen the dragons they had sought. With each mile away from the city, each league, time seemed to roll backwards, and this had a profound impact upon the longsuffering earth pony. The fortified farmhouses became smaller, and smaller, and yet smaller still. Some of the farms they passed now didn’t even have walls around them.

Only a coat of alchemical whitewash protected them from certain disaster.

Seeing the bleak, destitute poverty around him in a non drug-addled state was getting to Dim, wearing him down, and causing him to think crazy thoughts. Seeing what it was doing to his friend was difficult—and Pâté au Poulet was his friend, wasn’t he? Glancing in the Bard’s direction, Dim tried to imagine what his earth pony friend must be feeling. He had come home and was now facing whatever ghosts from his past that existed here. Perhaps he wondered if things might have been different if he had stayed? Did the Bard feel regret?

Dim, a pony so wrapped up in his own feelings, had trouble empathising with others.

“We got trouble! Hippogriffs!”

Blackbird’s voice snapped Dim from his thoughts and right away, he began casting spell protections. It seemed that more hippogriffs had come to join their fellows, and if they wished to die, Dim would oblige them. If he had to get wet, then somebirdy had to die, it was just that simple.

“I see a white flag,” Bailey reported while she peeped through the scope of the sharpshooter’s rifle. “Doesn’t mean much, but the other hippogriffs are staying back. I count thirty-two staying back.”

“They are smart to stay out of range,” Motte said to his counterpart. “Word of Dim is probably spreading, sort of like how a bad rash and unsightly warts spread around a whorehouse.”

Behind his thick smoked glass goggles, Dim’s eyes somehow rolled while he also kept his guard up. Payback would come later, perhaps, if at all. Right now, there were far more important things to think about. Blackbird hovered overhead with her long gun revolving ten gage held tight in her talons. The drizzle continued to fall and Dim knew that Munro would be busy later, cleaning and oiling everything that was getting wet now.

“I’m dying to see what this fourteen millimetre anti-materiel rifle will do.” Bailey’s words held a calm, chilly reassurance. “Should I aim for that white flag and turn our guest into a pile of claws, fuzz, and feathers?”

Peering out from beneath the brim of his hat, Dim studied the incoming hippogriff, who made a slow, cautious approach. After thinking about the situation, he said to Bailey, “Hold your fire… for now. You as well, Blackbird. Munro, I want you by my side while I speak with our guest. Smile pretty, Munro.”

The hippogriff that landed was very much like Blackbird, in that he didn’t have a beak, though he did have feathers on his head rather than a mane. A dark, dusky purple, he cut a commanding figure while he stood on three legs with the white flag held out in front of him. Studying his eyes, Dim saw fear, but he also saw confidence and intelligence.

“My name is King Grover, and I did not come looking for trouble, only answers.”

Before Dim could say anything, the Bard beat him to it. “You bear the name of a dead griffon king, Grover. How very curious. You are a king? Where is your kingdom?”

Grover bowed his head, but made no other movements. “I am a king without a kingdom and I am fully aware of my namesake. Like Good King Grover, it is my sincere hope to lead my subjects to greatness.” Raising his head, the hippogriff stared straight ahead, ignoring the many weapons pointed directly at him. “I humbly ask to know what happened. All I have heard is hearsay. Garrulous is dead, along with his misguided fellows.”

“I am curious, King Grover… what do you know of your subject, Garrulous?” A steady rain beat down upon Dim’s hat and water dribbled down from worn places along the brim.

At this, King Grover seemed irritated and sad; the youngish hippogriff did nothing to hide his emotions. His claws flexed, sank into the mud, and his tail flicked about in agitation. “Garrulous was mouthy and militant. He sought to usurp my leadership and believed a little too much in his own superiourity. He was a firm believer in taking everything by force and believed that we were far too superiour as creatures to engage in diplomacy. Garrulous and his followers were the worst.”

Even though his suspicions lingered, Dim felt some sympathy for the hippogriff standing in the rain before him. Grover had a noble bearing, spoke in the right way, and appeared educated. There was, indeed, something exceptional about this hippogriff, in much the same way that there was something exceptional about Blackbird. Upon reaching this conclusion, Dim decided that Grover would live—for now.

“Garrulous and his followers tried to seize my companion, Blackbird. They desired her for the purposes of breeding and were not content to take no as an answer. He foolishly believed that history would favour his actions and show that he was in the right.”

“That sounds like Garrulous alright.” Grover slumped, dejected, shook his head from side to side, and let out a weary sigh. “He was overly convinced of his own greatness, his own perfection. More and more, his words were poisoning my subjects, and I feared him leading them down a ruinous path. He spoke only of war, of greatness, and war is not something our fledgling nation can afford to do. Every life is precious.”

Turning, lifting his head, Grover looked up at Blackbird, who hovered overhead. “I offer you my most sincere apologies. I would never allow for abduction and coercion—these are not things I wish to be remembered for as king. I hope you will not think poorly of me… of us, though I would not blame you if you do. I humbly beg you for your forgiveness.”

“But you did no wrong,” Blackbird replied.

“But I am King Grover, and my subjects did you, and your companions, wrong. Ultimately, I am responsible for the actions of my subjects.” Bowing his head, Grover stared down at the muddy ground where his talons flexed.

Heavy was the head that wore the crown, and Grover’s head was awful close to the mud. Although reluctant to admit it, Dim found himself charmed by Grover’s charisma and bore the young hippogriff no ill will. Tilting his head, he glanced up at Blackbird and saw a confused look upon her face. What was she thinking? The last encounter with her own kind had left her unsettled, unhappy, but what would this one do?

“All is forgiven, King Grover.” Blackbird’s wings made steady beats while she remained airborne, and though she had offered forgiveness, she still pointed the long ten at the hippogriff below her. “Now go on… prove your good intentions and go on and get out of here. Leave me be. No more pretty words, no more silver tongue, no more playing on my sympathies. I’ll not join you… ever… and no amount of appealing to my good nature will ever change that. If I see you, or any of your scouts anywhere near me or my friends ever again, I will fucking end you and your kingdom. There’s my forgiveness.”

And then, after a moment of silence, Blackbird had one final thing to say: “Next time, clean up your own damn mess. If you would have been half the king you think you are and dealt with Garrulous yourself, my friends and I wouldn’t’ve had to kill them. Now get out of here. Right now. I mean it. No fancy goodbyes, no pretty words… just fuck off and get gone.”

Grover started to say something, but this turned into a choked splutter when Blackbird thumbed back the hammer on her long ten. Water ran down the thirty-three inch length of the massive ten gauge barrel and dribbled down in a steady stream from the cavernous void pointed at the hippogriff down below. If Blackbird was crying right now, it was impossible to see in the rain, but just looking at her left a dull ache in Dim’s heart.

“Instant headache,” Blackbird said while she stared down the sights of her long barreled shotgun. “Don’t make me do this… please… just go.” The octogonal barrel remained steady and didn’t move while she maintained a bead on her target. “I don’t trust you, I don’t want to look at you, and I don’t want to hear you say another word. Now go.”

In silence, King Grover spread his wings, nodded once at Blackbird, and then fled while he still yet lived.

Motte and Bailey pushed themselves, picking up the pace to reach the cultist compound. By the virtue of its continued existence, the compound had to be a place of secure safety and there was a sense of urgency now to reach it before nightfall. What would they find upon their arrival? Dim wasn’t sure… but cultists obviously.

Sleet now fell with the rain and it made a muffled thudding sound against the oilskin covering. The Bard appeared unsettled and cradled a bottle of wine in his foreleg while he stared out of the back of the wagon. It was cold enough to see one’s breath with no sign of warming, which made Dim think about autumn. He had lived indoors for so long that he had very little knowledge of seasons, other than what he had learned in books, but book knowledge and practical knowledge were two very different things.

“I know Blackbird’s pain.”

The low, soft sound of the Bard’s voice was difficult to make out over the steady beat of rain and sleet against the cover overhead. Even though it left his head feeling chilly, Dim pulled his hat off so that he might hear better and he felt a troubling sense of concern for his companion.

“You expect so much from your own kind… your kith and kin.” The Bard’s eyes were dull, glazed over with pain, and wine could be heard sloshing within his bottle with each bump in the road. “I expect… expected?” A pause fell upon the Bard for a time and after an extended silence, he began again: “Hope. Yes. I had hoped for so much from my fellows. I had such hopes of greatness. Fancy would rise to its deserved position as a shining beacon of light.”

Dim could hear the disappointment in Pâté au Poulet’s voice.

“But rather than come together, we squabble, we bicker, we haggle with each other’s very livelihoods. We hang on tightly to the very worst elements of our past, the glories of a bygone era that burned itself out of existence. I was born in the twilight of our once great empire and I grew up listening to the stories of what might have been… what should have been.”

For some reason, Dim thought of his fellow Darks.

“No doubt, Blackbird probably wondered about hippogriffs other than her mother and herself. What great and noble creatures might they be? Blackbird, who is capable of so much just because of who and what she is… Blackbird, who is a great and mighty creature… Blackbird, who has the sort of strength that she might carry the weight of an entire nation upon her back… alas, poor Blackbird. To meet other hippogriffs, only to discover that they are reviled brigands, and not even very good ones at that. They relied upon their supposed strength rather than any real measure of backbone.”

Again, Dim was reminded of his fellow Darks… and maybe even of himself, if he were to be honest. They might have carried the weight of a nation upon their backs at one time, but had since grown spineless and weak. Snivelling cowards that fled into intellectual darkness, that demanded their entitlements.

“That Grover fellow was going to ask Blackbird to come with him you know. He was going to wheedle and plead and beg, and say sweet words, and no doubt convince Blackbird to let bygones be bygones. I have no doubt that, given a chance, he would explain Garrulous’ actions as those driven by desperation, and that if Blackbird would just come with him, she might restore some hope. I’ve seen his type… I grew up around them… I called them my kith and kin. They are my fellow ponies of Fancy. Blackbird was right to do what she did, but I fear greatly what it has no doubt done to her heart.”

The Bard closed his eyes and his body shifted until he came to rest upon his side. Stretching out his legs, he tried to make himself comfortable. His cheek rested against his beloved bottle and Dim realised that his friend was preparing to doze off, to wile away the hours, lost to slumber.

“They are doomed, you know. Doomed. We’re all doomed. Fancy needs to burn to the ground and the old must be turned to ashes. In fact, all of the world should be burned away, every country, every nation, every fiefdom, every city-state, all of it needs to burn, to go to fire. Maybe whatever comes next, whatever comes after, maybe they’ll do better.”

And with that, the Bard fell silent, leaving Dim alone with his thoughts.

Author's Note

Everything changes once we reach the cultist compound. Be prepared.

Cultist compound

Upon seeing the cultist compound, Dim let out a long, low whistle. What had he been expecting? Not this. The forest had been shaped, grown into walled fortifications that stood at least fifty feet tall. Somehow, the trees had woven themselves together, and along with thorny brambles as well as other plants, had formed a solid, intimidating defense. Covering much of the ground around the compound was wolfsbane, which was now wilted with the coming autumn.

A living aperture allowed for entry into the compound and Dim could scarcely understand its workings, except that it was magic. Some zebras could be seen, along with some ponies and their wagons, no doubt there to deliver the infirm. A troll went lumbering past, and had Dim not realised that it was ensorcelled, he might have set it on fire.

There was magic here, strange magic, and it made Dim’s skin prickle. Quite some distance from the compound, nestled among a grove of trees, there was a patch of bright blue poison joke flowers that didn’t seem to mind the near-freezing temperatures. Blues, greens, browns, the colours of nature, all of it was a sight to overwhelm the eyes.

Dim saw a solitary zebra coming out to greet them and he was a big fellow with broad withers. His face was painted with strange symbols and a quarter moon covered one eye. The zebra was smiling, appeared cheerful, and trotted with a bouncy, exaggerated step that made his tail bob.

“My name is Mwezi and we have been waiting for you,” the zebra said while it drew nearer. “The Great Sun Spirit, Jua told us that the Kivuli cha Kifo would soon grace us and we waited with great eagerness for you to arrive. We welcome you. Do come inside.”

Something about this struck Dim as being odd, perhaps it was the mention of Jua. Something was going on and now, something about the zebra’s smile was spine-chilling. Dim grew ever-more uncomfortable with each passing second, and without quite knowing why, he wanted to be far, far away from this place, these zebras, this country, this side of the world.

Try as he might, Dim couldn’t respond and his growing dread left him apprehensive.

Upon passing through the living aperture, Dim saw the statue. Like so many had before him, he froze in place before the towering stone idol and felt something stirring within his shriveled, dessicated heart. Gazing up at the stone zebra, Dim could only think of the love and reverence that must have gone into the creation of this stone monument. Every conceivable detail could be seen, every stripe, her wise expression, and her flowing crown of dreadlocks that spilled down to her legs.

“Death,” Mwezi said while he too, stopped and looked up at the zebra statue. “The Great Mystery. She hides from us, but we are clever. We look into the eyes of the dying, and sometimes, if we are lucky, if we are blessed, we catch a glimpse of her when she approaches. Always so sad, so wise… I would give anything to comfort her while she goes about her great work. It is my sincere hope that when my time comes, she will see the life of dedication I have lived for her sake, and she will welcome me as a friend.”

“Dedication?” Blackbird moved until she stood beside Dim and she too, stared upwards in wide-eyed reverence.

“We care for the dying,” Mwezi replied and raising his hoof, he gestured at the compound around him. “Those who come here, they come here to die. We do what we can to ease their passing, to make it pleasant. These peasants live awful lives, terrible lives, with endless toil, constant worry, and they receive very little in return for their struggles. For some, for many perhaps, this might very well be the most enjoyable moments of their life. A time of rest. A time when they are cared for.”

Dim very much wanted to believe that there was some sinister ulteriour motive at work here, but a little, seldom-heard voice in the back of his mind said that he was a paranoid lunatic. Tearing his eyes from the dominating idol, he had himself a look at the compound, which consisted of a collection of stone and brick buildings, mixed with shaped natural structures. A living tree was also somehow a fountain, and water spilled from branch to branch, basin to basin, down to a pool around the roots. Ponies and a few zebras were drinking from this water, which radiated a weird, unknown magic.

For the first time, Dim noticed it was warm here within the compound walls, and no rain fell. It felt like the soothing, gentle warmth of spring and the cold chill of autumn did not reach beyond the natural walls. How was this possible? There was curious magic here, so much so that Dim’s senses were left scrambled, overwhelmed.

This was a place of beauty, of peace, and Dim had no idea how to deal with it.

“The dragons you seek, they were here for a time, but left to aid others. Indigo will tell you more, but right now, he is working, trying to understand the riddles left behind in Aunt Nancy’s web.” Mwezi turned about and pointed at a tall building with a conical roof covered in blue slate tiles. “You can stay there. Within, you will find all the comforts you need and we will bring you food. Have a bath, clean off the mud and dust of the road, and get some rest. You are safe here, as safe as any can be given the state of our world.”

Dim wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The circular room was almost empty, save for a low, squat table in the center and piles of pillows that had seen better days. A lone potted plant was the only attempt made at decorating. Munro went to work, dusting the cushions and trying to tidy up, but there really wasn’t anything to do, so it was pointless.

Bombay and Blackbird had vanished up the stairs and the clip-clop of hooves could be heard upon the wooden floor overhead that also acted as a ceiling for the room Dim was standing in. With each step, little sprinkles of dust fell like snowflakes and the floorboards flexed beneath Blackbird’s immense bulk. Craning his head, Dim looked ceiling-ward and wondered if it would come crashing down upon him.

“There’s no sign of a bath,” Bombay said and annoyance could be heard in her voice. “I need a bath. Cats are clean creatures. That zebra said to have a bath.”

Dropping the pillow in his hand, Munro went over to the stairs, walked around, and found a wooden door that opened into the space beneath the stairs. Inside, there was a copper basin that was just large enough for a pony to stand in, but not sit in. To a minotaur, an Abyssinian, or a hippogriff, it was hardly even a bucket. Shaking his head, Munro slammed the door shut while making a powerful snort of displeasure.

“I think these reed mats are the beds,” Blackbird could be heard saying.

“No way, they look like bath mats, or maybe welcome mats for the front door,” Bombay replied. “Sure are a lot of them.”

Lifting his hat off of his head, Dim pulled out his silver cigarette container, his silver cigarette stem, and a small pint bottle of Fancy whiskey that he had stashed away for emergencies just like this one. In short order, he had a joint tucked into his long, slender stem and began puffing away while the Bard stared pleadingly at the pint-sized bottle.

When Dim didn’t offer a swallow, the Bard muttered, “Bourgeoisie dégoûtante.”

Grinning, Dim took the first sip, and then in a gesture of aristocratic generousity, levitated the bottle to his companion. “Dégoûtant primitif.”

“Say, that’s very good.” Gripping the open bottle in his fetlock, Pâté au Poulet raised it in a salute to his friend and then, after smacking his lips, he drank down about a third of the bottle in one gulp. Satisfied, he waved it about and allowed Dim to take it back once more.

Striking the pose of a great orator, Pâté au Poulet cleared his throat a few times, pounded his chest with his hoof, drew in a deep breath, and became the Bard. “I have returned to the scabbed-over abattoir drain known as Gasconeigh. My home. My dreadful place of origin. The place where my sire and my dam fucked one another. My sire was sentenced to indentured servitude for being a thief of purity, for having stolen my dam’s virginity, and my dam was made to live in a workhouse for foaling out of wedlock. Her family disowned her of course, they had to, because they couldn’t afford to pay her legal expenses. You will find that we are quite backward in this place, this country known for storied romance. Fucking, fornicating, is only legal within the legally enforced bonds of marriage. Getting caught will get you in trouble. The secret is, don’t get caught.”

For reasons unknown, Dim felt inspired, but not in a good way. He now had the overpowering urge to set the city of Gasconeigh ablaze, and perhaps much of the countryside around it as well. The Bard’s gift to inspire still worked, even with part of his soul missing, and Dim marvelled at his friends ability to make one feel emotion, even unwanted. This, coupled with what the Bard had said earlier, left Dim feeling peculiar.

“Shall I even mention what we do to homosexuals? Those who sample delectable forbidden fruit? It is no wonder poor Jolie left, being the sexually deviant little minx that she is. She doesn’t care about the plumbing she encounters, no… she will find a way to make a connection and she sees the entirety of the body as a sexual organ. She is a gifted organist, let me tell you, and you shouldn’t let her small size fool you.”

Filling his lungs with soothing, numbing smoke, Dim waited for his friend to say more, but the Bard, it seemed, had gone silent. The earth pony went over to a pile of pillows, laid down with a tired huff, and then went still. With a clunk of metal, Motte and Bailey commandeered the table and began laying out their weapons on it, all of which needed to be cared for after exposure to the rain. Blackbird came down the stairs, which were far too small for a creature her size, and she almost took a tumble. Bombay followed a moment later and laughed at Blackbird’s near-misfortune.

“Disarm,” Motte said to Blackbird and Bombay while he made a commanding stomp of his hoof against the rough stone floor. “You’ve been out in the rain all day. Rust never sleeps.”

Bombay pulled out her pistol, examined it, and then she sat down on the floor beside the low table. Blackbird on the other hoof, began a process. Rolling her eyes, she began pulling guns from various holsters secured to her bandolier, a vast collection of revolvers of different sizes. Four Boars was pulled out from beneath her wing and the long ten was slipped free from the long leather sheath that went the length of her back. A great many clunks, clanks, thumps, bumps, and clinks could be heard as she began to stack her guns on the table.

But not just guns, no. Blackbird also began pulling out darts, thrown flechettes, a bolo, various daggers, a stiletto with a hooked end, what appeared to be a grenade, and last but not least, a pair of pliers.

Of all the things that Blackbird had divested herself of, Bailey’s eyes fell upon the pliers, and lifting her head, the mare asked, “Why pliers, Miss Coffyn?”

“Oh, just in case…” Blackbird’s words trailed off and she gave Bailey a sweet, disarming smile that went from ear to ear, splitting her face in two.

“In case of what?” Bailey’s eyebrow arched and she gave Blackbird a firm glare.

When Blackbird replied after a drawn out silence, she did so in a tone most saccharine: “Oh, just in case someone or something smiles at me and I don’t like it. Those teeth are coming out. A girl can’t be too careful.”

Author's Note

Next chapter... Indigo.

The hero that doesn't exist yet

Bombay Sable’s mandolin plucking left Dim feeling wistful, or maybe sorrowful. For reasons unknown, he thought of a home that didn’t exist, a place he had never known. How did one long for something they had never truly known in the first place? Dim imagined some cosy place, a proper tower perhaps, but the location really didn’t matter. Turning his head, he glanced at what did matter, and it was Blackbird. One day, when all of this was over, when it was time to settle down, when wanderlust expired, Dim reckoned that whatever came next would involve Blackbird.

But that was something in the distant future.

Dim’s thoughts might have had something to do with the pink hue in his vision. Nothing had been said, no thoughts had been projected, but it was there, and Dim was comforted by it. Blackbird, Munro, Motte, and Bailey were gathered around the table, breaking down every weapon among them, removing all traces of moisture from every nook, every cranny, every crevice, and the smell of machine oil was heavy in the air. From the looks of things, Munro was learning from the veterans of war and hung on every word said by Motte and Bailey.

Wet gear hung from the walls and the smell of sodden wool was heavy in Dim’s nose. Faint dripping could be heard as water fell to the floor. This, along with the mechanical sounds from the remorseless implements of war and the soothing strains of the mandolin almost lulled Dim to sleep. Well, the whiskey might have also had something to do with it. Something about the air was just right for breathing and the aching tickle in Dim’s lungs was hardly even noticeable.

Was this a happy time?

Dim supposed it was.

The Bard dozed on a pile of cushions, his breathing shallow and almost nonexistent. Life on the road was hard on him, and no doubt, returning home had taken some toll that Dim could hardly comprehend. Turning his head, Dim glanced over at the slumbering earth pony and felt the curious sting of envy. Dim wanted a place to be disappointed with, to have feelings about, strong opinions, a place of belonging, a place that inspired him to have strong emotions of love and hate.

Yet another swig of whiskey soothed the prick of envy.

Just as Dim’s eyelids grew unbearably heavy, there was a knock upon the heavy wooden door…

In the doorway stood a zebra wearing a wooden mask. Behind him, beyond the doorway, night was falling, the day fading, and a crowd of zebras could be seen as well as heard, gathered around Death’s statue, saying prayers. When the zebra stepped aside, a griffon ambled through the door on three legs, carrying a cast iron cookpot in his right talons. This was placed on the floor and then the griffon vanished, as he no doubt had others to feed.

“I am Weaver Indigo,” the zebra said, introducing himself in a heavy accent. His voice was somewhat muffled by the mask and he moved with a pronounced limp. One hind leg was crooked and it was obvious that, at some point in his life, he had been hobbled to keep him from running. “The Shadow has arrived, and Death is sure to follow.”

“Huh?” Motte, who was assembling Bailey’s dainty carbine, turned and looked in the direction of the zebra.

“Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. At this point in time, nothing matters, and time is short. You should be eating, you’ll need it. I have much to tell you, and time, like a candle left to burn, grows ever-shorter. Get your food and gather round. Hurry, hurry, do not dawdle.”

Munro had brought in wooden bowls from the wagon and was now serving up a chunky eggplant stew that reeked of garlic. Meanwhile, Indigo paced near the door, limping back and forth, his face invisible behind his carved, wooden mask. Scars spiderwebbed his body, some appeared to be lash marks, while others appeared to be intricate lines that formed geometric shapes that stood out against his stripes. Some kind of strange blue pigment had gone into the wounds and now, his scars stood out in a ghastly purple-blue.

“The Kivuli cha Mbuzi, he casts a long shadow across this land, but like all shadows, he is more dread than substance.” Indigo whirled about and turned to face Dim, who was just handed a bowl of stew by Munro. “He is not the real worry at the moment. A web of intrigue is being spun, by whom, I do not know. But this web worries Aunt Nancy, and has the foul stink of spiderkind. You are now in this web and its weaver, still unknown, can feel you in their web.”

“You mean, like actual spiders?” Munro asked while dipping his ladle into the stew.

“The ones you call the Ascendancy take on strange allies,” Indigo replied. The zebra sighed, a muffled huff from behind his mask, and then resumed pacing before the door. “An army has been mustered, an army of bandits. Several thousand strong they are. Someone within the filthy city awaits to open the gates for them. Even now, as we speak, plans are being made to overthrow the city. A fine cast of puppets assemble, all dangled on invisible strings that come down from an intricate web, a web you have stumbled into.”

“An army?” Bailey’s utterance was dubious and hesitant. “Of bandits? How are they being fed? Supplied? You collect rabble like that and you have trouble if you don’t keep them fed. Why, the farms would be picked clean from an army that size, and the food shortage would reveal them.”

“The obvious answer,” Dim said while he sniffed his bowl of eggplant stew, “is that somepony is supplying them. Somepony within the city.”

“The numbers swell and grow.” Indigo shuddered for a moment and them limped away from where he had paused, agitated. “There is an old bandit fort. Sometimes, the numbers grow, sometimes reaching a thousand or more, and then, they vanish. The fort goes back to having two hundred souls or so for a time, but the numbers slowly rise. Always rising and falling, like an incoming tide.”

Motte made a low grown deep within his throat and the grizzled veteran scowled. “That does not bode well. Where does one hide an army around here?”

“I do not know, and it is driving me crazy!” Indigo froze up again, standing in one spot, and then he made a few feeble stomps against the floor with his crooked, hobbled leg. “I have looked and looked! I have possessed the minds of thousands of birds and seen nothing! I have peered through the many eyes of spiders but nothing reveals itself to me! I’ve gone spirit-walking and found nothing! It is maddening!”

“Does the city have questionable sausage markets?” Munro asked.

The question was met with silence and several heads turned to look at the minotaur calf, who was dipping a spoon into his bowl of stew. One of Dim’s nostrils flared in the manner of annoyed aristocrats everywhere and he leveled a hard stare upon his valet. Bailey shrugged, snorted, and then dug into her stew. Beside her, Motte stared into his bowl, sighed, and poked at it with his spoon.

Just as the silence became unbearable, the Bard began laughing; no mere chuckle, this was a mad, barking laugh that sounded as though it would shatter his ribs. Pâté au Poulet laughed until he wheezed; then, coughing, hacking, and wheezing, he laughed even more. His eyes turned bloodshot and the fine, thin veins in his ears stood out in sharp contrast.

“Pearl Fisher asked me to help.” Dim returned his gaze to Indigo and stirred his stew with his spoon. “She mentioned that there is a conspiracy against Lord Chanson and that he is being pressured to flee the city.”

“When was this?” Motte asked.

“When she and I were alone together.” Dim’s expression soured when Motte raised an eyebrow at his reply. “Look, she came to me for help. She called me the Heebie Jeebie King and told me to cut out the infection or the city will die.”

Even though her mouth was full, Blackbird could not help snickering at what Dim had said, and the Bard seemed to find the strength to continue his wheezy chuckling. Dim took a bite of stew and gave the hearty vegetables an annoyed chew while casting a scathing glance at Blackbird. Taking advantage of the lull in the conversation, Dim forgot his manners and crammed a few more delicious spoonfuls of stew into his mouth.

“Many have placed all of their hopes on Lord Chanson. We’ve thrown our lot in with him and our fortunes rise and fall with his success and survival. It might be that he is the only lord within the city that wants us here.” Indigo let out a huff of consternation and his tail slashed from side to side. “We have been made the cause of the city’s ills. All of its troubles, all of its woes, every problem that exists, we are the cause. Many of the city’s lords use the word zebra as a curse. Colonialism has left deep wounds in this country, vast canyons of scars, uncrossable rifts, and the lords of the city whisper dreadful words that the citizenry wish to hear, words about how the former slaves have come to orchestrate the downfall of those who once oppressed them.”

“Well”—Dim felt the need to state the obvious and he stared at Indigo’s mask—“have you come to do that? Is Lord Chanson your willing dupe because of his obvious guilt and sympathy? Have you come to exploit his goodness? He chose the love of an islander over his love for his nation.”

The sounds of several spoons being dropped into thick stew could be heard, and one in particular clattered down to the floor. Indigo had gone still and time, which seemed to have been frozen, moved along at a glacial pace. Dim’s hard, unyielding, unblinking stare remained locked on Indigo.

“My ancestors laboured and suffered to make this nation great. Their sweat and toil counts for something. I want what I am owed…” Indigo’s voice went low and flat. “Lord Chanson recognises that. He acknowledges that this nation owes us a debt.”

“And that makes him unpopular, I would imagine,” Dim said, again stating the obvious.

“He wishes to put the past behind us so that we might all secure our future together.” Indigo shuffled in place, uncomfortable, and after a time, he resumed his pacing before the door. “When I first met him, I wanted to hate him. Believe me, I did… I was part of a splinter group, and we… we did bad things. Things I am ashamed of now. We were willing to take our recompense by any means necessary… even with bloodshed and murder. Lord Chanson demanded that I hold myself to a higher standard… and so I did.”

Hearing this, Dim thought about reconciliation and unification. Gasconeigh would certainly be a stronger city with everyone together rather than at each other’s throats. This wasn’t about right or wrong, moral or immoral, but about survival—and Dim, after sizing up the situation, knew that a unified city would have better odds, because of how Grogar functioned. While staring at Indigo’s carved wooden mask, Dim began to see how he could affect the lives of millions. He couldn’t fix everything, no, but he could greatly improve their odds of success and survival.

“Dim, what are you thinking?” the Bard asked while stew dripped from his muzzle.

“I cannot help but notice that this compound of friendly, happy Death Cultists is the perfect place for a zebra such as yourself to hide in plain sight. No doubt, all zebras probably look the same to the disgusting primitives around here. Whereas you seem to worship this Aunt Nancy I keep hearing about, the other zebras here worship Death. I have also noticed that Lord Chanson’s wife seems to know an awful lot about what is going on that Lord Chanson does not. She told me to find you here, Indigo, and that you would have information for me. If you want my help, I’d like for you to address this gap in knowledge that I seem to have. Why is Lord Chanson ignorant of these matters?”

“You know,” the Bard muttered, his muzzle inches above his bowl of stew, “it is easy to forget sometimes that this unhinged pyromaniac is as smart as he is.” Having said his piece, he dipped his muzzle into his stew and resumed eating.

“Lord Chanson stands in a precarious place.” Indigo’s accent seemed to thicken with his reply and the bits of twine on his mask bobbed while he shuffled about. “To keep the dream alive, he intentionally remains ignorant on certain matters, in the event that he falls from power. There are those who would accuse him of conspiring with the enemy, and would make every attempt to make that appear true, if given the right opportunity.”

“So I am guessing that Prominence and Scalio, our missing dragons, they came here to do whatever it was they were supposed to do, found out about about all of this, were swept up in it, and now have some vested interest in helping—this is, after all, a worthy cause. Why a dragon would take interest in this is beyond me, but I suppose they have their reasons. They are no doubt gallivanting around the countryside trying to aid this just cause somehow.”

“Actually, Min and Thod went off to investigate the bandits.” Indigo made an abrupt stop in his pacing and sat down. “More than that, they were trying to find some missing alchemists and healers. We sent out a crew to battle disease and they went missing. The wagon was found, stripped of all supplies and everything of value. Min and Thod went looking for their friends.”

“Dragons have friends?” Dim could not hide his incredulousness.

“Oh, Thod is the friendliest of dragons,” Indigo replied. “Real big on smiling.”

“Somehow, I’ve gone to strange places.” Dim shook his head and then wolfed down his stew.

“There is much at stake and I—” Indigo was cut off by the sounds of a ringing bell, and shouting could be heard from outside. The zebra sighed, a sad sound. “Time is up. My time is up. The Shadow came, and Death was certain to follow. Farewell, King of the Heebie Jeebies.”

Outside, the shouts turned to screams and the companions scrambled to react…

Author's Note

Next chapter: Death on Black Wings.

Also, a clever person might be able to go back to previous chapters and piece together a much bigger picture now.

Death on black wings

Death had arrived for the cultists in the compound. An alicorn stood amidst the shattered rubble of Death’s statue and he was a terrifying sight to behold. Twitching, he quivered all over as if he had a palsy and his face contorted with manic, spastic convulsions. The colour of an overcast winter’s day, he blended in with the shroud of night that hung over the compound and appeared to be a pale shadow in the light of the rising moon. Already, the bodies were piling up as some ran away and others stood in defiance.

Upon seeing this alicorn, Dim blinked away for cover, and regretted it right away because it meant that magical fatigue would come so much sooner. The stuttering chatter of gunfire could not drown out the sounds of screams and defiant shouts. While Dim stood in cover behind a building, zebras attempted to pelt the pseudo-alicorn with alchemical bombs.

As for Dim’s companions, most of their weapons were still on the table in various states of assembled wholeness. When the building he was taking cover behind exploded, Dim was forced to blink away again for his own safety as stones and the ragdolling bodies of the elderly occupants flew all around him.

Bullets did no good and bounced harmlessly from the shield bubble around the rampaging alicorn that stood his ground in the center of the compound. A powerful fire nova ignited in the air around him and spread outward in an ever-expanding ring, consuming those who had come too close. Zebras, griffons, and ponies, all set ablaze, ran about while making agonised screams, screams that went dead silent as their lungs charred.

Even as he was casting various wards for protection, Dim realised that they would do very little good; this monstrosity would brute force his way through them with no effort and Dim wondered if he had just wasted more of his magic. Since protection would do him little good, he took a more aggressive approach and cast The War Maiden’s Seeking Skull.

A grinning, howling, ghostly-white skull went whizzing off, took a sharp corner, and flew right at the alicorn. On impact with the alicorn’s shield, there was a terrific explosion and the shield bubble burst on impact. Almost unphased, the alicorn gave himself a shake and his shield flickered back to life before any of the bullets in the air could strike him.

It was at this dreadful moment that Dim realised that he was in dire trouble.

A masked zebra limped towards the alicorn, stepping over the twisted, fallen, charred bodies of his fellows. Somehow, every spell fired at him missed by some miraculous chance, and when he was just a few yards away, the hobbling, masked zebra drew himself up into a confident, defiant pose.

“I am Weaver Indigo,” the zebra said to the false-alicorn. “Long, long ago, I was told that I would not die until I was a free zebra. I have chosen this end, which means I am at last free. Do what you must. Strike me down and in doing so, your own doom will be assured. Death will come for you on black wings—I have seen it!”

In response, the alicorn said nothing, but his horn glowed with a brilliant light. This time, when he cast his spell, the glowing bolt connected with the masked zebra and there was a terrific explosion—but doom came as foretold. Weaver Indigo, devotee of Anansi, burst into a fine red mist, and from this mist came a writhing hoard of burning, blazing, spectral purple-blue spiders. Thousands upon thousands of them spread over the ground like spilled liquid and, borne on eights-of-thousands of tiny, scurrying legs, rushed the now retreating alicorn.

They swarmed his shield, causing it to flicker, and the rising tide of spiders seemed to grow in number as the shield grew ever-weaker. Though the Weaver known as Indigo was gone, his soul-spiders lived on, and they had a terrible message, such dreadful, ominous portents to deliver.

We are the vengeful souls of tens of thousands of slaves who cried out to Anansi for deliverance! You destroyed our Weaver, the one who carried all of our memories and kept our dreams alive through the Weave that binds us all together! Through him we had life! We knew free air! Death comes for you, forked-tongue Slave Driver, Death comes for you on black wings!

When the alicorn’s shield fell, disrupted by the legion of phantasmal horrors, the spectral purple-blue spiders rushed at him…

Sensing opportunity, Dim moved to engage the now shieldless alicorn, wary of the threat that his foe represented. This creature, this… abomination, was stronger by a magnitude. It was all strength with very little skill, and Dim knew that if he was going to win this fight, it would be with skill. Strange magic was at work, magic that Dim only knew about because of his extensive education: animancy. Soul magic. What dreadful torments had been mustered by the spectral spider bomb?

Weaver Indigo had died, and some grim part of Dim was determined to make that matter. It had to mean something, otherwise, what was the point? Indigo had died so that others might live, and Dim understood. Everything from his foalhood, every fanciful daydream, every fantasy, it all converged upon this point, and Dim understood. Something within him, something stunted and long malnourished, he felt it grow. It grew and he gained strength. This battle, this fight, Dim wasn’t fighting for himself or for glory—no, he was here for a greater purpose, one he did not yet understand.

He cast several spells, rapid fire, falling back on his old tricks. Stutter-Startle, because phantasmal charms were not common knowledge and were therefore difficult to remove. Clover’s Confoundment came next, to strip away spell protections and to leave the alicorn vulnerable, at least, whatever counted as vulnerable with an alicorn. Then, Dim cast Lightning Drain, a nefarious spell that would slowly deplete the alicorn’s near-bottomless magical reserves.

Somewhere, nearby, Dim could sense Motte and Bailey. More to the point, he could sense their peculiar magic; they were earth moving, perhaps trying to shore up some defenses to save and protect others. Munro went running past and he sprinted away with a pony beneath one arm and a zebra beneath the other.

The spiders seemed to be crawling beneath the skin of the pseudo-alicorn…

In the midst of the chaos, a familiar voice was heard, and it filled Dim with a curious sort of hopeful inspiration. “Now! Now, Blackbird and Bombay! Strike now! His protections are down!” The Bard stood atop a stone building, somehow bathed in a brilliant pink light that made him stand out against the smoke and darkness. Even more curious, a phantom horn projected from his head and two ghostly wings could be seen protruding from his sides. Like two shadowy wraiths, Blackbird and Bombay stood on either side of him, and the two of them, large, capable creatures that they were, hurled two massive barrels off of the roof.

The barrels flew in a wobbling parabolic arc towards the alicorn…

Even besieged as he was with the spectral spider hex and Dim’s detriments, the alicorn’s speedy response was marvelous to behold. A magic beam shot from his horn and blasted one of the barrels, contents unknown, and this caused a terrific, blinding explosion. Purely by reflex, Dim raised a shield, but the false-alicorn could not.

As it turned out, both barrels were filled with black powder.

Sound and fury bloomed through the compound and the forceful conflagration of Tartarus washed around Dim; somehow, his shield held against the raging onslaught. The alicorn was not so lucky and caught the full brunt of the explosion. Several buildings toppled, including the one that the Bard, Bombay, and Blackbird had stood atop of. When the first barrel exploded, the second one also went, and both had detonated mid-air, near the peak of their arc.

Even with his shield, Dim took a battering. Left almost deaf by the blast, he could feel that his muzzle was wet and sticky. Blood trickled down the back of his throat, gagging him, and poured from his nose. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he would be able to finish off the weakened alicorn, because surely, the two massive wooden barrels of gunpowder exploding had dealt a mortal blow.

Dim’s own life ebbed and each drop of blood was like sand in an hourglass…

In a cultist compound populated by zebras and the elderly, a location almost one-hundred miles away from Gasconeigh, a Bard lay dying. His lower body was crushed beneath the hard edge of a stone block, his ribs all crooked, ruined, and his entrails formed a glistening inkblot upon the ground where they had squirted out. Open mouthed, he waved one foreleg around while making gasping, silent pleas for help, but there was no help to be had.

From the ruinous rubble, a zebra crawled to the Bard’s side and somehow, the two embraced like lovers after an extended absence. The zebra mare too, was dying, her spine having been severed down near her hips, and her dead hind legs made no movement as they were dragged behind her. The mare’s bloody lips formed scarlet-flecked words that no one heard, for the blast had left many deaf.

Together, they stared into each other’s eyes, perhaps hoping to catch Death’s reflection when she arrived, for she was coming. Both panted and spattered bloody droplets upon one another, but neither seemed to mind. When dying, there was no etiquette, and somehow, the determined zebra mare managed to get one of her forelegs around the Bard’s neck, perhaps to comfort him.

Tearing the veil asunder, the zebra mare known as Lima Bean revealed herself…

The cultist compound was a smoking ruin and in its center, near the smashed, shattered statue of Death, two death-dealers squared off with one another. Parts of the alicorn were burned beyond recognition, but the abomination of animancy somehow still stood, and even worse, seemed to be healing. Charred blistered skin fell away like autumn leaves while new flesh knitted itself into existence.

It was unnerving to say the least and Dim wondered how he would defeat such a creature. As for Dim himself, he suspected that he was dying, or would be soon. Crimson blood gushed from his nose and from the corners of his eyes—he was almost drowning in it. He had one trick left and he hoped that it would be enough. Dim had one weakness left to exploit, and it was a weakness that he knew all too well because it was his own.

Arrogance.

This time, unlike his many encounters in the past, it was Dim who initiated the beam attack, and almost startled by the boldness of it, the alicorn scrambled to react, to respond. Right away, Dim realised his mistake, as the alicorn was far too powerful. Within seconds, Dim was overcome and the dreadful nexus that had formed was coming right for him. This alicorn, false as it might be, was just too powerful and Dim realised that he stood no chance at all.

In panic, he turned off the lights and hoped for the best while bracing for the worst…

As if by some miracle, the alicorn panicked when Dim’s shroud of darkness took hold and his concentration wavered. Dim seized this opportunity, detonated the nexus, and a second massive explosion rocked the compound. The blast lifted Dim into the air when he was struck by its terrific invisible force, which sent him flying.

After soaring for several long yards, Dim hit the ground, bounced, and came to a rolling stop, battered and bruised. Dizzy, disoriented, he found that he could not stand, nor did he have any magic left. It felt as though something in his brain had given way, and now his life came pouring out in a flood. The night air was freezing, cold enough to burn his lungs, for whatever enchantment which held back the weather had expired, or was damaged.

Wobbling about like a newborn foal, the alicorn still stood. One wing was gone, it wasn’t on the ground in a pile of meat, bone, and feathers—it was gone. Ribs were visible, along with parts of its foreleg. One eye poured down its shredded cheek like jelly, and glistened upon jagged, shattered molars. Even worse, the alicorn seemed to be recovering. How it was even standing was a mystery, but for it to recover… seemed impossible.

Dim was done, and he knew it. He had nothing left, his last trick had failed him. The alicorn had recovered enough to approach; though Dim tried and tried, his body had nothing left to give him. He was defenseless, magicless, and immobile. Even worse, he was probably dying, so it really didn’t matter that the alicorn was coming to finish him off. Why, it might even be a mercy.

But then Death arrived on black wings…

Like a descending predatory shadow, Blackbird dove down with a screech and collided with the alicorn abomination. She was every bit as large and powerful as he was, and when the two came together, it was as if an unstoppable force had impacted with an immovable object. Blackbird’s hooves came down upon the alicorn’s backbone with enough momentum to shatter it—had it been a normal spine—but somehow, the alicorn still stood.

The two powerful titans squared off, with Blackbird sitting astride the powerful alicorn abomination. One of her forelegs was wrapped around its neck, gripping him in a headlock, and with her other talons, the left ones, she reached down and got ahold of his surviving wing. Ripping and tearing, yanking and pulling, screaming and hollering, Blackbird’s immense strength was matched against the alicorn’s mighty endurance.

As it turned out, the alicorn was still flesh and bone after all, and accompanied by an awful, indescribable sound, his wing was ripped free from its socket by Blackbird. The alicorn’s horn flashed, sparking—it seemed as though its magic was starting to recover—but Blackbird was quick to react. Throwing the dismembered, twitching wing aside, Blackbird then reached around and her slashing talons tried to grab the alicorn’s horn as he tossed his head around.

The two colossi battled one another, locked in mortal combat. Kicking and bucking, the alicorn could not shake Blackbird from his back, nor could he free his head and neck from her constrictive hold. The glow cast from his horn was starting to intensify and Blackbird, buffeted about by the struggle, couldn’t seem to get her talons around the alicorn’s horn. In a move of petty, dirty violence, she rammed her clawed thumb into the abomination’s remaining eye and blinded him.

“Y--Y-Y-YOU F-F-F-FUCK-K-K-KING B-B-B-B-IT-T-T-TCH!” Squealing in pain, the alicorn’s voice almost sounded… foalish—so much so that it was disturbing. Dim’s detriments still held it seemed, as evidenced by the furious stuttering.

In response, Blackbird raked her claws across his throat several times, shredding flesh, and tearing open his windpipe. This did very little to slow him down—still he kicked, bucked, and thrashed—but it did seem to take the wind out of him. Reaching about, she was able to wrap her talons around his horn and then she began yanking with all of her hippogriff might.

After about a dozen yanks, there was a cringe-inducing snap and the alicorn abomination’s horn was torn out by the root, leaving a gaping, bloody hole in his forehead. His strength seemed to leave him in mere seconds, and his legs buckled. He and Blackbird crashed to the ground, and Blackbird, sensing weakness, rolled him over.

With a violent punching motion, she drove her talons into his ribs, dug around for a bit, got a good grip on the exposed bone, and with a powerful yank, she made an opening in his girth. Tossing the shattered, broken bits of ribs aside, she then made another punching motion and drove her fist through the opening she had made.

His whole body went rigid, going stiff while Blackbird’s talons explored his innards.

With a violent tug, Blackbird pulled something free, some hunk of glistening gristle that convulsed and throbbed in her claws. Scarlet blood spurted everywhere, gushing, a whole ocean of it seemed to be conjured just like magic, and with a flick of her talons, she tossed the alicorn’s heart away. Reaching beneath her wing, she pulled out something that glinted in the firelight. With a swift movement, she lifted it to her mouth, and with her teeth, she plucked free a pin with a round loop.

Blackbird’s quick, deft talons shoved the primed grenade into the bloody, gaping cavity where the alicorn’s heart had once resided. Every second mattered and once the explosive device had vanished into the gory hole, she took hurried flight. Pumping her wings, she went racing away while precious progressing seconds caused the grenade’s lifespan to grow ever-shorter. After much frenzied flapping, Blackbird gained some much needed altitude.

As fate would have it, the alicorn abomination was mortal after all, and death departed from him on black wings. His replacement heart ticked away inside of him and his legs flailed about while his body convulsed. Blackbird, perhaps sensing imminent doom, covered her face with her forelegs before the abomination of animancy detonated with terrific body-pulping force.

In a battle of hippogriff versus pseudo-alicorn, the superiour creature rose into the night, victorious.

Author's Note

Not sure what to say here.

Morning mourning

“Will he live?” Blackbird could see how her words made the wide-eyed, terrified zebra mare squirm and she felt bad for adding to the poor mare’s terror. At the moment, she was a bloody horrifying sight, Blackbird was, and she knew it. Raising her left talons, she pointed at Dim and this time, she kept her voice down when she asked her question. “Will he live?”

“He be a bleeder,” the little zebra replied in a thick patois. “His blood no thicken. A Weaver might be able to give him spider venom—”

“Spider venom?” Blackbird’s eyes narrowed and her head darted down until she was nose to nose with the tiny zebra mare. “To put him out of his misery?”

“No!” The mare let out a pleading whine and took a step backwards. “It very risky. The venom make the blood thicken, but it might also cause blood clots or make his heart stop. He be bleeding under the skin… bleeders don’t bruise like we do, they just keep bleeding and bleeding until the skin falls away from the muscles and fat.”

Hearing this, Blackbird felt something clench around her heart. “He’s dying, right?”

“At the moment, he is, yes. He be down in the shadow of the grave.”

“If he’s dying, it’s not like it matters. Get that spider venom in him. I want him alive!” The roar of Blackbird’s voice sent the zebra mare skittering for cover. For a moment, Blackbird’s eyes lingered on Dim where he lay, and then she glanced over at the bloodied heap, everything that was left of Bombay. “Motte… how bad is it?”

“I’m not a doctor!” Motte’s lip curled back into a snarl and he shook his head. “I’m a combat engineer and a field medic. I can probably sew what’s left of her back together. From what I can tell, it looks much worse than it really is. Her ear is gone, along with her eye, and part of her scalp. I think I can stretch everything out enough to sew it all together and cover up her skull. As for the rest of her… flesh wounds?”

“Get to stitching,” Blackbird commanded. “Now.” The authority in her voice made Motte’s ears pin back in submission. “What about Bailey?”

In response, Motte shrugged. “She’s a tough gal. Got her head bonked, but I’m pretty confident that she’ll come around. I told her to keep her damn fool head down, but she didn’t listen!”

“Munro, you’re Motte’s assistant. Scrub up and make yourself useful!”

Saying nothing, the minotaur calf scrambled to do Blackbird’s bidding.

“Others need me.” Shuddering, she tried not to think about the Bard. “My strength is needed. Keep me informed.”

Every muscle ached and burned with advanced fatigue, which drove away the freezing chill of the night. When Blackbird sat down, her joints screamed at her, begging and pleading with her to stop. How long had she been lifting rocks and timbers? How long had she been sorting through crumbled buildings and rubble, looking for survivors?

Looking eastward, she had her answer. On the horizon was the rosy pink of dawn. Bodies were everywhere, stacked in piles between the ruined remains of buildings. Almost sobbing, Blackbird wanted to keep helping, but her body protested and her bloodied, battered talons kept seizing up. The rough edges of stone, the splintered ends of wood, all of it had been merciless.

There was nothing left to give. She had endured multiple explosions, the abuse of which had left her body in a sorry state, and then she had spent the whole of the night picking through rubble. Inside of her skull was a dull, thudding ache that threatened to push her eyeballs out of their sockets.

Hearing the slosh of water, Blackbird’s head turned left and she saw a zebra colt approaching, carrying a bucket in his teeth. He wasn’t quite tall enough to be carrying a bucket; because of this, he had to strain and stumble. She saw his eyes—haunted—and wondered if he was scared of her.

When he put the bucket down, water sloshed over the side and splashed him. “Thirsty?”

Blackbird reached out to pick up the bucket, but her muscles rebelled and her talons seized up into a convulsing, quivering fist. Some skin had been peeled away from her knuckles and she saw that she was in a sorry state. In need of water, she fell over, dunked her face into the bucket, and drank as much as she dared.

Weaver Violet, much like Indigo, was covered in ritual scars. She was an old mare suffering the ravages of age, but she was still somehow spry enough to move around, not to mention tough enough to endure the whole of the awful night. Blackbird watched the curious old mare, who fretted over Dim’s sweaty, delirious body.

“He off on Heebie Jeebie bidness,” Weaver Violet said to Blackbird in a patois so thick it was almost incomprehensible. “Da Dreaming One has him now. He off in Her realm… nchi ya ndoto. He be suckling at Her teats and She be given him life. Dem Heebie Jeebies look after dey own. If he live, or if he die, it be by Her will.”

Blackbird found that she was not comforted by this, not at all, and she stared at the old mare. “Can nothing else be done?”

“I know nuddin ‘bout healing no Heebie Jeebie. He be kivuli… if he was a pony, I could do more.” The old mare’s face collapsed into a mass of wrinkles and she squinted down at Dim with one rheumy eye. “Aunt Nancy says that mebbe you make deal with the Hearth Keeper and mebbe he live. Such a cost, dat. No godling give for free. Always a cost with dem.” The old mare smiled, revealing her toothless gums, and she nodded. “I go now. Many in need of a Weaver. Flesh and bone. Not kivuli.” Stepping away from Dim, she shivered.

Exhausted, Blackbird nodded, but had nothing to say.

Dim’s hat was being frustrating and Blackbird had no patience for recalcitrant magical items. Growling, elbow deep, she fished around inside of it with her talons, just as she had earlier when trying to find the alicorn’s throbbing heart. Tongue out, she could feel all manner of items brushing up against her talons, but not the one item she wanted.

Exhausted beyond comprehension, she pushed her claws in deeper, and her foreleg was longer than the hat was tall. She didn’t understand this thing, and she didn’t want to, either. Most of the time, when Dim was awake and aware, the hat cooperated. Blackbird came to a realisation and she gave the hat a frustrated shake.

“I am trying to save Dim, you idiot! Open up or he’s dead! I need that spear!”

A jet-black obsidian spear tip poked up out of the voluminous space within the hat and Blackbird made a grab for it before Dim’s hat could change its mind. Resting upon Dim’s brow, the hat had no doubt absorbed much of Dim’s personality, which meant that it was a perverse, contrary asshole of epic, grandiose proportions. As if it had read her mind, its battered, limp tip brushed across her belly as she yanked the spear free from the hat’s magical confines.

She fumbled her grip on the spear and it went clattering to the floor, along with Dim’s hat. Unable to contain her frustration, she batted Dim’s hat away with her talons, snatched up the spear, and held it up before her face. Scowling, she gave it a shake, as if she wanted to wake up the occupant inside, and then she gave voice to her desires.

“Chantico! Things have gone right to Tartarus, Chantico!”

Nothing happened. Glancing once at Dim, Blackbird whimpered in frustration, thumped the butt of the spear upon the floor, and tried again. “Damn you, what use are gods when they don’t answer? If you don’t come out of there right now, I’m coming in there somehow and I’m gonna give you a skullfucking with your own damn spear!”

This—this seemed to get Chantico’s attention, because the spear vibrated in Blackbird’s talons.

Chantico manifested with a yawn, looking annoyed at first, and then quite alarmed. Glancing around, she seemed quite surprised by the situation, and then her gentle, wise eyes focused on Blackbird while the rest of her body coalesced into semi-solidity. Before Blackbird could say anything, Chantico extended one paw-finger, booped the frantic hippogriff right on her nose, and then turned away to examine Dim.

A few seconds after the disorienting boop, Blackbird recovered herself. “I need Dim better. What’s your price, paprika-eater?”

“We’ve already made a bargain,” Chantico said to Blackbird whilst she caressed Dim’s cheek with her paw. “You came to me while Dim slumbered, unaware. As I recall, you offered to do good for the world, to do what was necessary, if I led you to your mother once all of this was over.”

“I need a new deal.” Blackbird didn’t like the sound of her voice, how weak, tired, and worn out she sounded. She wasn’t in a good spot to bargain, and she knew it.

“You were supposed to protect my champion—”

“And I did my best!” Blackbird’s whole body trembled with frustration, fear, and exhaustion. Her mouth had gone dry, blood pounded in her ears, and her feminine places had gone so dry that they ached. “Look, I recall the terms of our deal, but that was before I had to fight a fake alicorn. I feel that I’ve gone above and beyond our original terms.”

“You killed an alicorn?” Chantico whirled around and now, her eyes glowed with dangerous pink fire.

“One of the fake ones. I beat his ass into the dirt, ripped his heart out of his chest, and stuffed in a grenade. My only grenade. I’m a bit sore about it—”

“You killed one of those soul-spliced abominations?”

Blackbird felt her face grabbed by Chantico’s paws, which were solid and quite real. The pressure was almost too much to bear and the immense bulk of her body was hefted around as if she was but a tiny foal. Chantico was even stronger than the pseudo alicorn had been and Blackbird felt her bladder clench in terror. Had she wet herself? She couldn’t tell—at the moment, Chantico’s burning stare was boring a hole into Blackbird’s soul.

“The few that are left will have grown stronger,” Chantico said, her breath a roaring fire that was far too hot upon Blackbird’s face. “There’s not many left now. Celestia told me that when they were many, they were relatively weak, but with each death, they grew stronger. For you to have destroyed one…” The cat-dog creature’s words trailed off into nothingness.

“I had help,” Blackbird whispered, terrified right now in a way that she had never been before in her life.

“I owe you a debt for saving my devoted champion.” Chantico let go and Blackbird dropped down into a heap on the floor, panting in abstract terror. “Dim has retreated into the dream realm… the new one. His divinity has returned to the source and he is with the Essence of Night. Dim needs a reminder of why he lives, because the pain of life is too much for him right now.”

“Can you get me there?” Blackbird asked, getting right to the point while looking up at the cat-dog entity that loomed large over her.

“Yes, but you might not be able to get back,” Chantico replied while she looked down at the hippogriff on the floor before her.

“I need Dim… I was just starting to make progress—I was just starting to sort him out and do all of the things I could imagine my father, Stinkberry, telling me to do. I think Dim was starting to come around. What do I gotta do to reach him?”

Chantico raised one of her immense paws and she made a furtive glance at it for a second before restoring eye-contact with Blackbird. For the briefest moment, Chantico’s face appeared to be apologetic, but then it hardened, becoming fierce and cold. Lightning fast—literal godspeed—her arm swung out wide and then came arcing down like a bolt from the heavens. Her paw collided with terrific, thunderclap force upon Blackbird’s cheek.

Alas, poor Blackbird, never in her life had she ever felt this much pain. Like booming thunder, the pain reverberated right into Blackbird’s soul, and then commited time-travel. Clear as day, she could remember the pain always there with her as a constant companion, going all the way back to when she was a teeny, tiny little nipper made of fluff, feathers, fuzz, and fangs. She suffered a dreadful precognition of sorts when she realised that the agony would be with her in her future memories as well.

When Blackbird’s head cleared up a little bit and her vision almost returned to normal, she saw a most curious sight: her own body on the floor in a limp heap. Chantico turned to look at her, and Blackbird realised with no small sense of dread that she wasn’t in her body at the moment. She had just been bitch-smacked into an alternate state of existence, one outside of her body.

“You coulda warned me!” she wailed at the cat-dog creature that had just done this—whatever this was—to her.

“Do you really think a warning would have been sufficient?” One of Chantico’s eyebrows lifted and her head cocked off to one side.

“That really fucking hurt!” Reaching up, Blackbird rubbed her cheek, which was still smarting, and her non-corporeal eyes were watering from some kind of unknowable existential agony that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “Am I dead?”

“I will keep your body alive while your soul goes off on a journey. Prepare yourself. The dream realm might reject you. You do not belong there. It is a place of will. Think of Dim. Focus on him, and do not let your fears get the best of you. With luck, the Essence of Night will sense an intruder and you will be brought before her.” Chantico glanced down at her paw once more, and then looked at Blackbird.

“Wait!” Blackbird cried. “Are you about to smack me again?”

Chantico’s paw moved faster than mortal eyes could follow…

Author's Note

Next chapter: Blackbird bravely goes to a place where she does not belong.

Where hippogriffs fear to tread

The city was at once both familiar and strange to Blackbird. It was a city, and it was so much like a city that it was indistinguishable from other cities she had seen and visited. This was home—but when had it become home? She couldn’t quite remember and trying to recall caused her to feel some kind of weird panic. Perhaps it was better not to remember… so much had happened… so much pain and loss. There had been a war—a war that it seemed that most of the known world had been involved in—and those memories were far too unpleasant to recall.

Yes, she was better off not remembering the war; she hadn’t been quite right since the war and maybe she was having one of her spells. Confused, Blackbird stared at the tower that she and Dim called home. Dim had spells too, they both did, and this was the cost of war. Sometimes, they got out of sorts and became more than a little confused—like now. Having witnessed the horrors of war up close and personal had left scars on her mind.

For some reason, she had stepped out, but she couldn’t remember why. Glancing around, she watched as the many ponies around her hustled and bustled to and fro. It had been a mistake to step out—a dreadful mistake—and she sought to correct that. She needed Dim and he needed her; together, they just sort of muddled through life somehow. After having experienced so much, they understood one another—they understood one another’s pain.

Still confused and out of sorts, Blackbird made her way along the narrow path leading to the front door. The handle that opened the door was brass and it was worn. Of course it was worn; how many times had talons pulled down upon it? More than she could remember—though she was having troubles remembering specifics. She was most certainly having one of her spells.

When her talons touched the cool brass, Blackbird couldn’t help but feel portentous apprehension…

Blackbird was hardly through the door when Dim began his approach. She was happy to see him, and from the looks of things, Dim was happy to see her as well. Something about the way he smiled—wait, there was something about the way he smiled. It wasn’t shiver-inducing, nor did it cause involuntary shuddering. Dim struggled to smile and when he did, the results were less than smilerific. Something didn’t seem right and as Blackbird shut the door behind her, her anxious apprehension grew.

“You’re back,” Dim said to Blackbird. “Did you get eggs from the market?”

Eggs? Market? Blackbird shook her head and tried to ward off her growing confusion. “No… I think I had one of my spells, Dim. I’m not sure what’s wrong.”

“That happens.” Dim’s smile never faltered and his mismatched eyes gleamed with fervent, manic glee. “That’s why I never leave home anymore. The pain of life just became too much. The pain of living… hey, maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Maybe?” Blackbird found herself shrugging. Before she could say anything else, Dim was upon her, his muzzle pressed tight against hers, and she could feel his hot breath against her lips. Startled, she struggled to understand what was going on—this just felt too weird and abnormal. Something felt off, as nothing about this felt familiar.

Frightened into a reaction, Blackbird reflexively opened her mouth to say something, to tell Dim to stop, but his tongue invaded her mouth. This felt like an entirely new sensation, something not entirely unpleasant, but certainly unexpected. She had to be having one of her spells, because surely she and Dim had done this before. They had been together since… since the war ended. Parts of her warmed and she became aware of a sticky humidity in the snug cleft between her hind legs. Her teats—all four of them—went diamond hard.

With a sultry feline purr, Blackbird flopped over and pulled Dim down to the floor with her. He kissed her again, and again, and then yet again, with each smooch deadening her senses. The smell of cloves filled Blackbird’s nostrils and Dim’s excited wheezes made her ears prick. When Dim clambered up onto her belly, she felt his growing hardness flop against the base of her ribs. She was longer than he in body and while his tongue made little circles against the roof of her mouth, his hips made reflexive humps against her breastbone.

Terror overcame Blackbird, an unknowable, unfathomable terror, and everything about this felt wrong. Dim’s cock was growing ever-harder and she could feel his fuzzy scrotum sliding against her silken pelt. Fright and arousal battled one another and the sensation of Dim’s tongue slithering around inside of her mouth overwhelmed her senses.

Reaching up, Blackbird seized Dim by the cheeks and with a gentle effort, she lifted his muzzle away from her own. A little ribbon of slobber stretched between the two of them, that is until it reached its breaking point, and then it became just so much drool on their chins. As much as she wanted this to continue, she also wanted this to stop—she needed time to regain her senses, because all of this felt wrong. It felt like the first time, and it was terrifying.

“Dim, no—”

“If you can’t make me scrambled eggs, I thought maybe I’d fertilise yours.”

“No, Dim… something feels wrong.”

“Never tell me no, Blackbird.”

“Dim?”

A numbing paralysis overcame Blackbird’s body and she found that she could not move. Dim, still straddling her, was sliding down her stomach now, and there was an unwanted electric thrill when she felt his scrotum dragging over her too-taut teats. Demanding that her strength do something, Blackbird willed her body into action, but nothing happened.

“I always take what is mine, Blackbird. Make no mistake, you are mine.”

Dim was between her hind legs now, and she could feel him sliding his length against her quivering, clenching cleft. At any second now, he was going to thrust his way in—and then what? This hadn’t happened before, she was sure of it, and everything about this felt wrong somehow. Why was he doing this? Dim was only a monster to those who had done him wrong. Had she done him wrong somehow? She had failed to get to the market to get his eggs, but surely he wouldn’t do this because of that.

When she felt his wide, flared tip press hard against her throbbing, knob of hardened flesh, Blackbird let out a wordless squeal of terror and somehow, her left foreleg was released from whatever magic had bound it. Her lungs filled with stinging, burning air and just as Dim was about to thrust himself into her, Blackbird found her voice while pointing one claw in Dim’s direction.

She scolded him—“BAD PONY! BAD!”

As if struck by some invisible, terrific force, Dim flew backwards, ragdolling, and struck the door with a thump. A bloody smear was left behind by the impact and it could be seen after he bounced from the wood and fell to the floor. Movement returned to her body and in a frantic panic, Blackbird scrambled away from the mess she had made of Dim, who lay moaning on the floor.

“You dumb fucking CUNT!” Dim’s legs flailed about as a puddle of blood spread ever-wider around him on the floor. “You stupid fucking WHORE!”

“You’re not Dim!” Blackbird screamed while still making a mad scramble to get away. “I don’t know who or what you are, but you can’t be Dim! Not the Dim I know! Impostor!”

“I am going to fucking kill YOU with my dick!” Dim rose, his legs wobbling, and his horn had a fearsome glow about it.

“YOU’RE NOT DIM!” She shrieked while squeezing her eyes shut. “DIM IS MANY THINGS, BUT HE’S NOT THIS! HE’S NOT! I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT! I DON’T WANT TO BELIEVE IT! NO!”

“Blackbird?”

On the verge of shitting herself, Blackbird’s eyes flew open at the sound of her father’s voice. Was she having a dream? Her whole body was soaked with sweat and every muscle felt as though it had electric current coursing through it. Jerking her head round, she tried to make sense of her surroundings so that she might dispel her disorientation.

She was home.

Had she left?

Blinking, she tried to make sense of her father, who was sitting in his threadbare chair. Sweat poured down into her ear canals, which made her want to rub them, but for some reason, she didn’t dare move. Nothing felt right. Just seeing her father filled her with relief, but also terror. He was somehow both familiar and strange.

“Having a bad spell, Blackie?” Stinkberry’s wise eyes seemed sad.

“Bad spell?” Blackbird fumbled to say the words, because for some reason, hearing her father’s voice broke her heart. Just seeing him filled her with grief, but also relief, and she wanted to start bawling.

“The Great War, Blackbird. It left you with bad spells. Terrors. This one must’ve been an awful rotten one.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, “a bad one.” After a moment, she recovered enough to try and make sense of everything. “Where’s Dim?”

Stinkberry sighed, a forlorn and mournful sound. His eyes glanced to the left and Blackbird too, also turned to look in that direction. Upon the fireplace mantel was a collection of photographs in wooden frames—friends, friends and fellow soldiers in the Great War. She saw Dim’s face staring back at her from one picture, and then her eyes lept from frame to frame. In the largest frame, she saw Dim laid out in his coffin, with a bouquet of flowers tucked between his forelegs.

“No… no… no… Daddy… no… the Great War… how did he die?”

“It wasn’t the Great War that killed him, Blackie… don’t you remember?” Stinkberry’s face wizened with concern.

“No, Daddy… I don’t… I don’t remember…”

“Poor thing… this must be a bad spell.” Stinkberry let out a sigh and then slumped over in his chair. “The pain of living grew too much. Not long after you brought him home, Dim killed himself. He couldn’t bear to keep going. Sometimes, Blackie, the pain of life just becomes a bit too much, and some of us ain’t strong enough to bear it.”

“No…” Blackbird shook her head, because this couldn’t be true. “No… I gave him a reason to keep going. I gave him a reason to get better. I devoted my life to him… my whole existence, Daddy… like you did for mother. Mother… Mom… Mum-Mum…” Her words trailed off into a lingering exhale while she shook her head in denial.

“It wasn’t enough, Blackie. Sometimes, no matter what, it just isn’t enough. Sometimes, the pain of living just grows too great. Living means loss, Blackie. Dim knew only loss. It pained him greatly. So much death, Blackie.”

Blackbird closed her eyes. “Death.” She thought about the fluttering of black wings.

“The Great War caused so much death, Blackie. There’s not a day that goes by that I ain’t grateful that you came home. The whole of the world went to war… entire nations gathered and for a time, it seemed as though the world might end. But that’s over now, and you’re home. I’m just so glad that you’re home. Don’t ever leave home again, Blackie. There’s no good reason to ever leave home again. Everything you could ever want is here.”

A foul, reeking, mouth-wateringly awful stench, the fetor of stinkberries burned Blackbird’s eyes and the dreadful nostril-seeking miasma crept out of the kitchen. She could hear her mother in there and her ears pricked so that she might listen better. Yes, everything she could ever want was here, here at home. Her mother, her father… everything except for Dim, but he was gone. Opening her eyes, she turned to look at the framed photos on the mantel.

The pain of living.

Blinking, Blackbird tried to remember living—she tried to recall coming home with Dim. It felt good to be home again. Home… home with her mother and father. If she had come home, she must have married. If she had married, she must have had a wedding night, a honeymoon. Straining, she tried to dredge up these memories, for surely they were happy memories, even if bittersweet. There had to be something.

But there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Try as she might, she couldn’t remember anything, and she certainly couldn’t remember the Great War. She recalled a time when she knew it was coming—she could even recollect preparing for it. Eerie… Eerie and all of her wisdom, she had known the war was coming. Perhaps Eerie could sort this out, but that would mean leaving home to find Eerie.

It was a relief when Blackbird realised that she had to go. She had to leave. Eerie would help her to remember. Wise, wonderful Eerie could be trusted. She was fragile, frail, just like Dim. Yes, Blackbird knew that she had to leave home so that she might go to Istanbull and find Eerie. As awful as it would be to leave, she knew it had to be done.

“I gotta go,” Blackbird told her father.

A stern expression crept over Stinkberry’s face and after a few terse seconds, he shook his head from side to side. “No, I don’t think so. You can’t leave, Blackie. These spells of yours… who knows what might happen. It’s not safe.”

The sound of her father’s voice made the blood in Blackbird’s veins turn to ice water. A painful constriction tightened around her heart and she knew too well the consequences of disobeying her father. Stinkberry knew best; a meek, humble, well-behaved Blackbird was a Blackbird that was tolerated and accepted by the community. If she resisted, he might scold her—or worse.

Stinkberry’s scolds were pretty much the worst thing in the world, and perhaps the only thing that could stop a hippogriff dead in their tracks. It worked on her mother, and it worked on Blackbird too. Even the fear of the scold was enough to make her reconsider. If Stinkberry raised his hoof… or worse, if he raised his hoof and his voice, she was done for. Finished. Such a tiny little pony, so helpless looking, but he could flatten a hippogriff with a word.

Terror sank its claws into Blackbird’s heart and a cold, chilly sweat trickled down her ribs. The sofa creaked beneath her bulk—they just didn’t make furniture fit for hippogriffs—and she wondered if she had the courage to defy her father. Maybe if she closed her eyes for a while, she might snap out of this spell. Maybe she would remember on her own, if only she was patient and waited.

Grief and loss were difficult concepts—sometimes incomprehensible. Once more, Blackbird turned to look at Dim’s photos on the mantel, and she longed to see him. To hold him again, to smell him, to have the feel of him sleeping beside her. Yes, she could remember him sleeping beside her, and she recollected the warm feeling of trust that came with sleeping with somepony.

Then, just beside the picture of Dim resting in his coffin, she saw a tiny spider. Now spiders were a common sight in the farmhouse, and when Blackbird had been a little nipper, she had sometimes eaten the spiders she had found—it was a good way to gross out boys. This spider however, was mighty peculiar, because it was waving at her with one foreleg while pointing at one of Dim’s photos with another.

How odd… one of Dim’s photos was moving. Why, she could quite clearly see him shaking his head at her, and he was saying something—his lips were moving. Waving his legs about, the spider danced a little jig on the mantel and then scurried out of sight when Stinkberry turned his head to see what Blackbird had been staring at. Dim’s photo went still and so did Blackbird’s heart.

What had Dim been saying?

Had she gone mad?

Was this one of her turns?

Tearing her gaze away from Dim’s pictures, she glanced over at her father, only to see dry bones sitting in his threadbare chair. Bones. Grief. Loss. The pain of living. The pain of living. Stinkberry was dead and Starling… Starling was gone. She had succumbed to the pain of living and had tumbled back into the bottle. Starling had taken her guns and gone on a killing spree. Blackbird’s mother could not cope with the pain of life, nor the agony of loss.

“I’m sorry, Daddy… as much as I’d love to stay with you, the living need me more. I’m strong enough to face the pain of living… but I don’t think Dim is.” Blackbird had a stunning moment of total recall and a torrent of memories flooded into her grey matter, overwhelming all of her senses. “I’ve faced the pain of disappointment… I’ve seen Dim in a way that broke my heart… and that’s really what I am afraid of, I think. Having my heart broken. But Dim knows the pain of a broken heart as well. The pain of betrayal? Dim has been betrayed. That’s why I can’t give up on him, Daddy.”

A huge lump grew in Blackbird’s throat and it could not be swallowed.

“And now it seems, I am facing some other fear. Daddy, I love you, but I can’t stay. You’re dead. I hate to admit it, but your memory haunts me. I promise that I’ll be a good little Blackbird, at least, as good as I can be… but I have to go to war. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and collect my shadow. We’re a pair, he and I. Yes… I must go embrace my shadow, and we must become as one.”

“Must you leave?” Stinkberry’s voice could be heard coming from the dry bones and his skull made a sad nod. “With you here, I have life again.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Blackbird tasted bile in the back of her throat. “This isn’t life…”

Author's Note

Next chapter: the pain of living.

Blackbird finds that she is one of the pains of living

Tears flowed from a pair of predestined eyes whilst Blackbird wept herself into being. Two eyes—blazing like glittering, gathering twin nebulae—shed tears that twinkled like embryonic stars emerging from their stellar nursery. Each new star brought light into the void; slowly, perhaps spanning eons, a newborn constellation took shape while other, older stars and constellations bore witness to this solemn event.

Blackbird was in a form she was incapable of comprehending, a state of existence that she was ill-prepared to cope with. Here there was only will and she had never been one for willpower. With no body, with no physical distractions, there was only a perfect mental state of total, unwavering awareness, which was terrifying. By what means did she see without eyes? What manner of existence could be defined with a body made of stars?

What was a constellation but something that you imagined that you saw in the stars?

Two constellations moved among the stars to intercept her but Blackbird lacked the means to respond, to react. They moved with terrifying finality, two cogs sprung free from some great celestial engine. The larger one was comprised of bright red, orange, and yellow stars, while the smaller had stars that ranged from indigo, blue, and white. Blackbird knew them, she had followed them in her travels, they were the Sisters Equus Alicornae; the larger one had a horn that pointed north, always north, while the horn of the smaller one always pointed due south.

But not now; no, those horns were pointed at her and Blackbird was terrified beyond understanding. She was an intruder here and she knew that she didn’t belong. Through happenstance, she had stumbled beyond the mortal realms and now she was in a gallery comprised of incomprehensible celestial beings—with Dim somewhere among their number. Blackbird understood that now; lives—any lives, mortal or immortal—were like stars, and stars burnt out.

Some of the other constellations were now awake and watching as the Sisters moved to engage the intruder. Blackbird could feel eyes upon her; no, more than eyes, she could feel awareness thrust upon her, and the sensation stripped her bare. She had no means to hide here in this place. An unknowable dread permeated her very being when the vague darkness beyond the stars also took notice of her. There was good here, but also evil. For the first time in her life, Blackbird was truly awake and aware to this knowledge. It went beyond all mortal understanding, which caused her mind to race with an endless number of new insights and epiphanies.

Even things that were not creatures—beings as she understood them—held awareness of her, and she could see a constellation made of scales; she knew with absolute certainty that it was judging her. How did scales hold sapience? Blackbird’s state of consciousness shrivelled, recoiling, rejecting this reality that went beyond her limited mortal comprehension.

Did those watching the stars below watch the drama unfolding in the heavens above them?

The approaching Sisters spoke in one voice.

Who are you that come to this place where the divine come to rest? By what right do you intrude upon the Forge of Fate? Speak, little, insignificant one, and We might still be merciful.

How did one speak when one had no body? No means to generate a voice? The stars of Blackbird’s constellation seemed to shudder while she struggled to comprehend the workings of this existence. Without knowing how she did so, somehow, she spoke: “I have come looking for Dim. Who are you, so that I might address you properly?”

We are the Star Maiden. We ask you, why have you come looking for Dim?

“Well, Star Maiden,” Blackbird began, “Dim is my friend and I suppose if I broke it down into the most simple of terms, I just can’t let go of him.”

Did you just not let go of what your heart held fondest?

Blackbird raised her right talons, extended her index talon-finger, and was about to respond, when the words died off in her nonexistent throat. Again she tried—and still holding up one talon-finger made of stars—again she failed. Celestial entities were tricky creatures, Blackbird realised. She couldn’t bluff them, intimidation wouldn’t work, and for once, Blackbird wished that she really was a sphinx so that she could be equally cryptic.

Dim has withdrawn himself and recalled his essence. He is a Celestial. Rather than be defeated and possibly consumed, he has conceded. His divinity has been relinquished and now resides in his sanctum.

“So Dim just quit? He gave up?” Blackbird shook her nonexistent head from side to side. “No… I need to see him.”

The very meaning of sanctum means a private place where others are excluded. He is beyond your reach.

“So what happens to him now?” Blackbird demanded while the stars that comprised her body flared with anger.

Freed from his corporeal form, no longer held back by physicality, he is now free to become a guiding force in the realm of dreams. With his body cast aside, he will go on to greater things.

“The pain of living was too much?” Blackbird’s extended talon-finger curled down and joined the rest of her digits in a tight, clenched fist made of coalescing gases, clouds of dust, and tiny stars.

Yes.

“Whatta load of shit!” Blackbird knew that she had lost her temper, but she didn’t care. “Where is he? Where is that whiny little asshole bastard? I need to talk some sense into him!”

You are one of the pains of living, no doubt.

“You’re damn right I am!” Though she lacked a body, Blackbird seethed and the stars that shone where her heart might have been located blazed with ever-increasing brightness. On the verge of a full-body supernovae, Blackbird felt a rage that she had never before imagined, an all consuming wrath that existed only in beings that didn’t have a body, for a living form could never contain such fury.

His body might still live, for a time. Bodies are stubborn like that. For whatever reason, bodies like to cling to life, painful though it might be.

Confused, Blackbird tried to make sense of the words said to her.

You lack comprehension, tiny, insignificant mortal, which is why you should not intrude where you do not belong. Only Dim’s divinity has gone. That is separate from the weak force that animates the fleshy construct of his body. The part that you want, the part that you desire, it still persists and will for a time. Let not your fleshy blood pump be troubled.

“I want all of him!” Blackbird’s voice thundered through the celestial void and even more constellations awoke, their stars flickering and twinkling. “Where is he? Where do I find him? Where do I go to talk some sense into him?”

A massive dragon lifted his head from his hoard of golden stars, yawned once, and then belched out a cloud of swirling, glowing cosmic gas. Somehow having a sleepy expression, he faced Blackbird, raised his nine-clawed hand, and made a gesture at her.

Greed and ambition. Admirable qualities. Always take what is yours… by force, if necessary. What you seek is hidden here, in plain sight.

Really, Draco. You’re going to help this annoyance?

Since when does a talking hammer tell me what to do? Shut up, Mjölnir.

You just wait until my champion, Mjölna awakens to her potential!

Like a maddened astronomer, Blackbird began to search the stars, trying to find something familiar. Wings spanning entire galaxies spread from her sides and she was painfully aware of so many awarenesses focused upon her. The constellations continued their banter among one another, but she tuned out the unwanted distraction. Flying in loops and circles, she looked everywhere.

One side of the Forge of Fate was filled with the brightest stars and the most dazzling constellations, such as the Sisters Equus Alicornae. Blackbird knew that Dim would not be among these stars, he couldn’t be. If he was, she was certain that she would hear his ceaseless whinging about the light being too bright even now. Dim would never be content in such stellar space.

Turning about, she saw Capricornus, the Horned Goat. His stars were dull, as if they were distant, and darkness gathered around him. His light seemed sickly and ruinous. To Capricornus’ left, there was Lynx’s Gaze, also known as Catrina’s Eye, a cluster of half-dead stars that almost appeared to be a slitted cat’s eye if one squinted at it just so.

No, Dim would most certainly not be among these stars either. If by some chance he was among their number, there would be signs of conflict and violence. Not just any violence either, but the sort of violence that only Dim was capable of. No, Dim, though dark, and also a Dark, would not count himself among this number of stars.

So where would he be?

Following a hunch, Blackbird’s sharp eyes sought out the scales, which stood in the middle of the two sides, the brilliant and the fading. Somewhere between the blazing and the dying. There, tucked between the opposing sides, she found what she was looking for, a cluster of constellations including a set of scales.

A lone purple-pink star surrounded by a magenta nebula flashed to get her attention.

Hey! Hey you! I think you’re looking for Libra, right? Balance in all things? He’ll ignore you until you say his name.

The nearby scales flashed in annoyance.

Oh bother. The upstart has outed me. So annoying, always trying to make friends with everyone.

Well, I am the Light of Friendship. Blackbird, your friend lies in Libra’s realm. You should talk to him. Maybe try to make friends.

Willing herself forward, Blackbird flew through the celestial space and approached the scales, her eyes searching for signs of Dim. As Libra grew larger, smaller constellations around him gained focus. She saw a sword, a plow, a hunter’s bow, and a great many things that were neither good nor evil, but simply were. Her sharp eyes even found the Blacksmith’s Sconce, a constellation that her father, Stinkberry, had pointed out. Stinkberry claimed that the ingenuity and industriousness of earth ponies came from the Blacksmith’s Sconce, which was also called the Forge Light.

“Libra, where is Dim?” Blackbird asked, all too aware that she was being watched and studied by all.

Preserving the balance, as is right and proper.

“Okay, let me make this clear, you rigged system of measurement. You’re gonna tell me where Dim is, or I’m gonna knock those scales of yours right off balance. Got me?”

Like Dim, you are a creature of upsets. But you do not belong here, with us. You are no force of equilibrium, no countermeasure capable of correction to restore balance. Go be with the Sisters.

“The Sisters don’t have Dim, you off-balanced hunk of junk.” Blackbird held her talons out in front of herself, though she wasn’t sure what she could do to follow through with her threats. Eyes darting about, Blackbird sought some solution, some means to tip the balance of the scales in her favour.

Just as she was about to run her mouth some more, she noticed something behind the scales. Swooping through Libra, she honed in on a patch of darkness. A most curious constellation was ahead, a candle with a swirling black flame—a vortex of some sort. As she drew nearer, a cacophony of voices broke out, but she ignored them, but in doing so, failed to take notice of their warning.

The candle grew larger, or maybe she grew smaller, it was difficult to tell. Not much made sense. This constellation was a lot like Dim’s cutie mark, which was a candle with a black flame in a silver candle holder. Now, the candle was a massive, vision-filling thing, and the swirling vortex seemed to devour the light of the burning stars below.

Something about the darkness was terrifying, but also fascinating. Blackbird could feel a tug now, a pull, an attraction. Looking down, she could see stardust being pulled from her constellation body and the streams of glittery silver formed spirals as they were sucked into the black patch of nothingness.

From the devouring maw, a formless, shapeless mass emerged, the suggestion of something, but what remained unknown. It was the absence of everything and was the same colour that could be seen when one closed their eyes. Blackbird found herself mesmerised by it and she hovered near the black flame of Dim’s candle like a moth too curious for its own good.

Wait...

The voice was cold, vacuous thunder that both alarmed Blackbird and filled her with odd reassurance. Faceless, without form or definition, it was devouring her essence little by little, sucking away her stardust. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, because she was a thing that did not belong here in this place, and things that should not be had to be disposed of. How did she know this? Blackbird had no idea, but the strange knowledge filled her with peace.

I would speak with you.

“Who are you?” Blackbird asked while she stared into the unfathomable, unknowable rift in reality.

I am the Void, and I too, have business with Dim. I wish to rouse him from his lethargy, his malaise, so that he might do something for me.

“What is it that you want from Dim?” Blackbird looked down at the streams of stardust being siphoned from her constellation body, but for whatever reason, felt no sense of concern or alarm. “Tell me plainly, if you want my help.”

What many who encounter him seek to have… death. Long, long ago, I was created to audit reality. I was to correct the things that should not be. And so I have corrected many things that should not be. Things like Dim himself—he is a thing that should not be, an oversight of fate, a contingency no longer needed. He will be repurposed, not devoured, but there are other things that should not be. Like so many other things, I have suffered from entropy. I have grown tired. Rouse Dim from his inactive state, so that I might die… so that I might achieve my own end.

Extending her talons, Blackbird pointed in the direction of the constellation of Capricornus, the Horned Goat. “You mean like Grogar?”

Yes! That is something that should not be! Grogar unnaturally extends things beyond their natural end. This upsets the balance. I am aware of how I must appear, but I am not a force for evil. Nor am I a means of righteousness. I exist only to consume, and I have grown satiated.

“What will this do to Dim?” Blackbird leaned forward, closer to the swirling vortex, and could feel a powerful attraction. “Will this hurt him in any way? Do him harm?”

Does Dim not want power?

“The sort of power that might win a war?”

Oh, that and so much more. My power wanes, but it is still power unimaginable. Against unnatural things, abominations, eldritch horrors, things that offend reality, monstrous forms that are an anathema to Harmony, I am a force to be reckoned with. Through me, the dead will know rest.

Blackbird turned her head and glanced in the direction of the constellation of Capricornus, keen of his awareness. While Blackbird was a chaotic creature, she knew and accepted this, she was also a good creature. Could Dim be trusted with the powers of the Void? She had no idea what they were, but the cosmic, celestial essence of Grogar didn’t seem pleased with this development.

“Give me your power as well,” Blackbird said to the Void, “so that Dim and I might be in balance. I want the power to slay the undead and all those other things you mentioned. But I want the means to be Dim’s equal, just in case all this power goes to his head.”

No!

The one voice of the Sisters Equus Alicornae thundered through the celestial expanse and everything echoed with their protest. It was both terrifying and reassuring, for reasons Blackbird could not comprehend. Of course, the Sisters were agents of some greater force that Blackbird did not understand, so it was only natural for them to protest.

Absolutely not!

Grogar’s voice overlapped the echoes of the Sisters and formed a dreadful cacophony, a disturbing dissonance that filled the emptiness with distressing conflict. Of course he wouldn’t want this either, which made it seem all the more right. Now, more than ever, Blackbird knew that she had done the right thing.

Let it be done. This one is brave and plucky enough to stand in contention with the major powers. She ascended to this place through her own sheer force of will, and reanimated the constellation of the long dead hunter. Give her power to go with her self-ignited divinity. If only all mortals were so driven.

Libra’s voice brought harmony to the discordant echoes and the stillness of the celestial realm was restored. Blackbird now had a million questions, maybe as many questions as there were stars, but now was not the time nor the place to ask them. She could feel the scales behind her silently judging her even now, and the force of his awareness permeated through every star of her being.

Let yourself be devoured and you will find Dim beyond.

The Void awaited and when Blackbird dove into the yawning nothingness, it felt like the most natural thing in the world…

Author's Note

Next chapter: the pillow fort sanctum.

A better edit might be up later. We shall see.

Rampant filly abuse gets things done

Having never been pulled through an event horizon before, Blackbird was somewhat disoriented when she popped into existence. It took her several seconds to regain her senses and figure out what was around her. Stone was beneath her claws and hooves, but what kind of stone was unknown. There were walls here, but looking at them caused them to retreat into the distance, zooming off to some unknown, infinite horizon. Above her was some manner of vague darkness that was utterly unfathomable.

“Be careful!” a voice said in warning. “Don’t step on that.”

Jerking her head around, Blackbird tried to ignore the walls as they shifted and looked down. Near her front talons was a creature, something small and limp. It was black, no, maybe it was blue—no, on closer inspection it might have been green? The colour was so dark, yet so indistinct, so it was hard to tell. Whatever it was, whatever colour it was, it wasn’t moving. Was it dead? It was a weird half-simian, half equine thing, whatever it was.

“What is that?” Blackbird asked.

“That was the Void.”

“Yeah, but what is that?” Blackbird began looking around for the source of the voice.

“That was a centaur.” The voice, as it turned out, came from behind Blackbird.

Whirling about, Blackbird spotted a tiny blue alicorn filly. She was little, somewhat gap-toothed, and glanced down at the dead body on the ground with a sad, forlorn expression that only foals seem to have. The filly had a stubby horn, tiny wings, and a terrifying aspect about her that made Blackbird want to cower.

“Who are you?” Blackbird was mindful of the corpse and was careful of where she stepped.

“I am the Essence of Night,” the filly replied, looking up at Blackbird. “You came for Dim.”

“Am I in the dream realm?” Blackbird made the mistake of looking around, and the walls went zooming away from her at the speed of perception, and she returned her gaze to the tiny blue filly.

“No,” the filly replied, “you stumbled through a door. I’m not sure how. Honestly, you shouldn’t be here, though I am glad you came. In your current form though, I think you’ll find that Dim is quite unreachable.”

“It feels good to be back in my body again… I was a constellation of stars just a moment ago and I—”

“Is that what you perceived?” Blinking, the filly was curious and peered up at Blackbird in the most peculiar way. “You mortals and what you think you see.”

“I was in the night sky, and there were all these constellations, stars, and I was a constellation too. There was a Star Maiden and some scales and these scary dark places beyond the stars. I was in a body made of stars and everything was so beautiful…”

“Uh-huh.” The filly’s head bobbed in a solemn nod and moving her stubby legs, she moved close to Blackbird. “That is what your mortal mind made you see so you wouldn’t go mad. What you actually experienced was incomprehensible and indescribable. You were so set on reaching this place that you ignited your own inner potential and pushed past the usual mortal barriers. You even survived the encounter of meeting with beings beyond your limited comprehension. What this means for you, I’m not sure, but you’ve done all of this to yourself.”

Now, Blackbird was confused, and she wasn’t sure what to say.

“Silly self-realised mortals, stumbling into realities they aren’t prepared for and can’t comprehend.” The Essence of Night sounded a bit miffed and her lower lip protruded while she gave Blackbird a sullen, pouty stare. “First you trespassed in the dream realm. You don’t belong there. I’m not sure how you got there as more than a dreamer, but you did. And when the realm’s natural defenses tried to deal with you, you rooted yourself into that reality by facing one of your worst fears, which really says something about you, because as far as fears go, that’s not much of a fear. I suppose it must be wonderful to be a big, scary hippogriff, tromping about and being completely oblivious to the dangerous world around you, by virtue of what you are.”

“I have fears,” Blackbird said while she squirmed in place.

“Yeah, stupid ones,” the filly replied. “I whipped up an army of cosmic horrors, tentacle monsters, dark, vague, indistinguishable shapes, eldritch abominations, the usual assortment of nightmares, and your psyche responded to none of them. So I had to dig deeper, and deeper still, and then I ran into that. I was disappointed, let me tell you. You just didn’t leave me much to work with.”

“Well, if you came looking for the fucks I have to give, I was fresh out at the moment.”

“So I noticed.” baring her teeth, the Essence of Night shook her head. “You faced that fear, and didn’t go running off, screaming, so I had to hit you with the one thing you can’t bear to face… the very reason why you are here right now. Care to make a guess as to what that is?”

With a shrug, Blackbird replied, “Loss?”

“See, most beings wouldn’t say that so casually.” The filly puffed out, her wing feathers fluffed, and fine hairs along her spine stood up in a dark stripe. “You fell out of the dream realm on your own, I’m not sure how or why. You tumbled into the spaces between the barriers of reality, and really, you should have gone stark raving mad… but your mind turned it into a pleasant vision about stars and constellations, so it seems. You even made a deal with the Void, who is now dead. The very last vestiges of what he was were lost in that in-betwixt space. And the Void, who was a real prick by the way, just like Dim in almost every conceivable notion, brought you here in a flagrant violation of the rules. This is why nobody, and I mean nobody likes chaotic beings of neutral bent. They do whatever it is they feel like with not a care for any of the consequences they might cause.”

“Yeah, Libra, the scales that I saw, he was juxtaposed between the Star Maiden constellation and Capricornus. I found Dim’s candle there, right in the middle of everything, with other neutral entities. I’m not sure what that means, though.”

“Juxtaposed?” The filly’s wings flapped once and she shook her head.

“Hey!” Irritated, Blackbird reached down, grabbed the filly by the scruff of her neck, and yanked her up to eye level, ignoring her flailing kicks of protest. “I’ll have you know that I went to school and I’m not as dumb as I might look. I might not be smart like Dim is smart, but I manage to keep my wits about me. I made my way here, didn’t I?” To make her point, she gave the little blue alicorn filly a hard shake while looking her right in the eye.

“Put me down!” the filly demanded while her wings flapped and her legs thrashed about.

“Where’s Dim, you snotty little tyke?”

“Out of your reach!” The Essence of Night gave Blackbird a hard, defiant stare.

“We can do this the hard way…” Blackbird gave the filly yet another shake.

“Yeah, let’s do that!” The filly split open like a torn stuffed animal and creeping doom came spilling out. Spiders, bugs, centipedes, worms, leeches, and other horrors slipped free, along with a flock of bats, which went swirling around Blackbird.

In the chaos, the filly was dropped, and Blackbird waved her wings to get the swarming bats away from her face. Even more disgusting horrors spilled forth from the rip in the filly—what appeared to be an endless stream of creepy-crawlies—and her tiny little eyebrows formed a malicious ‘V’ above her narrowed eyes.

“Ooh, spiders!” Reaching out, Blackbird plucked a wriggling eight-legged horror from the seething hoard, examined it for a moment, and then popped it into her mouth in the same manner that one might do with popcorn. Several legs scurried against her lip and there was a loud chitinous crunch when she chomped down.

At the same moment, the horrific illusion vanished and the filly, covering her eyes with her two front hooves, cried out, “Oh gross! Yuck! You’re not supposed to eat those! EUGH!”

“Where’s Dim?” The illusionary essence of what had once been a spider swirled away from Blackbird’s lips while she asked her question and she picked up the alicorn filly once more. “Spill the beans, tot, or else it’ll be you I eat next. Got me? Dim is my friend and he saved me once. He didn’t have to save me… he could have left me and saved his own hide, but he didn’t. So I am returning the favour and I will not be turned away, you annoying, mouthy little shit.”

“Mark my words, your single-mindedness will one day be your undoing.” Hanging by the scruff of her neck from Blackbird’s talons, the filly crossed her forelegs over her barrel and glared in defiance. “This is Dim’s sanctum. He resides in the Pillow Fortress of Seclusion. He needed a soft place to hide away.”

“I think I can deal with a pillow fort,” Blackbird said while dropping the midnight-blue alicorn filly on the ground. “Now, where is he?”

“Try looking?” The filly’s sarcasm was palpable.

Squinting, Blackbird did just that, and was immediately repulsed by the horizon, which played tricks on her. As the walls went zooming away at the speed of perception, she felt herself grow queasy. Looking down, she stared at the floor, she had herself a good think, trying to grasp how this place worked. Shuffling around, she looked at the dead centaur foal and felt pity for him. It felt wrong to leave him there, just lying on the ground in this place, whatever this place was, but she had no idea what to do with him.

Steeling her mind, Blackbird tried again and right away, she wished she hadn’t. The walls did their thing again, stretching the room out to an infinite length, and Blackbird realised that her mind balked at the notion of infinite, endless interiour space. Why, the size of the rug one would need to cover this ugly floor… it was impossible to conceive.

“You’re so dumb,” the filly said to Blackbird in the manner of annoying tykes everywhere, on every plane of existence. “It’s like you existed in a three dimensional plane of existence.”

“Are the walls even real?” Blackbird asked.

“Are the walls even real?” the filly repeated, mocking the much larger hippogriff. “Look at me, I’m a big spider-eating stupidhead that can’t perceive extradimensional spaces because my stupid brain is stunted from existing in such a limited reality.”

“Huh.” Blackbird scratched her chin for a moment and engaged her brain. “What would Dim do in this situation? How would he sort this out?”

This wasn’t regular wizardry, no, this was asshole wizardry, so to sort this out, Blackbird figured she’d have to think like an asshole. Going against her own cheerful nature, she tried to think grumpy, cranky, awful thoughts, and how to be the most acerbic, assholish individual as possible. The answer, it seemed, was sitting right beside her, and Blackbird knew what needed to be done. To find this asshole, she would have to become an asshole.

Reaching out, her talons moving with lightning speed, Blackbird snatched up the filly by her head and then hurled her at the wall with terrific force, but was careful to not actually look at the wall. With a fantastic cry, the filly went hurtling off, tumbling end over end, trailing vulgarities behind her like some profane blue-streak comet. A second later, she struck the wall with a terrific splat, thus proving the wall was a real, tangible force that could be interacted with.

“You unmitigated asshole!” the filly shrieked as she bounced and skidded over the floor after having impacted the wall. When she tumbled to a stop, she rose, defiant, gave herself a shake, and her lip curled back into a snarl at Blackbird.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Blackbird moved with alarming alacrity right for the wall, so much so that the filly had to scramble to get out of the way of the huffing hippogriff hauling ass. Spreading her wings, Blackbird launched herself right for the wall and braced all four of her legs for impact. The room—no, reality—tumbled around her, and for a terrifying moment, Blackbird had no concept of up or down, sort of like flying through a thick fog.

When she opened her eyes, the room had become a hallway. She stood in a narrow space, standing on what had once been a wall, and the floor she had lept from was now the wall beside her. As for the filly, the Essence of Night stood on the wall still, and her mocking laughter echoed through this space. The dead centaur was still stuck upon what had once been a floor but was now a wall.

Blackbird realised that she was in a hallway, an entryway, and ahead of her loomed a door…

Beyond the door was a round room, such as one might find in a tower, and in the center of the room was Dim’s Pillow Fortress of Seclusion. It was exactly the sort of thing that a foal might make, if a foal had a mind-boggling surplus of the most extravagant, most luxurious pillows. When the pain of living proved to be too much, one retreated to a softer place.

“Don’t hurt him.” The filly’s whole demeanour was now changed, and she peered up at Blackbird from where she stood near the hippogriff’s hooves. “Brute force won’t help you here, not in this place. Strength is of no use in this place. Dim has nullified it.”

“Dim?” Blackbird approached the extravagant fort and began to look around for an entrance. Reaching a curtain, she reached down and tried to lift it. When nothing happened, she gave it a stronger tug, and found that it was to no avail; it didn’t budge in the slightest. The fabric was every bit as solid as iron.

“You don’t belong here,” the Essence of Night said to Blackbird in a gentle voice that held no antagonism. “Look at you… you killed an alicorn. You are a monster made of teeth, claws, thewy sinews, and muscles. Everything about you is hard and dangerous.”

Undeterred, Blackbird circled the pillow fort and sought out some other means of entrance. It didn’t matter that she was a hippogriff, that she was a monster; she could be gentle. Her father, Stinkberry, he had taught her meekness. She tried so hard to be gentle and to be somehow unassuming. Dim was one of the most fragile ponies she knew, and she hadn’t broken him just yet, though she had rolled over onto him one night while sleeping.

She had awoken before he had suffocated too much…

“It wasn’t a real alicorn,” Blackbird said to the filly who followed at her heels.

“Does that matter?” the night blue filly replied. “Do you think the common creature knows the difference? They watched you, a hippogriff, dismember and eviscerate the very pinnacle of perfection. If an alicorn is the very peak of perfection, what does that say about you?”

“But I don’t wanna hurt no one!”

“You chucked me against the wall,” the filly said in a knowing sort of way. “And I’m a foal. You didn’t hesitate, not even for a second, you just picked me up by my head with your birdie claws and hurled me. You’re a meanie.”

“You’re not real, so you don’t matter.”

“Oh, I beg to disagree. That hurt. I’m real enough in the way that matters. But I am willing to forgive. They say that forgiveness is divine, you know. Every mortal has a spark of greatness in them because of that.”

Pausing suddenly, the Essence of Night bumped into one of Blackbird’s hind legs, but the thoughtful hippogriff paid it no mind. Reaching out, she grabbed a pillow in her talons, gave it a yank, and grunted when nothing happened, nothing budged, not even a scant inch. Bracing herself, Blackbird put her back into it and applied the same sort of strength she had used to physically pull the alicorn apart—but nothing happened. The pillow fort was utterly undisturbed by her actions.

“Libra said that I had self-ignited my own divinity,” Blackbird said to the filly while she continued to tug and pull on the pillows. “I don’t think it was for forgiveness. What did he mean by that?”

“Well,” the Essence of Night said in a somewhat annoying know-it-all manner, “every single pony has within them an inner-alicorn of sorts. For some, it slumbers. For others, they self-actualise their own potential and awaken to what they are truly capable of, and this inner alicorn awakens. When this happens, they go on to live extraordinary lives, though sometimes in a most ordinary way.”

“I’m not a pony.” Blackbird gave up and sat down upon the floor, almost sitting on her filly companion.

“No, you’re not.” The filly too, sat down, and reaching out one stubby leg, patted Blackbird on the thigh. “You are a creature of chaos and contradiction. Most of you is an earth pony, and this is a problem, because you have wings. You are at your strongest when you have your hind hooves planted on the ground, and let’s face it, most of the time, you are flying. As such, you are cheated of your own strength.”

Frustrated, Blackbird grabbed a corner of a pink velvet pillow and gave it a hard yank—so hard in fact, that she almost dislocated her own shoulder when it didn’t move. To have all of this strength but to be utterly powerless against pillows was disheartening.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but monsters are often robbed of their own potential.”

“Am I really a monster?” Blackbird asked, fearing the answer.

“In the strictest definition of the word, yes.” The filly was apologetic with her reply, and leaned up against Blackbird while rubbing the hippogriff’s thigh. “Many are monsters though, and that’s not a bad thing. Some monsters are frustrated because they don’t fit in, and sometimes, they lash out. They become bad monsters—monstrous monsters… though sometimes it isn’t entirely their fault. Monsters too, need love and self-actualisation, just like everybody else. But it is harder when you are different. Dim is a monster, thoroughly and completely, he was born to be a monster, but does he not have feelings? Does he not fear pain, hurt, and rejection? Dim stood, and I suppose he still stands, upon the precipice of collapsing into his monstrous nature.”

“Is that why he came here?” Blackbird stared at the paradoxical pillow fortress that she could not topple and wished that she could reach Dim. “Rather than risk taking a tumble, did he just run away and hide?”

In a low, squeaky voice, the Essence of Night whispered her reply, “Sometimes the pain of living makes monsters. I know this better than most. My counterpart in the mortal realms, Luna, the pain of living drove her to despair. She wanted love, recognition, self-actualisation, all of those things that are common, garden variety wants… and when she could not have them, she embraced monsterhood. Such is the way of things, sometimes. Luna now has those things, and it is very, very hard for her to un-monster-fy herself so that she might enjoy them. She is healing though, and is learning to cope with the pain of living.”

Was Dim running away a good thing? Blackbird’s brows furrowed and she stared at the impenetrable pillow fortress that was the source of her frustration. Rather than risk the whole of the world, rather than embrace the worst aspects of monsterhood, Dim had withdrawn, perhaps sparing the world of one more monster. Surely, that counted for something, something meaningful even. Maybe Dim wasn’t off just sulking, maybe he was trying to do right in his own messed up way. She was still going to have to sort him out for leaving, but Blackbird was willing to admit that she might have misjudged his motivations.

She reconsidered, and thought about what she had learned among the stars. Since when did Dim care about right or wrong? Rubbing her chin now, Blackbird thought about how she had found Dim in the middle, in the shadow of the scales. One lone candle behind the scales of balance. If Dim hadn’t done this out of a sense of right or wrong, then why? His motivations were maddening, and there were times—such as now—when Blackbird desperately wished that she could understand him.

Dim didn’t care about things being right or wrong, no, Dim mostly cared about what was fair. She thought about the trial that he had presided over and his sentencing. Blackbird recollected all of the times when Dim had become involved in something—right and wrong never motivated him. Dim hadn’t killed Zinc because it was the right thing to do, no, Dim had blown Zinc’s brains out because that was fair. And later that day, Dim had poisoned Grimy’s tea. Thinking back, Blackbird remembered all too well her own hurt and outrage, but her eyes had been opened since then.

Grimy’s death might not have been just, but it was pretty damn fair, when one squinted at it in just the right sort of morally ambiguous way.

Swift Swirl could have been killed without a moment’s hesitation, but Dim had offered mercy instead. Facing great risk, Dim had found a way to save the colt, sparing him from a fate worse than death. There was no good reason to let the colt live other than Dim’s own whims and desires. In showing mercy, Gesundheit gained a helper, and Swift Swirl gained a purpose. Blackbird, though no great philosopher when it came to morality, decided that this outcome was fair.

Where Eerie was a restorer of law and order, Dim was a force for fairness.

“How do I get past these pillows?” Blackbird asked of her filly companion.

“The same way that the Void and I did,” the filly replied.

This made Blackbird think of the centaur foal in the other room, and of the filly sitting beside her. Reaching up with her talons, Blackbird brushed her mane out of her face, blinked, and wondered how pillows could be so impervious. Her claws could gouge chunks out of steel, but she hadn’t been able to leave a single, solitary mark upon these pillows.

“You could go in there right now?” Blackbird glanced down at the filly leaning against her side and contemplated their difference.

“Sure can. But nopony wants gross girls in their fort.” The Essence of Night sighed and pulled herself away from Blackbird. “When the Void arrived, it took him a while to figure things out as well. At least he didn’t throw me against the wall though, so kudos for him. He and Dim spoke for a brief eternity or so, and I watched you blunder your way here. I have no idea what the Void and Dim had to say to one another, and I haven’t asked, so don’t bother interrogating me, spider-eater.”

“The Void gave me some of his power as well—”

“He sure did!” Tiny thunderstorms flashed in the Essence of Night’s eyes and her ears pricked in an aggressive way. “That was a major no-no, and me and my sister, we’re not too happy about that, let me tell you!”

“You are the Star Maiden?” Reaching out her talons, but mindful of her claws, Blackbird poked the filly in her tummy and got a scathing frown in response.

That I am.

“Well, half of her, I suppose.” Blackbird poked the foal in her tummy again, and the thunderstorms roiling in the filly’s eyes intensified. “Aw, come on, don’t be like that. You have nothing to fear from me—”

“Says the crazy alicorn slaying hippogriff that chucked me into the wall.”

“How do I reach Dim so that I can help him?” Blackbird withdrew her tummy-touching talon-finger and did her best to look kind—though tossing the filly against the wall once more remained an option. “I need to get Dim back into the fight. We have a lot to do. There’s a whole lot of the world that needs to be made right. And if things can’t be made right, then maybe Dim and I can make things a little fairer.”

“You’re dense,” the Essence of Night stated in a matter-of-fact sort of way.

“Not that dense,” Blackbird replied. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I can surprise you. Dim would never keep my company if I was dense.”

“Surprise me?” Shaking her head, the little blue alicorn filly let out a haughty huff. “As if.”

Moving with the sort of speed that angry hippogriffs possessed, Blackbird’s talons circled the filly’s throat in less time than it took to blink and then she began squeezing, applying enough force to make the startled alicorn foal’s eyes bulge from their sockets. Yet again, Blackbird lifted her companion from the floor and held her up to eye level.

“I’m pretty sure that was you in that rape nightmare.” Try though she might, Blackbird could not keep her voice from quavering. “So you’d better shut the fuck up about having your head bashed into the wall. Now, if you know what’s good for ya, you tricky little shit, you’ll tell me what I want to know or else I’ll unscrew your head from your neck. Got me?”

“This… this is what keeps you out of Dim’s Pillow Fortress of Seclusion.” Gagging out her reply, the filly kicked, struggled, and thrashed in Blackbird’s grip. “Brute force holds you back, you big dumb hick!”

Scowling, Blackbird gave the half-strangled filly a final spine-compressing squeeze and then dropped her.

“You big, stupid, spider-eating sphinx!” The filly flopped on her back and her legs kicked in every direction while she gasped and hacked. Rolling over, she crawled away on her belly, coughing and spluttering while making inchworm like movements. “I’ll admit to being surprised!”

If being a hippogriff wouldn’t work, if that wouldn’t gain her entrance, then she had to be something else. While the throttled Essence of Night lay heaving on the floor, Blackbird resigned herself to having a good think. The Void had gained entrance somehow, and so had the Essence of Night. Contrary to what she had expected, she didn’t feel better after strangling this annoying whatever it was that had taken the shape of a foal.

It was at this moment that Blackbird had an epiphany.

With her father, Stinkberry, still fresh in her mind, Blackbird allowed his memories to run rampant, even though it hurt a great deal. Stinkberry Coffyn had taught her so much; how to be humble, unassuming, gentle, how to gain the trust of others, and all of the various values of friendship. Blackbird had needed these things, these precious, precious things, and while life wasn’t perfect, far from it in fact, she was able to make friends and sort of fit in, monster or not. Blackbird was a behemoth that lived in a world of little ponies.

Reliving her memories, Blackbird recalled the time when she was just a little nipper, when she was tiny, when she was small enough for her father to cuddle her, as he was wont to do. Before she became a lumbering colossus, she had been his little fuzzball, and when he held her, he would blow into her ears to annoy her. In response, she would ‘rawr’ at him, but she had learned not to bite him, claw him, or otherwise do him harm for being an annoyance. Those lessons in play had been her first lessons in being gentle.

Yes, she was a titan that could rip the wing off of some pseudo-alicorn, but she had also been the caretaker of ducks, chickens, and geese. Blackbird had proven that she could be trusted with the tiniest and most fragile of lives. Yes, she was a hippogriff, but she was also an earth pony, a fact that she now knew that she had sorely neglected. Her father was an earth pony that respected life, all life, and Stinkberry had loved what many might consider unloveable.

With these thoughts, Blackbird felt herself shrinking, growing smaller. Why growing smaller? That was a contradiction in terms, but then again, she was a contradiction in creatures, so she supposed it was okay. As Blackbird shrank in size, the pillow fort grew larger, until it became a grand imposing structure fit for a prince in exile.

One day, her prince might come, hopefully in a nice, pleasant way that wasn’t at all rapey and scary, as it had been in the dream. Blackbird was eager for that day to happen, but they had to find her mother first—together. The smaller Blackbird became, the idea of being with Dim in that way at first made her shudder, then repulsed her, and then she found it absolutely disgusting.

Did she really want to go inside of a colt’s fort?

Ick.

Who knew what he might be doing in there?

Ick.

“Be brave,” the Essence of Night said and there was no trace of mockery in her voice.

Blackbird, now a tiny little nipper once more, had a good look at her stubby forelegs, her tiny clawed talon-fingers, and she gave them an experimental wiggle. Her wings were almost too small to fly with, and her bottom was a lot chubbier than she remembered it being. She might’ve gone past the little nipper stage, right to fluffy fuzzball.

Reaching out, Blackbird poked the pillow palace with her talon-finger and felt softness. She was now a soft thing, with a pleasantly plush petable pudge. Now, she was more sleek, chubby housecat than death on black wings, though what an odd, disturbing housecat she was. Marvelling at the vagaries of magic, she gave the pillow palace another poke.

Grabbing a corner of a blanket, she lifted it up and peered into the darkness within…

Author's Note

So, uh, Blackbird is travelling along her own Hero's Arc, her own monomyth.

Where are we now?

Secret?

Lingering on the edge of dreams, Blackbird crossed the precipice of wakefulness. A confusing, cascading jumble of images left her disoriented, and when she opened her eyes, the dreams persisted in the waking world until she blinked several times to banish them back to wherever it is that dreams go. Her body was stiff, leaden, dull, and achy. Another body was beside her, this one small, fragile, and a bit sweaty from the feel of things. Blackbird had vague memories of kissing him, but it was no mere dream.

Yawning, Blackbird lifted her head and through thick, dull, fuzzy thoughts, discovered that her mouth was as dry as the desert. A hand holding a wooden bowl appeared in the corner of her vision and electric tingles jolted through her brain when she smelled water. Peering about, Blackbird saw the smiling, worried face of Munro, and she took the bowl of water from him.

It was gone in but a few gulps, and she handed the now-empty wooden bowl back to the helpful minotaur. Recovering more of her senses, she had a better look at Dim. He was feverish, sweaty, but alive. When she moved away a little too much, Dim stirred in his sleep and whined. Another bowl of water was held out in front of Blackbird’s face, so she drank that too.

“How long?” Blackbird’s question was little more than a croak, even though she had poured two bowls of water down her gullet.

“About two days,” Munro replied. “Much has happened. Want more water?”

“Yes!” Blackbird’s empty stomach screamed for food, too. She passed the bowl to Munro and glanced down at Dim once more, worried. Maybe she could get him to drink? Was it safe? Would he choke?

Lifting a crockery pitcher, Munro poured more water into the wooden bowl and then handed it to Blackbird once more. “Chantico revealed herself and prevented many deaths. She found a few worthy of the gift of healing. They’ve already built a shrine to her, a hearth. Some of the cultists now revere Chantico. Hope has been restored, Blackbird. It’s been a pretty amazing time.”

The water was cool, but not cold. This time, when she drank, Blackbird took slow, careful sips, and swished some of the water around the inside of her mouth. A faint ringing still existed in her ears, which ached, and her body was sore from being exploded one time too many. Was Dim actually Dim? Everything was hazy. Had she succeeded? It was difficult to remember what she had dreamed and everything that had taken place.

Dipping her talon-finger into the water bowl, she soaked it with water and then held it over Dim’s mouth. He responded to the drips by licking his lips once, and this left his mouth open. Patient, careful, Blackbird allowed even more water to drip from her claw and into Dim’s mouth. Munro watched, worried, his face wizened with concern.

“How are the others?” Blackbird asked.

“Bombay’s ear and eye are gone, but she’s alive and partially healed. Bailey went through a funny spell but that seems to be passing. She and Motte have been reconstructing the buildings. They’re pretty amazing when they work together… the stones just seem to stack themselves in the shape of a building and then stick together without mortar.”

“How many are dead?” Having voiced the horrible question that had to be asked, Blackbird awaited her answer.

Munro hesitated and wrung his hands together.

“How many?” Blackbird dribbled more water into Dim’s mouth and tried to control her temper. Why was she angry? She didn’t know. Munro didn’t deserve her wrath and she took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

“Well over a hundred,” Munro replied, meek and subservient. “The bodies are still being counted. There is still a lot of rubble to sort through. Not enough able bodies to do everything.”

“Go fetch Weaver Violet,” Blackbird said to Munro. “I need to find out if Dim is okay.”

“Um…” Munro squirmed in place and looked apologetic.

“What happened?” Blackbird, her eyes narrowed, locked her gaze with the young minotaur calf.

“Night came…” Munro’s words were a troubled whisper. “The cold was bitter and cruel. Before the midnight hour came around, a fair number died. The weak, the vulnerable, the sick, the old, and the injured. It got cold. Weaver Violet gathered the other Weavers, there were only three more of them left, Weaver Red, Weaver Yellow, and Weaver Green. They fixed the spell that holds back the weather, but Weaver Violet and Weaver Green died from it. Weaver Violet was old and Weaver Green was injured. But it’s warm now… so I guess…” His words died with a sigh and Munro’s hands went still.

“Well”—this was uttered in a drawn-out huff—“shit.” Blackbird blinked a few times and realised that her eyes were full of crusties. She was stinky, smelly, and her pelt was matted in all sorts of places, including unmentionable ones. “Munro, I need you to go and find me as many eggs as you can, and get that cast iron pan from the wagon.”

“Right away!” His hooves thumping against the stone floor, Munro hurried off to do as he was bid.

Each move she made caused Blackbird’s spine to crackle in some alarming way, but she paid it no mind. Holding a tin plate in her talons, she waved it around in front of Dim’s nose. Some of the eggs were duck eggs, but she didn’t think Dim would mind. A little goat’s milk, a little butter, some salt, pepper, and cooked only to the point of being slightly runny in the pan, which made them perfect on the plate. Dim intensely disliked overcooked eggs.

“Wake up.” Blackbird’s words held a hard edge to them and she continued to wave the plate around in front of Dim’s nose. Her own stomach growled, demanding food, but she would worry about that later.

Some of Dim’s spider bites wept a clear, oozing liquid. Seeing them filled Blackbird with guilt, but also relief. Getting his blood to thicken and clot had no-doubt saved him. He was alive, and Blackbird intended for him to remain that way. The bite on his neck seemed the worst, it was swollen, inflamed, and the skin around it was shiny.

When Dim’s eyes opened just the tiniest bit, Blackbird almost cried with relief. His face was swollen, misshapen, and lumpy. One nostril was almost shut and the corner of his mouth was pulled back into a smirk because of the swelling. The explosions and getting tossed about had not been kind to Dim, who was fragile.

Setting the plate down, Blackbird pulled Dim up into a sitting position. This didn’t work as well as she had hoped, and he almost toppled right over, so she laid him down again. With Dim on his belly, Blackbird lifted his head in her left talons, and armed her right talons with a spoon. He didn’t like cold eggs, so Blackbird started spooning hot eggs into his mouth.

At first, nothing happened, Dim made an incoherent grunt, but then he made a feeble effort to chew. Peering into Dim’s eyes, Blackbird could feel her heart pounding in her throat. Was this Dim? All of him? She really wanted to know. Needed to know. When she tried to feed him more eggs, she bumped the spoon into his teeth and then cringed when he mewled with pain.

Dim had retreated from the world because everything hurt and she had just caused him more pain. Muttering to herself, Blackbird made a promise that she would make it up to him somehow. Her own muscles rebelled, they twitched, convulsed, and quivered. She needed to stretch, she needed to fly, she needed to move after being still for so long.

“Did Chantico do anything to heal Dim?” Blackbird asked while she made a careful effort to feed Dim more eggs.

“One of her new acolytes did,” Munro replied.

“Well, at least he’s not as bad off as he could be, I suppose.” Blackbird could feel her hind legs threatening revolt, because they were in no mood to be sat on. A brutal, blazing fire ignited and burned within her thighs and a violent stomach cramp almost caused her to topple over. “Munro, I hate to even ask, but can you find me something to eat?”

“Sure thing!” Sprinting away, Munro departed to find some food for Blackbird.

Blackbird’s body protested its abused state and begged her to lay back down and go to sleep. There was an awful itch where a bullet had grazed her a few days ago and the wound needed cleaning. Hidden beneath her ebony pelt were bruises that covered most of her body. She had broken feathers with bloody ends that stung with any sort of movement. Much of her hair was singed and had rough, scratchy ends.

On top of all of this, her ass needed to be washed.

There were moments when she could feel the searing heat washing over her body and the concussive force of the explosions battering her. When the black powder kegs had detonated—both of them—she had been blasted right off of the roof. Somehow, she managed to stay in the air, though she wasn’t sure how, and this had saved her from the collapsing rubble. Blackbird was lucky—there was no other means of putting it—and it was her luck that had saved her. Yet again, another moment in her life had been affected by the outcome of fortuitous circumstance.

Dim… poor Dim… he had been even closer than she, the Bard, and Bombay had been. Blackbird found herself second guessing their gambit. She hadn’t even seen Dim until it was too late and the barrels were in the air. Had the Bard seen Dim? If the Bard had seen Dim, had he made the decision to attack anyway, with the hopes of bringing the false-alicorn down? The plan had seemed so perfect and simple, at least in the heat of the moment. Chuck the barrels down and have Bombay ignite them with her magic. But things had gone catastrophically wrong. Had she almost murdered her best friend?

Blasting your best friend to bits was not a good way to keep your best friend.

Blackbird had made a pile of pillows for Dim to sleep on, rather than the flat, thin, reed mats. Looking at him, she tried to make herself remember everything, but the details seemed insubstantial now. The most vivid memory she had was of Chantico’s soul-separating smack. As painful as that was, it was a small price to pay.

Hearing the door, Blackbird called out without turning around, “Munro?”

“No,” a young, weary voice replied, “I am Weaver Yellow. I have come to check on Dim.”

The zebra that approached was not even a mare yet. Young, filthy, worn out, her hooves almost dragged across the floor, but her eyes seemed bright, cheerful even. A bulging bag hung from her neck, along with several gourds that sloshed with her movements. As her name suggested, she was rather yellow, as if her pelt had been dyed, and she wore a copper spider in her mane.

“Can you heal a Heebie Jeebie?” Blackbird asked as the zebra sat down beside Dim.

Weaver Yellow laughed, a tired, but somehow joyful sound. Lowering her head, she gave her mane a little shake and the copper spider tumbled free. It scurried about on Dim’s body, and the gemstone on its abdomen changed colours as the spider went to and fro. Blackbird watched, fascinated, marvelling at this strange magic. When the spider was done, it lept from Dim back up into Weaver Yellow’s mane, where it became inanimate once more.

“His body recovers from the venom.” Weaver Yellow lowered her head down once more, pressed her ear against Dim’s barrel, and then went still so she could listen. After a minute or so, she raised her head, frowned, and then opened up her satchel.

She dug around for a moment with her hoof, and her ears pricked straight up when she found what she was looking for. Pulling out a gourd on a stick, she gave it a shake and it made a pleasant sound. It seemed to be a rattle, nothing more, and the zebra filly continued to shake it while she made elaborate gestures around Dim’s body.

“What’s the rattle do?” Blackbird found herself intrigued and also a little doubtful. She didn’t want to come right out and say that the rattle didn’t do anything, but it was a rattle, and all it seemed to be doing was make noise.

Smiling, Weaver Yellow said nothing. Instead, she opened up one of her gourds with her teeth, pulling out the stopper on one end. Holding it in her right fetlock, she placed her left hoof over the open end, turned the gourd over, and when she righted it once more, a smear of yellow ochre could be seen. A strong medicinal stink filled the room. Gesturing for Blackbird to come closer, Weaver Yellow held out her yellow ochre smeared hoof.

Obliging the zebra filly, Blackbird came closer, and then was startled when cold, gritty yellow ochre was smeared across her nose. It tickled something awful, and a second later, Blackbird sneezed. Her vision fuzzed over, going in and out of focus, and from somewhere distant, she could hear drums. A strange yellow hue tinted her view and that was when she saw them: hundreds of tiny yellow spectral spiders crawling all over Dim.

Weaver Yellow picked up her rattle, gave it a shake, and more spiders spilled out.

Putting the rattle down, she stoppered up her gourd and wiped the excess yellow ochre from her hoof onto her pelt, making her just a little bit more yellow in that spot. Blackbird watched the yellow spiders while listening to the sound of the distant drums. Everything felt alright about this and didn’t seem strange—at least, no stranger than anything else that had happened recently. The zebra foal kept a rattle full of spider ghosts, a perfectly normal thing for a filly to have.

“What are your spiders doing?”

“I am Weaver Yellow,” the filly replied. “Yellow is the colour of disease and sickness. Dim has a touch of blood poisoning. My spiders are purifying his blood. I assure you, it is nothing to worry about, it is a common reaction to the spider bites and I treat it all the time.”

“Oh. Oh… okay.” Swaying to the sound of the drums, Blackbird nodded. Going cross eyed for a moment, she studied the smear of yellow ochre on her nose and then looked at the zebra filly, who was now opening up another gourd. It occured to Blackbird that the filly, smeared with ochre as she was, heard the drums and saw the spiders all the time. Try as she might, Blackbird couldn’t decide if that was a curse or not.

“When you see Pearl Fisher again, tell her I said hello. She will know me. I was, and will always be, one of her students. It is with the gifts she gave me that I restore your friend to you. She faces many enemies because she tries to teach zebra magic to ponies. Every day, I fear for her safety. You are helping her, yes?”

“Dim is, I think, and I guess that means I am too.”

“Pearl Fisher has a plan to heal the city of its hurts.” Weaver Yellow poured some foul-smelling liniment over Dim and the stench made Blackbird’s eyes water. After stoppering up her gourd, the zebra filly began rubbing the stinky concoction into Dim’s skin with her hooves. “But for Pearl Fisher to act, we zebras need safe, free access to the city, so we can purge its taint.”

Blackbird thought about what Dim had said, about the city needing to be purged. He had said that wizards were needed, but Weaver Yellow seemed to think otherwise. Soothed by the distant sound of drums, Blackbird had a clear image of a little waving spider in her mind’s eye. If Pearl Fisher had a plan to heal the city, then Blackbird wanted to be a part of that plan. Certainly Dim would help the zebras gain access to the city and he would keep them safe, too. Yes, a new plan was in order. But first, Dim needed to be better.

“Aunt Nancy knows your secret,” Weaver Yellow whispered to Blackbird.

This snapped Blackbird back to paying attention, and her spine stiffened. “What secret? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Weaver Yellow giggled and then offered Blackbird a weary smile. “Your secret, it is safe with me and Aunt Nancy.”

Unsettled, Blackbird felt like sneezing again, because the yellow ochre had formed a dry crust on her nose. Secret? Blackbird had many secrets. What secret? Her secret love of dolls? The secret desire she had to be a pretty, pretty princess with a fantastic, fantabulous frilly dress? Just once, at least. She actually hated fancy dresses, they looked uncomfortable, but the glitz, glamour, and spectacle seemed so appealing.

Worried, Blackbird wondered what secret had been revealed.

Author's Note

I am out of my backlog of scripts. Sorry. We're back to once a week updates. I just blew through a lot of material.

Griffon? Aw, Gratin

A most curious thing happened when Blackbird held the Spear of Chantico; black and pink flames danced along its length and there was a curious thrum. Holding it made her feel calm, strong, in control, it eased the fears in her mind and left her feeling courageous. Something had changed within her, something profound, and when she held this spear in her talons, she felt that anything was possible.

Anything at all.

Beside her, Dim stirred, and Blackbird’s tufted ears pricked at the sound. Would he wake again? He did, sometimes, long enough to eat or maybe drink a little, and then he would drift off again. Blackbird gave the spear an absent-minded twirl in her talons and waited to see what Dim would do. His lips moved, and he seemed to inhale. She listened, hopeful.

“Pyrotheosis.” The sound of Dim’s utterance was like dry leaves tossed about in the wind, or a door with poorly oiled hinges slowly creaking shut.

What sort of word was pyrotheosis? Blackbird’s head tilted off to one side and a quizzical expression could be seen upon her face. She didn’t get much of a chance to think about it though, because Dim burst into flames—again—and she had to scramble to put them out. The spear fell to the floor with a clatter in her mad rush to stop the flames, which she suffocated with a blanket. After she had patted them out, she then double-checked the cushions that Dim lay upon, fearing more damage. They were a bit more burnt now, a little blacker, and she felt awful about their condition.

Dim was like a foal that wouldn’t stop wetting the bed, only this was a good deal more dangerous.

“Getting real sick of that, Dim.” Blackbird shook the blanket again and ashes tumbled down to the floor like snowflakes. She waited, wondering if the flames would flare up again, and without even thinking about what she was doing, she held out her talons. On the floor, the Spear of Chantico wiggled for a time, and then flew back to Blackbird’s outstretched talons. “You keep this up and you’re going into a fireplace. Now stop it.”

Munro returned, and somehow he held Bombay in his arms. Abyssinians were a bit bigger than one might expect, and minotaurs as young as Munro weren’t very tall. Blackbird turned to watch and noted that what appeared to be whole weeks of healing progress could be seen. An ear was gone, as well as an eye, but new pink skin had been grown where her scalp had been stitched back together and her many stitches had been removed.

“Blackbird?” Bombay could hardly be heard. “Help me, Blackbird, Munro won’t let me do anything for myself. Wouldn’t even let me walk.”

Huffing and puffing only just a little, Munro dropped his feline companion down upon a cushion. He then made sure that she didn’t fall over and hurt herself. Hovering over her, he waited until she got settled in, cross-legged, and it was only when he was certain that she was safe did he back away.

“We all got fucked up pretty bad,” Bombay said while she folded her paws into her lap.

“How are you holding up?” Blackbird sat down on the floor and kept an eye on Dim, ready for him to burst into flames again.

“I’m fine,” Bombay replied. “It doesn’t even hurt much, so long as I have a few drinks in me.”

“No.” Shaking her head from side to side, Blackbird twirled her spear in her talon-fingers. “No, that’s not what I mean at all.”

“Oh. That.” Bombay closed her eye and huddled down. “I’m okay. Really. I mean, I’m sad, don’t get me wrong, but I knew this was something that would happen.”

“How can you be okay?” Blackbird asked.

“Motte and Bailey,” was Bombay’s cryptic reply. After a short time spent taking a few deep breaths, she explained herself better. “I’ve stood on other worlds, Blackbird. I’ve seen things. I’ve seen other whens and wheres. That means that there are other Bards. Happy Bards, sad Bards, Bards that are whole of soul, and Bards that are still madly in love with me. It helps… really it does. I wouldn’t lie about something like this.”

Munro, humming to himself, went to work preparing some tea.

Meanwhile, Blackbird could see a pained smile upon Bombay’s face, which seemed as though it was stretched a little tight. It couldn’t be argued, the Bard had inspired them. Mere moments before the disastrous attack, the Bard was a clear voice of order in the midst of the chaos. His words drove away fear and brought clarity to the mind. If he could inspire so much while still alive, what might his death have done?

“I will be the Bard now… our Bard,” Bombay continued and there was a strange look in her copper eye. “As awful as it is, I will draw inspiration from all that has happened, and I will become our Bard.”

The emphasis that Bombay put upon the word ‘bard’ was unmistakable and Blackbird knew that this was how the Abyssinian was coping with this dire predicament. Different creatures responded to grief in different ways, and Blackbird understood this better than most. Some went off on murderous rampages, seeking revenge, while others sought meaning and beauty after experiencing loss.

“Munro, if you wouldn’t mind, when you are finished, could you bring me my mandolin?”

“Sure thing, Miss Sable.”

The door banged open and Blackbird almost chucked her spear. Everything in her body tensed and she only stopped herself because there was a zebra colt in the doorway, panting and breathless. Wild eyed, he tried to say something, but failed. After panting for a few moments more, he seemed to have enough wind to speak.

“Dere be dis mighty big griffon here! I be dold to dell you, he comin’! He be drinkin’ now, but he come when done drinkin’!”

Griffon? Blackbird gripped her spear, unaware of how Bombay’s surviving eye reflected the pink and black flames. Why would a griffon be here to see her? Even though her thoughts were racing, she remembered to smile, and she nodded her head. “Yes, tell him to come and see me. I’ll see a visitor, if I have one.”

“Sure ding, Mizzy Blackbird!” Stripes wiggling, the zebra colt was gone in an eyeblink and he forgot to close the door.

“Some of the zebras call him Marathon,” Munro remarked while he went to shut the door. “I have no idea what his real name might be. I’m almost certain that is the longest time I have ever seen him stand still.”

“Yeah, he strikes me as a twitcher,” Blackbird replied, absent-minded.

When the door opened, Blackbird wasn’t sure who she expected to see, but it most certainly wasn’t Gratin, who was covered in bandages. She almost panicked seeing him, but clutching her spear, she held it together. He looked tired, weary, worn out, and wounded. The big griffon limped on his right hind leg and his left foreleg was swollen near his elbow.

“Blackbird,” he said before she had a chance to say anything. “I was sent to find you. We were attacked.”

“So were we!” Bombay blurted out. “One of those alicorns!”

Gratin nodded. “Us too. Jolie turned our guns on him. We all shot him… there was a big battle. The Solar Stinger was damaged pretty bad.”

“How did you kill him?” Bombay’s paws wrung together and she waited for a reply.

So did Blackbird.

“She.” Gratin blinked once, and then his eyes became distant. “After we blew out her shield, we blasted her to smithereens with our guns, or tried to. When she started to recover after we blasted her into the dirt, we harpooned her and hauled her up to the edge of space. Once she froze up solid, we shot her and her body shattered into a million tiny fragments.”

Blackbird gave the big griffon a nod. “Well, Gratin, have a seat. Have we got a story to tell you.”

Having exchanged stories, Gratin sat in silence, and a look of profound sorrow could be seen in his eyes. Hearing that the Bard was gone had impacted the big griffon and Blackbird felt bad for being the bearer of bad news. Jolie’s crew had suffered losses, and though Blackbird didn’t know them, these losses caused a keen sense of remorse to settle over her.

“So, agents from the Fancy Foreign Legion are in Gasconeigh right now?” Bombay asked. She held a cup of tea in her paws and wore a sad frown upon her too-tight face.

“Jolie violated the directive, but for good reason.” Gratin paused for a moment to gulp down a bite of stew, and then, holding his spoon in his talon-fingers, he pointed it at Bombay. “You don’t need to worry. The agents are there to protect Jolie and our crew.”

“That makes me worry.”

“Sorry, Bombay. Some of the city’s lords are trying to excite trouble. Many feel that Jolie’s warship shouldn’t be here in the first place. The whole damn city feels like a boil that needs to pop. Insurrection is happening all over Fancy. Other cities have turned to rioting. Feels like we showed up at a bad time.” Stabbing his spoon into his bowl, Gratin ate more strew.

Motte turned away, shook his head, but said nothing. Bailey sat watching Gratin eat, and like Motte, she remained silent. A large, goose-egg sized bump could be seen on her head and one ear was still rather swollen. Blackbird looked around at her group, her troupe, her companions, and wondered to herself, what came next?

“Pyrotheosis!” Dim’s wet, gurgly voice held a surprising amount of volume and he burst into flames upon uttering his exclamation.

When Blackbird moved to put him out, Motte said, “Let him burn.”

Motte then lifted Dim up from his cushions, and held the burning unicorn aloft. Bailey added her magic to Motte’s, and then the two of them sat together, watching while Dim burned. Munro, a practical young minotaur, pinched a slice of bread in his thumb and forefinger, and held it above Dim so that it would toast.

“Munro, really?”

“Miss Sable?”

“You look ridiculous.”

“Maybe I do, but I’m about to have fresh, hot toast.”

“Fix me a slice?”

“Sure thing, Miss Sable.”

“Anarchy is the last light of our fading hope.”

Everypony—everyone present—took a moment to look in Dim’s direction. Motte became thoughtful, reflective even, and Bailey appeared as though she was considering Dim’s philosophical babble. Even Gratin was thoughtful while he ate his stew, and Munro, failing to pay attention, burned his fingers, almost dropping his toast.

“How bad do things have to be for Dim’s delirious rambling to sound appealing?” Bombay asked of her companions.

“That’s the thing”—Blackbird jerked her thumb in Dim’s direction—“if you travel with him long enough, you’ll find that he says the sanest things in the maddest moments.”

“Eerie sent Dim to help unravel things here in Fancy.”

“Motte?” Bombay seemed a bit startled by this revelation.

“It was Eerie’s hope that everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. She wanted Dim to break as much as he could, so that it could be fixed and made better. From what Gratin is telling us, it sounds as though everything is coming apart. Now we just somehow need to get Dim into the middle of it so that nothing holds together.”

Bombay closed her eyes. “Did everybody get different orders from Eerie?”

“I got the same orders as Motte.” Bailey’s eyes had the reflections of Dim’s flames in them. “She told me that Dim is the calm eye of the hurricane, placid and quiet, surrounded on all sides by absolute and total devastation. Eerie gave Motte and I orders to stay in the eye.”

Opening her eye, Bombay shook her head. “I don’t like this. Eerie is all about order. Nothing about this feels right. She gave all of us different directives, and I’m fine with that, but different orders? We’re a team, we should have a common goal.”

“We do.” Motte’s expression turned hard and flinty. “Some of us are just more aware of what the goal is. I don’t think it is coincidence that mere days after we arrive in Fancy, we’re attacked by those freaks. At the same time, from the sounds of it. Everything has gone wrong, which is exactly what was expected, no doubt. I suspect that Eerie was counting on this to happen. By leaving our orders specific to our roles, she left us with a great deal of flexibility to handle this crisis, and no one is freaking out about not being able to follow an order… our individual directives can still be met.”

“I suppose that you’re right.” Sighing, Bombay rubbed the side of her face with a soft, tender touch and her paw moved with an almost circular motion. “So what do we do now? The Bard is gone. He was our translator and trusted face. He knew the area. I can speak Fancy, and I even know some of the local customs, but there is no way I am a trusted face. I don’t know if I can get us lodging for the night. What happens next? Should we just pack up and go home?”

Bombay, it seemed, had said the very thing that was on everybody’s mind, because all gathered became thoughtful, save for Dim, who was delirious. Blackbird, feeling some strange pressure upon her, tried to weigh their options. She found herself in agreement with Mott; it couldn’t have been a coincidence that not long after their arrival in Fancy, they were attacked. Not just one attack, but two, upon the both of them while they were seperated by whatever distance had sprung up between them. Clearly, their visit here was anticipated, planned for, and whomever had tried to kill them was still at large.

Even more notable was the riskiness of it, because the alicorns had revealed themselves. They had been here operating under somewhat secretive circumstances, no doubt pulling the strings of their puppets from offstage. But with their bold attack, they had shown themselves. Of course, now it stood to reason that this attack was expected to be successful, which lead Blackbird to new places of thought; she had an inkling that she and her friends now held some advantage, having survived this attack.

Survival had given them an edge of some sort, she was certain of it, but Blackbird could not say what it was. These attacks had been to prevent further interference, so it stood to reason that now was the perfect time to interfere. Now was the time to push while they held an advantage. Surely, the loss of two fake-alicorns had hurt the plans of whomever was in charge and now was the perfect time to introduce yet more chaos into the situation. Turning her head, Blackbird glanced at her unicorn companion, who was currently in use as a toaster.

“Gratin… you speak Fancy, right?” Blackbird’s eyes now darted to the griffon eating stew.

“Oui,” the stew eating griffon replied.

“Griffons around here are trusted faces. They work as law enforcement. They defend the farms. The earth ponies around here trust their very existence to the griffons that protect them.” Blackbird hesitated, because she could feel Motte and Bailey’s eyes burning holes into her. “Gratin, I can’t let you go back to Gasconeigh.”

“What?” Gratin dropped his spoon into his stew.

“She’s right,” Motte said, sounding weary. “OId friend… I can’t let you leave. It’s nothing personal.”

“Motte… did you just conscript me?”

“Yeah. Yeah I did. Jolie will forgive me… at some point.” With a sigh, Motte got down to practical matters. “You came armed, and though you seem a bit roughed up, you’re no worse than the rest of us right now—”

“I am a privateer.”

“Correction”—the word came out flinty—“you were a privateer. Now you’ve been conscripted into Dim’s Irregulars.”

“Well… shit.” Raising his wing, Gratin saluted. “Aye-aye, then.”

Bailey nudged Motte in the ribs, nodded once, and a half-smile could be seen upon her face. “Listen to that. He’s just so… elegant.” Tossing her head back, she gave herself over to snickering.

“We’ll need to find some way to send word back to Jolie so she doesn’t panic.” Motte raised his hoof and offered Gratin a sincere return of his salute.

“Nothing changes,” Blackbird told her companions. “We’re not wanted here. Someone expected our arrival and had a plan to be rid of us. We’re still alive, so we’re going to exploit that. We’re going to push on, and see what sort of trouble we can stumble into. If we find trouble, we’ll give it trouble. We’re going to do what we do best… stumble ahead blindly and then blow shit to smithereens in a panicked overreaction.”

Gratin, holding his bowl of stew in his left talons, held out his right talons in a fist. “For glory… for Blackbird’s Francs-Tireurs!”

Munro, who jerked his toasted bread away from Dim, was the second. “For Blackbird’s… whatever that was.”

This wasn’t what Blackbird had in mind, and she felt a most peculiar panic.

“Yes,” Bailey said, laughing, “here is to Blackbird’s Francs-Tireurs!”

“To our good fortune and continued survival!” Motte raised his hoof.

“For the memory of our Bard, we go ever onward!” Bombay held out her paw.

Though terrified, Blackbird put on her bravest smile and prepared to lead.

Author's Note

Interesting word, pyrotheosis.

Factory standard

“What are gods, you ask?” The Essence of Night Who Might Be made a sweeping motion with his foreleg and an unknown number of stars twinkled into existence in the sky overhead. “Just beings with different phases and states of life, Dim. Nothing more and nothing less. Why, some of them were made in a factory, Dim… a place called Skyreach. Some were created with a purpose in mind… purpose-based beings. Others were created as weapons. But the point is, they were created. All too often, gods start out as what you would call disgusting primitives, but then have their horizons forcibly expanded. They are made to see beyond a limited mortal scope, and as such, they become something else.”

Dim also waved his foreleg and in response, a few stars twinkled to life overhead.

“There is always a new threshold to cross, a new plane of existence to become aware of. For those who cross that first initial threshold, for those who imagine a bigger world than what can be initially observed, there are many names… many perceptions of this awareness. Some call it awakening divinity. Some call it becoming enlightened. Nirvana is a popular name, and so is spiritual awakening. Many names and many perceptions exist to attempt to describe this first elevated state of being. But make no mistake… it is merely a state of being and there are always new doors of perception to force open.”

“So I could pass beyond this frail mortal form?” Dim looked down at the soil and imagined grass growing. In a short time, it did, and he imagined it to be both cool and inviting. When he sat down in it, he found it to be so, and he gave careful thought to the lesson he was giving to himself.

“You could.” The Essence of Night Who Might Be stared skyward and arranged stars into meaningful constellations. “You could, and there are many ways it could be done. Contemplating one’s navel is popular. A great many zebras ascend this way, through animancy. They place their soul into some mask, or some magical trinket, or some meaningful item that they then pass on to their beloved descendents. This is their magic, Dim. It does little to benefit them in their own lives, but it does much to enrich and empower their descendents.”

“Weaver Indigo…” Dim breathed the words and closed his eyes. “He was a zebra possessed by spirits and he gave his life to cast a spell.”

“Yes, Dim. Weaver Indigo ascended and took on a new form, a form that fulfilled purpose. His life… his essence… everything he ever was or would be, it transcended the mediocrity of flesh and became something greater… something that would serve other Weavers. He became just one more thread in their shared tapestry, a tiny piece to a much greater whole. All of the Weavers are now stronger for his sacrifice. Mysterious zebra magic gained a tiny bit of potency for his contribution.”

This gave Dim a great deal to think about and he found that he prefered his own company. The Essence of Night Who Might Be was the best part of himself, the best version of himself, the pony he wished that he could be. Dim gave careful thought to everything said, every word spoken, and felt fiery inspiration within his soul.

“Recently, I awoke. I was touched by something, but I know not what. Every time I try to recall it, all I can hear and remember is the fluttering of wings… and a kiss. But the details are so hazy. I want to do better… be better… but to be the best version of myself… I—” Here, Dim faltered, and no matter how he tried, he could not find the words.

“You wish to be like Weaver Indigo. To leave behind the best you have to offer for others, so that they might benefit.” The Essence of Night Who Might Be cast his wise expression upon his counterpart and began stroking his magnificent goatee. “Death is a pesky annoyance for most, but there are ways around it. Many are content to simply die and then go on to whatever lies beyond. But others… they wish to keep going.”

“This body of mine will not last forever. How do I protect what is precious to me?” Dim studied himself, he watched himself as he stroked his chin, and for the first time, he thought of others beyond himself. “There will always be some evil that needs to be purged, some foulness that needs to be burned out of existence. How do I keep going? I am not content to simply die and pass on to whatever comes next. I wish to continue.”

“Dangerous words, Dim.”

“I have much to atone for.” Flabbergasted by his own honesty, Dim sat in awe of the words that had just escaped his lips. “Sins against myself most of all.”

“A part of you will always exist in this dream realm, Dim. Long after that body is gone, you will persist. You will become one of the forces of governance in this place.”

“That is not enough.” Dim turned his eyes skyward and watched as the stars danced overhead. “It is not enough to be passive.”

The Essence of Night Who Might Be sighed, shook his head, and let out a chuckle. “Then you must find a way, Dim. That is the test of worthiness. If you wish to be more, then do more. There are many gates, many means. Find the one most suited to your talents and then find the means to progress beyond it. Devote your life to it. Delve into the forbidden mysteries.”

“Pyrotheosis.” Saying the word, Dim conjured a wisp of flame that he then played with in much the same way a foal played with clay. “Sometimes, I can hear the flames speaking to me, but I do not yet understand their language. They have a strange voice… a chorus… I cannot make sense of it.”

“Those are the voices of madness, Dim. They only know hunger and consume. Fire makes no plan, it has no grand design, it holds no fantastic intelligence. Because of what it is, it can only go about in a mad rush, consuming all it comes into contact with in a desperate bid for self-preservation. Fire has no hope, no aspirations, it has no industry. As a collective entity, it knowns only to destroy and to devour.”

“Then I must become acquainted with the language of madness,” Dim replied to himself. “Pyrotheosis.”

“This is but one gate among many. Be warned, Dim. Perhaps those voices you hear in the flames are those foolish enough to have gone before you. In crossing over, you might become just one more voice among many, luring in the next fool with a penchant for arson.”

“If that is indeed the case, then I must succeed where others have failed. I am a Dark. The impossible and improbable is my nature.”

“Dim, this is the way of madness, and perhaps, not the best way to ascend. Perhaps something more aligned with order might be better… it might welcome you. Draw you in rather than consume you.”

“Anarchy is the last light of our fading hope.”

“Damn you!” The Essence of Night Who Might Be lost his patience. “Must you embrace chaos so willingly? Your body is given to chaos, that cannot be changed, but your essence… ME… we… us… we can still embrace harmony. There is still hope for us. Can’t you see that? In this place of dreams, anything is possible.”

“I do not seek hope for myself,” Dim said, explaining himself. “But for others. Is flame not also a beacon? A light for others? Since my awakening, I have been keenly aware of other possibilities. Something restless stirs within me. Some new magic lurks in the corners of my mind. I understand the flames in some new way… the urge to consume… to devour… I can sympathise with it. I hunger—”

“That magic is best left alone, Dim. Delve into it at your own peril. It will be your undoing.” The Essence of Night Who Might Be turned his head and focused upon Dim.

“What is it and why do I have it?” Dim asked. “You just said to delve into the forbidden mysteries. Is this not a forbidden mystery?” While speaking, he saw himself, his counterpart, grow more frustrated.

“It is not a power you should have—”

“Why then, do I have it?”

The Essence of Night Who Might Be turned away and let out a groan of irritation. Dim waited, hoping for some answer, but it seemed that no response to his query was forthcoming. In his current absent-minded state, the flames he had been playing with poofed out of existence, but the stars he created overhead somehow persisted.

Dim thought of the flapping of wings, a sound and sensation that he could not quite remember, and of the kiss that haunted his mind. Something had changed, something profound, but he wasn’t sure what. Whatever meaning these events had eluded him. Maybe they were just dreams—this was, after all, the dream realm, and he was prone to dream.

“I am too bound by harmony to help you, Dim. When I was created in Skyreach, I was modeled after the Essence of Night. I was crafted from a duplicate template, like all of the others. Even if I wanted to help you… I can’t. I am bound by what made me. Dim, you have more freedom than I do. All I am, everything I am, is a slave to purpose.”

“Then who can help me?” Dim asked, hopeful.

“Seek the Nameless One. She lurks. When next you meet, ask for help.”

“The paper pony?”

“Yes, the paper pony. She who weeps ink. She was there in Skyreach… but… but I can’t remember her. She was there though. She created me. Us. She laid out the contingency plans, the number of which outnumber the stars. At one point, the Nameless One was an agent of harmony and she laboured towards a harmonious ideal. Something changed though. Maybe all of her plans changed her. She went rogue. Adopted a neutral stance. The Nameless One even delved into chaos. If you ask, she might help you, or she might not. The Nameless One is unpredictable.”

After some thinking, Dim knew that he was now humble enough to ask for help. Something had changed, something profound, though he knew not what. Again, the fluttering of wings haunted his mind, and he thought of himself with wings. This was the dream realm, a place where anything was possible. Did he want to be an alicorn? No… no he didn’t. Feathered wings did not suit him… but flames… shadows... intangible things held together and made real by the sheer force of imagination and will, these things tickled his fancy.

“Those are dangerous thoughts, Dim. There is chaos down that path. To reject the harmonious ideal of the perfect equine form—”

“A template for godhood?” Dim saw pain in his counterpart’s eyes and he felt bad for hurting himself. “I’ve never been one for the factory standard.”

“Don’t you think it is time you woke up, Dim?” The Essence of Night Who Might Be smiled, a sight that was somehow sad. “There are things to do.”

“I suppose there are,” Dim replied.

“You have a nation to save, Dim. Get to it.”

“I suppose I will.”

The scent of scrambled eggs roused Dim from his slumber and he opened his eyes. It was night, he could feel it, and the room was lit only by a few candles. A plate of scrambled eggs passed near his nose and the blurry, indistinct shape of Blackbird could be seen. It took some time for his eyes to focus, a task made difficult by the sheer weight of his eyelids.

“Is there anypony in there?” Blackbird asked, her voice low and soft. “Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anypony home?”

Dim tried to nod, but his neck was stiff. Munro came into half-focus beside Blackbird and Dim could see both of them looking at him, worried. For many, waking up to these faces filled with sharp teeth would be terrifying, but he found them comforting. Blackbird was his friend and Munro could be trusted.

Thinking of trustworthiness, Dim became aware that Munro’s fingers were around his neck, holding him upright so that Blackbird could feed him. His body was leaden, fevered, and achy. The spider bites itched something awful and throbbed in the worst way. A powerful thirst left his throat and tongue feeling like dry, cracked leather.

“Munro, pour some tea down in him and let’s see if that helps,” Blackbird said to her companion. “Once we do that, let’s see if we can get him to eat.”

Unable to move, completely helpless, Dim was eager for sustenance.

Author's Note

It might help to go back and read the previous chapter. Just saying. There are connections.

Trauer, revisited

A pile of stones just didn’t seem like a suitable marker for the Bard. Struggling to remain standing, Dim gazed at the stones and tried to understand the awful pain he felt inside. It wasn’t a physical pain and it was impossible to say where this pain was. Even worse, there seemed to be no way to soothe the terrible raw sensation that persisted without location.

Bombay Sable stood near the stones, her scarf-wrapped head bowed, and her forearms were folded into the small of her back. Though it was difficult, Dim glanced up at her and tried to imagine what she was feeling, but it was impossible. With each attempt, he came up short. Feeling disappointed with himself, he allowed his gaze to fall back to the cairn and he drew in a pained, wheezing breath.

“He was my friend,” Dim said, his words a raspy, guttural croak that seemed to struggle to escape his throat. “I didn’t get to spend much time with him and I feel… cheated. Robbed somehow. I was only just starting to get to know him… to appreciate him… and he’s gone.”

“That’s life, Dim. That is the way of things.” Bombay stood rigid, still, and almost unmoving. “This is our life. Any one of us could die in any number of horrible ways at any moment. Each moment is potentially our last. We’re not like other creatures. We deal in death and sometimes, Death comes to collect her due. I suppose I’ve been listening to the Death cultists. What they have to say is quite comforting.”

“He’s gone.” Dim felt a wing wrap around him and he resisted for a moment before allowing Blackbird to pull him close. Looking around, almost paranoid, he looked at the faces of his companions. Not a one of them seemed to think any less of him and looking closer, he realised that they were in pain too—a pain they all shared together. For a moment, he wasn’t sure of what he was thinking, and his paranoia—his concern on what others thought of him—bothered him.

It was doing him no favours.

“Rather than cower and be afraid, the Bard chose to be defiant.” Motte’s words sounded like gravel sifting. “If he hadn’t used his inspiration magic when he did, I think the fight might have turned out differently. Not good. Not good at all. The Bard drove Eerie crazy with his wild, wacky ideas, but that’s the thing; he always had an idea when the situation went to shit. Eerie loved him, but she also hated him in equal measure. She always said he was a damned fool and that he’d get himself killed one day with his cockamie ideas.”

Bombay laughed, but it also sounded like a choked sob in Dim’s ears.

“Here’s to damned fools, and the fools who follow them.” Bailey bowed her head.

“Blackbird, it seems as though you are now our new damned fool.” Motte, solemn and a bit sad, gave the big hippogriff an expectant stare. “Congratulations on your promotion. This certainly isn’t what Eerie had in mind, but I don’t think she planned for this outcome. Bombay is our new Bard. With Gratin, we have another heavy hitter. We still have Dim, but only just barely.”

Dim, secure beneath Blackbird’s wing, felt a curious dampness in the corners of his eyes and wondered how smoke, dust, or other irritants had somehow worked its way inside of his goggles. In fact, his eyes were burning… stinging… it was a most unpleasant sensation and he didn’t care for it one bit. Motte’s words rang true; this was yet another brush with death and Dim wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“The Bard told me that Fancy needs to burn to the ground,” Dim said as he fought against the horrible tickle in his throat. He paused and thought about everything else the Bard had said, and Dim chose not to mention that. “To save his home, we have to burn it down. So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll start with the bandits and see what happens. Whomever did this is going to regret the fact that we lived.” The tickle in Dim’s throat proved to be too much and he started to cough; a little at first, but it turned into barking whoops in no time at all.

“We might be expected, since we survived,” Bailey said to her companions, and this got a grunt from Gratin, who stood beside her.

“No one expects Dim.” Blackbird’s serious outburst got a few sad snickers and she waited for these to end before she continued, “If we’re lucky, we’ll find some answers. If not, there’ll be a lot less bandits. Win-win, really.”

Heads bowed, faces adorned with sad smiles and tired, weary, sorrowful eyes, the companions continued to pay their respects to their fallen Bard…

It was awful, packing up the wagon and knowing that one of them was getting left behind. Dim had no companion that would ride with him, nopony that would sit with him and keep him company. Dim would recover on the road as they traveled, and he had been told that he would recover. Would he have time? That remained to be seen. This was no longer a mere job, a contract to be completed. There was killing to do and Dim fully intended to make a spectacle of it.

He watched Bombay, how she moved, how she winced, and knew that she was still in pain. She hid it well, mostly, and reassured anyone who asked, telling them that she was fine. With one eye, could she shoot? Could she still fight? Dim felt such a fierce sympathy for her that it tore his insides and left him with a profound sense of suffering. How could he comfort her? Why was he so compelled to comfort her? Who was this creature and why did she matter?

Aching, he tore his gaze away and looked around the compound. Motte and Bailey had done so much to rebuild this place. Collapsed stone cottages now stood anew, maybe even better than before. Death stood watch near the gate again, whole once more, as if she hadn’t been shattered. This place would go on—life would go on—except for those who were now laid to rest.

So many had been lain to rest; the sheer, indiscriminate carnage was unimaginable.

Rather than say goodbye, unable to bear the pain of parting, Dim chose the dull comfort of sleep.

The rocking of the wagon and the sensation of poppy, static-crackles along with fuzzy warmth woke Dim from his slumber. It took him many long troubled seconds to recover his senses and in his confused state, he though it was Blackbird beside him—but as his consciousness gained potency he became aware that someone else was cuddling him. His first response was to lash out and set everything ablaze, but his higher reason, feeble as it was, quelled this foolish reaction.

He lay beside a giant and he determined that it had to be Bombay. Dim didn’t even come up to her hip; she towered over him while standing and very nearly smothered him in sleeping repose. A part of him wanted to be angry, but this part of him sputtered out of existence like a candle exposed to a tempest. Sure, the cuddle a cute pony thing was annoying, but Bombay was grieving, in pain no doubt, and had reached for him in sleep. At least, this is what Dim told himself.

The giantess stirred beside him, mewed in confusion, and her hot, fishy breath washed over him, robbing him of wind. Carnivores! One heavy arm of hers lay over his body, pinning him, and her torso was tight against his spine. He was no teddy bear, no stuffed toy, no cute, cuddly pony plaything! This was demeaning—but it was also something that Bombay no doubt needed and Dim’s waking mind succumbed to confusion in much the same way a sinking ship took on water.

“Dim… I’m sorry.” Bombay mewed out these words in a sleepy manner, and lifted her heavy arm from Dim. “They made me lay down. I was woozy.” She paused, breathing, her body going stiff whilst she stretched. “I was dreaming about… him. You were the right size and shape, I guess. This is bad. I know how you feel about being touched.”

What came out of Dim’s mouth surprised him a great deal, and he wondered if he was delirious again even as he said it. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Panicked, he blinked a few times to check and see if there was a pink cast to his vision, because if Princess Cadance was playing games with him, this wasn’t funny. But there was no pink tint—no sign of the Princess of Love having an active presence in his mind—and his consciousness threatened to collapse into nonexistence from embarrassment.

Of course he minded! But how could he tell her that? Another part of him, a part that he didn’t like, posed the question: How can you be such a selfish asshole? This question he asked of himself had to be rhetorical; he was a selfish asshole. For most creatures, their asshole was a tiny, unmentionable place hidden beneath their tails. But for Dim, he was made of asshole. He was asshole, evolved. His kind had dwelled in the primordial murk and then, in the most assholish move in all of existence, they had collectively decided that dry land was in sore need of assholes, for they had conquered the seas. So Sphincterus Tyrannus Tormentus had pulled themselves from the bubbling primordial ooze and had sallied forth to become one of the dominant lifeforms, unliked, unloved, and unwanted by all.

The heaviness of Bombay’s arm returned and Dim found himself pinned once more. Rather than letting him go, she was pulling him closer. The pillowy softness of her oddly placed chest-mounted mammaries was warm against his neck and she was soft, silky, in the same way that house cats were soft and silky. Among the tall races, the cats of Abyssinia, minotaurs and the like, ponies had replaced house cats as desirable, cuddly companions for one to pet and stroke.

Dim found himself in the worst sort of predicament; his dignity was in danger but his friend was suffering. She was his friend, wasn’t she? Of course she was—the Bard was his friend and by extension, the Bard’s friends were his friends. That was how this worked, right? But now the Bard was gone—dead—and Bombay was all he had left of his departed friend. A lump manifested in Dim’s throat and he suffered a moment of profound confusion.

Friendship was complicated; no wonder a princess was needed to govern it.

Bombay’s soft, fuzzy mammaries jerked and twitched against him. Dim was confused for a moment, there was an odd, puzzling element of sexuality about this, but then he realised that she was crying, sobbing in soft, subdued silence. Her paw fingers curled around his foreleg, but she did him no harm, even as sore and tender as he was. This was, perhaps, one of the most awkward, most unbearable moments in all of Dim’s existence, and he was at a total loss for what to do.

The wagon rocked back and forth, it’s movement like a cradle, and Dim found himself enveloped by humid warmth, which stood out in sharp contrast to the cool autumn air he pulled into his lungs with each laboured breath. It was almost too warm and this left him feeling drowsy. Dim’s psychosis, a forceful, vocal presence of its own, attempted to internalise all of this and cope with this the only way it knew how; by rationalising the use of excessive ultra-violence upon those who might hurt, injure, molest, or otherwise harm the affectionate, grieving cat-creature that held him while she sobbed.

By assigning Bombay as a precious thing, he was able to quiet the discordant, turbulent emotions within, and some measure of peace overcame him. Blackbird was a precious thing, but Blackbird was capable of reckless dismemberment and casual disembowelment. There was a time when Blackbird hadn’t been so capable, she had been a bit more helpless, but something had changed. Blackbird had changed, she had grown, and she had evolved. She too, was capable of gleeful psychotic violence and when thinking about this development, Dim wasn’t sure how he felt about it. The idea of a soft, somewhat helpless Blackbird appealed to him, but the notion of Blackbird the Butcherbird filled him with curious lust that he was hesitant to explore.

There was nothing that Dim could do but endure.

Author's Note

And we continue...

Do it yourself godhood

From a distance, the hamlet was so picturesque that it belonged on a postcard, but up close? It was whitewashed, like everything else was, so it offered the suggestion of safety; however, whitewashed hovels were still hovels. A few of the buildings were made from heavy timber and stones, but not many. A windmill stood like a tall, creaking guardian that watched over the settlement that had grown where two major roads had crossed.

Dim saw soldiers and he puffed away on his cigarette while some of them came over, no doubt to ask about their business here in whatever this place was. They were fusiliers by the looks of them, common soldiers. Disposable infantry. They appeared to be fighting the great enemy of boredom, the dreaded bane of soldiers everywhere, though it could be said that no soldier wanted their life to become suddenly exciting.

Gratin met with the two griffons and the pegasus that had flown over; now, the four of them were chattering away at one another. Bombay joined them, woozy on her paws, and Dim saw a concerned look from the pegasus pony. For some reason, this moved him, this brief display of kindness. Soldiers didn’t have to be kind—they had to be soldiers—but for them to chose to be kind left Dim feeling some unknown emotion that made his throat tight.

Correction: the pegasus pony was clearly a grenadier, as evidenced by the bombs strapped to his bandolier. Dim’s sharp eyes searched for more details, more clues, and he began to wonder what was going on out this way that required advanced soldiery. Well, other than pseudo-alicorns roaming about that could level a village or maybe even a city.

Motte and Bailey were exhausted and in need of rest. Somehow, they had pulled for over thirty miles this day since leaving the cultist compound. Night was coming and the shadows had grown long. A brave gang of foals ventured close to the wagon, but not too close. They stared at Blackbird, fearful but curious, and Dim watched her wave. Munro, perhaps hoping to compete with Blackbird for attention, began to juggle apples, but apples were not a hippopotamic behemoth that was the hippogriff.

Braying laughter could be heard from the pegasus pony and Dim took this as a good sign.

“Dim, we have a situation.” Gratin’s eyes glittered gold in the firelight and the big griffon’s talons flexed with nervous energy. “The soldiers tell me that Duc Truffe has levied an emergency tax without saying what it is for. Farmers that cannot pay with coin are bound to have their land taken. Panic is already spreading across the countryside. One of the griffons I spoke to thinks that Duc Truffe is trying to raise a militia, but his companions disagree. They feel that something far more sinister is at work here. Raising a militia feels too obvious.”

Slicing potatoes into a pot, Munro let out a muffled moo of concern.

“It is no mere coincidence that this tax happened just a few days ago.” Bombay rubbed the side of her head, her paw-fingers gingerly making little circles. “Right about the time when we were attacked. Not long after our arrival. It sounds to me that Duc Truffe has been made desperate by our arrival and now consolidates his power.”

“It could be coincidence,” Bailey said to the irritated Abyssinian.

“And Dim could be called a fine example of altruism,” Bombay replied, wincing in pain.

“Bombay?” Bailey, worried for her companion, ignored the sarcasm. “You okay?”

“The skin feels too tight and everything itches. It aches something awful.”

Dim, sitting atop a pile of grain sacks, looked around at the interior of the windmill. It was cold in here and the space was far too open for the small cooking fire burning in the hearth to warm it. A clay oven that looked like a big beehive was still somewhat warm from baking loaves of bread, but it did nothing to overcome the chill in the air.

“The Conseil des Ducs have the right to impose an emergency tax at any time. Most of them don’t do it, because it is a mighty unpopular thing to do, as you might imagine. If Duc Truffe did this, he had to have support… or he did it without the approval of the other lords of the city. I can’t imagine this going well for him if he acted alone though.”

Still silent, Dim turned to regard Gratin and gave him a faint nod of acknowledgement.

“I’ve never seen a nation unravel right before my eyes before,” Blackbird said, her eyebrow jittering up and down like a coffee-starved squirrel. “It’s really happening, isn’t it? This Duc fella, he’s just going to say fuck the rules and do what he wants. He’ll take these farmers’ lands and their houses and probably do something awful to them like charge them rent or something, unless somebody does something.”

“And what would that something be?” Bombay asked, still rubbing her scarred head.

“Pay his tax in lead,” Blackbird replied with no trace of joviality in her words. “Just kill the everloving fuck right outa him. Keep shooting until the body looks like that weird cheese with holes in it. I mean, I feel bad about killing, I do… but a whole lot of creatures is about to be hurt. But if we kill this gutter-sniffer, we can spare a lot of suffering.”

Bailey, wearing a grim, enduring smirk, nodded. “Killing him is an option, but we need good reason to kill him. Evidence. Proof of wrongdoing. This Duc guy sounds important. Just killing him outright might make everything worse. Public outrage can go a long way towards smoothing over the cold-blooded murder of the guy in charge.”

“What about the soldiers outside?” Dim asked, breaking his silence. “What are their intentions?”

“I do believe they are about to break their sacred oath,” Gratin replied, his talons still twitching. “That is why they are here… they hope to shelter from the current political weather. These soldiers are locals, Dim. Farmers, most of them. They’re loyal to soil, not to the Ducs.”

“Loyal to the soil.” Dim repeated the words, savouring them, and he nodded his head. “For now, we continue as we had planned. We go and check out those bandits. Perhaps we’ll find something. Of course, if we don’t, dead bandits. Everypony wins. If everything goes to shit, the bandits will be one less thing to worry about.”

Having finished slicing up potatoes, Munro began slicing up carrots into the pot.

Roosting birds cooed in the overhead spaces, disturbed by the noises from down below. The sounds of spoons scraping thin tin bowls, slurping, belching, and grunts of satisfaction could be heard. Dim was wrapped up in the greatcoat that Blackbird had made for him and he was almost warm enough to be comfortable. He ate, but was distracted, his thoughts distant and far away from the camaraderie offered by his companions.

Loyal to the soil.

Not to a lord, or some noble, or member of royalty, but soil. The very idea, the very concept kept Dim enthralled, fascinated by such simple, satisfying words. Had the Bard been loyal to his soil? Yes. Perhaps. Pâté au Poulet was a pony that loved his country, but held no blind obedience to its rulers. Soil. The Darks had betrayed their soil—their traitorous actions had harmed Equestria in some great, unfathomable way. Being loyal to the soil seemed to be a good start for being a hero, something that Dim now gave careful consideration to. All of the tales of his youth now had renewed vigour in his mind, new meaning.

What was a pale carrot called again?

Oh yes, a parsnip, which Dim ate and then spared no further thought about.

“So… that other world,” Blackbird said when her tin bowl was empty, “what made it end? I mean, what happened? I’m only asking because it feels like this world is starting to come undone.”

Bailey allowed her spoon to rest in her half-eaten bowl of stew and she eyeballed Blackbird, thoughtful. After a few moments of consideration, she replied, “There was a unicorn named Starlight Glimmer and she meddled with things best not messed with. She had a vendetta against a pony named Moondancer. Moondancer became an alicorn for some such reason, I don’t know the specifics. That was before my time. But Starlight went back in time and messed with things. Moondancer never became an alicorn. The present broke in two and both realities that existed tried to play themselves out on the same stage. The whole of the world unraveled. All of the monsters that Moondancer had stomped on as an alicorn were never stomped on. Eventually, it all came apart.”

“How tragic.” Blackbird said this while looking down into her empty bowl and when she looked up once more, she sighed.

“Moondancer was Princess Luna’s student. I don’t know much.” Bailey frowned and shook her head. “About all we had left was storytelling. Everything was gone. Nothing but ruins and bones as far as the eye could see. Princess Luna’s sister came back after being banished for one thousand years in the sun. But Starlight changed the outcome. Moondancer never became Princess Luna’s student. When Supernova came back, she and Princess Luna fought. Monsters ravaged everything. The War of the Sisters scorched the world. Those sisters were supposed to save the world, not end it. But end it they did.”

“How did everypony know that things had changed?” Blackbird asked.

“Because there were many that remembered both realities. Drove them mad. We called it the Great Fracturing. The adults all went crazy when they remembered two different realities at once. A whole generation of foals grew up with no parents. Society broke down. Thousands of years of progress were lost overnight and we all became savages.”

“I… I… I can’t even—” Blackbird’s voice faltered and trailed off.

“I can.” Dim’s words caused Blackbird to level her bewildered gaze at him. “An extensive part of my schooling was the theoretical consequences of temporal tampering. Looking back, I can only imagine that my mother was trying to prepare me for something. Temporal excursions create tangent universes. The temporal flow splits. It is divided. However, very powerful magics can restore the two streams and cause them to overlap. A mere unicorn could not do this.”

Bailey shook her head. “Then how did Starlight do—”

“She didn’t.” Dim lowered his stew bowl and studied Baileys bewildered, hurt expression. “Your Starlight didn’t cause the two streams to overlap one another. She might have caused the stream to fracture, to split in two, but something else, something immensely powerful exploited the chaos that she caused and took advantage of it from the background. There are powerful creatures that can do this, given the right circumstances. Reality is governed by unseen forces, but these forces can be fought… meddled with… or even killed outright. If this happens somehow, no corrections can be made.”

“I don’t understand.” Bailey, still shaking her head, cast her gaze down to the floor. “If these forces exist, why would Starlight even be needed at all? Why can’t they just destroy everything directly?”

“Certain primordial spirits and demons hold the potential for unlimited power, but need the right conditions,” Dim replied. “If, say, a primordial demon was responsible for this, he or she or it might have been mostly powerless. Dorment. Slumbering. But, splitting a timeline in two causes immense chaos. A disruption in the flow of harmony causes dissonance. This energy can be fed upon and given the right circumstances, a near powerless entity can suddenly find themselves overflowing with power. Enough to cause your Great Fracturing. The sheer chaos caused by such an event such as the Great Fracturing would further elevate these beings, transforming them into incomprehensible things that defy all reasoning. Eldritch entities that hide in the dark spaces beyond the stars, beings that lie in waiting, lurking, hoping for another chaotic event to come along so they can feed.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Motte asked, shivering, though perhaps not from the freezing air.

“Extensive schooling.” Dim could think of no way to be humble about this. “Pretty much the finest schooling available on subjects both mundane and fantastical. Given the nature of who and what I am, it seems obvious that my mother was preparing me for whatever grim future she had planned.”

Waving his hoof about in a dismissive gesture, Motte snorted. “You make it sound as though you were schooled in the fundamentals of becoming a god. Just saying it aloud causes one to hear and realise just how far fetched it is. Self-aggrandising. It’s hogwash.”

Dim’s lip curled back into a fine aristocratic sneer and the lights around him flickered, as if threatening to go dark. He chuckled, a disturbing, unpleasant sound that almost caused poor Munro to drop his bowl. Bombay’s surviving ear pricked and her eye narrowed with curious interest when she glanced at Dim and gave him a knowing nod.

“Allow me to give you a step by step tutorial,” Dim said as the lights went weak. “I promise, I’ll keep it simple. First thing you must do is plan for the long term. The mortal body is weak and will fail. For many, this means becoming a lich or a vampire… something that is a bit more enduring. There are many ways to accomplish this step. Once you no longer have to worry about mortality, you find some way to connect yourself to a primordial element. For most, this means siphoning chaos. It is the easiest thing to tap into.”

Here, Dim paused, took a deep breath, and licked his lips.

“At this point, it becomes a waiting game. You have all the time in the world. So now, you need to generate chaos, and lots of it. Make others fight and bicker around you somehow. Use magic to influence the lives of others and sow discord. It starts with a village and you slowly drink it in, gaining power. You start making artifacts to aid you, and maybe you recruit a few toadies to assist you in your great work.”

Again, he paused and this time he put his bowl down.

“At some point, waiting pays off and you move onwards to bigger and better things. Instead of tampering with a village, you send an entire nation into chaos and undo the lives of untold millions. Now your power grows in leaps and bounds. You gain and you grow. A hundred thousand unspeakable tragedies play out and you drink them in like mother’s milk. At this point, you begin to transform. You warp and you wend, becoming something else. It is at this point that you get noticed by others… those who have gone before you. They hunger, and make sweet, sweet promises. Feed them, give them sustenance, and they will share their secrets with you. Eventually, a nation is no longer enough, and you move on to consume the world… and from there, you begin to rove through the stars, seeking out the next conflict to feed upon.”

Trembling, Motte appeared as though he would say something, his mouth opened, his tongue lolled around his teeth like a thrashing serpent, his lips moved, but no words came. Beside him, Bailey looked disturbed, her eyes haunted, her hard face grim. Blackbird’s eyes held no mirth, no joy, they had gone dark and did not shine. Bombay rubbed at her scars, but she too, had nothing to say.

Munro alone had the courage to say something, and his voice trembled in the most awful of ways. “So… is someone undoing the nation of Fancy to gain the power they need?”

“Perhaps.” Dim shrugged, a stiff, careless gesture, and then his withers sagged with exhaustion. “My mother did just become a lich. She’s as well-versed in the plan as I am. She was one of my many teachers after all. Then there is Catrina, an Abyssinian who became a lich. No doubt, she aspires to something greater. Make no mistake though… something out there is benefiting from all that is happening around us.”

“Wait…” Motte raised his hoof as a perplexed, puzzled, quizzical expression crept over his face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I mention it only as a possibility.” Dim’s sneer spoke volumes and said far more than his words did.

Motte was about to say something in return, but there was a howl outside, a dreadful sound that chilled the blood and made each of the companions shudder in turn. This howl was accompanied by a second, a third, a heavy thud, a crash that could be felt through the ground and floor, followed then by screaming. It was just outside and Dim sat with his ears pricked, listening as more screams rent the night.

Bailey shook her head and in a frantic whisper she said, “Dim, don’t do it.”

“I don’t hear the soldiers.” Dim’s head tilted to one side so he could listen better.

“This is a fight they can’t win, Dim. They can’t do anything because they’d be throwing their lives away.” Gratin’s beak clicked together and his spine went rigid as his wings fidgeted during a particularly awful scream.

“Dim, no.” Bombay almost mewed the words and her eye was wide with terror.

Alas, all of the companions lacked the persuasive tongue of the Bard, and Gratin, perhaps fearing the worst, shook his head from side to side, a silent plea for Dim to listen to reason. A brutal scream, the kind that liked to haunt the memories of those who heard it, was cut off by a burbling, wet gurgle. Bailey squeezed her eyes shut and Motte did the same, his lips moving while something was muttered in near-silence.

“I can’t just sit here!” Dim cried, his voice a ragged, raspy sound that caused the birds overhead to let out panicked coos. “For the Bard!”

Blackbird almost said something, but Dim was already gone…

Author's Note

So... why'd he do it?

Heeding the call

As Dim materialised into an unknown situation there was a blood chilling howl. One of the hovels—a mere shack—had been cracked open like a walnut and something large, hairy, and brutish could be partially seen. Dim approached, raising as many spell protections as possible, and rounded the corner of a building with somewhat crooked, leaning walls. Screams filled the night and as Dim cleared the corner, he got his first look at what the ponies of Fancy called loup-garou.

While Dim stood watching, almost frozen in horror, the creature ripped the head off of a writhing, screaming victim held in its claws, crunched the skull once in its mighty jaws, and swallowed. The body, kicking, twitching, thrashed in death and released its bowels. What was this thing? Dim didn’t know. It looked like a diamond dog, but bigger. It was mangy looking, covered in bulbous tumours, with twisted, distorted limbs that looked as though they had been broken and allowed to heal all wrong. Scarlet blood glistened in the wan moonlight and billowing steam rose in panted gusts, curling in the freezing night air.

One still lived; one shrieked among the rubble and partially devoured corpses. A filly, not long for marehood, ran circles in the open, stupid with panic. Though it was a costly move, Dim wrapped his magic around her, subsumed her will—which caused her to go silent, still—and then he teleported her inside of the windmill, which was behind him. The diseased creature, for surely it had to be diseased, deprived of its meal, now turned its attention to Dim.

“Welche Hündin hat dich zur Welt gebracht, du hässlicher Mutterficker?”

The creature snorted, sending vast plumes of steam shooting from its nostrils. Bits of skin and hair dangled from its open maw, wriggling with its jerky, twitchy movements. It was hunchbacked and boney, spiked growths could be seen protruding from its lumpy, mangy flesh. A wet slurp could be heard when it licked its chops in anticipation and its eyes narrowed at Dim, who stood unmoving.

“Widerliche Pissflitsche.”

Sparing no further words after his terse, consonant-heavy opener, Dim opened with a Fenix Fireburst, a deadly barrage that launched homing darts of flame. When he had last cast this spell, he had only been able to summon a meagre three darts; a source of cringeworthy embarrassment for him. Seeing the evidence that he had grown in strength and power emboldened him, and he prepared for what was certain to be an entertaining fight.

Each of the fiery darts struck home, an even dozen of them, and each landed with explosive, concussive force. The creature was rocked back with each blast, set ablaze; the stench of burning hair and flesh filled the night. It was a shame, really, the fight was almost over before it had progressed to a worthwhile distraction—or so Dim thought while he prepared another spell, a finisher.

But Dim’s initial assessment proved incorrect; the scorched lupine creature made a startling recovery and as it turned out, wasn’t nearly as injured as was believed. Even as Dim stood watching, the burnt flesh seemed to be knitting itself back together. New bulbous growths appeared, new tumours, and the charred skin—still smouldering—now looked like old cracked leather. The regeneration was remarkable, even more so than the pseudo-alicorn, and was comparable to a troll.

Why hadn’t fire stymied the regeneration?

When the creature lept, Dim teleported because his body was still too stiff to move—he was still recovering from his injuries—and he reappeared almost one-hundred yards away with the hopes of leading the monstrous creature away from the buildings. The creature lept again and somehow managed to close forty feet or so of the distance in a single bound. How? What terrible brute was this? Even after watching it happen, his brain wanted to doubt what he had seen.

Distractions could be fatal so he forced himself to focus.

With the creature closing fast, Dim let go with The War Maiden’s Seeking Skull. The glowing phantom skull crackled into existence above him and its howling, riotous laughter flooded the night with sound. It flew unerringly towards the approaching beast, collided with the creature’s face, and detonated—The War Maiden’s Seeking Skull transmuted living tissue into an explosive mass on contact and there was a lot of living tissue on the tumorous, lumpy wolf-monster.

An eyeblink later and it was raining smoking bits of meat, hair, and bone.

Much to Dim’s shock and disbelief, the creature, little more than a pile of formless meat, began to recover. Shattered bones formed jutting spikes as new bones gave form and definition to rapidly regrowing limbs. Visible ribs protruded from the beast’s torso like clawed fingers and bony ridges of its skull formed a helmet of sorts while a new skull took shape. It was horrifying to witness and Dim cursed regenerators, the apparent bane of his existence.

While he had a few precious seconds—the monster was busy regrowing itself—Dim fashioned raw aether into a wisp. It was a costly move, creating a summon, but a worthwhile distraction might help and the wisp would do damage. This wisp was electrical in nature and it buzzed like an angry hive of disturbed bees whilst it generated a static charge. After a moment, it went streaking off towards the monster, an insubstantial mass of raging electrical fury.

Dim’s summons never lasted long, but typically they lasted long enough.

The wolf-monster danced an electric jig while raw, arcing lightning poured into its body from the wisp. It smouldered, caught ablaze, and Dim considered his options with great care while he had a few precious seconds to spare. By all rights, anything being zapped by the storm wisp should have died outright, so Dim was at a loss for what to do.

“Gebratene Wolfsnippel, genau wie Mutti früher gekocht hat!”

He cast Clover’s Conflagration, his most reliable offensive spell and one of his favourites. Not only did it ignite a foe, but it slowed them as well. Much to his relief and surprise, the magical slowing seemed to work on the creature’s regeneration, which was helpful. Stopping the regeneration was his top priority and there had to be a way. The creature, howling with pain and fury, tried to attack the wisp, but its clawed paws passed through the insubstantial form, receiving hefty electric shocks for its effort.

Still, the creature was recovering, and this was bad indeed…

“Deine Großmutter war die Dorfhure!”

Teleporting away to gain more distance, Dim began flooding the area around the creature with hydrogen, summoning stray bits of matter so that they could be ignited. A glowing nexus appeared over him, swirls of magic both amber and pale pink as he wove two distinct streams of magic. For added potency, he spoke the ancient words of power.

“Incertus pulcher imperio!”

The nexus shrunk, becoming a tiny thing, something almost harmless in appearance, a miniscule mote of vivid orange light. Held in magic, Dim hurled it like a pebble and it flew for the wolf-creature that was still trying to destroy the wisp. The fiery missile trailed purple-blue light behind it while it flew unerringly right at its target. Around Dim, the air reeked of ozone and smoke. Gritting his teeth, Dim readied himself for impact and ignition, knowing that this would be spectacular.

All around him, the world was awash with heat and light, with night becoming as bright as day. The physical force of the explosion would have been enough to pulp Dim, had he not been protected from his own blasts. His power had grown considerably and he delighted in his wanton destruction.

“Schmutziger Furzlecker!” he shouted, his words drowned out by the roar all around him.

When the rampant destruction cleared and Dim could see again, there was nothing left. The grass, brown with autumn, was an ocean of flickering, dancing flames. Several trees had been ignited. Jittering motes of magic danced in the shimmering waves of heat. Of the nightmarish wolf creature, there was no sign. It was gone, dead, blown to smithereens, and Dim heaved a sigh of relief. Even his wisp was gone, consumed by the blast.

It was over. Overwhelming, overpowering brute force had won the day. Might had made right and all was good in the world. When regular explosions failed, bigger, badder explosions were needed, and there was no such thing as overkill in a world with crazy regenerating creatures. Just as Dim was about to have himself a cigarette and relish his victory, he noticed movement in the epicenter of the blast.

“Verdammt, fick mich.” His victory cigarette would have to wait, it seemed. “Unmöglich.”

And then, for emphasis, “Unmöglich!”

A burnt, blackened figure rose from the smouldering, scorched earth. It was almost skeletal, little more than a slender silhouette in the flickering firelight, and watching it while it jerked about like a seizure-ridden marionette caused Dim’s nethers to suddenly become moist with terror as his fear went flowing out of him in a steady, acrid-scented stream. The blackened bones grew lumps, these lumps grew more lumps, and the collection of lumps took on form and definition.

“Was sagst du jetzt, Feuergott?”

The sound of wings made Dim’s ears prick and a terrifying shadow manifested in the darkness, a phantom harbinger of spectacular doom. An immense form seemed to take shape as it dove into the light and the flapping of Blackbird’s wings caused the smoke rising from the scorched grass to roil in beautiful eddies. In her talons, she held the long ten, the impressive ten gage of elephantine proportions, a weapon crafted for titans, gargantuans, and behemoths.

At almost point-blank range, she fired and caused the wolf-creature’s regrowing skull to disintegrate. She fired again, severing a forelimb at the shoulder, and then again, blasting off the opposing limb. Afterwards, she took careful, steady aim, and removed both legs at the hips. With the creature dismembered for a moment, she flapped her wings, rose upwards, and retreated, all while reloading the revolving cylinder of her long gun.

“Keep going for the limbs!” Motte’s commanding baritone rent the night, his quad-barreled shotgun held at the ready. “We can only slow him down! Recover Dim and retreat! Blackbird, keep him occupied if he gets up!”

Bombay stepped out of the shadows and into the light, with pistol in one paw, glowing wand in the other. Dim realised this was a tactical retreat—Motte’s words rattled around inside of his head—but the fight wasn’t over. The monster wasn’t dead. It was already recovering from Blackbird’s downright surgical dismemberment and when it got up, it would only continue to terrorise the night. It had to be put down like the rabid, mangy dog that it was.

“We have to kill it!” Dim’s own voice was ragged, almost wheezing from his efforts.

“No can do,” Bailey replied, barking out her response. “The only way to kill that thing is to boil its heart in moonlight-refined silver. Now let’s go, Dim. Hurry, before we have to put it down again!”

Dim balked at the idea of an unkillable enemy; he hesitated for a time and then was overcome with a seething rage that made his heart ache. This is what the peasants lived in fear of? This… this thing preyed upon them and the only protection was some alchemical whitewash? For a second, Dim was certain that he would either have a stroke or a heart attack and the whole of his body seized while his hind hooves trod in the puddle of his own urine.

A violent, contemptible protest exploded from his lips: “NEIN!”

With an accelerated burst of teleportation, Dim surged forwards, his mind racing for solutions. He closed the distance between him and his regenerating, recovering foe, not knowing what he would do next. Fine control had given way to chaos and this suited him—sometimes chaos was the only light of hope that could be found.

“Blackbird! See if you can grab him! I don’t care if those claws of yours make him bleed! Recover Dim at all costs or Eerie will have our heads on pikes!” Motte’s command was a screech of frenzied panic as he too closed the distance, his quad-barreled shotgun raised and ready. “Bombay, stun him if you can! Use magic! I don’t care what it takes!”

Acting in desperation, Dim crushed the recovering wolf-creature and then teleported the compacted, smashed remains inside of a tree. A second later, before Dim could even congratulate himself on his quick thinking, the tree exploded, showering the area with splinters, and the Tartarian nightmare burst forth, a furious lump of bone, rage, and gristle. He needed something stronger to contain the beast—he needed stone! A stone sarcophagus might do!

“Motte, Bailey, I need stone and lots of it! Enough to put a body inside!”

“It won’t kill him!” Bailey cried.

“No, but it might trap him!”

“It’s worth a shot,” Motte said while he took careful aim, but held his fire.

The two earthmover unicorns went to work, calling up rocks from out of the soil while Dim kept the creature subdued, while Blackbird hovered overhead with her reloaded surgical shotgun at the ready. Bombay flanked, ready to react if needed, but she kept her precious bullets and magic withheld in reserve. Through the chaos, the companions actually worked together, forming a cohesive, copacetic, functioning team. Where before, they had scattered, leaving them weak, they now had a shared strength.

Like clay, the stones were pressed into one another, gaining mass. More stones came, summoned up from the depths of the ground, they broke the surface of the soil and came rolling over to join the ever-growing mass. Dim used his telekinesis to keep snapping limbs and to subdue to the quivering mass of tumorous, lumpy growths, pounding upon it like a baker did dough. Dim could see the problem; he could only do this for so long before he became exhausted, and then the creature would run rampant. Subduing it somehow so that it could be ritualistically destroyed in moonlight-refined silver would be quite a task—a task made easier by a blessing of unicorns working together. His thoughts strayed and he thought about the unicorn collective he had witnessed in Istanbull—but his distraction only lasted for a second.

With the massive lump of stone now finished, Motte nodded and said to Dim, “Put it in there and let’s see what happens. Everybody, be ready to beat a hasty retreat!”

Dim teleported the quivering mass of tumours and bone-spikes into the stone—and then waited with bated breath. A groaning sound could be heard, a most curious sound, and then cracks began to appear on the surface of the shaped stone. Backing away, Dim summoned the Spear of Chantico, which burst into pink and black flames at his magical touch. The stone shuddered, there was a grinding sound, and fine spiderwebs of cracks appeared, growing in length with alarming rapidity.

“Get back,” Dim commanded while he waved the spear around over his head.

His companions scattered without requiring an explanation, much to his relief. Dim divested himself of his gear, vanishing it into the distant windmill, and then he ignited himself. He was now a terrific sight, a horrible flaming form that blazed, sending spitting, crackling embers into the night around him. With a whoosh, he subsumed the fires around him, the grass, the trees, the everything, and his own flames burned ever brighter. His fatigue melted away and he felt his strength returning to him while he devoured the flames in the general vicinity.

Reaching out with the spear, he stabbed the stone and there was a sizzling hiss. In no time at all, the stone was glowing; first a dull cherry red, then a bright, vivid orange, and then the surface began to bubble. The cracks vanished as the stone temperature climbed towards the boiling point and began to liquify. Dim stood amidst the blazing inferno, unscathed; if anything, he felt invigourated.

Like hot wax, the stone gave up shape and form to become a puddle that spread out over the earth. Soil ignited, sending up wisps of flames as it became a blazing carpet. The liquified stone bubbled like a stew, sending white-hot globules of stone flying with every simmering bubble that popped.

“I think the beast will be contained,” Dim said, his voice the crackling roar of a well-fed fire. “Even if he lives through this, there’s no part of him big enough to displace matter with his regeneration. He’s finished.”

“We’ll see about that come morning,” Motte replied. “Now come away, Dim. Let us get inside. There are packs of these creatures roaming the countryside.”

Hearing this, Dim was disheartened. Was all of this for naught? Could nothing else be done? Was this all the peasants of this land could hope for, a fresh coat of alchemical whitewash? All of this effort, all of this fire and fury for just one creature—and there were packs of them. How could a nation function with monsters like these at large in the countryside? He shuddered at the thought of them invading a city; the carnage would be almost unimaginable.

He stirred the molten rock with the spear, unsure if it did anything beneficial, but doing it anyway. Tonight was not a victory, but at least he had made the attempt and thinking about that made him feel better. His thoughts turned to the Bard, his fallen friend, and he wondered if Pâté au Poulet would have appreciated the attempt—or if the grumpy earth pony would have called him a reckless fool. Still… what noble bard did not appreciate a heroic effort, even if it was a foolhardy attempt? This was the very essence of songs… ballads… stories… tall tales… the very things that had once inspired him.

The knight errant was not always victorious, but his valiant efforts became storied legends. Retreating from the simmering mass of boiling stone, Dim accepted that this would have to do—this was his best effort. Perhaps with time and better preparation, this was a foe that could be killed, but what an undertaking that would be.

There was nothing left to do but to check on the peasant he had rescued…

Author's Note

Sometimes, being a hero means making futile gestures of ~~idiocy~~ goodness.

And then the morning comes

In near-silence, Dim made a surreptitious effort to endure his post-battle jitters. While he did his best to appear okay, he was far, far from it. Why, the very fact that something like what he had battled still existed in the world had left him shaken to his very core. How could a nation function with monsters like that running around rampant, devouring hapless citizens? The long and the short of it was, it didn’t; Fancy was decaying from within, its rotten bones finally giving way.

Gratin was a source of comfort for the frightened, grieving filly, and the two of them were talking to one another, though Dim could not understand what they had to say. He toked away on his his clove and cannabis joint, trying to hold back a dreadful case of the jitters that demanded to be let out. What he needed was comfort, but Blackbird seemed preoccupied, disturbed by what she had witnessed. Bombay joined the conversation with Gratin and the filly, and with her paw, she began stroking the filly’s neck. The act of kindness caused Dim to feel weird and it took him a moment to realise that he was jealous. He too, was in need of comfort, though he would never, ever, under any circumstances, admit to it.

Closing his eyes, Dim listened to the chatter though he didn’t understand a word. He was glad that his friends had showed up. A part of him was thankful that he hadn’t faced this alone. Some part of him delighted in the fact that it been a team effort to subdue the creature, and surely, it was subdued. Much to his dismay though, telling himself that did nothing to alleviate his fears.

“Her father watered down the whitewash,” Bombay said, shaking her head from side to side. “She called him stupid and said many awful things to him. Her last words to him were angry ones.”

Upon hearing this, Dim sighed.

“They were poor and had been forced out of their home,” Bombay continued. “The river was rerouted to drain a marsh and some old mine of some sort. Many of the farmers in the area got displaced from—”

A mine? Dim’s head turned to look at the filly. “Ask her more about this mine.”

“Dim?” Bombay’s head cocked off to one side, confused. “Ask her what, exactly?”

“Do it.”

Still stroking the filly’s neck, Bombay obeyed Dim’s terse command. As for Dim himself, he puffed away on his joint while thinking about mines and what could be hidden inside of them. Whole armies could be made to disappear, secreted away belowground. If a mine was abandoned and then allowed to flood, it had to be tapped out—worthless. To go through the trouble of rerouting the river and draining said mine—said worthless mine—was a tremendous cost.

“Bombay, does she know who gave the order to reroute the river and open the mine?”

“Be patient, Dim,” Motte said with a mouthful of leftover stew.

But there was no patience to be had. Dim had done the right thing, foolish as it was, and now it felt as though the universe was rewarding him; these serendipitous circumstances could not be mere coincidence. He had saved one life—just one—but now the universe was doing its utmost to restore his notion that one life mattered.

It was Gratin who translated two words: “Duc Truffe.”

When Dim nodded, he was not alone, both Motte and Bailey joined him.

“Duc Truffe promised that with the mine reopened, there would be many jobs,” Gratin said, his words heavy, a weary rumble. “But there were no jobs to be had and he posted soldiers around the mine to deal with angry protests. Everything was lost.”

The teary eyed filly—almost a mare—climbed into Bombay’s embrace and collapsed against the Abyssinian, sobbing. Dim could see the understanding upon the faces of his companions as he met each eye in turn. How did one hide an army from any skyward eye? Where did all of those recruits from the bandit fortress go? Why, underground of course.

“When she feels better, ask her if she can point out the location of this mine on a map.” Dim’s words came out as rich blue smoke that curled into question marks. “As tourists, I think we should pay this place a visit. It sounds spectacular.”

“Indeed,” Bailey agreed, her brows beetled. “You know, if we can trap most of the army while they are still secreted away underground—”

“Yes?” Bailey suddenly had Dim’s full attention and he turned his sneering gaze upon her.

“Motte and I could fill the mine with gas. We’d need some kind of gas though, but there are alchemical stills around here. For some reason Dim, I don’t think you’re the type to object to the torturous slaughter of thousands.”

“Nein. Klingt effizient. Gaskrieg.”

Blackbird shivered and almost dropped her tin cup full of water.

“So… mercenaries, bandits, and those seeking easy coin show up at the bandit fort and then get moved to the mine which is probably an underground barracks now. Any pegasus ponies or airships or griffons flying overhead would only see a mine. It’s pretty clever, if this is indeed what it is. And let’s be honest, this is probably exactly what it looks like.”

“So they have an army and we have Motte, Bailey, and Dim.” Munro went to work preparing tea now that the water had boiled. “Well, Blackbird too, and myself, and Gratin, and Bombay, but, uh, let’s be honest. Three of us are clearly okay with this plan, while the rest of us have some, uh—”

“Hesitation?” Blackbird finished while she cast a glance at Gratin.

The minotaur scowled, his cheeks crinkling and his eyes becoming downcast. “Yeah. The rest of us have surviving consciences. At least for now.”

“Wenn wir einen Krieg führen, tun wir, was notwendig ist.”

Munro blinked. “That sounds dire.”

“Was moralisch ist, ist das erste Opfer.”

It was comforting not to think about the monstrous regenerating beast that was kept at bay with a thin coat of alchemical whitewash. Dim’s cigarette neared its end. He suspected that they would find their remaining Ascendancy alicorns there at the mine, too. All of this at the cost of doing a good deed—doing that which was right. He cast his gaze upon the spring green filly that Bombay held in a tender embrace. She wasn’t quite a filly, nor was she a mare, but given her circumstances and having lost everything, the end of innocence was at hoof. She would have to grow up in a hurry; with the coming dawn, so too came her independence and she would have to find her way in the world.

Dim found that he pitied her. As an earth pony, she would have to somehow survive in this unkind world that was indifferent to her needs. No doubt, she would have to make do, because there were only but a few ways for a young mare in her position to survive. The unfairness of everything caused Dim to forget his post-battle jitters and for a few seconds, he entertained the idea of taking her with them—surely a better life could be had in Istanbull.

Not every filly in trouble had a noble knight—or vizard—to save them. She said something, her words muffled, and Dim could see that Bombay was listening. Was the Abyssinian missing the Bard? She had to be. Dim thought about how Bombay had clung to him and how she now held the grieving earth pony that had just watched her whole family get slaughtered. Turning his head, Dim looked in Blackbird’s direction and amended his previous thoughts; not every filly needed a knight or a vizard to save them; some of them saved themselves.

“No one came out to help,” Munro said while he began passing out tin cups filled with hot, steaming, fragrant tea. “Not a door opened, except our own, and we had to fight and argue about it before we did something. Blackbird threatened to throttle us all.”

“I did.” The big hippogriff offered her companions an apologetic nod.

“It was Motte and Bailey who made the decision,” Munro continued while passing Dim some tea, which was accepted with a thankful nod. “Things got real crazy in here. I can’t imagine what it must have been like outside. I guess it was as bad as the last fight. Maybe worse.”

Squaring his withers, Motte’s jaw firmed and his scarred ears stood at attention. “It was a fight, just like any other.”

This gave Dim pause and he took a moment to consider if all fights were the same.

Dawn came, grey and blustery; with it came a profound curiousity. After suffering from anxiousness for all of the night, Dim had to know—he had to find out. His body was stiff, uncooperative, and quite unwilling to move. Thick frost covered everything and this autumn appeared to be a bitter one; no dog days of summer to be had here. A crowd of rubberneckers was behind him, all of them gawking at the ruined hovel while the soldiers dealt with the dead.

Dim was not alone. While the others slept, Munro followed. The young minotaur calf was tired, his bloodshot eyes had trouble staying open, but he was persistent and determined. Scorched earth and blackened trees made the morning bleak, along with the oppressive fog that seemed to be rolling in. Rain was coming, with the fog as its herald, its harbinger.

“Did you… did you do all of this?” Munro’s stammered question revealed his fear.

“I did,” Dim replied while he took a moment to survey the devastation he had wrought, but only a moment. His curiousity demanded to be satisfied.

“Some of the soil has… it’s… it has—”

“Melted?” Dim turned to face his valet. “Turned to glass?”

Trembling, the minotaur calf nodded, his eyes wide as saucers.

“Come, Munro. Not much further.”

The stone was still hot enough that it wasn’t solid and it glowed with a dull light. The surface was rippled, lumpy, like thick porridge stirred but not smoothed over. Something had come out of it and had crawled away, leaving behind a trail of disturbed, smeared earth. It seemed impossible and Dim had trouble believing his own eyes.

He coughed, the tickle in his lungs plaguing him, and took a moment to study the trail that lead off into the woods. For a second, he thought about following it, but then asked of himself, to what end? Confront the beast in its lair? No… no, there was nothing else that could be done here but to admit defeat and accept loss.

“You seem disturbed,” Munro said in a soft whisper.

Dim nodded. “I am.” He paused, then started over. “I am fire-aligned. Fire is my nature. It governs my actions, my every thought, and it is the author of my instincts. To those attuned to fire, there is nothing worse than regenerating creatures. We hate them. Despise them, and they loathe us in return. It galls me that I could not kill this… this… thing.”

“I’m sorry, Dim.” The young minotaur folded his hands behind his back. “You did what you could though, and that’s what matters.”

“How trite.” Scowling, Dim turned away from the searing hot mess of earth and started in the direction of the hamlet. “Come, Munro. Let us get out of the cold. Come away with me.”

Sitting in the wagon, Dim watched as it was being loaded. Some of the residents of the hamlet had come to gawk, but they kept a considerable distance. Gratin was speaking to the soldiers and Bombay spoke to the rescued earth pony. There was a creak from the metal hinges as the canopy over the wagon was raised to keep the rain out.

Turning his head and his body about, Dim stared out of the front of the wagon at the ruined hovel. The bodies had been cleaned up, but the wreckage hadn’t. No doubt, it would be repaired and some other unfortunate family herd would live there. All of this death and devastation over watered-down whitewash. The alchemical repellent just wasn’t strong enough and the beast—the terrible, brutal beast—was able to overcome whatever was in the whitewash that kept him away.

Daylight, thankfully, was a deterrent, though Dim wondered about dark, overcast days.

“Dim.”

He turned his head at the sound of Blackbird’s voice saying his name.

“Even though what you did was monumentally stupid…”

“Yes?” He waited, uncertain of what Blackbird might say.

“I’m really proud of you for doing it. The Bard… he told me a few things that helped me to understand you. I was raised to do right and even in troubled times, I stick to that. You though… you were raised to do wrong. Your entire upbringing was all about teaching you how to be wicked. The Bard knew because he knew Eerie so well. He told me to praise you when you do good, he said it would mean something coming from me. I’m still trying to understand everything he told me.”

Whole seconds passed and Dim swallowed a few times because his mouth went dry. Munro was looking at him, his beefy hands resting on a metal strut for the canopy. At long last, Dim found his tongue. “It does mean something, Blackbird. Thank you.”

“One life matters, Dim. You couldn’t save the rest, but you did save the one. Even if you did put the rest of us at risk. As soon as we have eggs again, I owe you a meal.”

Was he sick? Did he have a fever? His cheeks and ears were hot, an unpleasant sensation. He thought of the Bard and felt a curious mixture of joy and sorrow. The growing heat radiating from his face left him lightheaded and the blackened, shriveled lump of gristle that was his heart thumped against his frail ribs, causing a dull ache.

The first of the raindrops fell and Munro hurried to finish raising the canopy.

Author's Note

Things are developing. So... who can see the bigger picture? Or what you think is the bigger picture?

Respite

The Wood of Shattered Trees was aptly named. Of course, this was the translated name, but the translation was spot-on. There weren’t many trees here and most of them were dead. Everything about this particular place seemed bespoilt; what was left of the trees were rotten and the soil was a curious shade of gray. A group of ponies and griffons were burning a patch of poison joke, which was about the only signs of something living. At least the rain would keep the fire from burning out of control.

Dim could feel it, the rottenness was strong here. He had felt it in other places, but here, the sensation caused a dull ache in the root of his horn. Whatever had taken place here had happened long ago and the residual magic had ruint like milk left in the hot summer sun. The farms here looked particularly poor and Dim wondered what they produced, because they certainly weren’t growing anything.

Now the very land itself was festering.

With a sigh, Dim returned to his studies while the wagon trundled along the rutted path. Though it seemed unlikely, there was a spell he hoped to burn into his memory, a complex spell that thus far, had been out of his reach. For far too long, he had tried to burn it into his memory, but the words would not stick and the complex spell would not sear itself into his mind. It had been a source of constant frustration and a reminder that he wasn’t as powerful a wizard as he would like to be.

But… casting Fenix Fireburst had given him hope. He had grown, gained experience, expanded his mind, and strengthened his resolve. With his own eyes, he had seen his progress and it ignited within him some faint light of hope that it might be possible to learn Clover’s Chaotic Conundrum. It utterly annihilated minor spell protections in a huge area of affect and for each spell protection that it stripped away it triggered a random mental effect. Those beguiled by the spell might be confused, dominated, frightened, sickened, have their central nervous system shut down, leaving them paralysed, or a number of other detrimental outcomes, each of them quite debilitating.

In general, the more protected a wizard was, the more vulnerable they were to Clover’s insidious manifestation of chaos, hence the conundrum. On a wizard with no protections, this spell had no effect whatsoever, making the spell absolutely useless. Most wizards forwent this spell completely—Dim’s own mother frowned upon it, calling it a parlour trick—but Dim saw potential. He understood how it could be exploited and best used. Of course, that was what made him special as a wizard, he felt; his ability to use low level spells in horrifying and creative ways. A grease spell was great for an airship wizard and its most common application was for maintenance. However, if you cast a grease spell on a creature and then fired off an ignition spell… things happened.

He read the same words as he had done a thousand times before and nothing happened. No pleasurable burn tore through the folds of his grey matter, rewarding him for a job well done. The words themselves were magic, a voice made with ink. Read them in just the right way and they would brand themselves into the mind, revealing secrets. The vast, mind-boggling complexity of the spell and all of its nuances would take root in the psyche. No mistake, this was a powerful spell, a spell of an entirely different calibre than anything else he knew.

These spidery words were time travellers of a sort, with Clover’s voice echoing into the future. Clover had gone through the excruciating trouble of scribing a new spell, creating it, birthing it, and then the entire contents of that spell were written in the language of magic, a kind of cipher that kept away the unworthy and the cretinous. Princess Cadance had done much the same with her coded missive and with that fresh in his memory, including his fondness of her, he made ready to try again.

Were they friends?

Was he worthy of her friendship, he wondered.

The question was distracting.

All internal dialogue was distracting.

If he went home and they met, would they be fond of one another?

Why, the very idea left him feeling peculiar and when he read the ancient cipher once more, the words ignited and sent a fiery ray of understanding through his eyes. His mind could hardly contain a spell of this immense power and his body seized as if in climax. Like a hot branding iron, the words were forever imprinted upon his thoughts, his consciousness, and with understanding came unbridled ecstasy.

Years of study paid off in this worthwhile moment.

Dim could almost feel his grey matter being rearranged, his neural synapses twisting and forming new growth that would allow him to manipulate the thauma in the manner he so desired. A rush of power left him giddy and as the blood pounded in his ears, the stench of ozone tickled his nose. Having had his mind rewritten by the spell, he was left lightheaded and in need of recovery. He closed his eyes, intending only to rest them for a moment…

The sign, what could be seen of it beneath the heaped birdshit, said Le Mousquet Rouillé in bold embossed letters. Beyond the sign was a proper inn, a fortified compound complete with a somewhat crooked guard tower and a barracks for constables or soldiers. Lighting a clove-laced joint, Dim decided that he liked this place right away. Smoke curled from chimneys, the grounds smelled of urine, and there was a battered bounty board between the barracks and the inn. Why, there was even an airship mooring here, though it was empty.

It was a welcome sight and Dim hoped that he could get a bath.

Off to the west, the sun hurried for the horizon, no doubt hoping to shine on a better location than this alicorn forsaken place. A tree dragon, roosting atop the guard tower, warbled out a lusty song that Dim could not understand. On second glance, the tree dragon was revealed to be a wyvern. There was an important distinction between the two and Dim was surprised to see that this one was friendly.

“Je veux te baiser dans le trou du cul,” the wyvern sang to no one in particular.

A soldier approached; not a militia member, but an actual soldier. She wore a battered mail hauberk that had seen better days and a pair of yawning blunderbusses were strapped to her back. She wasn’t all that big for a griffon, but Dim noted that she had a fantastic air of deadliness about her. Gratin went to meet her and much to Dim’s surprise, she spoke in a language he understood.

“Hail and well met,” she said while her hauberk clinked around her face. “My name is Grabbigail. I have a pretty good idea who all of you are and all of you will find that you are welcome here. This place is owned by Duc Chanson Argentée and we’re all soldiers in his employ. I was told by one of Pearl Fisher’s birds to keep an eye out for you.”

“Pleased to meetcha, Grabbigail,” Blackbird replied in the most charming manner she could muster. “What’s this about birds?”

“I don’t know thing a thing about it,” the griffon replied. “Some kind of magic I don’t understand. But Pearl Fisher controls the birds and uses them to send messages.”

At this, Blackbird grinned. “And probably to spy.”

“That too.” The captain raised one talon for Blackbird to wait a moment, then turned her head around and shouted, “You dirty buttfucking lizard, will you shut the fuck up, you barbed-dicked sodomite?”

Scowling, the wyvern took wing and went flapping off, his stinger tail trailing behind it in the breeze. Blackbird snickered and after resisting for a few seconds, Munro joined in, though he looked guilty for doing so. Gratin watched as the wyvern headed towards the setting sun, his eyes squinting in the fiery orange glow of the sunset.

Looking apologetic, the captain returned her attention to Blackbird. “Do come in, all of you. We have wine, we have whiskey, and we have sablejack if the Abyssinian is thirsty. Take a load off. This place is as safe as a place can be right now and from the looks of things, all of you could use a break. So come inside!”

Dim saw Blackbird glance back at him, and he gave her a faint nod.

The big hippogriff returned the nod, and then faced the griffon once more. “We’d love to come in and sit a spell. Thanks for having us.”

Amorphous clouds of blue smoke moved with a life of their own and took shape as wyverns, which flew in lazy circles over the top of Dim’s head. It was a neat trick and though Blackbird kept it to herself for fear of being thought as foalish, she truly loved to watch. Dim looked comfortable, sprawled in an overstuffed chair with threadbare arms. He nursed a tankard of mead and something about him right now was appealing.

In the lithe manner of cats everywhere, Bombay slipped into the space beside Dim on his chair. Blackbird laughed when Dim grunted in protest, but to her surprise, he did not kick Bombay from his seat. Earlier, when walking along the rutted road, Bombay had seemed a bit melancholy, but her mood had improved. Almost purring, Bombay pulled Dim closer and slipped one thin arm around his neck while holding a mug of sablejack in her free paw.

The sablejack smelled of anise, blackcurrants, and something suspiciously like catnip.

Dim’s wyverns dive-bombed Bombay’s head and Blackbird was surprised to find that Dim was in a playful mood. Sure, he was sneering a lot, and his dimples were in full view, but this was just about as good as it got. In silence, Munro was staring into his tankard with a sleepy expression and Blackbird wondered if his horns were heavy.

“Hey, Blackbird… hey…”

“Yeah, Bailey?” With a relaxed turn of her head, Blackbird faced the mare now standing beside her.

“All those guns you’re carting around,” Bailey said in a low conspiratorial whisper, “I think you could make a few coins here. I told Grabby about them and she was interested. Her troops want revolvers.”

“I have revolvers.” Blackbird gave Bailey a nod while leaning over a little closer. “But there isn’t much brass. Not enough to outfit a garrison of soldiers. That’s the problem ‘round here, not much brass. Which is why black powder remains popular, I guess.”

“So, you want to make a little scratch, Blackbird?”

“Yeah, yeah I do. I wonder what they got to trade.” Whipping her head around, she peered at Dim and Bombay. “You two stay right there and keep each other company. Stay out of trouble. I mean it. I gotta go do business.”

“You go and do business,” Bombay replied. “Dim and I will have a quiet moment. No trouble will be had.”

From Dim, there was no response other than a nod.

Turning back to Bailey, Blackbird waggled her eyebrows. “I need to go to the garage where the wagon is and get my goods. I’ll be right back.”

Blackbird’s eyes focused on the prize, a grenade with a match pin and a slo-fuse. This sat next to a small pile of gold and silver ingots, tiny ones, ingots that were about the size of her thumb. One of the soldiers was examining a revolver, spinning the cylinder and staring down the iron sights. While staring at the grenade, Blackbird wondered if this is what dragon-greed felt like, because she really, really wanted the boom-boom-bomb.

You never knew when a grenade would come in handy.

“These are in pretty good condition, for having been pulled from dead bodies,” Grabbigail remarked while her eyes darted from pistol to pistol. "Old mare’s teats, how many souls have you consigned to the dirt to get all these guns?”

Grinning a sheepish grin, Blackbird shrugged. She thought about Dim going aboard the Black Talon ship as well as their many other encounters. How many? That was an excellent question. How many… mind racing, Blackbird’s eyes now glanced down at the guns before her. All of these firearms had been liberated from their previous owners through murderous means. Her grin vanished and Blackbird began to feel more than a little uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Grabbigail said to Blackbird. “Huh… you must be the face of your group. I had you pegged as one of the killers.”

“I’ve killed.” The words tasted ashy in Blackbird’s mouth.

“Yeah, I reckon you have, but you’re not like the others, now that I’ve had a good look at ya. Motte and Bailey? Career killers. I doubt they’d even flinch. That Abyssinian… she’s got a murderous glare about her. She’s slinky. The big griffon? He kills, but I don’t think he’s happy about it… just a guess. As for that unicorn…”

“What about him?” Blackbird asked.

“What’s that lazy aristocrat do to earn his keep other than sneer and give orders?”

Unable to stop herself, Blackbird burst out laughing, almost fit to split. She laughed so hard that she gave herself side stitches. Starbursts popped in her vision and she almost choked. Her peals of laughter became whooping coughs and she banged her talons down upon the table hard enough to make everything jump, including the grenade.

Grabbigail’s beak clicked together and her her glittering eyes were now like hidden stagehands behind a half-closed curtain. “What’s so funny?”

Unable to answer, Blackbird whooped some more and then began pounding on her girth with her fist while blue-white dots played tag in her vision. She sucked in a huge breath, gasped a few times, shook her head, and then let it all out as slow as possible while the griffoness stared with one raised eyebrow.

“Hey,” Blackbird managed to say while she battled her wheezes, “I want you to imagine all the worst possible ways that a creature can die. I mean, the worst. Now imagine all of them happening all at once while everything is on fire. Now, whatever it is that you’re imagining? I’ll tell ya, you’re not even close. You have no idea. When I first met Dim, he threatened to boil a minotaur in his own semen and then set him on fire. He burned down the island of Tortoise-Tuga. All of it, I think. He accidentally set the ocean ablaze.”

All of Grabbigail’s face feathers drooped and her eyes slowly opened wide.

“Oh, you’ve heard about that, I take it?” Blackbird waited for a moment and allowed her words to sink in. “Let me tell you the story of the fight we had with this pseudo-alicorn. I think you’d like it. Neat story. Lots of explosions. I could tell you what happened to my last grenade, and why I need a replacement…”

Author's Note

A brief, pleasant interlude.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

It was a handsome pipe, though Dim wondered if it was worth purchasing. The pipe was a frivolous expenditure to be sure, but it was a handsome pipe of unique design. Bombay called it creepy, but what did she know? A skeletal arm and hand clutching a bloodshot eyeball was the perfect accoutrement for a vizard. The bony arm and hand were carved from fine wood, while the eyeball was crafted from glass. Dim suspected that when lit, the eyeball would have a Tartarian glow.

“It’s hideous,” Bombay—whiskers aquiver—said while shaking her head.

Dim could not help but wonder if she felt that way because she had lost her eye. Saying nothing, he packed the pipe with clove-infused cannabis while also admiring its superb design. The stem fit just so between his lips and rested comfortably in the corner of his mouth. With a flick of magic, he triggered ignition within his pipe and tried a few experimental puffs. In doing so, he somehow attracted the attention of a rather inebriated earth pony, who came wobbling over to have a bleary-eyed gawk.

After a sour belch, as if to say hello, the earth pony asked in a heavy accent, “What manner of pony are you that can summon up fire without flint or tinder?”

Had this disgusting primitive never seen a unicorn? Was there no magic in this alicorn forsaken countryside? Puffing away, Dim regarded the earth pony with a perplexed, but stolid sneer for all to see upon his face. Rather than send this poor wretch away, Dim decided to humour him. “I… am a vizard.”

The earth pony belched out a foul miasma of soured wine, ale, and over-fried food. He blinked a few times, his ears rose and fell, and he swayed on his hooves. “By what name are you known?”

Dim shared an amused glance with Bombay and then replied, “There are some who call me… Dim.”

“Greetings, Dim the Vizard.” The earth pony hiccupped, and satisfied, he went stumbling off, muttering incoherently to himself as he went.

Exchanging another glance with Bombay, Dim saw her shrug, and so he also shrugged back at her in return. The weird but harmless encounter had left both of them a bit perplexed, but they seemed to have shared the same overall reaction. Which was nice, Dim supposed. Bombay waved, signalling that she needed more drink, and while Dim puffed away, he decided that he too, could use a bit more liquid cheer.

Puffing contentedly upon his new pipe, Dim pulled out his spellbook for study.

Blackbird returned to find the group pretty much as she had left it, though Dim was smoking a pipe. This gave her pause, and upon having herself a closer examination of said item, she found herself thoroughly disgusted by what she saw. It was a horrendous pipe, a horrendous pipe of nightmarish design that seared itself into her consciousness. A skeletal arm clutching a bloody eyeball in twig-like skeletal fingers. It even had a Tartarian glow about it and demonic shapes rose from the eyeball to dance jigs of damnation in circles around Dim’s head.

Nope!

Feeling pleased with herself, she flung herself down into a battered chair that had seen better days long ago and flashed her companions one of her best smiles. She was now a few guns lighter, but she had a grenade again, and that was cause for happy times. Her bright eyes reflected the firelight and her sleek, black body had a faint sheen of sweat.

“You pick now of all times to study, Dim?”

He sneered a bit, a handsome sneer that set Blackbird’s heart aflutter like a spastic butterfly. Bombay and Munro were playing cards, some game that Blackbird wasn’t familiar with. Motte and Bailey were trying to outdrink one another, which was weird, because they were the same pony and this caused one to think about all manner of troubling implications.

“I seem to be able to learn new spells,” Dim replied with thick aristocratic annoyance in his voice. “Several of them. It’s been quite an exciting day for me.”

“You leveled up!”

“I did what?”

“One of my previous companions… the one that put on his robe and wizard hat and kept telling me that I failed my saving throws against his charms… you’ve gained a level as a wizard, Dim, and that means learning new spells. Which you seem to be doing. Wizards level slowly and it takes a lot of time to gain enough experience to earn a new level.”

“Blackbird…”

“Yeah?”

“Cease this brain-stupefying prattle at once.”

“Aw, come on, Dim. Lighten up.”

“I’m trying to study—”

“But this is a time to have fun!” Blackbird leaned forwards, totally unconcerned about Dim’s death glare. “I’m going to see about a bath.”

Dim’s book snapped shut and Blackbird saw a change overcome his face while his new nightmarish pipe bobbed in the corner of his mouth. A rising smoke imp grabbed its groin and made lewd gestures while it rose to join the others dancing over Dim’s head. She had Dim’s attention now, and this was good, because she was a whole lot of creature and it was nice to have help scrubbing her back—there was too much back for one to scrub alone.

“Dim… that pipe…”

“What about it?”

“It’s a bit gross.”

“That’s an opinion, not to be confused with fact.”

Blackbird, smiling, licked her teeth and her tongue lingered upon a sharp canine tip.

“On the contrary, I find the pipe to be quite handsome. It communicates exactly what sort of vizard I am.” Just like magic, a smirk appeared on Dim’s face, a handsome smirk that did nothing to make the nightmarish pipe more appealing. “Finding worthwhile rolling papers is quite difficult so this is a solution to a problem.”

Try as she might, Blackbird couldn’t figure out why anybody would make a pipe like that one in the first place; it wasn’t like one could count on a travelling vizard to stop by and take a fancy to it. Or could they? Somebody had made it, and a buyer had found it. This gave Blackbird pause and she thought about the nature of life. Sometimes, random chance worked out. Fortune favoured the bold. She had taken Dim on as a mercenary companion and now she was here, in Fancy, trying to stop the flowing tide of war. How did one stop a tide? It seemed impossible.

Life had many funny quirks.

There were no tubs, but there were showers, if a weak trickle of water could be called a shower. This was considered adequate bathing facilities and the promise of such had proven to be a lie. There would be words with the innkeeper, perhaps. While the promise had a certain truth to it, what was offered left much to be desired.

She and Dim sat beneath the tickle together and neither of them were particularly wet. Damp was a stretch and it would take a while before they reached said state. Reaching out, she lifted Dim’s mane away from his eyes so that she could have a better look at them. His eyes, hidden behind his goggles most of the time, were quite beautiful in their own way. She saw him looking at her, perhaps studying her, and she found herself wondering about what he might be thinking.

The tile floor was rough, a bit scratchy, and the grout between the tiles had started to crumble, leaving behind a sandy, gritty feeling. She thought about what she had said a while ago, about Dim leveling up, and wondered if perhaps there was some truth to it. What changes had been wrought on her? Killing the pseudo-alicorn and then going to retrieve Dim—what had that done to her?

“What spell did you learn when you were reading your book in the common room?”

Dim’s ears pricked and a thin trickle of water ran down his temple, leaving behind a darkened patch of pelt. “I did not expect for you to show an interest in my spells.”

She shrugged, not knowing how to reply.

“I am trying to learn a spell called Vampire’s Kiss. No success as of yet, but I feel that I am close. For the first time, I am able to read it with clarity and without getting a massive headache. Perhaps soon, it will burn itself into my mind.”

“Ooh… will that let you suck the life out of something?” Even as she said it, she heard Dim groan and knew that she had annoyed him by saying something stupid.

“No.” He shook his head. “Spells like that don’t really exist, as far as I know. Magic… unicorn magic anyhow. Demons however, and other eldritch entities, they do possess life-sucking magic.” He sighed and tilted his head to try and get a different spot damp. “This spell causes the victim to bleed profusely. Any wounds or injuries result in violent blood loss. It seems like it would be useful with companions around. Even a grazing wound would become a crisis.”

“Dim… what unicorn comes up with horrible magic like that?”

“No unicorn,” he replied while water trickled against his ear. “It is believed that Princess Luna wrote this spell. At least, we Darks believe that. While the rest of the world forgot our matron founder, we kept her legacy alive by studying her spells. Her magic. This originates from a grimoire that doesn’t bear her name, but has her style, her methodology, and follows the pattern of how she scribes spells. Of course, Princess Luna couldn’t affix her name to such a terrible spell… such an act would come back to haunt her.”

Blackbird found herself appalled by the very idea, but she did nothing to show it. Dim was baring his soul right now, sort of, and she didn’t want him to stop. He was talking, revealing himself, sharing his secrets. She most certainly didn’t want to disturb him or make him stop. He needed to open up so that she could get in.

“Princess Celestia made a dreadful mistake trusting us Darks with Princess Luna’s magical legacy. At least, it is said that she gave us all of her sister’s spellbooks for safe keeping. I’ll confess, I do not know the truth. But we did have these books and many of them have dangerous magic. In the beginning, we were loyal… true to Equestria. We were Darks… Equestria’s most dreaded and most feared protectors. A great many of us were selected by Princess Celestia to become her student… her apprentice. We had a fine and noble history and we were trusted. How could ones so noble become so… ignoble? How could we turn like we have? It is only now that I understand why my mother was so pissy about me digging into our family history… our roots. She didn’t want me knowing. None of them did. But I found out and in hindsight… I… I don’t even know what to say.”

Reaching out, Blackbird smoothed back Dim’s coal-black mane and stroked one damp ear.

“Meeting Eerie broke me, Blackbird. It broke me. I cannot even begin to express how I feel knowing that she exists… and that she too is trying to atone for our family’s great many sins. She’s found her way, I suppose. Eerie is doing what is right for her and I believe she is recovering. But I fear that I am too far gone… try as I might, and as of late, I have been trying, I just don’t see much hope for myself. I feel as though I am barely even a Dark. Eerie has the sort of raw magic power needed to change the world. Me? I’m struggling to learn spells that aren’t even considered powerful by one of her ilk. She would find them laughably easy. Foal’s play. The fight with the pseudo-alicorn and that wolf-creature has thrown everything into sharp perspective. I lack the magical wherewithal to do the truly great things that would redeem me.”

Blackbird found that she didn’t know what to say, but she felt bad for Dim. He was just too hard on himself. It was downright intimidating sometimes to be around somepony so motivated, so driven, who pushed themselves so hard. She wished that Dim could see what she saw in him, but he seemed blind to his own strengths. While she wasn’t sure how to fix things, she did think of something to say.

“Dim… Chantico found you worthy. You are the Champion of Chantico. Everywhere you go, she gains followers. So you must be doing something right. Something that you are doing is enough to inspire others to share your faith… your belief. Your restoring the faith and worship of a forgotten hearth spirit.”

“There… there is some truth in what you have to say, Blackbird.”

“We work with what we have, Dim. You can’t compare yourself to Eerie. She’s off doing her own thing and trying to get her head sorted out. You have a different purpose and only you can fulfill that purpose. Not Eerie, not anypony else, just you. You were chosen. So stick to that.”

“You’re right.” Dim blinked and an astonishing change overcame his delicate, androgynous features. “Thank you, Blackbird… that was just what I needed to hear.”

A tender moment was rare, a treasured thing, and Blackbird did not wish to spoil it. “Aw, don’t mention it, Dim…”

Author's Note

There will be a brief time skip... just sayin'. When next we meet, we'll be investigating the bandit camp. Good times await.

If you had the luck of the Blackbird...

“I take it, based upon your reactions, that you’ve ran into those other hippogriffs.”

Dim said nothing in return, but studied the strange hippogriff, who was a rather blue looking fellow. He looked fussy and was entirely too clean. A monocle hung from the collar of his jacket and it had a curious hint of magic to it. A brace of pistols was in full view, but the guns appeared too new looking, too pristine to have seen much action.

“Yeah we have, stranger,” Bombay said, her paw resting upon the grip of her gun.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Asterveld and I am a scholar of hippogriff studies from Canterlot University. Princess Celestia commissioned a study so that we might better understand hippogriffs. Not much is known about them and there are those who aim to change that. I’ve come here, to Fancy, because there are an extraordinary number of hippogriffs compared to other regions of the world, no doubt due to the unique relationship between the earth ponies and the griffons.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Bombay asked.

“Well, crossbreeds are rare. They just don’t happen very often. But it seems that when they do happen, they most frequently happen with earth ponies, who have a biological drive to breed with pretty much everything. They do happen with other tribes, just not very often. Statistics and all that.”

Dim glanced at Blackbird and saw her give him a faint nod of tentative acceptance. “Very well, scholar. You may live. What is it that you want from us? Other than Blackbird’s attention, obviously. We have much travelling to do and a lot of ground to cover.”

“Oh, I understand. Dangerous country at night, and all that. I promise I won’t take long. Young Miss, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Rather personal ones I’m afraid, but I’ll try to be as polite and discreet as possible.”

“Questions are fine, but don’t take it personal if Dim reduces you to cinders for hurting my feelings. We’re trying to train him to be sociable, but it’s hard and poor Dim is the excitable type that burns first and asks questions later.”

The fussy hippogriff froze for a moment, his feathers clearly ruffled, and when he moved again it was to loosen the collar of his dark woollen jacket. “The things I do for science,” he muttered to himself, his beak unmoving. “Very well then, young Miss. Might I ask you about your parentage?”

Dim took a step back with the hopes that Blackbird might relax a little and though he kept his guard up, he did his best to appear passive. Blackbird was visibly nervous, though she was doing her best to hide it. Munro had flanked the strange hippogriff, and now leaned against a tree behind him.

“My father was an earth pony and my mother was a hippogriff, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Fascinating. That I did not expect. About your mother being a hippogriff, I mean. That makes you a rare specimen, Miss. Most first generation crossbreeds have some minor fertility issues. The second generation is always the hardest to establish. I’ve spoken to a fair number of hippogriffs in this region and anecdotal evidence seems to correspond with already collected data. I suppose it helps with your father being an earth pony. Tell me, do you know anything about your mother’s parentage?”

Dim saw Blackbird squirm and for a moment, her muscles rippled when they tensed. One hind hoof stomped into the dirt and he heard her say, “Almost nothing. She wasn’t keen on talking about it. I learned early on not to ask too many questions. My mother… she had a temper like morning embers in the stove. All it takes is one little blow and you have a roaring fire in no time.”

It was fascinating, watching Blackbird lie and Dim took note of all her tells.

“And your parents… they stayed together?”

“Yes.” Blackbird nodded and something almost like good cheer returned to her face. “They loved one another a great deal. At least they did. My father died and my mother, she took off. I’m trying to find her. Look, I’m sorry… but I don’t want to talk no more. I hope you have something you can work with. Please, I’m sorry, I’m just not in the mood.”

“I understand, Miss. Thank you for your time.” The fussy hippogriff glanced around, nervous, noticing the hard stares coming at him from all directions. “Thank you for your time, young Miss. I’ll be going now. Goodbye!” Kicking against the ground, the hippogriff took off in a hurry, his wings working a frantic beat while he made his way skyward.

Worried about Blackbird, Dim watched their visitor as he departed.

A weak fire burned in the ramshackle hearth, kept alive by a few bits of coal that Dim was certain was saved for when the farmhouse had guests. It did nothing to heat the room, but offered enough pale, flickering light for the shadows to dance to. No glass was in the windows, just wooden slat shutters that did little to keep the cold out. The sole griffon occupant was a grizzled elderly sort, and Dim guessed that he must be a veteran of some kind. Old? Yes. Deadly? No doubt.

Hard times had befallen this farm with the two oldest colts having gone off to join the bandits. As for the bandits themselves, the old griffon said they took very little, more of a token offering, but the fact that they took anything at all from such a poor homestead left Dim infuriated. It wouldn’t take much for this place to fail; the poor soil grew very little and the two colts—the main source of strong labour—were gone. All that was left was one stallion, two wives, six rather small and somewhat malnourished-looking fillies, a yearling colt, and the grizzled griffon veteran.

At least the whitewash appeared fresh, and Dim hoped that it hadn’t been watered down.

“Dim” —Blackbird whispered his name so as to not disturb anyone— “it’s dark out. Real dark. Looks like a new moon. We could go scouting that bandit fort. You know, have a look around. See what we’re up against. I can fly and carry you. Pretty sure we won’t be seen.”

In silence, Dim gave Blackbird’s suggestion careful consideration. The past few days since leaving the inn had been downright boring—uneventful—and if the truth were to be told, he was aching for some kind of excitement. Maybe not pseudo-alicorn or wolf-creature levels of excitement, but skulking around a bandit camp and spying on them certainly seemed like a good time waiting to happen.

“Did you just ask me on a date?” he asked.

Blackbird’s face turned a darker shade of black somehow, and when she spoke, her voice was husky. “No. No, I most certainly did not. We’re not going off to canoodle, we’re going of to do a little scouting. It’s dangerous out there… on the ground, anyhow.”

“So, this isn’t a date… but I do get to ride you—”

“Dim, you pervert. Shut up.”

He felt a growing fondness for Blackbird that drove away the chill in the air. “Can you even see when it is this dark?”

“Not really, but you can, I’m sure of that. I, uh, was kind of planning on trusting you to be my eyes in the dark. I think it would be stupid to fly around with a light on.”

“Indeed.” Something warm and fuzzy could be felt deep inside, and Dim revelled in the fact that Blackbird trusted him enough to be her eyes. That was a pretty significant level of trust. She also trusted him enough to sleep beside him, bathe with one another, and face danger together. It was quite unlike anything that he had ever experienced in his short paranoid life.

“If we’re going to do this, we should leave now.”

Overhead, the skies were almost purple and a canopy of stars stretched from horizon to horizon like a spilled dragon’s hoard of jewels. Even without the moon, the night was rather bright. Swooping through the air was exhilarating beyond all measure and Dim clung to Blackbird’s back, both terrified and enthralled by this experience.

Below, farms were held in the death-grip of autumn and the faint lights of farmhouses could be seen. There were trees here, many of them, trees that were twisted and gnarled like nothing that Dim had ever seen nor witnessed. A thin river snaked its way through the forest and in the distance, a great light could be seen—their destination.

The bandit fort sat atop a wooded hill and what appeared to be a wooden palisade surrounded a crude keep. Fires burned within the safety of the walls and could also be seen in the rickety wooden observation towers. This place would burn—all of it—and all of its occupants as well. For a moment, Dim entertained the idea of burning everything down tonight; starting right now, but caution gave him pause. There might be something worth learning.

Something like the bobbing light of what appeared to be a lantern. It was a faint light and Dim surmised that it was flying in the same general direction of Gasconeigh. It was… a pegasus? What was a pegasus doing flying at night? The bold night flier rose from the bandit fort, gaining altitude while heading in a westward direction. Right away, Dim became suspicious and he gave Blackbird a nudge.

“We should go and say hello to our new friend,” Dim said to Blackbird.

“Yeah, I got that gut-instinct feeling too, Dim. I see him.”

“Blackbird, you may feel a peculiar sensation in just a moment. Do not panic or be alarmed.” Without further ado, Dim began to murmur the words of a rather complex spell and he gave himself over to the sweet, sweet release of magic, which flowed through the pleasure centers of his brain.

In the span of an eyeblink, Blackbird and Dim vanished from view.

Only to reappear right over the head of the pegasus, who let out a startled yelp. Dim saw saddlebags which appeared to be loaded down, and these bounced against the pegasus pony’s sides when he poured on the speed to escape. But there would be no escape, not tonight. Reaching out with his will, Dim snuffed the light of the lantern and heard a panicked whimper from the fleeing pegasus.

Blackbird was faster by far, but Dim saw no need for struggle. With a thought, he subsumed the will of the pegasus, which had no defense, no willpower of his own, no mental resistance whatsoever. Wings ceased flapping and the pegasus, now stiffened and unmoving, began to plummet towards the earth. Swooping down, Blackbird snatched the subdued pegasus right out of the air and with her talons, she held him by his saddlebag straps.

“There was a barn,” Dim said to his companion.

“Wasn’t much of a barn,” she replied.

“It shall have to do for our purposes.”

“So we’re foalnapping somepony? Is that what we’re doing?”

“Yes.”

“Not sure how I feel about that, but okay. He did come from the fort, so he’s probably a bandit. I guess that makes it okay to abduct him? I don’t know the rules about this stuff.”

“There are no rules. If he didn’t want to be abducted in the dark of the night, he should not have been seen exiting a location thick with soon to be ash piles.”

“Are we going to torture him?”

“No, Blackbird… we’re going to extract vital information using the creative application of coercive techniques.”

“Oh, good, because I don’t know how I feel about torture.”

Dim sighed, but said nothing else as Blackbird flapped back towards the farmhouse.

Together, Gratin and Bombay were sorting through the courier’s papers, the evidence of wrongdoing. The freezing barn smelled of goat shit and old mildewy hay. As for the captured courier, he was tied, standing, to a support beam, and was still completely out of it. Bombay’s whiskers quivered with every word she read, and her remaining eye took on a feral gleam of quiet rage.

“I am forced to wonder sometimes, about Blackbird’s seeming luck,” Motte said, more to himself than anypony else.

“It certainly sways life in her favour,” Bailey added while she turned to face Gratin. “So, what do we got here?”

“Evidence of treason,” the big griffon replied, his eyes darting to and fro while reading from the paper he was holding. “These are lists saying which families cooperated and offered up a son or two for the cause.”

“Nothing is coded? No ciphers? No magical glim-glam?” Bailey cast her incredulous stare upon the griffon.

“From what I am seeing, the writer of these was barely literate. That’s cryptic cipher enough. It’s like they got a foal to write these and most of it is written in burned charcoal. It’s smudged and smeared. Everything is a mess.”

“So we’ve got idiots organising the revolution, fantastic.” Motte hurled a hefty snort and turned to study the tied up courier. “Revolutionaries that can’t fucking remember to bring a pencil or a pen. Smart. So smart.”

“Do we have a name?” Bailey asked, looking at both Gratin and Bombay.

“Duc Truffe, of course,” Bombay replied. “His name is all over these papers like a bad rash on a whore’s cunt. There are writs of guarantee, promises that those who gave generously will be part of the gentry when it is established.” She held up a crinkled sheet of paper covered in loopy scrawl. “You can see which families signed on to pledge support in exchange for what I am certain are sure to be empty promises.”

“So, what happens now?” Blackbird glanced around at her companions, her eyes glittering with curious anger while the corners of her mouth twitched and jerked with barely suppressed emotion.

“I think it’s obvious.” Motte leveled his steely gaze upon the hippogriff and his next words were spoken in a cold, detached deadpan. “We go to the bandit fort and we kill them. Gratin is going to fly back to Gasconeigh and deliver these papers to Lord Chanson. While we’re mopping up the bandit mess, we’re going to need an airship or two for support so we can pay a visit to the mine. Duc Truffe can’t pull off his coup d'état if he has no soldiers, and I aim to deprive him of that. Every family that donated to the cause is about to lose a few sons.”

“So… a bloodbath.”

“Blackbird… you need to understand. We’re sparing lives by taking lives. By killing this army of upstarts, we’re sparing the lives of those who live in the city. Not just from murder and the bloodshed of the revolution, but also from being crushed beneath what is sure to be an oppressive regime. So keep that in mind when you blow some dumb hick’s head off. They signed up for this fight with the hopes of becoming part of an elite gentry… the same bullshit promise offered to all revolutionaries in some form or another.”

“Yeah… I know… it doesn’t make it easier for me, though.” Blackbird heaved a sigh, shook her head, and stared in the direction of the tied up courier.

“We’re going to send him back to Lord Chanson with Gratin,” Dim said in response, breaking his silence. “But first I’m going to fix his no doubt troubled mind. I bet he carries a lot of guilt and I’m going to make it so that he speaks about everything that troubles him. When I’m done, he won’t have a single shred of will of his own. He’ll tell Lord Chanson everything he knows without struggle or resistence.”

Upon hearing this, Blackbird shuddered hard enough to make her teeth clatter.

“It’s for his own good, Blackbird,” Motte said to the troubled hippogriff. “Dim’s doing him a kindness. He’ll be tortured otherwise. Have what he knows pulled out with pliers, pincers, and branding irons.”

“He’ll still be gelded though.” Gratin’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the first thing they do to new prisoners here. I don’t think we can save him from that.”

“The less I know about this part of the plan, the better. I’ll do what’s necessary. I’ll fight when it comes time. But I can’t watch this.” Blackbird shook her head while making a grimace of disgust. “Come on, Munro. You don’t need to be seeing this either. You’re getting out of this country with some semblance of your soul intact if it’s the last thing I do.”

Motte’s ears pricked. “Semblance?”

To which Dim responded, “She went to school. Don’t be so surprised.”

“Come on, Munro. We’re getting out of here so all of this can be sorted out. Let’s go.” Turning about, her tail swishing, Blackbird made ready to leave and the reluctant young minotaur followed, but only after lingering for a time.

Author's Note

Heads would explode around you.

"Someone has to die for my discomfort."

“Tell me, Blackbird, what do your hippogriff eyes see?”

Blackbird was peeping through a brass spyglass while Dim tested the very limits of his last shreds of sanity with a roving eye spell. Motte, the owner of the spyglass, had taken a look, but couldn’t see much at this distance. So everything depended on Dim and Blackbird if they were to have good intelligence. The companions had gathered atop a high ridge almost a mile away so that they might have a better understanding of what they faced.

“I see heads that I could pop,” Bailey said while peering through the scope of her fourteen millimetre rifle. “I am almost positive that this gun could hit them from this range. Should I cause a panic in the ranks?”

“Hold your fire, Bailey,” Motte commanded.

Suddenly and without warning, Dim vomited and the others scrambled away from him, crawling on their bellies. Somehow, his concentration held and he maintained the roving eye spell, though he showed signs of imminent future spewage. Motte and Munro stared at the steaming mess for a time, and then shared a glance with one another.

“How does he do that?” asked the minotaur. “Not break his spell, I mean.”

“Fuck if I know,” replied the combat engineer. “Wizard hazard, I guess.”

“Target practice.”

“What’s that, Blackbird?”

“Motte, they have earth ponies chucking rocks.”

“Say again, Bailey?”

“Chucking. Rocks.”

“Is that even dangerous?”

“Have an earth pony chuck a rock at you and find out, lame brain.”

“Save that bitchiness, Bailey. Stow it.”

“Oh, I have a lot of bitchiness. Enough to spare. Trust me. No shortage of bitchiness here. I’m laying in gravel, down in cover and I got sharp pokey bits stabbing me in my alicorn-damned teats. My asshole is itchy and I’m real fucking sick of all this treachery surrounding me. Someone has to die for my discomfort.”

“It also smells like vomit—”

“Shut your mouth, Motte.”

With a gurgling cough, Dim puked again and mucus-drenched chunks dribbled from his nose. Blackbird pulled the spyglass away from her eye and began looking around for something to wipe Dim’s face with, but there was nothing to be had. Munro crawled away on belly, trying to put some distance between himself and the twice-blessed puke puddle. Motte and Bailey soldiered on, suffering with shared stoicism—they were the same pony, afterall.

Far up in a tree above them, a faint tittering could be heard on the breeze, above the creak of gnarled, twisted branches. Blackbird returned to peering through the spyglass and beside her, Bailey’s face went grim while she kept one eye pressed against her scope. Munro—belly down in the dirt—covered his nose with his hand, what little of his face that could be seen radiated a profound misery.

“We have Motte’s mortar,” Bailey said to no one in particular. “I don’t think Motte would mind a date with Milly. He knows how to stroke her in all of the right places and make her cum on command.”

A flustered Blackbird made a strange warbling sound in her throat but said nothing.

“It’s not a bad plan. We pepper them with mortar rounds and then go in and mop up the dazed shell-shocked survivors. Of course, we also run the risk of them running out and escaping into the surrounding region. We want this fort to be their grave. It’s easier that way. Having to hunt them down would be a pain.”

“Motte speaks truth.”

“Thank you, Bailey.”

With a gasp, Dim ended his spell and then lay on the ground panting, trying to recover his senses after prolonged use of the roving eye spell. He looked dizzy, a bit sweaty, and appeared as though he would blow chunks yet again at any moment. In fact, with as frail and as weak as he was, and with the symptoms he showed at the moment, it was amazing that he was even alive. Each breath was a ragged wheeze that whistled within the cavity of his thin ribs.

In a faint, laboured voice, he spoke: “Come away. I have much that I can show you.”

Back in the barn, the very same barn where they had secured their prisoner before sending him off, Dim recovered with some tea and a smoke. In the bed of the wagon, a sheet of paper had been laid down, and an ink pen danced atop its surface, drawing out everything that Dim had seen in fine detail, recovering everything from his memory.

The fort took shape, including its gate, a run-down keep, and interesting terrain details. It was, curiously enough, of motte and bailey construction; a wooden palisade surrounding a glorified log cabin built upon a hill. Though primitive, it was effective enough as a defense, at least against ground troops. Rock-chucking earth ponies would be a major deterrent to airborne invaders. The pen continued its movements and drew tiny pegasus ponies armed with javelins, further demonstrating the keep’s formidable defenses.

Motte and Bailey studied the paper with great interest, taking note of everything.

“A few hundred,” Blackbird said.

“Say again?” Motte replied.

“A few hundred defenders.” Blackbird clarified her first statement and shook her head. “It was hard to get a good count through the spyglass. Dim kept puking and the two of you kept making wisecracks. If I had to guess, I’d say about five-hundred or so. We’re going against five-hundred or so.”

“Not to worry, but I have part of a plan.” Dim’s raspy voice was almost inaudible.

“Will you be working alone?” Bailey asked.

In response, Dim shook his head but also said, “No.”

“I would hear your plan, Dim. At least your part of it.” Blackbird’s demeanor changed, becoming solemn. She glanced around the barn, met the gaze of each of her companions in turn, and then returned her attention to Dim.

“We strike them from above and below.” Dim coughed, a hacking, whooping, raspy cough that caused his small, slight frame to have violent shudders. When he recovered, he continued, “On the far side of the keep, there is a steep embankment. I spent a lot of time looking at it. Lots of scrub and cover. I’m thinking that Motte and Bailey could tunnel in with their earth-moving magic and sunder the foundations of the fort itself, bringing the entire structure down upon its occupants. All those logs will become a funeral pyre.”

Though it took him a moment, Motte had a response: “That’s a mighty fine plan.”

His counterpart, Bailey nodded, but also asked, “We’ll be doing this at night?”

Sipping his tea, Dim had nothing to say and the whole of his body trembled while he tried to control his breathing. A rattle could be heard within his ribs, though the clove-infused cannabis was already quieting the dreadful sound. Blackbird, thoughtful, was rubbing her fuzzy chin with her thumb, and her eyes seemed distant.

When she spoke, their usual perfect clarity was restored. “We strike from above and below. Dim will do what he does best… even though I don’t like it, it will be safer for all of us if Dim works alone. Dim, if you can, find some way to cause a distraction without actually putting yourself at risk. As for me, I’ll mind the skies and I’ll cut down anypony that tries to escape by flying away. I’ll also try to pick off any dangerous targets that I can spot. Commander types and what not. Unicorns, maybe.”

“Want to drop a bomb, Blackbird?” Motte asked.

Eyes narrowed, Blackbird’s response was measured silence.

“Eerie sent a Nightmare Express mortar shell along. It’s an alchemical round and it might be kind of frowned upon by most, uh, civilised governments. It releases airborne hallucinogens and this causes mass hysteria, madness, and will no doubt cause the bandits to turn on one another with violent paranoia. I could rig it up so that you could drop it like a conventional bomb. Just plunk it right in the middle of the fort and then get the fuck out at all possible fucking speed.”

“I like this plan,” Dim wheezed with his faint, scratchy voice. “We can’t have the bandits catching wind of Motte and Bailey’s backdoor surprise. A literal assfucking without warning. Use the bomb, Blackbird. Not to be mean or cruel, but to keep Motte and Bailey safe. I’ll make a strong approach right through the front door and we’ll take those raiders by surprise.”

“Uh, Dim… won’t you be walking into the nightmare cloud?”

“I’ll be fine—”

“Dim, no.”

“Trust me, I’ll be fine and unaffected.”

Blackbird’s resolve seemed to melt like hot candle wax. “Okay, I’ll drop the bomb. Dim… can you do this without getting yourself in harm’s way?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice improving. “I’ll send my hat to make a noble sacrifice in my stead.”

“Dim, this is no time for jokes.”

“Who said anything about making a joke?” Holding his tin cup of tea just below his chin, Dim’s expression became cold and unreadable. Unfathomable. Unknowable. “Nopony suspects a hat to come a calling… and certainly, nopony expects a hat to slay them in cold blood. With the Nightmare Express bomb, my hat will make for a most unsuspecting messenger of death.”

“By Eerie’s dainty teats, he’s fucking serious,” Bailey swore whilst her eyes rolled backwards into her head. “What a lunatic.”

“Eerie warned me that this would get weird,” Motte added. He shrugged, sighed, and his withers slumped. “We should get some rest. Especially Dim. Tonight will be a busy night. Munro, you’ll be staying here to watch our stuff. When Bombay returns, tell her that she’ll be keeping you company tonight. We might need her for recovery efforts if something goes wrong. I’m getting me some shuteye.”

“Me too,” Bailey added.

“Dim, this is the part where you should say, ‘me three’ so that we can have a laugh. It’s called humour. This is how you endear yourself to others. It works better than sneering or leering or calling them disgusting primitives.”

As Dim sipped his tea, faint red embers within his glowing pipe reflected in the smoked glass of his goggles, granting him an infernal, almost demonic presence, but Dim offered no meaningful response. The big boisterous hippogriff waited, hoping for some sign of acknowledgement from the smoking, tea-sipping unicorn, but none seemed forthcoming. After a few seconds, she gave up with a shrug and her folded wings tickled her ribs, causing her to smile.

The pen went still, fell over, and clattered atop the map, which was now finished. Dim’s use of the roving eye allowed for an extensive map to be made and revealed a great many details about the crude fort. Perhaps the most interesting of which was an enormous stack of barrels beneath a lean-to shelter.

Snatching up the map, Motte had himself a better look and his face wizened with concentration while he squinted at the tiny, accurate details. “I’d bet my left nut that those barrels are filled with gunpowder. You can’t leave that many barrels of beer in a fort of bandits, they’d all be drunk as lords. And I doubt those barrels are full of pickles. Look how they’re tucked against the wall of the keep, secure beneath a roof.”

“That’s a mighty big bang,” Bailey remarked while she snatched the map away from Motte so that she could have a better look. “Only one gate. This looks like a smithy and that’s an open air kitchen if I’ve ever seen one. I wonder what this big bin might be. Could be coal. It’s fucking cold enough for coal.”

“I would not give my flunkies coal.”

“That’s because you’re an asshole, Dim.”

“Blackbird, you have a devastating knack for stating the obvious.”

“I know I do, Bailey. It’s a gift.”

Eyes narrowing, Bailey studied the map and Motte leaned over so that he might also have a better look. Dim puffed on his pipe and the clove-infused smoke seemed to have soothed his lungs. Munro, hunkering in the wagon, was rummaging through a box of mortar shell, and while his beefy hands were steady, his red-rimmed eyes were wide with bowel-clenching fear. There was enough high-explosives to blow them and the barn into smithereens.

“I took cover behind this wagon, not knowing…” Munro’s words were little more than a calfish whimper.

“Exciting, isn't it, Munro?” Dim turned to give his valet a cool, smirky sneer. “I bet the knowledge leaves slick streaks in your britches.”

The minotaur nodded and even managed a halfhearted chuckle in reply.

“Just where did Bombay go anyhow?” Motte demanded from behind the map held up before his face.

Glancing up from the mortar shell he held in his hands, Munro replied, “She went hunting for coneys.”

Author's Note

War is... uncomfortable.

A wizard's hat comes a callin'

The bed of the wagon was strewn with the cold, remorseless instruments of death. While guns were a major power, a force to be reckoned with, a greater power existed, and that was brass. Industry birthed brass, and brass empowered guns. While there was something both effective and even charming with black powder firearms, brass made rapid reloads possible. Neatly prepackaged perfection, everything a shootist needed was housed in brass.

Blackbird brokered in brass; she was a banker, a merchant, as such she plied her trade with the exchange of brass and lead. Like a banker’s pen, each of her guns were polished to perfection and they gleamed with fresh oil, which she now wore like some exotic perfume. Each brass shell represented a transaction waiting to be finalised, with the ideal exchange medium being one bullet spent for one soul acquired—one shot, one kill. Her face had the calm austerity of an accountant sitting down to balance the books, only these ledgers belonged to Death herself, and Blackbird was her bank agent. What terrible industry existed in the world; what dreadful alchemy turned brass into naked souls, bereft of body.

The companions, killers all, prepared to ply their trade. Motte and Bailey also dealt in brass, though in different ways. Both were combat engineers, each with specialised skill sets. Motte turned brass into fiery blooms of absolute destruction through the intricate magic of mathematics, and it might be argued that no finer artillerist existed, save for Bailey, his counterpart. They were the same pony, after all, twin souls mirrored in different bodies. The mortar shell, now modified, was ready to be dropped.

In the bed of the wagon, there was enough firepower to start a revolution, which might just be the outcome of tonight’s raid. Dim, smoking his pipe, had a relaxed coolness about him, and he watched with casual interest as others worked with brass. Though a wizard, he did not dismiss his companions’ means to deal and distribute death. While he might have done so at one time, he had since grown to respect Blackbird—as well as the others. Though tight-lipped about the subject, he saw them as equals, at least when it came down to the dirty business of killing.

“Dim…”

“Blackbird?”

“I need something from you.”

“What’s that, Blackbird?”

“Reassurance. I need you to promise me that you won’t be in direct danger tonight.”

This was met with silence.

“Dim, don’t do this to me.”

A sigh happened and Dim’s small, slight torso heaved.

“Come on, this is hard on me. Don’t make it worse. For once, don’t be an asshole.”

“I won’t be in the thick of the fighting. I’ll be striking from unseen places. My hat should serve as a worthwhile distraction, it has grown quite magical from constant contact and will act as a lure. Distance is a detriment though. My magic’s potency diminishes with distance. Which is why I’ll be trying a few new things tonight to minimise my exposure to danger.”

“All those words and not one promise.”

“I can’t promise I’ll stay safe. Things can go wrong. Misfortune happens. I do have a plan to neutralise most risks to myself and I’ll be trying some of the new spells that I have learned.”

“I suppose that is the best I can get from you.” After a moment, with a sigh, she added, “What new spell have you learned to keep yourself safe? Is there some way you can reassure me? Otherwise, my head won’t be in this fight. I have to know that your safe.”

Motte and Bailey exchanged a glance.

“One of the new spells I learned is The War Maiden’s Emotional Ravager.” There was a dramatic pause to allow the name to sink in and an almost playful sneer graced Dim’s lips. “It creates a spirit of torment, a ravager of magical construction. It leaps into a mind, feeds upon the animus, gathers every bit of guilt, every dirty secret, every horrible, rotten thing, every secret shame, and causes a severe emotional reaction to these things. Then, stronger for having fed, it leaps to a new mind, bringing with it the secret knowledge of the first, and the damage becomes two-fold. The new target learns of every horrible thing that the first have done, as the spirit feeds upon their animus as well. Strengthened even more, the spirit goes off in search of new victims, gaining potency with each leap, and the crowd devolves into animalistic violence if all goes well.”

Blackbird, like the others, now wore a horrified blank stare.

“My family ridiculed this spell…” Dim shook his head from side to side. “Said it was worthless, because it didn’t cause direct harm. My own mother frowned upon it, said it was a waste of time. She said there was no sense burning it into the mind, because it was a frivolous expenditure of energy. My mother is foolish… she is stupid and weak minded. She only understands brute force and perceives subtlety as weakness. Once I release this spirit of torment tonight, I should be much, much safer, because everypony will be busy trying to kill one another for the horrible secrets and terrible acts they learn. The secret knowledge will drive them mad. If I am somehow discovered, I will be the least of their concerns.”

Motte shivered so hard that his teeth clattered together and then, with a blasting snort, he recovered himself. Holding his quad-barreled shotgun, he said, “I am reminded that the Darks are terrible ponies… even if you have one of them on your side or work for one.”

“So says the pony who modified the Nightmare Express and is plotting the brutal slaughter of bandits.”

“Touché.” Motte bowed his head. “At least this is being done for the right reasons.”

“And you get paid?” Dim asked.

“Of course. I don’t do what I do for free. Eerie pays me well and I sleep pretty good at night. I don’t mind doing awful things if it makes the world better, and everything that Eerie has asked me to do has made the world better in some way. Though I don’t always agree with Eerie’s methods, I trust her.”

This gave Dim pause for consideration.

“I’ve killed before.” There was an unsteady waver to Blackbird’s voice, a vulnerable tremour that made her companions turn to look at her. “It was always… defensively? Well, except for that one time when it was an accident and I made that pony’s head explode. But that’s beside the point. This time, I’m about to be the aggressor. I’m about to show up at a fort where creatures are minding their own business and I’m gonna murderise them to death. I don’t know how I feel. Really, I don’t know how I should feel. All I can do is keep reminding myself that I’m killing them before they can do something real bad to the city of Gasconeigh.”

“Blackbird, we have a chance to stop something bad from happening. We have to strengthen our resolve and do what is necessary. You’ve seen the peasants around here. We’ve stayed with them… broke bread with them. Eaten their food and benefited from their hospitality. We owe them. If we don’t fight for them, who will?”

“You’re right.” Blackbird closed her eyes and a profound change overcame her face. “It doesn’t make it any easier, but you’re right. We owe them whatever we can give them.” Grim acceptance could now be seen, and when she opened her eyes, they were flinty-glinty, like a cat preparing for a pounce.

In silence, Dim retreated into his own thoughts, thinking about what he owed others.

There was hardly a moon at all in the skies above, a thin, almost nonexistent sliver of silver surrounded by the cold stars of autumn. It was the coldest night so far and the frigid chill that haunted the air whispered the suggestion that winter would soon arrive. It was a still night, quiet, a night given to sitting around the fire and drinking—which is what many did, including the inhabitants of the fort atop the hill.

It was a night given to song, to revelry, and there was a palpable excitement in the air. Their ranks had swollen considerably, many had joined their cause and the promise of a new, better life loomed large before them. Soon, all of Fancy would be united beneath one banner, one crowned head, and a great many toasts were raised to Duc Truffe—soon to be Roi Truffe, or possibly even Empereur Truffe. There was a fortune to be made in becoming one of his soldiers and he promised a glorious future full of conquest, glory, and valour.

And for the brigands, those who lived by questionable means… a legitimate pardon.

After all, it wasn’t their fault they had turned to banditry, no. Such soft language had inspired them, given them hope. No, their problems, their misdeeds could be blamed upon another, who now hung in effigy from the gate and would soon hang in real life; Duc Chanson Argentée. Such a traitor was he… a failed governor who had surrendered his own island to savages and was now plotting to parcel out Fancy, giving away the once mighty empire to foreign interests. Soon, if Duc Chanson Argentée had his way, Fancy would cease to exist. It would become a nation of zebras, of savages, the once proud nation would fall to outsiders. For Duc Chanson Argentée would surely sell out Fancy to its former slaves, bleeding heart that he was.

Such a thing would not stand.

From out of the woods a hat came flying, a broad-brimmed conical hat, the sort of hat that might have been worn by a wizard that had no fucks to give about fashionable standards. This hat, whatever colour it might have been, was now a weathered grey, and its brim undulated like the frill of a cuttlefish while it flew through the air, weaving and bobbing between the trees.

Peculiarly enough, the hat could be heard humming to itself, a tune that was remarkably like The Battle Hymn of the United Tribes, something most typically heard in Equestria, of all places. It was certainly not the sort of thing that one expected a hat to be humming, but then one, one did not expect such a hat to be wizardless while venturing through the woods. What was a hat without its wizard? A sad, lonesome piece of headwear indeed.

It’s pointed tip turned to and fro, as if it were looking around, keeping an eye out for trouble while it swam through the air with the smooth undulations of its floppy, flappy brim. It raced for the fort ahead, unconcerned about a stealthy approach, and moved with remarkable speed—unbelievable speed, really, for who could believe that a hat could be in such a hurry?

It banked, making a hard turn, and flew in the direction of the gate, buoyed along by unseen currents, swimming through a nonexistent ocean. It bobbed in excitement upon seeing the gate, as if it was tipping itself to say hello to the guards, and then the hat did the most unexpected thing: it let out a cough, cleared its throat, and addressed the creatures in a booming voice.

“I am Dim, the Unfathomable Djinn of Istanbull, the Unkillable, Unseeable, Invulnerable Spirit of Torment! You disgusting primitives are wicked, prepare to die!”

Without further ado, the hat cast a fireball, which went soaring for the gate with a whoosh. The guards scrambled, some took wing, each of them trying to escape from the tiny wisp of fire that flew unerringly right at them. On impact, the tiny blob of fire blossomed and it was as if Tartarus vomited out unholy fire. The gate was blasted into splinters, the numbers of which rivaled the stars above, and burning hunks of wood. A wave of heat washed over the whole area and the sharpened wooden logs that made up the walls ignited.

As an opener, it was impressive by any standards; but from a hat, doubly so.

With the gate obliterated, the hat invited itself inside while the occupants of the fort scrambled to defend themselves from the unlikely invader. The first volleys of musket fire rang out, smoke filled the central yard, and miniballs went whizzing through the air. Holes were torn in the fabric of the hat and a shattered wine bottle fell, with wine dribbling down like blood. But the hat, undaunted by gunfire, unconcerned by the sheer number of miniballs in the air, hovered in place while its pointed tip bobbed up and down like a wagging finger of shame.

While those armed with muskets reloaded, earth ponies chucked stones, a truly devastating barrage against fleshy, squishy targets. But the hat had no such concerns, and though bleeding wine, the hat proved to be invulnerable to the rain of rocks. Another fireball was lobbed off with casual disregard and this one ignited the open air kitchen. The occupants of the fort were panicked now, and the greedy flames licked at the wooden structure in hungry anticipation.

High overhead, a black shadow obscured the stars, an insubstantial phantom.

In the chaos, no one noticed the cylindrical brass object striking the ground just in front of the keep’s double doors. No one heard the popping sound over the sound roaring flames, screams, and musket fire. The hiss went unnoticed, as did the shimmering waves. As the hat made a mocking gesture with its brim, the sweet scent of lilacs joined the stench of burning hair and feathers. As the lilac perfume spread, eyes bulged, nostrils flared, and a sudden change overtook the crowd of defenders.

A single glowing orb flew forth, not from the hat, but from somewhere unseen out past the gate, and it struck an earth pony getting ready to hurl a rock. It froze, its face a rictus of agony, and then the orb, now even brighter, flew off at another target while the earth pony collapsed to the ground, clutching its temples with its front hooves. This orb bounced around, going from head to head, creature to creature, leaving chaos in its wake.

One of the griffons, his eyes wide with fear, his talons trembling with rage, pointed his musket at one of his fellow pegasus ponies. “Vous l'avez pris!” the griffon hollered, and then, pulling the trigger, blew the head clean off of the pegasus pony. The violent act did not go unnoticed, and other pegasus ponies, succumbing to the spell and to the scent of lilacs, turned on the griffon with the musket.

Discord, so sown, reaped a bitter harvest.

Author's Note

Not sure if this counts as a cliffhanger.

The puppeteer's lament

That she might smell lilacs was a terrifying notion to Blackbird, who circled overhead like an opportunistic vulture. If she caught even the faintest whiff of the floral scent, she was to flee with all due haste. The gas was heavy and she was up high, but the fear remained, lingering like one of Dim’s smoke-creatures. Below her was a nightmarish scene of carnage; everything was on fire, both creatures and objects alike. An orgy of bloody violence was taking place, with both the dreadful gas and Dim’s horrible spell having unraveled the minds of all exposed.

She watched, she waited, and she had the most horrendous view of everything down below. A black silhouette could be seen, it stood out in sharp contrast to the lurid orange glow of the billowing, devouring flames. Something flapped, trying to escape, and she couldn’t tell if it was a pegasus or a griffon. It didn’t matter, not really. Whatever it was, it was suffering, and so shooting it would be a mercy.

At least, that is what Blackbird told herself.

Taking aim with her long barreled ten gauge, she peeped down the iron sights and waited for the creature to gain a little more altitude. Something about the weight and solidity of the shotgun was reassuring to her. It was a storied weapon, heavy, impractical for many, but not her. No, for her, it was perfect. While she drew a bead on what was revealed to be a griffon with a musket, a thought rose unbidden in her mind.

I shall call you ‘Mercy’s Reach’ her inner voice said while her talon-finger curled around the comforting curve of the trigger. Mercy has a mighty long reach.

Exhaling, Blackbird fired and there was a thunderous report that rent the night.

A cloud of lead, smoke, and flame was spat out and the bright muzzle flash dazzled Blackbird’s eyes. These shells had been overloaded—terrifyingly so—and the recoil was like a mighty mule kick that jolted her whole body. She had aimed for center mass—her iron sights had been trained on the section of spine just between the wings—but the cloud of lead, smoke, and flame connected with the base of the griffon’s neck with explosive results.

The decapitated griffon somersaulted from the force of impact and tumbled out of the sky, spurting blood and viscera from the gaping, yawning wound where his neck once connected to his body. His talon-fingers lost their grip on the musket, and it too, tumbled down, falling end over end. It had happened again, much to Blackbird’s horror. She had aimed for a perfect shot… she was certain she had fired when pointing at center mass… but once again she had achieved spectacularly bloody results.

Bile burned the back of her throat.

Another rose to escape and Blackbird was forced to steel her resolve. Before this night was done, many would die. These creatures needed to die, she reminded herself, they needed to die so that others might live. Though some doubts remained, she had almost convinced herself of the the rightness of her actions, her cause. She sucked in a deep breath that tasted of smoke, held it, drew a bead, and when she exhaled she squeezed the trigger with gentle, but firm force. This time, a pegasus met a terrible end, and having lost a wing, tumbled down to the carnage below.

These were not good creatures… no, these were creatures given to vice, debauchery, and iniquity. They were called bandits for a good reason, having given up on making an honest living and instead taking whatever it was they felt as though they were owed. Honest goodness had been replaced with gross moral turpitude. As such, these creatures, weak-willed, weak-minded, had heavy consciences weighted down with their depravity.

The spirit that plagued them had become gluttonous from their wantonness, their impropriety, their reckless profligacy—in short, they were easy targets. As the green miasma lept from mind to mind, it turned the whites of the eyes to a sickly shade of luminescent green in every creature it preyed upon, imbuing them with a ghastly, hateful glow. Under the influence of the discordant spirit, they accused one another of every vile thing, every horrible act, every lurking suspicion. Their paranoia took over; being bandits, they knew that they were bandits, and as such, none of them could be trusted, not a one.

They killed one another without mercy, which only made things worse. Few things weighed down the simple minded like the heavy guilt of murder, and so everything descended into absolute and total chaos. Earth ponies trampled their former friends, rendering them bloody with powerful blows. Griffons tore out throats with claws and pecked out eyes with beaks. Pegasus ponies pummeled while flitting about. All of this took place while the fort burned around them, the bright orange flames reaching up into the night sky like greedy, grabbing fingers.

The cause of it all was a hat, now quite tattered and by hat standards, on the verge of death. Many holes had been shot through it, ragged tears had been made, and it smouldered from the devouring inferno. It moved about, a peculiar guardian of the exit, spewing fire and killing any who tried to flee through the gate. Upon the world of Terra, death came in many forms; titans, behemoths, leviathans, dragons, arimaspi monsters, cyclops, ogres, trolls… but for these creatures, the cause of their demise was a hat—a strange fate indeed, and a far stranger tale to tell Death when she came to collect their souls.

The overpowering fragrance of lilacs lingered upon the air like sweet perfume…

Above the mayhem, Blackbird found herself dogfighting with those attempting escape. She battled now with pistols akimbo, snapping off quick shots. By some miraculous stroke of luck, each bullet seemed to strike a fatal or crippling shot. Though she aimed for center mass just as her mother had taught her to do, her bullets found their way to heads, necks, wings, and limbs. To miss center mass with each and every shot, only to strike critical blows on vulnerable extremities, Blackbird couldn’t tell if she had extraordinary luck or some dreadful curse.

Heads burst like lanced boils. Limbs were blown clean off and the arterial spurting that followed created delicate fountains of bright scarlet blood that glistened in the firelight. Blackbird flew with lateral motion, just as her mother taught her, strafing and moving at odd angles while surrounded in billowing clouds of gunsmoke. She was running out of revolvers and would have to reload soon, which worried her.

A group rose to meet her and miniballs whizzed around her, with one grazing the feathers on her left wing. She holstered her revolvers, flapped to gain altitude while maintaining lateral movement, and unslung Mercy’s Reach, which needed a reload. Remembering the shells that Dim had given her, she shoved a few in with her thumb-talon and then snapped the revolving cylinder shut. Lifting the long-barreled ten gauge, she took steady aim…

BLAM!

Mercy’s Reach belched fire like a dragon and the briny scent of the ocean filled the air, a strangely salty smell. The crowd was stricken with explosive wounds—injuries the likes of which Blackbird had never seen. Skin steamed and sizzled while enormous, gaping wounds happened just like magic. The salty stench of gunpowder, burned hair, scorched feathers, and seared meat made her eyes water. What had Dim packed into these shells?

Squinting because of the stinging, salty smoke, she fired again into the mob, and this too produced explosive results. The wounds seemed to ignite and burn, with tongues of flame lapping at the jagged, torn edges of flesh. Those unlucky few that survived the fiery, salty onslaught tumbled out of the night sky to meet their fate in the flaming, murderous chaos below. The smoke that rose from the burned, blasted bodies was so salty that it almost made Blackbird choke, and her vision blurred with stinging tears.

Blinking away tears, Blackbird tried to clear her vision so that she might clear the skies…

The creaking of timbers moaned over the sound of roaring flames, gunshots, and the sounds of violence. At the far side of the fort away from the gate, the ground began to ripple and the wooden palisades wiggled like loosened teeth, jostling against one another. From somewhere deep within the ground, there was a groan, followed by a grating rumble, like two heavy stones sliding along one another, the sort of sound that put one’s teeth on edge.

Fire—like a spreading cancer—had lept to the main keep itself and was edging closer to the barrels stacked beneath the lean-to roof built off from one side of the log keep. The roaring crackling flames spat cinders out like colonists seeking new lands, and new things ignited. Thick, roiling smoke rose like pillars that held up the canopy of the heavens.

A massive shudder rocked the fort’s motte; that is to say, the hill that the fort had been constructed upon. It moved—it shivered—and everything built atop of it began to lean at precarious angles. The ground quivered, gave a violent tremble and then the far side of the fort, the side away from the gate spilled its stony guts. Rocks—a great many of them—exploded from out of the side of the hill, the very foundation of the fort itself. These rocks had once dinged the plows of farmers and over time, they had been rounded up and placed in a rock pile. With the passing of time, this pile grew and grew, until one day it was covered in dirt, turned into a motte, and had a bailey constructed upon its crown.

But now these stones spilled out like viscera from a gash in the soil, and the palisades began to lean as the foundation gave way. The ground tilted, a great deal this time, and all of the stacked barrels toppled over. They rolled down the incline, bounding and bopping one another, smashing any creature unfortunate enough to be in their path, until they reached the flaming palisades.

Blackbird watched in awe as the hill itself came apart and the landslide of stones spilled forth from about the middle of the steep incline. The once level ground at the top of the rise was now slanted—very much so—and everything leaned as the fort toppled. Barrels, dozens of them, were pitched from their lean-to shelter and went bounding down the incline, smashing and killing anything in their way.

When the first barrel smashed into the burning palisades, Blackbird realised what was about to happen and she turned tail, fleeing as fast as her wings would carry her. Seconds later, she felt it, the burning, searing heat at her backside, she felt the sound and heard the fury that echoed through her ears, almost deafening her. It was a sound so loud that it ceased being a sound at all, and became a sensation instead, an indescribable one. The concussive force struck her and sent her spiraling out of control while a pillar of fire rose like a vulgar raised finger in the night, which was now bright as day.

Blackbird was certain that her eyeballs would burst from their sockets and she squeezed her eyes shut in a vain attempt to hold them in. The shockwave rippled through her body, turning her bowels into water, which she could feel spraying out behind her while the crushing force constricted around her body. A searing heat singed her from tail to nose and she felt her skin grow tight, as if she had a terrible sunburn.

Still, somehow, Blackbird flew. Whatever luck she had sustained her and she flew blind out of the billowing column of fire that expanded all around her like an unfolding roll of parchment. She emerged smouldering, missing a few patches of her fine black pelt, and she struggled to level out her staggered flight. Behind her, the pillar of flames grew ever taller, and now reached several hundred feet into the night sky, a towering colossus of fiery fury.

Now perched in the gnarled crotch of a tree, Blackbird surveyed the devastation, not that much could be seen just yet. Most of the hill was gone and stones were everywhere. Sharpened wooden logs lay scattered about like toothpicks, many of which were on fire. The keep was gone, it had simply ceased to exist when the powderkegs had gone off. How many hundreds of pounds of black powder had detonated was unknown, but Blackbird guessed that it was a whole bloody lot. What little bit of the hill that remained could now be called a crater.

Never in her life had she seen anything quite like this and her mind struggled to take it all in. A few unicorns working together had done this. Of course she had her own role in it, but picking off the escapees paled in comparison to leveling a fort and the hill it stood upon. This… this was only a minor example of the sort of horrors of war that could be expected if all of the world plunged into conflict. Instead of bandit forts built on a hill, whole cities could be razed.

It made her feel small, insecure, it left her vulnerable and she wished that her father was here to comfort her. But Stinkberry was gone. He was dead and the dead had no fear of war. She rubbed her stinging eyes, blinked a few times, and tried to clear her vision. Black ashes drifted down like dirty snowflakes borne upon scorching winds.

From beside her, there was a pop, like a cork yanked free from a bottle and Dim appeared, hatless. When she turned to look at him, she saw his stoic, unfeeling expression, the utter lack of emotion upon his face, and for a few seconds, she hated him. Hot resentment burned within her breast and her breath shot out of her swollen, snot and ash-clogged nostrils like cannon-fire. But then the feeling passed and she was grateful to see Dim, because he had come looking for her.

He cared, even if he didn’t show it.

“Motte and Bailey are fine, I found them already. How are you, Blackbird?”

She blinked and ashen tears dribbled down her cheeks while she replied, “I don’t know.”

Dim, standing on a tree branch, lowered his head and studied her. As for Blackbird, her heart ached in some odd way and the hard, unyielding bark of the tree pressed cruelly into her tender hide. She wanted her father—her mother—anypony really. But Dim was stoic, cold, he was utterly indifferent. The bodies in the crater were just that—bodies—and probably meant nothing to him, but she couldn’t steel her heart to be so apathetic to the slaughter that had just taken place.

Much to Blackbird’s surprise, Dim came closer, and while she tried to recover her shocked senses, she felt a soft nuzzle against her neck. The unexpected affection, this kind act, she wasn’t expecting it, not at all, and it left her as shell-shocked as the powderkeg explosion that had just taken place. When she reached out for him, she almost knocked him from the branch, but she pulled him into her safe embrace.

He was small, compared to her, fragile, little more than skin, bones, and indomitable willpower. When she breathed in his scent, she smelled smoke, acrid sweat, and cloves, but he always smelled like cloves. Her talon-fingers ached; she had burned the tips with so many hot reloads and then had burned the blisters too. Everything ached, her heart most of all, but holding Dim made everything better.

Dim was cold and she could feel the way his muscles tensed, as if he was trying not to shiver. She pulled him a bit closer, rubbing his body against hers, and the pleasant friction made a delightful warmth between them. The pony she held had almost no weight to him, as if there was nothing solid nor substantial about him. He was so small, slight, and fragile—but capable of so much devastation.

The duality of it all left her feeling withdrawn and confused.

“It was a puppet spell…” Dim almost sighed out these words.

“Say again?” For some reason, the idle chatter made Blackbird feel better, and she longed for a distraction.

“It was a spell for puppeteering. When I was a colt, I found the spell in some dusty tome that had been sorely neglected. I spent weeks trying to learn the spell, it was far more complicated than it first appeared. But learn it I did and I gave my toys a sort of pseudo-life. I was so pleased with myself… but then my mother found out and she became enraged. Such a spell was beneath me, she said. It was frivolous, meaningless magic. She stole my joy… my happiness… it was… it was a triumph for me. With but a thought I could bring all of my toys to life, I could make them dance and entertain me and Darling. But my mother had to punish me for my gaiety.”

The words left Blackbird flummoxed.

Dim sighed and then rested his head against her neck. She struggled, trying to understand his pain, trying to understand him, but try as she might, he remained a mystery. He had just used a spell intended to entertain foals to help sack a fort and take who knows how many lives, but that was sort of what he did. When cast by Dim, no spell maintained its innocence for long.

Holding Dim to keep him warm, she watched as the fires burned.

Author's Note

Sodium and water reaction. Basic science.

Don't get it wet, Dim had said.

Ashen aftermath

In the pale, wan light of the frozen dawn, the fires still burned. With light came the rubberneckers, the gawkers, the looky-loos. Dim stood near some flaming sharpened logs that had once been part of the fort’s palisades, but were now just so much blackened, burnt wreckage. While he warmed himself near the fire, the onlookers shouted words he did not understand and their faces were decidedly angry, which concerned him. Had he killed their sons? Perhaps. But then, he’d ended the lives of many sons for a variety of reasons, and these were no different.

Blackbird too, warmed herself by the fire, and she stood in reserved silence whilst squirming a great deal. Motte and Bailey were tossing bodies and remains onto another fire some distance away, their faces grim and blackened with soot. Munro prowled the area, a stiletto in hand, making a quick end to any of the suffering survivors. Occasionally, a head would pop up out of the scorched soil, hopeful, joyful to see daylight, struggling to avoid the dreadful fate of being buried alive, only to be stabbed by the apologetic minotaur that was a bit too eager to do his job.

Daylight truly revealed the devastation that the night had concealed. What had once been a hill was now more of a crescent-shaped crater, with the stone innards of the motte spilled out onto open ground. Scattered among the many fire-blackened stones were bones—a great many bones—most of which were charred and devoid of tissue. At least those deaths were quick; a fair number had been buried alive when the tilting hill had collapsed and spilled them down the slope.

Not far away from the fire, a dirty orange head poked up out of the soil and Dim could not help but think of carrots for some reason. Munro hustled over to do his job, stepping between bones and cindery husks that had once been bodies. When the stiletto was driven deep, the unmistakable sound of metal striking bone could be heard and it struck a discordant note that resonated against the glorious dawn.

No quarter. No survivors. Fancy was about to slip into revolution, of this there could be no doubt, and Gasconeigh might have already fallen, for all that Dim knew. In the aftermath of anarchy, there would be no time, no force of law for trials and sentencing of these souls. It was better—merciful even—to finish them off and spare them a far worse fate.

“Blackbird… Blackbird, must you keep squirming? Do you have fleas? Can you not be still?” Dim allowed his level gaze to fall upon his companion, and he wondered what she was feeling. The grey soot upon her black face gave her a curious, haunted expression, and she lingered like a supplicant spirit awaiting answers.

In response, Blackbird squirmed even more, and began kicking out her left hind leg so that she might give it a shake. “I itch everywhere and I think I need a bath. Also…”

“Yes?” One of Dim’s eyebrows arched in a perfect curve that matched the round edge of his smoked glass goggles.

Blackbird’s eyes darted about in some avian way, or perhaps feline, it was difficult to tell for Dim, and then he heard her reply, “My asshole has a cramp from clenching.”

Upon hearing this stunning revelation, Dim snorted, and behind his black lenses, his eyes rolled. It was almost funny, in a terrible way, but there was no way that he would allow himself to show any signs of mirth and he maintained his stoic exteriour, though his lip did curl back into a sneer.

“You should kiss it and make it better,” she suggested, her eyes gleaming with mischief.

When faced with the blackest of circumstances, Blackbird always fell back on humour, something that Dim held a grudging admiration for. She was coping with this in her own way. Her ebony hide had a number of crimson streaks, some of which were welts. Grazes—only grazes. Somehow, she had flown between the volleys of hot lead spewed out by muskets and blunderbusses.

Bombay emerged from the crowd, her paws resting on her sword and her pistol, which for now, remained slung on her belt. Her scarred head was covered in a colourful bright green scarf, which gave her a roguish, highway cat look. An odd appearance to observe, given the ruined fort and the hundreds of bodies of dead bandits.

“We have angry locals, Dim,” she said whilst approaching. “As bad as the bandits were, they kept away worse things. They were a force of protection in the region and these peasants want to know who is going to protect them now. Some of them are getting heated, Dim. Expect trouble.”

Turning his head, he surveyed the distant mob and his ears pricked at the sound of their rapidly spoken words. He had just quelled a bandit revolt, and the idea of putting down a peasant revolt unnerved him. These ungrateful disgusting primitives… after all that he had done and after sacrificing his hat—his hat—these disgusting primitives had the audacity to look upon the bandits as a favourable force of protection.

Gritting his teeth, he calmed himself and reminded himself that these poor wretches lived without any sort of adequate protection. They had no wizard, no knight, no force of righteousness to protect them. In desperation, they had turned to the false-protection of the bandits, a sort of security racket, no doubt whose terms worked in the favour of the bandits. Just thinking about it made him feel sick.

Blackbird continued to squirm but Dim no longer found it quite as distracting, considering that his mind was now elsewhere. What terrible desperation drove these poor souls to entreat such degenerate protectors? To beseech such reprehensible guardians? What hopelessness they must have to see those who robbed them as watchdogs. Through narrowed eyes, he studied them, trying to understand their motivations.

An older stallion with a pox-scarred face and one rheumy eye approached, his right hind leg almost dragging behind him with each step. Life had not been kind to this poor fellow and rather than feel annoyed, Dim felt something else, something unknown for this poor wretch. Anger flashed in his one good eye, it glinted fiercely in the dawn’s light, but when he spoke, his words were calm and measured.

“Oi, who’ll keep us lot safe now?” he asked in a thick, hard-to-understand Grittish accent. “As bad as those sots were, there was worse things they kept away. They hunted the wolves for sport, so they did, and I bet my good eye that the occupied fort was what kept away those buggering bloody owlbears.”

“But they took from you,” Blackbird blurted out while she whirled to face the accuser.

“Oi, so they did, but they never took too much, so they didn’t,” the old stallion replied. “It was like paying taxes… only unlike the taxes we pay to those stuffy ducs in the city, we actually saw some benefit from what we paid to this lot. We got something in return. Now? We got nothing. What’ll we do with nothing?”

Paws still resting upon her sword and pistol, Bombay clucked her tongue while motes of magic danced along her clawed fingertips. Though her expression was one of anger, her words were soft when she spoke to the hobbled elder.

“Do you not have griffons who guard your houses?” she asked, her paw-fingers drumming against her weapons, which caused raw magic to go trailing away in arcing sparks. “Take whatever it was that you were coerced to pay the bandits and redistribute it amongst yourselves. Organise a militia. Security is a commodity, and like anything that costs coin, you get what you pay for. Invest in your protectors. Don’t be… lazy”—she spat this word out—“and just wait for help to arrive. Save yourselves. If you had the means to pay them”—she extended her paw and pointed to where Motte was chucking yet another corpse onto the fire—“then you have the means to finance your own well-being.”

The old pony licked his lips a few times, blinked his eyes, and then focused a wary stare upon the Abyssinian that had just told him off. He started to say something, Dim saw it, but then the words died upon the elder’s lips. Ears bobbed, his thin, sparse tail flicked, and the old pony seemed to be attempting to conjure up an argument, but Bombay’s words had a ring of self-evident truth about them. Some of the gathered crowd had gone still, silent, and appeared to be waiting for the old fellow to say something.

Without warning, everything was interrupted by a menacing silhouette that arrived from the west. A gunship approached and when Dim squinted through the smoked glass of his goggles, he could see the glint of sunlight reflecting upon the armored steel hull. Flying low and slow, the nacelle was emblazoned with the colours of the Fancy Foreign Legion. Upon seeing it, the peasants scattered with all due haste, even the old fellow turned out to be quite spry when properly motivated.

“Blackbird… mind your cramped asshole. We have guests.”

His face a stoic mask, Dim sized up the approaching griffon and his four guards, two pistoleers and two grenadiers. Interestly enough, the griffon—while having a martial bearing—didn’t strike Dim as being a soldier. He was too clean, too fussy, too immaculate, and the monocle hanging from a thin brass chain around his neck just wasn’t very soldierly. His pillbox hat with the short, stubby brim seemed out of place upon his head, almost as if were an afterthought, something only worn for show.

“Prince Dim, of Istanbull,” one of the grenadiers said, barking out the words in a rough, soldierly greeting, before slipping into a stiff, starchy salute. “Commandant Graham of the Airborne Pacification Peacekeepers.”

“What news of Gasconeigh?” Dim asked before Commandant Graham could say anything.

“There is a tenuous peace, but it won’t last,” the commandant replied, shaking his head. “As for the rest of Fancy, it has fallen. Rioting has overtaken the major cities and the citizenry revolts. Our worst suspicions have been confirmed, as this is a concerted effort on the part of our enemies. That courier had some… revealing documentation.”

“You’re not from Fancy.” This wasn’t posed as a question. After sizing the commandant up and hearing him speak, Dim had ascertained a great deal.

“Well, this is the Fancy Foreign Legion. We take all types.”

“What’s an Equestrian doing in the Fancy Foreign Legion?” Dim turned the full force of his piercing stare upon the commandant, looking him right in the eye. “Tell me, is this how Princess Celestia polices the world? Sending her educated, indoctrinated diplomats out to fill dedicated positions of importance? An Equestrian pony might draw attention… but an Equestrian griffon... nopony expects an Equestrian griffon.”

“I was warned that you were cunning, but this goes beyond the pale.” Commandant Graham made a strange sound, almost as if he was clearing his throat.

“So Fancy has fallen,” Dim remarked.

“In one night of bloody revolt.” Commandant Graham took a moment to steady himself and when he spoke again, his words were a detached, clinical monotone. “Gasconeigh only stands through good fortune. We arrived through circumstance, namely, to deal with the incident involving Captain Jolie Rouge. Had that not happened, we might not be in the city at all, and a very different outcome might’ve happened. As it is, the entire fleet is convening in Gasconeigh, but you’ll learn more about that later. I was dispatched to pacify and restore peace at the mine.”

“I see.” Dim, unmoving, took a moment to collect his thoughts. Fortuitous circumstances, indeed. Thankful for whatever luck that had brought about this happenstance, he continued to study Commandant Graham. “We shall probably encounter the false-alicorns at the mine. They are quite difficult to kill. I suggest caution, as I doubt fleeing will be an option. They are unbelievably difficult to put down and finish off.”

Lowering his head, Commandant Graham’s eyes narrowed and his voice went low. “I am under orders from Princess Celestia herself to find out more about the Ascendancy. Which is why I was dispatched to find you and deal with this… situation. Command is aware of my priorities and my… interests.”

“The fort—”

“Yes, Garrabow, the fort has been obliterated,” Commandant Graham said to the grenadier that had done the brusque introduction. “Behold, Garrabow, what Equestria has loosed upon the world… the Darks. From my briefing, I am told that Dim here isn’t the most powerful of them, but has been observed to possess demented creativity and imagination that goes beyond the ken of most.” Squinting one avian eye, the commandant gave Dim a practiced look of appraisal. “Be mindful, Dim. Dreadful Dark was sprung from the mental asylum and we know him to be right here in Fancy. Princess Celestia suspects that he’s either looking for you, the Ascendancy, or both. He’s out for prizes.”

Though he showed no outward signs, Dim’s blood cooled considerably and he fought to repress a shiver. There were only stories—but in this instance stories were enough. Uncle Dreadful had a penchant for necromancy and the buggery of young colts, two grotesque hobbies that should never, ever, under any circumstances, ever intermingle.

“As soon as you are ready to go, Dim, we’ll ship out.”

Author's Note

Soon: the mine.

Uncle fucked

Alone. Dim was alone. He reminded himself that this was necessary, for the sake of his companions and this wasn’t a decision that he’d made lightly. It weighed on him now as he made his way down the moist, slick passages, a series of switchbacks that descended deeper into the mine. The magical horror was oppressive now, but somehow Dim resisted. When Dim reached the bottom of the passage, he turned, expecting to find yet another switchback passage leading down, but emerged into an open space instead.

There was a shaft leading straight down, along with a rickety lift that Dim didn’t trust, not in the slightest. Who knew what the local construction standards were. The shaft was a well of darkness that for all Dim knew, might go down forever. Yet, that was where he had to go, because there were answers down there. After studying the lift for a moment, he realised that whomever was down below hadn’t taken the lift down—or they had sent it back up—perhaps for him.

It seemed as though he was expected.

Tired, weary, knowing that his magical reserves were barely enough to conjure a sneeze, Dim eyeballed the lift. He could use magic to fall like a feather down the shaft, and if the rickety lift failed, feather falling might still be a necessity, but he needed to conserve his strength. With a sigh, he chose the lift; what did it matter? He was likely going to his death anyway. If Grogar’s agents were down there, he doubted that he could beat them. Yet, he had to go and his face contorted into a grim grimace of acceptance.

Water poured down the rough-hewn edges of the shaft but no sounds of splashing could be heard below. This place was damp—too damp—and Dim was struggling to even draw breath. Having suffered long enough, and no longer caring, Dim pulled out his silver stem, a slim rolled joint infused with cloves, and decided to have himself a good smoke while he lowered himself down to his inevitable death.

The walls… there was something dreadfully wrong with the walls. Dim had trouble figuring out what it was until he ignited his horn, and then he sincerely wished he hadn’t. The walls were covered in strange spiderwebby construction—made of meat. Glistening flesh reflected the light from his horn and tiny translucent spiders could be seen scurrying along the strands of twisted, braided meat.

Walls needed paintings, tapestries, walls needed art, not spiderwebs made of meat.

This grotesquery was just plain tacky and whomever was responsible for this interiour decorating scheme was in need of a good lashing. Perhaps Dim might even do it himself if he ran into whomever was responsible. As the lift continued to descend, more meaty webbing could be seen, vast networks of it, and nestled among the strands of tissue, glowing, pulsating egg sacs could be seen. If ever there was a place that needed a good, thorough purging with fire, this was it.

And the smell… the stench would haunt Dim all his days for certain.

It occured to Dim that the lack of bodies topside might just be because the poor, unfortunate souls posted here might’ve become just so much meat webbing. He was glad that his friends, his companions had not seen this, and that he had spared them this nightmarish sight. Puffing away on his joint, he realised that he rather prefered smoking a pipe, all things considered. At least he could breathe a little easier, and the concentrated clove essence numbed the terrible tickle in his lungs.

As the lift went lower, the meat webbing grew thicker, and the spiders increased in size. Some of them had abdomens the size of cantaloupe melons. He saw a body in the webbing, a pony. It was swarmed with spiders, who were pulling strands of meat from it in the same way that yarn could be pulled from a sweater, and Dim felt a curious magic at work. So, the webbing it seemed, was made from pony meat, and maybe griffon too. Perhaps anything, really.

One of the spiders turned to face Dim, waved a foreleg, and waved its pedipalps in some unknown spidery way. “You are expected, Dark One. The Spider Queen entertains visitors down below… rude visitors. Rid her of them and she will owe you a favour, Dark One. Blech, these visitors are demanding jerks.”

“Rude visitors, you say? There is nothing worse than rude visitors who show up uninvited.” Dim poured on as much charisma as he dared without sounding patronising. The silver stem bobbed in the corner of his mouth and smoke curled up from his joint. “My apologies for showing up unannounced.”

“Oh, you were expected. The Spider Queen has watched you for quite some time, and she is amused by your antics.” There was a curious sound, like a sigh, and the spider waved his hairy legs in an all-encompassing gesture. “The rude guests killed those who sought to free the Spider Queen, and now they bully her to make her beholden to them.”

“How crass,” Dim replied, his words forming an exclamation mark of smoke for emphasis.

“The Spider Queen guarantees your safety, because she feels that you are like-minded individuals.” Scurrying back, the spider-speaker made way for a worker spider who dragged a strand of meat-yarn behind it. “You’re not a bad guy, quadruped. See ya around.”

“Why, thank you, octoped.” Dim went to tip his hat, but it no longer existed.

The lift continued its slow, creaky descent.

There was water down here, quite a lot of it, and there was only one way to go, one option available. Dim silenced himself so that his hooves would make not a sound. The meat-webbing hung around the entrance like a grotesque curtain, a veil made from spun meat. After stepping through the doorway, Dim found himself in the most horrific room.

It was an abattoir with a sacrificial altar up against one wall. The altar was spider shaped, of course it was, and bodies could be seen around it. As for the blood, it poured down channels in the spider’s legs and collected in a blood pool, whose contents had long since congealed into something that resembled reddish-brown curdled milk. Blood pools were so inviting and festive, Dim felt, and more lairs should have them. It really sent a clear message to visitors. Teeny, tiny spiders swarmed the altar, itty-bitty spider babies.

In but a few seconds, Dim connected the dots. Duc Truffe must have been working with the Ascendancy, and the Ascendancy must have been operating down here. No doubt to free the Spider Queen in return for some kind of favour. The mine shaft had probably mistakenly bored right into an ancient prison or a vault of some kind. As for the altar and the bodies, Dim’s best guess told him that blood was needed to free whatever was trapped in here—blood or souls enough to give them the power required to escape.

Even the lingering horror supported his theory; he was dealing with some kind of eldritch entity who had been sealed away long ago. The miners, having found this place, probably went a bit mad or whatever, and the powers that be sealed it up, closed it off, and redirected a river to flow over it, flooding the mine so that the evil held within could be contained.

Of course, he could be wrong.

Green witchfire blazed around the altar and a ghastly, glowing spectral spider formed. In silence, it gesticulated at the doorway in an impatient gesture, as if to say, ‘hurry up.’ The very wrongness of the magic here was no mere unicorn trick, no. This was primordial magic, eldritch thaumaturgy. Dim took a moment to read it, he unbarred his mind and allowed it to come in, as risky as it was, so that he might understand better.

Shaking his head to be rid of the psychic echos, Dim pulled the Spear of Chantico free from his saddlebag strap and made his way towards the door, stepping over assorted lopped-off body parts. Poor fools. Poor, poor fools. They had signed on for looting and pillaging, or maybe valour and glory, the promise of being the new lords after the revolt—but as it turned out, they were just meat for the sacrificial altar. A fool and his life were soon parted.

This corridor was rough-carved and the walls bore testament to recent boring, revealing that this passage wasn’t all that old. Beneath Dim, the floor was rough, uneven, and treacherous enough to turn a fetlock the wrong way if great care was not taken. Ahead, he could hear laughter, faint mad laughter that was both familiar and strange. Hearing it caused the fine hairs along Dim’s spine to stand up.

Ahead, faint light danced, throwing shadows recklessly about the walls. Dim peered ahead, cautious, making not a sound while he crept along, a shadow taking refuge among shadows. The corridor opened into a large room with perfect, smooth walls, and this room appeared to have been converted into a laboratory. A lone figure paced about, going from book to book, his eyes wide, mad, and he was clearly celebrating whatever it was that he had found.

In the corner, there was a cage with two dragons, and above the cage, there was a hanging lamp that emitted a witchfire green glow. The dragons were in poor shape, their scales were dull, some were missing, as if they had been cruelly ripped away, and neither of the dragons were moving. Remembering the freezer on the Black Talon ship, Dim suspected that these dragons were being stripped of useful alchemical ingredients one piece at a time.

Essences swirled in collection tanks and some kind of alchemical experiment still bubbled on the bench. Dim studied the crazed figure and it was like staring into a mirror, as Dim saw himself, more or less, only older, much, much older. Dreadful Dark, for surely it had to be Dreadful Dark, was just beside himself with glee.

Saying nothing, Dim lifted Chantico’s spear, glanced at the obsidian tip, thought a silent prayer to Chantico, and then he hurled said spear at his uncle, launching a sneak attack from the shadows like a common sneak thief. The spear flew true, blazing with pink and black flames, and it struck the maniacal unicorn in the side, just behind the ribs, slid through his torso, and the obsidian tip protruded out just beneath Dreadful’s neck. Needless to say, Dreadful had quite a surprised look upon his face when he looked down and saw the protruding spearpoint.

“Oh drat and buggery,” the impaled unicorn gasped whilst he collapsed to the floor. “I’ve done been cornholed. Would you look at that? Dry gulched from behind. Blast and damnation. Desire told me to keep my guard up, but I didn’t listen.”

Cautious, Dim crept forward, having learned a long time ago that he was a fragile creature in a world full of dangerous enemies. Dreadful was squirming, and Dim found that he delighted in witnessing his uncle’s pain. Blood formed a rapidly expanding pool around Dreadful’s fallen body and his hind legs made feeble, ineffectual little kicks.

“Dim Dark… my how you’ve grown. Nice bit of treachery. With but one unspeakably cruel act, you’ve proven that you’re still worthy of the Dark name. I’m impressed.”

“Shut up,” Dim hissed.

“I wanted to have a go with you when you were little, but your sweet mother said you were meant for something greater. Not sure what’s greater than some little asshole stretched tight around my dick, but I digress. Don’t mind me, I’m just biding my time.”

Sick of his uncle’s words, Dim reached out with his telekinesis, grabbed his uncle’s jaw, and with a fantastically cruel yank, tore it right off, tongue and all. Dreadful’s eyes went wide with shock, but something told Dim that his uncle wasn’t feeling much in the way of pain. Thoughts racing, he realised that his uncle was probably transforming into a lich, just like his mother had. This of course, presented a dreadful problem of what to do with Uncle Dreadful Dark.

Dim tossed the severed jaw to the floor and snorted in disgust.

For Dim, cruelty was something like a rough beast that he kept in a cage, and in severing his uncle’s jaw, the beast had been set free. Now, Dim struggled to put it back, he fought to contain himself, to rise above his base instincts to dismember and torture his uncle. Nothing good would come of it and if Blackbird found out somehow, she would be upset. She would be upset and that would bother him. For Blackbird’s sake, if not his own, he forced the beast back into its cage and secured the door.

The Spear of Chantico, which protruded from Dreadful on both ends was now making a humming sound. Stepping back, Dim shielded his eyes from the fires which now burned bright, and a second later, Uncle Dreadful immolated. Hearthfire intermingled with vivid, glowing black flames—void-flames—though Dim had no idea how or why he knew this. Uncle Dreadful began to wither and shrivel, as if consumed from within, as if all of his moisture was somehow evapourated. His eyes widened, revealing pain, real pain, as well as shock, surprise, and terror.

Uncle Dreadful began shrinking, desiccating, he withered like an unwatered plant left in the scorching sun. His eyes wrinkled like raisins in their sockets, his ears shriveled until they looked like autumn leaves in winter, and then the flames began to erupt from splits in his body that tore open wide. This void-fire, it seemed to work in harmony with hearthfire, and Uncle Dreadful was being purged, consumed from within by the ravaging flames. Even his ripped-away jaw was undergoing the hideous-but-satisfying transformation and Dim watched with dispassionate, stoic interest.

Curiously enough, Dim felt stronger as his uncle wasted away. His weakness, his fatigue, his weariness, it retreated from him a bit and he knew why, though he could not explain how he knew. By striking down an abomination, he had been replenished, for such was the nature of void-magic. It was a curious thing, something of much fascination, but he didn’t have time for contemplation, as there was much to do.

Revitalised a bit, Dim turned his attention to the two dragons, and pity flooded his heart…

Author's Note

Next: a centennial chapter.

Mummy dearest

The attuned iron cage resisted Dim’s magical touch and he stood a few paces away, his face an impassive, dispassionate mask of thoughtfulness. Above the cage, the hanging lamp’s witchfire green glow made him feel weak and nauseous if he approached. In the cage, the pair of dragons huddled together, watching him with half-closed eyes, wary with fear and mistrust. Though he was terrible at this sort of thing, he tried to reassure them once more.

“Like I said, I mean you no harm and I plan to get you out. I’m just not sure how. I think I’ll have to come back though, because I need to conserve my magical reserves. I don’t know what fighting still awaits. I want to help you though, I really do.”

For Dim, these sentences held a strange compassion, as he found that he really did want to help them. Seeing them made his heart clench in a most peculiar way, rather like he imagined Blackbird’s poor asshole doing. The very idea of being kept in a cage filled Dim with emotions that he could not identify, except for anger. Only now was not the time for anger, no, he had to keep a level head or he might very well die in the next fight.

These dragons had been abused. Teeth had been extracted. Claws had been torn out from the quick. Scales had been peeled off. All parts that would regrow in time and Dim, having studied alchemy for almost the entirety of his life, understood exactly what was going on. For many applications of alchemical reagents, freshness guaranteed potency. So killing these dragons would represent a loss, but keeping them alive assured a constant, steady supply of necessary, vital components. The idea of such a life left Dim sickened and he blinked while staring up at the lamp that emitted the witchfire glow.

His magical sense told him that living energy had been used to create the lamp—lives had been poured into the crucible that had spawned it. Bound souls could be used to power all means of enchantments, some good, some bad. Some volunteered themselves willingly, while others had their soul essence tortured and twisted in terrible ways. With an internal shudder that failed to disturb his outward calm, Dim thought of the sacrificial altar he had passed.

Frustrated, Dim realised that there was nothing he could do for the dragons, not right now. He could probably open the cage, but doing so would exhaust him and that might prove fatal. Taking a step back, the heaving feeling of nausea left him when the witchfire glow no longer shone down upon him. When he returned, he would free the dragons and whatever bound and tortured souls that existed in the lamp. But for now…

“I give you my word,” Dim said to the pair of dragons, “which is something I rarely give. It is a precious thing. I don’t expect you to understand, but make no mistake, I will return for you. Which means that I have to survive whatever comes next so that I might keep my word, and that might be a tough thing to do.”

One of the dragons, the female, lifted her head to peer at him. She was pale purple and under better circumstances, she might be considered pretty among her own kind. Dim waited, hoping, a curious flame burning within his breast, for he had a sincere desire to reach these creatures, to have them trust him. To have the trust of those so vulnerable, so exposed, so utterly helpless, Dim found that he craved this, his soul itched for it.

When she spoke, the dragon’s voice was raspy and weak. “My name is Prominence. I gave up on anybody helping us.”

“Prominence… Eerie sent me to find you and a dragon named Scalio—”

“Thod,” Prominence said while stroking her companion with a kind, affectionate touch. “You know Eerie? Why didn’t you say so?”

For this, Dim lacked an answer.

“We only wanted to help, and then all of this happened. Thod was chosen because of his smile and he’s kinda simple-minded, so I was supposed to protect him.” Her face made some unknown, but clearly unhappy expression. “I failed.”

“Things happen,” Dim replied, his stoic acceptance manifesting. “For now, endure a little longer and when I am done, I will free you. Eerie would be unhappy with me otherwise.”

“That I trust.” For the first time, Prominence looked hopeful. “Eerie is working with Ember to create a dragon nation. It’ll be glorious. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of here to see it.”

Though it pained him, Dim had to go and while he stood, hesitating, uncertain, he couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to watch one’s would-be saviour walk away. Especially if they were never seen again. For a time, he considered springing the dragons from their cages, but he just wasn’t sure how. Prominence, drained of vigour, allowed her head to drop once more, and she collapsed with a pained whimper.

It occurred to Dim that he might not be able to just walk away. For the first time in his life, his resolve utterly failed him. He felt some unknown conflict ripping and tearing at his insides, leaving him raw and vulnerable. It was something that he only had some vague notion of understanding because of books, and he was almost certain that he was facing the hero’s dilemma, the moment where the hero was torn asunder between duty and necessity.

Dim had a duty to these poor souls, but necessity dictated that he prepare for a fight.

As a colt, he had always assumed that these moments of internal conflict were just so much unnecessary melodrama, a means to spew letters into a story to expand the space between the covers, but having finally encountered it himself, he struggled to recall how the hero would steel himself to face the dilemma head on. All attempts failed and Dim was left with nothing; he had skimmed over those parts of the story, because all those pathetic emotions were just plain stupid. Who read that drivel?

Never one to say goodbye, Dim left.

While Dim made his way down the darkened passage, heading for whatever fate awaited him, his mind seized upon the idea that he was the hero. Alone, he had ventured into some madness inducing mine, he had already killed one unspeakable evil, and he had faced the hero’s dilemma. Now, with each step of his sore, stiff legs, he was creeping towards some unknown future, some unknowable outcome, and he had a good idea of what—and who—awaited him.

How would he survive this? He didn’t know, but he had given his word to Prominence and Thod to free them. Failure meant breaking his word, which was somehow worse to him than death. Dying was easy, but keeping one’s word was hard. Harsh Winters had an ironclad reputation for keeping his word. There was a pony whose word was his bond. That name, Harsh Winters, had weight to it, and mentioning it was enough to secure him almost any job. Harsh Winters was a thorough completionist, and he was known for keeping his word.

But Dim hadn’t given his word as Harsh Winters to the dragons, no.

No charades, no illusions, no deception… he had given his word as Dim Dark.

Thinking about it was agonising like little else.

The passage opened up into a massive round room with a domed ceiling. Two enormous stone alicorns dominated the room; they stood apart from one another with their wings spread to form a natural arch that had a shimmering curtain of magic hanging from it. Near the center of the room was a crystal spire that blazed with witchfire, and a lone ghostly figure was projected from the crystalline apparatus.

“Dimmy… I’ve been expecting you.” Dark Desire’s projected spectral form flickered while she turned about to face him. “While you were playing with those dreadful bandits last night, I was here, claiming the real prize. You came a little late to the party, Dimmy… all that’s left now is the clean up.”

“Does this make you the serving wench left to clean up after the guests have departed?” he asked in stoic deadpan. Having asked his question, he felt a rampaging swarm of warm fuzzies go clambering through his guts when his mother’s face contorted with rage. “A good servant should neither be seen nor heard. Begone, ye stench-ridden, flyblown scullery maid, and mind your betters.”

Above, the domed ceiling was a ballroom floor for dancing shadows that paid no mind to trivial things like up and down. His mother’s illusionary image trembled with homicidal fury and Dim, well, Dim felt pretty good about himself, all things considered. Dark Desire was never one to hide her emotions very well, she was passionate, volatile, and given to distracted fits or flights of fancy. Why, his mother couldn’t even respond, and her illusion was gnawing her lip while enduring her apoplectic fit of choler.

“I killed Uncle Dreadful,” he announced, his deadpan pouring like bitter liquid from the fount of his smug, aristocratic sneer. “And I regret to inform you that departed Uncle Dreadful will not be turning into a lich as was planned.” When his mother’s eyes narrowed into slits, he was almost giddy with glee at the sight of her displeasure. She was nothing more than a projection, and could do nothing to him. There would be no rebuke, no swift punishment for his devastating snark.

“We took those false alicorns—”

“What a pyrrhic victory,” Dim remarked, interrupting, his deadpan smashing through his mother’s words like a wrought iron wrecking ball. “All it cost you was Dreadful, which I am sure was a significant investment of resources. Uncle Dreadful, I’m certain, was a sure thing, while these pseudo-alicorns remain an unknown outcome. Was it worth it?”

Again, his mother’s fury spoke volumes, and he revelled in her umbrage, drinking it down like a fine, aged wine. Why, it was just the sort of vintage that he liked, strong, with heady notes of arrogance. Even the acidic bitterness suited him and he savoured this moment while giving his mother the haughtiest stare he could muster—and being Dim Dark, that was saying something. Few could match the sheer, unmitigated haughtiness that Dim could muster when he was in a mood, for he was the pinnacle of haughty breeding, haughtiness evolved and perfected.

“I think I have a knack for killing Darks,” he continued whilst approaching the crystal emitter. “Not bad, seeing as how I was the weak one. I fit the Dark ideal, but only just barely. I suppose it didn’t matter though, did it, seeing as how I was just a vessel, a means to an end. It was my body that was important, and I suppose that if I had gone along with the plan, I’d be the recipient of unspeakable, unfathomable power. Alas, in my adolescence, I developed a rebellious, contrary nature, and I was given to willful, insolent fits. I see that you didn’t plan for that, did you, Mother?” His mother was almost beside herself right now, and it was all Dim could do not to cackle with glee.

After grinding her teeth for a time, Dark Desire made herself respond to her son’s baited words. “There are still contingencies in place. We’ll see about the outcome. For now, it seems, I must suffer your insolence.”

“I am rather enjoying my insolence.” Dim’s ears stood up and the corners of his mouth pulled back, revealing his teeth in something that was almost, sort of, but not entirely a smile. “Tell me, Mother… what will happen if I smash this crystal? How valuable it must be… I can’t even imagine the magical resources required to construct such a complex creation. Given my knowledge of such things, I’d say this took months of work, not to mention all of the lives consumed to create a necromantic projector.”

His mother’s baleful stare was his only reply.

“I see that the illusion that you project is rather fleshed out… the appearance of living. Unhappy with lichdom, Mother? Does the dessicated, dried out mummy look not suit you? Your once sodden, dripping cunt probably feels like rubbing two sheets of parchment together when you walk now, if I hazarded a guess.”

“There are no words found in any language, in any existence, adequate enough to express my hatred of you.” Dark Desire’s projected spirit flickered as her livid expression intensified.

“Oh, I assure you, the feeling is mutual, Mummy Cunt.”

The sound of Dark Desire grinding her teeth could be heard coming from the projection.

Ignoring the sound of his mother’s fury, Dim studied the crystal emitter. Within, trapped souls swam through an aethereal ocean, it was a device powered by misery. As for the crystal itself, it sat secured in a copper and bronze stand that was practical and functional, but not artistic or beautiful. No doubt, Uncle Dreadful had set it up in here, and with Uncle Dreadful gone, no one else was around to clean up this mess. Truly, Dim resented having to clean up his family’s messes, but somepony had to do it.

“I worry for you, Dimmy. All this weakness you’ve cultivated. I thought I raised you better.”

Pausing, Dim turned to focus upon his mother once more.

“Your friends and this growing compassion of yours… ‘tis a volatile combination, Dim. Just imagine the pain your heart will feel when Blackbird is killed, violated, and revived as one of Grogar’s Harbingers. What will you do then? You’ve made yourself so weak and vulnerable.”

Though angered, Dim gave no outward sign of it, and he maintained his stoic armor. He wanted to dash the crystal upon the floor right here and now, to give himself into his fury, to maybe even throw a smashy-smashy tantrum, but since leaving home, he had changed. Grown. He’d adapted to a hostile, uncaring, unfeeling world that was indifferent to his needs. Rather than feel anger, Dim chose to feel hope, because his mother’s words had a ring of truth to them.

Perhaps she didn’t realise what she had said, about his growing compassion. Did he have compassion? It seemed he did—enough so that it caused his mother some degree of alarm. If he had compassion… perhaps his damnation wasn’t quite as assured. What could change the nature of a pony?

“You’ve already lost one, Dimmy.” His mother’s voice had a sepulchral chill to it now. “Soon, the others will fall as well. Death will claim them, one by one. It would be a mercy for you to die first, to spare yourself the pain of what’s to come. But you have my assurances, you will die last. And only after you’ve watched their agonising ends and seen them revived to do His will. See, that’s the thing, Dim. Death is our victory and your loss. And death… death is inevitable.”

“Remember those words well, Mummy Cunt, because I plan to make you eat them when I down your revived corpse.” Dim’s icy stoicism was a near-perfect counter to his mother’s impassioned, emotion-evoking threats. He had changed, and the full awareness of it began to percolate through his grey matter. Thing was, he hadn’t changed on his own, no, it was his friends who had changed him, Blackbird most of all, but the others had probably done more than he gave them credit for. The Bard’s death had changed him profoundly, and Dim could not nor would not dismiss that. Grief and pain surfaced, almost shattering his stoic platemail, but rather than push those feelings away, he let them wash over him in a flood.

Though it didn’t feel good, it most certainly felt right.

Perhaps haunted by Pâté au Poulet’s memory, Dim felt inspired, for that was the Bard’s magic. He could almost see his friend’s face in his mind’s eye, and in some weird way, the pain of loss and grief shielded Dim from the agony of his mother’s cruel words. This was a meaningful, profound pain, and he embraced it. Grief shielded his heart and Dim was able to look upon his mother without reservation, fear, or doubt.

There was no further need to exchange words. His mother was an empty vessel full of empty threats. Should his friends fall in battle—which was most certainly a potential outcome—it would not weaken him. No, it would strengthen him and his resolve. Rather than break him, Dim knew that loss would motivate him. Perhaps not to do right, but to do whatever was necessary so that others would not know this loss.

In compassion, Dim found strength, and the light of hope flickered bright within him.

Turning away from his mother, he reached out with one hoof and gave the crystal emitter a hard shove.

Author's Note

Next: Speaker for the Dead.

The Spider Queen says hello

For the briefest of moments, it almost seemed as though the laws of known reality were suspended. The crystal emitter paused—there was no other way to describe the phenomenon—and did not immediately smash into thousands of tiny fragments. It hovered just above the floor, fighting against the inevitable, and Dim could sense self-preservation imbued into the wretched, abominable artifact. Annoyed by the resistance of an inanimate object, Dim concluded that, if given enough time, the crystal emitter would gain true sapience, it’s own malevolent force of will. It was made of life, stolen lives, and it longed to return to life so that it might express its rage.

As the crystal projector fought to keep itself from being dashed upon the floor, the illusion around Dark Desire fell away, revealing her true form. A rotting skull, mostly bereft of flesh, with eyes like charnel pits. As for the flesh of her neck, there was very little, what remained had dessicated and shrank tight against the vertebrae. Dark Desire had become the antithesis of beauty, and her carrion charms would no longer inflame the wonton lusts of mortals—at least, most of them.

“Damn, you’re a special kind of ugly, Mother,” Dim deadpanned during the moment frozen in time. “I bet you have to sneak up on your reflection in the mirror.”

Dark Desire howled with fury, she bayed like a banshee, a really, really ugly banshee, and while she stood there, impotent with fury, Dim summoned up a burst of magic to smash the crystal projector. When it did strike the floor, there was a terrific thunderclap that echoed through the room, the force of which almost bowled him from his hooves. The crystal, now subjected to the laws of reality once more, exploded.

As reality in the local area began to break down and reassert itself at the same time, Dim discovered that he wasn’t done, no, he had one more waiting within him. His emotion poured out of him in the form of words—the worst of words—even as the explosion began to pierce him with needles of agonising magic. Back arching, muscles tensing, Dim focused his pain into one final insult before the finale, for what else could he do? “I can never play peek-a-boo with you ever again, Mother—first I peeked, then I booed. What a hideous crone you’ve become.”

Tormented spectres lept from the now-shattered crystal. In death, they were grotesque parodies of the forms they had in life, twisted, made violent. Dark Desire joined them in screaming, and her illusory form radiated exquisite agony as the spell broke down. The spectres flew at her, their tormentor, but her body was insubstantial and their fury was for naught. Then, still shrieking, they turned on Dim, for the dead hated the living, because the living had in abundance what the dead did not.

Dim, sensing their desires, their hatred, their pent-up frustration, he projected his own hatred of Dark Desire. When they came for him, when they reached inside of him, reached through him, he did nothing to stop them, because it didn’t feel right to deny them. These were victims, not enemies, and they longed to vent their venom, to protest the great injustice done to them. The spectres, sensing someone sensitive to their plight, relented for a moment.

His thoughts on Chantico, Dim braced himself and offered up his body. Desperate for a reprieve, the spectres descended upon him, and finding no resistance, lept into him. One after another, they situated themselves in the space that Dim’s corporeal body occupied, and so it came to pass that Dim Dark—channeling the dead—committed accidental necromancy. The ravaging spectres piled into him and Dim’s eyes took on a baleful Tartarian glow. Witchfire burned along his flesh, sickly and green, and when his mouth opened, an unearthly scream could be heard.

A thousand different voices all screamed at once, a chorus of the damned. The force of the utterance ripped apart what was left of Dark Desire’s spirit projection, and as the scream continued, the fragments of the crystal projector crumbled into fine dust, consumed in witchfire. Dim, filled with spirits, did nothing to reject them, no, he embraced them with his newfound sense of compassion. A great unfairness had been done to them, they had been robbed of life and then their rightful death had been stolen away from them as well.

What they wanted was a voice to express their anger, grief, and loss; which Dim—without reservation—gave to them. The unearthly keening wail continued, it echoed through the domed room, and Dim did nothing to shut out their pain. No, like a drunkard with an overabundance of wine, he drank it all in, a glutton for their pain, and Dim made it his own. Many had suffered beneath Dark Desire—and by extension, Grogar as well. These poor harvested wretches, starved for mercy and compassion.

All they wanted was one last chance to express emotion, which they did, through Dim.

Somehow, Dim’s frail form survived the system shock, but his mind threatened to unravel. It was only through compassion that he held on to himself and didn’t lose the tiny spark that was Dim in the crowded riot that took place in his mind. As for the spirits, fury made a gradual turn to gratitude, and rather than be weakened, Dim felt himself be strengthened as the spectres imparted some of themselves in him, a token gift for his compassion, his kindness. What had once been torn away from them, they now gave freely.

One by one, they winked out of existence, and the scream pouring from Dim’s mouth began to fade. Pale forms came pouring out, carried upon the eddies of the shriek, which existed for only but a moment before departing. With the worst now past, the baleful witchfire flames flickered, faded, and turned pink. Dim stood within the cleansing flame, twitching, his eyes little more than pink inferno pools, and the last of the scream trailed off into nothingness.

When he blinked, the last of the fires extinguished from his eyes and Dim struggled to recover his senses. He felt strong and weak, exhausted and revived, spent and replenished. His brain itched and there was a peculiar sensation in his very soul. His first thoughts were moral ones; he had committed necromancy—he had trafficked with spirits—but he wanted to believe that his motivations were pure and that he had done so for the right reasons. Could there ever be a good reason for necromancy? He doubted it and it was with great sadness that he knew that his soul had been made a little blacker. One more unforgivable act, lost among his many misdeeds.

Yet, it was only through the foul act that Dim understood the suffering of souls in slavery. This was the fate of the world beneath Grogar’s rule, shackled souls denied eternal rest. Servitude and slavery without ending, without reprieve. The best outcome would be to serve Grogar willingly, but in the end, that mattered little, because all would be made to serve. Shivering, Dim did nothing to push the thoughts away, but he made himself drown in them. Now, he understood what was at stake and this knowledge left him feeling small and rather insignificant.

Alone, without companions, his heart heavy, Dim murmured a prayer to Chantico…

Body aching, left both weakened and strengthened, Dim approached the alicorn archway. His frail body had reached the very ends of the abuse it could endure, and yet, somehow, he continued. A curtain of magic hung from the archway formed by the alicorn wings and when he approached, he saw a spider on the other side of the curtain. For a time, he studied the spider, saying nothing, and observed that it had no eyes, not a one.

Curious, he rounded one of the alicorns to view the curtain from the other side, only to find that the spider had moved with his perspective. The spider was still on the other side of the curtain opposite to him, and Dim knew that whichever side he stood on, the spider would always appear on the far side of the curtain. This was a dimensional prison, far more clever than mere petrification. Again, he shuffled around one of the alicorns so that he could observe the shifting perspective of where the eyeless spider was located.

Hearing a laugh, he paused, and while he stood there watching, the bloated, distended abdomen of the spider split open. It parted to reveal a jaundiced yellow eye, which rolled about for a time before focusing on Dim. Well, this was quite fascinating, as Dim had never seen a spider with a gigantic eyeball in its abdomen before. This spider could only see behind it, and it turned about on some invisible, unknowable surface to have a better look at its visitor.

“Dim Dark,” the spider said in a rather androgynous voice that was every bit as alluring as it was disturbing. “I’ve been watching you ever since you stepped into my web. It has been a long, long time since I have met a kindred spirit. Of course, you have no reason to trust me, but I assure you, I mean you no harm. You’ve been a source of much amusement to me, not to mention that you have rid me of a major annoyance. For this, you have my gratitude.”

Wearing his stoicism like rigid platemail, Dim nodded, a silent, but polite gesture.

“I would imagine that you have questions.” The spider scurried right up to the edge of the curtain, and seemed to press its yellowed eyeball right up against the shimmering barrier. “These will be answered with all of the painful truth I can muster, my necromancer friend.”

Hearing this, Dim scowled, because the truth could be quite awful.

“You have the stink of Thrennog’s magic about you,” the spider remarked while studying Dim.

Eerie had mentioned Thrennog, and Dim knew nothing about him except for that he was a demon, and perhaps a bit of an asshole. It was frustrating, when others seemed to know more about you than you did, but he contained his emotion. Wearing a deadpan expression, he gave his host an impassive, leaden stare.

“Thrennog the Flesh Warper, since you obviously don’t know. He’s a sculptor of sorts, works with a living medium, and fancies himself as quite an artist. Your family learned some of his craft, your rude, demanding mother in particular. She got a lot of practice by shaping rats as a hobby. To each their own, I suppose.”

“You’re in league with Duc Truffe?” Dim asked, hoping that he didn’t seem too interested in Thrennog, but fearing that his host could read him like a well-worn book.

“In league?” There was a titter like the scurrying of thousands of tiny hairy legs. “I convinced Duc Truffe to release me… this is all his doing. I lied to him. Told him that if he released me, I would be bound to do his bidding. Which of course, isn’t true at all. He fancies himself as Emperor of Fancy. I was planning on eating him the moment I got out, because I bet his arrogance is all fatty and delicious. I am only half-demon, and I really can’t be bound. Which is how I ended up here. I doublecrossed some centaurs and some alicorns. Live and learn, and all that drivel.”

“So you promised Duc Truffe absolute power, I suppose,” Dim said while his thoughts remained on Thrennog. “And given enough time and blood sacrifices, you could free yourself from your prison?”

“Yes, and your mother came here with an eye on my release… and enslavement. I might’ve doublecrossed Grogar once or twice or thrice times in the past.”

Unable to stifle his reaction, Dim chuckled, a throaty, raspy sound.

“You and I are of like minds, Dim Dark,” the spider said, it’s voice becoming more feminine. “We’re both selfish, out for our own ends, for ourselves. I’ve peered into your heart, Dark One, and it was like looking into a mirror. Good and evil matter little to us, and we are no slaves to order. We follow our own whims. We’ve moved beyond black and white.”

Mindful of honeyed words, Dim guarded his thoughts, though he could not help but listen.

“You don’t understand,” the spider continued, “but that’s okay. I find myself enamoured with your charming naiveté. Your mind is still trapped in black and white thinking. Good and evil. Chaos and harmony. I left all of that behind eons ago, and now I live to serve my own whims. I am loyal to those who are good to me, and vindictive to those who would exploit me. Tell me, Dark One, do you understand the difference between freedom and liberty?”

“There is a difference?” Against his own better judgment, Dim found himself intrigued.

“Indeed.” The spider seemed to have settled upon a polite feminine voice for the time being, and she blinked a few times while studying Dim. “Liberty is the freedom allowed through the rigid enforcement of law. Don’t do bad things to others and bad things won’t be done to you. Obey the social contracts, and you’ll be as free as the law allows.”

“And freedom?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“The absence of law. Nothing is forbidden. Do as you please without consequences.”

Lips pressed together, Dim gave careful consideration to these words.

“I dictate the terms of liberty with all those who would have dealings with me,” the spider explained, her words weaving a charming web. “So long as my laws are obeyed, liberty prevails. I will maintain a social contract with you and not eat you. But violate my laws, and you are free to die. You are not so different, Dark One. You are fair in your dealings with others, I have seen this with my many eyes, and you are ruthless to those most deserving. This is why I’ve chosen to help you. I wish to see you evolve, to grow. There is nothing I want from you in return, and you will not be beholden to me, Dark One.”

Squinting, suspicious, Dim studied his host, but what emotion, what feeling could be discerned from a spider? Her words held a ring of truth to them, which made them incredibly dangerous. As she had stated, she doled out sadistic truth, as painful as it was profound. The last thing he expected was for this queen of spiders to help him, which was why he was so wary.

“It is good you are paranoid, Dark one.” Scuttling in place, the spider tittered once more, an obscene sound not good for one’s sanity. “I have stood in your place, unsure and uncertain of my future. My father”—she paused for a time and her eight legs jittered—“was a no good spider-fucker. Demons get bored, and I can’t blame him for seeking out some means to while away his dreary existence. But I found no acceptance, being neither demon nor common creature. And if I am to be completely honest, my heart is moved to pity for you. As Thrennog’s creation, you are not what your outsides suggest you are. Be good to those who accept you, Dark One, and be fantastically cruel to those who would hurt or otherwise exploit you. There is no morality except for what you make.”

These words gave Dim some grave concerns, as there was a ring of truth to him, as well as elements of what he so longed to hear. Try as he might, he could not dismiss them as false, but nor he could he accept them at face value. He was being fucked with, but gently perhaps. Or maybe not. It was impossible to tell.

“You don’t think I’m evil?” Dim asked, taking a risk and baring his soul.

“What is good?” she replied, her thorax and abdomen wiggling. “What is evil? Alicorns enforce the will of Harmony upon others and Grogar seeks to bring about world peace, an end to conflict. Harmony has made slaves of the most powerful race of mystics to have ever existed and Grogar seeks to upend that tyranny. You and I, we’re caught in the middle, torn between two tyrants who seek to impose their wills upon us. What choice do we have? The best that you and I can hope for is to cut a bloody swath through our enemies until at last we are left alone.”

Overwhelmed, Dim lacked a response.

“The centaurs… the centaurs tinkered with the alicorns. These natural mystics, these planeswalkers, and they tried to improve upon Harmony’s design. Tried to make it better, they did. They poked around and rewrote the tiny scrolls that hold the blueprint of living things. Unable to leave well enough alone, the centaurs created the ultimate race of tyrants… and these tyrants became slaves. Now, the centaurs are all gone. My guess is, Harmony wiped them out. Because let’s face it, the alterations to the alicorns wasn’t exactly harmonious, was it?”

“No…” Dim shook his head, distracted. “I suppose it wasn’t.”

“The centaurs had this plan,” the spider continued in a soft, sweet voice, “to unleash a massive army of alicorns upon the universe. They would go forth and reclaim dead worlds. Restore life. Bring order. This army would go and push back the darkness. That was the plan… but what is light without darkness? What is life without death? These dark places… these dead worlds, they all exist for a reason, but the centaurs were blinded by their zeal.”

Turning away, Dim focused upon the dusty, cobwebby floor, and gave careful consideration to what had been said. It might be the truth, or a partial-truth. Of course, it could very well be a lie said in such a way that it appeared truthful, or it might just be what his host earnestly believed was true. Whatever was being said, it was dangerous, and Dim began to understand why this creature had been sealed away in a prison. Such words were far too volatile for most to be hearing, the thoughts far too damaging.

Might the same be done with him?

“There is a vault down here with me,” the spider said to Dim, her eight legs tapping. “It can only be opened with royal blood—”

“Wait.” Dim’s head swiveled to face the spider. “Why is it that you think I could open it and not Dreadful Dark?”

Gleeful, the spider did a little dance while the putrid pupil of her eye shrunk down to a pinprick. “By virtue of what you are and what you were intended to be, had things been different. I assure you, the door will open for you, and within, you will find things most useful to you. I want you to have them, so that you might secure a place for yourself in the world. Artifacts locked away by the Moochick himself, when last he paid a visit with his retinue of lackeys. He was a fool, and far too trusting of the centaurs’ infalible magics. Only those with royal blood can open this lock, which in general, means an alicorn. Knowing the danger, they would leave the vault alone. But you…”

Dim saw malice in the spider’s jaundiced eye.

“My hatred isn’t for you, Dark One, but for the world.” The yellowed eye narrowed and the pupil took on a vague skull-shape. “I was truthful in what I said, about feeling pity for you. We are kindred spirits, you and I. You will leave this prison and I understand the way of things. I will be buried and forgotten about for a time. For this, I bear you no grudge. I merely wish to help a like-minded soul, so that maybe you don’t slip into despair and hopelessness as I once did.” She gestured with her legs, indicating everything around her. “Mistakes were made, Dark One.”

There was a dangerous amount of truth in these words, a terrifying surplus of truth, and Dim could sense no dishonesty. This left him untrusting, but also hopeful, two very different and conflicting feelings. His leaden gaze lingered upon his host, trying to read her somehow, but she had no facial features, no expression, just a hairy spider abdomen that housed a diseased, yellow eye with a shapeshifting pupil.

“Someone has to champion the grey.” The pupil shifted, changing shape until it resembled something like a set of scales that swung from side to side, a shifting inkblot of meaning. “I ask nothing of you. I only wish to give you the means to choose your path. That is all. The vault is beyond the door with the horn lock in the middle. So that you can choose your way, I will be going now. Good luck with whatever you choose.”

Before Dim could say anything, his host was gone. Oh, he was sure she was still in her prison, but she was unable to be seen at the moment. She had left him with a mind heavy with thoughts, and he had no doubts that these thoughts would turn into questions. This would leave him troubled for a long, long time. Which was, perhaps, the point. Almost frozen in place, unmoving, Dim tried to recall a time when somebody had messed with him so thoroughly by telling him the truth. Was this the truth? Hard to tell… harder to say… but it had a ring of honesty to it.

Saddlebags slapping against his sides, Dim shuffled off to have himself a look at the vault door.

Author's Note

We need burn cream...

What was left behind

The steady drip of water was an annoyance that Dim ignored, because he had far too much on his mind and such trivial distractions were beneath him. One had to be careful with what one heard, for ideas were much like a whore’s pox—once encountered, they tended to linger. Ideas were—potentially—the most dangerous things in existence, and Dim wondered if this particular spider queen was sealed away to keep her ideas away from the world at large.

His own intellect, his own intelligence, why, he was outclassed in every meaningful way, dwarfed by this sealed-away entity. For all he knew, he had learned something detrimental to his own well-being, something that might lead to his own purging. It was, indeed, a paranoid thought, but Dim knew that everyone was out to get him. It was dangerous conversing with such entities, for the knowledge they shared tended to make most mortals mad.

Dim had only been disturbed and was now left wondering about the truthiness of everything said. Things could feel true, or have the illusion of truth, but still be a lie. The opposite was also true; things could feel like a lie, or have the aspect of dishonesty, but hold within them an unwanted, or otherwise painful truth. Truth or lie, those words were now stuck in Dim’s head, very much like a seed stuck between one’s teeth, the sort of annoyance that could not, and would not be budged no matter how much one fiddled about with one’s tongue.

He was quite wary about the spider’s claim that the vault would only open for ‘royal blood.’ It was a suspicious claim to make and he wondered if, perhaps, she was stroking the shaft of his ego. Yet, there was a certain amount of sense to this. What if, acting as a contingency, he was a unicorn in need of some great power to defeat an alicorn? Might some unknown hand of fate guide him to a vault filled with baubles and trinkets of immense power to aid him? Being able to open the door would be a necessity in such a circumstance.

But still, doubt remained.

Even if the spider was just stroking the shaft of his ego, there seemed to be a portion of truth to her words. Angling his head, Dim had himself a good look at the vault door, which was made of some unknown orange metal, the likes of which he had never seen. It was flawless, unmarred, fully embedded in the stone wall. As for the wall itself, much of it had been chiseled away from around the door, revealing more of the mysterious orange metal beneath. Dim suspected that the vault itself was a room made from the strange metal, and that the stone had been shaped around it.

In the center of the perfectly round door there was a hole meant for horn-insertion.

Casting a furtive glance about, Dim couldn’t help himself, he had to check and see if he was alone, and he was, save for a great many spiders. Hundreds of little eyes watched him, waiting, and he saw far too many legs waving at him in unnerving, friendly ways. For most, the sight would be unsettling, perhaps even terrifying, but for Dim, well, Dim being Dim, he was only mildly put off by spiders waving at him. Being the polite sort, Dim would be kind to them and make sure that he didn’t step on any of them, because that would be quite rude, seeing as how he was here as a guest.

He was mostly certain that sticking his horn into the lock wouldn’t release the spider queen.

Angling his head, he pointed the tip of his horn at the opening and for some reason, had distracting thoughts about coitus. It too, required lining everything up just so and a good thrust for insertion. But this felt riskier and far more dangerous. Perhaps the door was a trap and would suck the life out of him. Maybe it really would release the spider queen, and he’d end up as just so much meat-webbing.

Taking a deep breath, Dim inserted his horn…

The door swung open and as Dim stepped aside, he was blasted with stale, dead air. Inside the vault, there was light, but try as he might, squinting the whole time, he could not discern a source for said light. It just… existed. There was magic here, but not the magic Dim expected. Sighing, Dim looked around, his weary legs wobbling with exhaustion. He had reached the ends of his endurance long, long ago, and now only stood due to sheer willpower.

Too weary for giddy anticipation, Dim entered and immediately stopped. Just to the left of the door was an overstuffed chair, dusty, but not rotted away. Beside the chair was a wooden table, rather plain, with a few items on top. A pair of forgotten spectacles could be seen, their lenses dusty, and there was no hint of magic about them. There was an ornamental box that Dim suspected held tobacco or something to smoke, and this, this had a curious enchantment. On top of the small wooden box was a pipe, and this was the source of the strongest magic in the vault.

Who enchanted a smoking pipe?

A really smart vizard, that’s who.

With their owner long gone, Dim took the box and the pipe, which he felt were a set of some kind. He would scry their enchantments later, when he had time. Beneath the chair was a rug, but it was so covered in dust that Dim could not see the pattern, or if it even had one. Turning his head, Dim now focused upon the other items to be found in this vault, uncertain of what he might find.

In the back of the vault there was a stone table, the likes of which Dim had never seen. It was an alchemist’s bench, complete with gutters, collection drains, and everything an alchemist needed for their craft. It was with great sorrow that he realised that the alchemist’s bench could not come with him. Sitting on the stone table was a small wooden chest, which Dim opened.

Inside the wooden chest, Dim saw brass and he was puzzled for a time until he realised what it was. Several brass plates, all held together with a single brass ring in the corner. This… was a spellbook, and not just any spellbook, but a centaur spellbook. Dim only knew of this because of his extensive reading, and the knowledge that centaurs liked items of great permanence. Paper rotted, but brass endured. This was a priceless artifact, a rare treasure indeed. Not just for the magic it no doubt contained, but the very fact it existed. How many of these had been lost to history? Melted down for their brass? How much had been forever lost, never to be known?

Hesitating, Dim engaged his brain in a bit of internal dialogue. Why was this locked away? Why go through such trouble to secure it in such an impressive vault? If it were dangerous, why not just melt it down? What was the purpose of its preservation? Perhaps it was meant to be found, to be recovered, to be studied in the future… by those with ‘royal’ blood. But why? Dim counted fourteen plates, each as big as a slice of bread. Teeny, tiny letters could be seen, but this wasn’t Unicornian text, no. On the ring itself, he saw bold, blocky letters, which said, ‘De Anima.’ Something about that seemed a bit off somehow, as if it were not part of a complete title or sentence. Perhaps it was some ancient in-joke between centaurs.

Oh, this was a treasure indeed, and unable to hide his greed, Dim took the brass plates.

After securing them in his saddlebags, he had another good look around, but there was nothing left to take. This Moochick fellow had maybe done a bit of light reading from the looks of things, had himself a smoke, and departed. He cast a final glance at the eyeglasses sitting on the table, and thought about how annoying it would be to forget them in some vault somewhere. Heaving a sigh, Dim took the spectacles as well, not to keep them, but to return them to their owner, should their paths ever cross.

But he was keeping the pipe.

The makeshift laboratory still had bits of Uncle Dreadful dust in the air, dancing about as macabre motes in the pallid light. Dim had returned, as he had promised, and the dragons seemed to be somewhat surprised to see him. How to spring the dragons from their prison was a puzzle to be solved, and Dim was already wracking his brain for answers.

If he were a stronger unicorn with better magic, he might be able to overcome the attunement of this iron. Frustrated about this, he peered up at the lamp above with a scowl. Like his mother’s spirit projector, this was a device made with souls. Where the projector had unbelievable complexity, this was crude, something cobbled together with a rudimentary knowledge of forbidden magic. Simple as it was though, it was effective.

Housed within an attuned iron housing as it was, Dim doubted that he could harm the device, at least, not with magic. After a few moments of intense scrutiny, Dim came to the conclusion that the lamp was zebra magic of some kind, crude but effective zebra magic. This, into and unto itself, was revealing; Duc Truffe had zebras working for him, zebras who were less than good. Of course the pony who stirred up xenophobia in others had zebras working for him, because hypocrisy was a stepping stone to evil—one of the first steps, in fact.

With hypocrisy on his mind, Dim rummaged around in his saddlebags until he found the small derringer he kept. Holding it aloft in his magic, he took careful aim at the lamp, and then offered a warning to the two dragons in the cage: “There might be an explosion. Try to cover anything vulnerable. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Eyes wide, fearful, Prominence nodded and pulled Thod as close as dragonly possible. Both of them closed their eyes and then buried their heads beneath their bodies. Dim raised a shield, and then, for good measure, he began casting a few protective wards upon himself. The brass derringer had a boar’s head, and within the boar’s mouth the two barrels could be seen. The gun didn’t look like much, but Dim had made the ammunition for it himself.

In each shell, there was a relatively harmless reagent that was mostly nonvolatile. But when fired together, the two loads would combine to form something incredibly caustic. It did a number on living tissue—something indescribably unpleasant—and Dim reasoned that it should dissolve the lamp. Or maybe just damage it. If the attuned iron housing was damaged, then perhaps he could deal with the lamp.

It was his only foreseeable option, at the moment.

There was a muffled bang from the derringer, a soft sound that was more like a dropped book than a thunderclap. The two projectiles connected, dribbled out a tiny portion of ooze, and an acrid smell filled the laboratory. Smoke began to rise from the ironclad lamp and an fearsome crackle could be heard. The witchfire glow from the lamp flickered, went a bit dark, and then there was a hiss as fine spiderwebs of cracks appeared in the crystal housed within.

Dim waited and waited, anxious for something to happen, anything. The hissing became a fizzle, like somepony opening up a soda bottle, and then there was popping, like ice shattering. In a burst of disappointment, the green glow died and the lamp’s magic was no more. Though annoyed with the anticlimactic outcome, Dim was pleased that the dragons were unharmed and that he hadn’t been blown to smithereens once more, because recovering from that was such a chore.

The iron ceased its peculiar hum and went silent.

Blinking, the two lethargic dragons reacted, and underwent a most curious transformation: colour returned to them, their dull scales taking on a faint shine once more. Thod reached out and with one claw, he sliced through the iron cage, then again, cutting off a section of iron, which he ate. Prominence did the same. It started with little nibbles, but soon became a feeding frenzy. Iron shavings, like crumbs, went everywhere.

Feeling rather good about himself, Dim sat down upon the floor and watched as the dragons had their first meal in who knows how long. He secreted the derringer away in his saddlebags, pulled out a flask of water, had a drink, returned the flask, and then decided to have a smoke. The sound of dragon teeth scraping against iron set Dim’s own teeth on edge, but that was a small price to pay.

Author's Note

And now, we return to Fancy, to finish up some loose ends.

Dreadful dust

The gritty silt that collected in the folds and creases of Dim’s frogs did nothing to help his mood. He had been tired mid-fight during the bandit camp, exhausted when the dawn came, and no idea what his current state of being was, but he was reaching the absolute end of his time upright. The sound of the nonstop water dripping was wearing on his last nerve, it made him want to set everything around him ablaze to ablate his anger. Each annoying drip eroded away a spot from his remaining sanity, like a constant trickle of water that bores a hole through solid stone.

This had not been the best excursion, not at all.

As for the dragons, they were recovering rapidly. They had eaten their iron cage and had moved on to eating everything else that was metallic or mineral. Glassware, copper instruments, alchemy stands, piping, tubing, and stills. Of course, the sound of sheared, creaking metal being chewed did nothing to help Dim’s mood, nor his sanity, because every sound had become an annoyance. Even Dreadful was an agonising annoyance, because his dust was everywhere and covered everything, and he was almost certain that he had Dreadful dust go right up his nose.

No amount of sneezing could purge his innards of Dreadful dust.

At long last, the dragons seemed sated. If not sated, satisfied that they had consumed anything and everything that was remotely edible, save for the stone around them. Dim had destroyed the research he had found, including everything gleaned from the Spider Queen in yonder room. This would need to be buried again, the river rerouted, and forgotten about. Of course, it would be found again, for such was the stupidity of dimensional prisons tethered to primary reality. Of course, while it was easy to be judgmental for this practice, Dim could think of no other, no better way of doing it.

“You’re barely standing.” The tall dragon, Prominence, her statement was annoying to the core for Dim, who listened with a sneer. She clucked her tongue, a maternal sound by any species’ standards, and made a gesture with her claws in Dim’s general direction. “Thod, go get him—gently! We’re getting out of here. We’ll fly up that shaft and you’ll carry him out of here.”

“Okay,” Thod replied, grinning his terrifying, toothy grin as he waddled to obey.

Whatever protest that Dim was about to muster died. Thod was a happy dragon—a big grinning happy dragon—and Dim found the idea of hurting his feelings abhorrent. The toothy teen seemed a bit simple-minded, but oddly kind—for a dragon. Both Thod and Prominence were looking better now, they had a little bit of colour, Prominence seemed a whole lot smarter after eating, and Dim was almost certain that they were regenerating in slow-motion even as he watched. Yes, new scales had appeared almost like magic, and he could see that new teeth were poking through their gums.

“Being around ponies for so long has changed us,” Prominence said while Thod lifted Dim from the floor. “I suppose being imprisoned with Thod has changed me as well. Thod, be careful. Mind those claws. This pony is far more fragile than most.”

Thod nodded while cradling Dim in a protective, scaly embrace.

“But you were held captive by ponies,” said Dim to Prominence.

“So I was,” she replied with a nod of her elongated head. “But I cannot help but feel these jerks were the exception, not the standard. Thod and I, we were welcomed into the homes of these ponies and treated with an extraordinary level of kindness. It is as Spike said it would be.”

“Spike?” Dim could feel a faint warmth in Thod, though most of the dragon’s scales were cold. The fire had been stoked though and he suspected that Thod would soon be quite warm.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle’s royal bodyguard.” Prominence grinned, revealing a gap-toothed smile. “Twilight Sparkle is an important pony princess, but she is fragile, as ponies tend to be. So much so that Spike is assigned to protect her, because dragons are naturally tough. Spike alone is trusted with this sacred duty, because even one baby dragon is a formidable defense. Spike is the Princess Protector, and the Pride of Dragonkind. Ember tells us to aspire to be just like him so that we can build a glorious dragon nation. So to follow Spike’s example, many of us have gone out to find helpless ponies to protect.”

“I see.” Dim knew social manipulation on a grand scale when he saw it, but said nothing about it. This was good, beneficial, this was a deed that would aid the world, not tear it apart. Yes, a little manipulation was fine and no one was being hurt by it, which made it okay.

“Say…” A shrewd look appeared in Prominence’s draconic eyes. “You’re a pony in need of protecting. You’re the softest, squishiest pony I’ve ever seen. If Thod and I can keep you safe from harm, we’ll gain a lot of favour with Ember.”

Dim saw right away where this was going, this dragon was being quite vocal about exploiting him, but he was okay with this. Mutual exploitation that was beneficial to both parties appealed to him in some fundamental way. In a rare display, Dim humbled himself. “I am weak and fragile.”

“Thod, we have a new pony project. Let’s get out of here.”

Somehow, the dragons flew through the meat-webs without disturbing a single strand. Thod was, indeed, growing warmer, as if the fire in his belly had been stoked. Many of the spiders waved as Dim ascended, and bade him fond farewells. As cruel as the Spider Queen could no-doubt be, she could also be kind, and he thought about everything that been said. Mostly, he thought about what she had said about being kind to those who showed kindness, while being cruel to those deserving.

He thought about the nature of good and evil, and his place in the greater scheme of things. Perhaps he wasn’t evil, as he had been lead to believe. Could he possibly lie somewhere in the middle? He thought about what the Spider Queen had said about freedom and liberty. His mind raced from one subject to another, one topic to the next, never settling for long with any one idea.

Could he champion the grey?

Something about the notion appealed to him. The grey knight, sallying forth, free of moral convictions and conjunctions, doing what was necessary, and helping those trampled by both sides. From all that he had seen, from all he had witnessed, peasants were just as much in danger by the ruling powers of ‘good’ as they were from the rampaging forces of evil. Sometimes, a ‘good’ ruler had noble intentions, well-meaning intentions, but the peasants, the lowest of the low, endured a measure of suffering in the name of progress. Yes, the more Dim thought about it, the more his mind flitted about from subject to subject in an exhausted haze, the more it made sense to him.

Those at the bottom of society were neither good nor evil; they just existed. They were decent, to be sure, but they were too busy pulling a plough or working the soil to be concerned with good deeds and great acts of goodness. Each day was a struggle to exist. Upon their backs, society was balanced. They carried the weight of the world upon their withers. A ruler, a noble, even a ‘good’ one, might take this for granted, or mighthap forget it completely. If seen only as resources, and not as the living, breathing, necessary beings that they were, bad things could happen even with the most noble of intentions.

Yes… who championed the grey?

A knight… a vizard went forth to protect the peasantry from the monsters. All of the stories he had read stated this to be true. But what if the knight… the vizard… stood between the peasants and the powers-that-be and defended said peasants from unfair policy? Harmful taxes? Could a knight or a vizard still be loyal to the Crown by serving the better interests of the peasants themselves, above the wishes and desires of the Crown itself?

For the first time, Dim saw a future he desired, and it yawned before him like an endless expanse of grey.

The Darks had rotted away in their tower, they had spoiled like milk forgotten on a back shelf. By isolating themselves from the world, they had forgotten the importance of what they protected. Having gone slumming, having gone out into the world and having lived among the disgusting primitives, Dim now remembered the sacred charges of nobility, the ancient social contracts that he was obligated to live by.

Royal blood indeed.

The vault had opened for him for a reason; he had inserted his horn and the vault recognised him for what he was. Dim desperately wanted to believe that this was because of his recent epiphany involving compassion, because his noble ideals had awakened after their long, hibernal slumber. It was compassion and empathy that had saved him from the tortured souls bound to his mother’s spirit projector. He had given them a voice, a means to express their rage, grief, and torment. Their gratitude was now seared into his very soul, tattooed in some language that he did not understand on the inside of his eyelids, a reminder that would haunt him to the end of his days.

What a welcome sight the gunship was… but more importantly, the sight of his friends filled Dim with some unknown emotion. Blackbird was crying while she rushed forwards, and Thod set Dim down upon the ground, unharmed, unscathed, unscratched by sharp claws. Weary, Dim struggled to remain upright, but this concern, this worry was cast aside when Blackbird swooped in, lifted him, and held him pressed to her ribs.

She flew to and fro, ecstatic, and Dim could do nothing to halt her enthusiasm.

“We were about to come looking for you!” Blackbird cried while her wings beat a steady rhythm. “I was losing my mind! I kept telling myself that I was an idiot for letting you go alone! Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened? You smell terrible! Hey, your stomach is rumbling! Ew, you smell really, really bad, like spoiled meat slathered in rotten vomit gravy!”

It occured to Dim that Blackbird would never stop being Blackbird.

“You found some dragons!” Blackbird swooped down and hovered her titanic mass near Prominence and Thod. “Hi! I’m Blackbird! We’re going to be the best of friends because you brought Dim back and I can’t thank you enough!”

“Dim rescued us,” Prominence replied. “Now we have a new pony protection project.”

Standing a short distance away, Commandant Graham asserted his control upon the situation. “We need to return to Gasconeigh with all due haste. Please, if we could continue this happy reunion on deck so we can be away from this place. Prince Dim, I know that you are tired, but I need to know what happened down there. My apologies, Majesty, but I cannot make a polite inquiry, or give you time to rest and recover. I need to know as soon as possible. Too many lives at stake. Potentially, the world suffers from whatever transpires this day.”

Nodding, Dim understood. “I will tell you everything I know, but I need succor before I collapse. I have worn myself thin and have suffered grievous magical injuries. Give me food and drink, and I will give you information.”

“Done.” Commandant Graham bowed his head. “I want to be gone ten minutes ago. Come, if the wind favours us, we can return to Gasconeigh before nightfall, if we are lucky. As long as this day will prove to be, I fear the night will be even longer. Come, let us do what must be done.”

The tea in the tin cup was soothing and eased the dull ache in Dim’s barrel. His belly was full with scrambled eggs, a wedge of cheese, and a half-dozen apples that were truly delightful. Commandant Graham sat across the table from Dim and the room was crowded with companions—including two dragons who corroborated Dim’s story.

Having told Graham much of what had happened while eating, Dim now settled in for a smoke. He pulled out his pipe, packed it with a pinch of clove-infused cannabis, and lit it with an effortless flick of magic. Across the table, Graham squirmed, uncomfortable, his eyes troubled, his feathers ruffled.

“Trafficking with a demon.” The fussy griffon shook his head and his beak clacked. “Blood sacrifices. All those poor souls… killed for the sake of vile magics. Sometimes, sometimes I hate magic, I really, really do.”

“This gunship flies because of magic,” Motte remarked while Dim puffed away.

The commandant said nothing, but Dim saw the conflict in the griffon’s eyes. Dim had told him everything, with unabashed honesty. Even the part about the accidental act of necromancy. Princess Celestia would know—and would no doubt cast judgment. What grim fate awaited? Dim was just following instructions—her instructions. She had told him to survive and to return home, with the assurance that he would be forgiven. He would return home… eventually… but right now there were pressing matters to look after, like trying to stop the world from collapsing into war. He had already suffered one gross failure to that end, and now Grogar had the pseudo-alicorns.

Dim was certain, well beyond any shadow of a doubt, that if he had resisted the spirits, if he had refused those poor tortured souls and had tried to close himself off from them, he wouldn’t be alive right now to eat scrambled eggs, drink tea, and smoke. He would accept whatever fate he brought upon himself and do so without hesitation or question, because it felt like the right thing to do.

For some reason, the prospect of facing Eerie after this failure was somehow worse than facing Princess Celestia. Dim liked Eerie and there was some kind of weird familial bond. Eerie would be disappointed—she would be hurt by what he had failed to accomplish. Of course, Eerie’s hurt would likely pale in comparison to the harm that might be done to the world because of his failure. Grogar had the fake alicorns now and nothing good would come of it.

“We’ve lost,” Dim said aloud to his companions. “My mother said it best… damn her. While we were busy fighting the bandits, she got one step ahead of us. We might have saved Fancy, but doomed the world in the overall scheme of things.”

Hunched over, her back resting against a bulkhead, Blackbird shook her head. “We don’t know that yet, Dim.”

Commandant Graham added, “We cannot second guess ourselves. Prince Dim… you and your companions have done this country a great service. Working together, you’ve accomplished much—”

“It all feels rather hollow right now,” Dim said, interrupting. “What good is saving Fancy if the whole world falls?”

The griffon’s resolve could be seen burning in his golden eyes. “If Fancy can be restored, if it can be saved, then it can be an ally. Prince Dim… I know this feels like a loss, and maybe it is, I’ll give you that. But the actions of you and your comrades might very well have secured Fancy’s future and the world’s future by extension. Sometimes, you can lose a battle but still win the war. Istanbull has saved an ally… an ally of Equestria, I might add. And the ally of an ally is surely a friend.”

As trite as the words seemed, Dim found some comfort in them.

“We’ve changed the fate of a nation.” Somehow, Blackbird sounded foalish, which belied her immense bulk. “All it cost us was the Bard. I don’t know how I feel about that, trading one life for many. Trading one life I know and cherished for strangers. How am I supposed to feel about this?”

Sighing, Commandant Graham shook his head. “The fight isn’t over yet…”

Author's Note

By the pricking of my hooves, something wicked this way grooves.

What must be done

Vague, troubling dreams had plagued Dim’s sleep and he couldn’t quite remember them. What he did remember were lights; a brilliant blue light had shouted at him, had scolded him until a pink light intervened and the blue light was shouted down. Afterwards, when all was said and done, the blue light had become comforting, at least from what little that he could remember. The pink light was with him now while he stood upon the deck of the gunship, staring at the city in the distance.

Smoke rose from a number of places and flames could be seen reaching up into the sky.

Even from here, one could see the airships clustered around the skyscraper towers in the heart of the city. From what little Dim could make out, there was no fighting, no exchange of fire, which meant that there was a stalemate or they were waiting something out. One of those towers had to be Duc Truffe’s, a pony whose lifespan grew radically shorter with each passing minute.

Dim got paid for killing and there were ponies here that deserved to die.

Blackbird moved beside him on the deck to his left and Bombay to his right. The Abyssinian’s mood was unknown; she’d been quiet, reserved, and Dim suspected that with the lull, she may be grieving. Though he said nothing, he was too. He barely even understood the friendship that he had with the Bard, he hardly had time to appreciate it, and now, he was mourning it. Life’s lessons came fast, hard, and harsh.

“Gasconeigh is burning.” Blackbird’s voice was muted, troubled, and husky with emotional turmoil. “Some of the buildings have been blown up and some of the walls are damaged, I can see it from here.”

Try as he might, Dim could not see the level of detail that Blackbird could, and he was envious of her eyes.

“Duc Argentée had better be okay,” said one of the nearby soldiers.

“Oui,” said another, “we have orders to raze the city if he falls and I want no part in that.”

Dim was still weary and fearing that he had a long night in store, he allowed an audible sigh to slip free unhindered. The setting sun was a bloody, graphic orange against a red-rust sky, which was either Princess Celestia’s bad joke or an ill omen. Entering the city would be tense, sailing closer, and closer, and closer to the hovering enemy gunships. Whatever fragile ceasefire, whatever porcelain truce that existed, Dim hoped it would not break in-route.

“Ignite the white lanterns!” shouted the Bosun and there was a scramble on deck to do his bidding.

“Blackbird,” Dim began, drawing out her name while leering at her with a fine aristocratic sneer, “prepare to clench your sphincter.”

The ruination wreaked upon the city left a chill in Dim’s blood, but he took solace in the fact that he had spared the city from a far worse fate. If the Spider Queen had been released, the city would be gutted and its inhabitants no doubt eaten. How close had they come to doom? How many more lives would have been necessary to break the seals? Some of her influence was already leaking out, as evidenced by her command over the spiders and their odd mutations.

Argentée’s tower was damaged, but not terribly so. Damage to the city center was minimal and Dim guessed that a ceasefire had been called not long after the initial exchange. Now, the gunships were moored around two towers; Argentée’s tower and what Dim assumed had to be Truffe’s tower. So far, the peace seemed to be holding in the city’s center, though gunfire pealed through other parts of the city and fires raged uncontested.

Something would have to be done to restore order to the city, though Dim wasn’t sure what. He understood the source, the causes, the hows and the whys, but this all felt so senseless. The commoners, the peasants were wrecking the very city they lived in, and ultimately, their actions would only hurt them the most. They were, for all intents and purposes, shitting in their own nest. The sheer pointlessness of it all left a lingering despair that lurked in the back of Dim’s thoughts.

A room. It had a far too long table and no windows. Some kind of board room tucked deep within the bowels of the skyscraper that Chanson Argentée called home. For the lords of Fancy, or the Ducs as they were called in the local parlance, running the country was just an act of business. It was a strange way to do things, Dim felt, and given the current state of things, business had gone bad. As a system of governance, it had failed, and Dim did not feel that his judgment of it was too harsh.

“Général Martinet,” a stocky earth pony barked, and every soldier in the room went rigid.

The door opened and a pegasus entered, followed by Chanson and his wife, Pearl Fisher, both of whom looked as if they had seen better days. As for the pegasus, it was the meanest looking pegasus pony that Dim had ever seen, and from the look on his face he had a full-time habit of chewing on lemons. A fourth pony entered, a unicorn mare that looked every bit as frazzled as the pegasus looked mean.

Almost to the table, the pegasus paused, and then Général Martinet turned his glower in Dim’s direction. Remembering his manners, Dim returned this glower and the two ponies spent some quality time scowling at one another. After a time, Martinet nodded and then stood there while Chanson and Pearl Fisher were hustled into seats.

“Martinet,” said Blackbird with irrepressible cheer. “That’s a pun! It can mean a harsh disciplinarian, a type of whip, or a type of bird more commonly called a swift. This guy has a clever name!”

With a slow turn of his head, the hardass pegasus glared at Blackbird, who didn’t seem bothered at all. If anything, she became even more cheerful, worryingly so, and Dim felt his face muscles trying to betray him, wanting to rearrange his scowl into something else that would no doubt make his face ache.

“Bombay has been teaching me the langue locale, if you know what I mean.”

“My mother was a saintly mare, a member of the Celestial clergy. She had a fine wit that almost got her thrown out of the order. Had a keen mind, you see. Wouldn’t be silent. Didn’t know when to hold her tongue. She’d have these outbursts…” For a moment, Martinet’s harsh face softened just a bit and his eyes grew sad. “She was also a patriot that loved her country. Which is why I am doing what I’m doing.”

“She sounds like a fine mare,” Blackbird replied. “Can’t help but notice that you speak of her in the past tense.”

“My mother was part of the Benevolent Order of Celestines… the clergy placed her within the order to get her away from them. Dedicated her life to helping the poor. Died of Pauper’s Cough.” A faint hint of Fancy accent bled through the pegasus’ words and for a second, he bowed his head.

Dim realised that Blackbird had just gained the trust of Général Martinet. How, how did she do this? What sort of marvellous creature was Blackbird? She just had this way of doing things. What might Blackbird have changed with but a few kind words? She had taken what was obviously a stressful time for Martinet and made it better, reminding him of why he fought.

“Martinet, you promised that you would explain to me what is going on when Dim returned. Now, I’d like that explanation, if you please, and then I’d like to depart for Equestria.”

Again, Dim saw pain in Martinet’s eyes, but only for a second. The pegasus glanced around the room at his subordinates, meeting their eyes, and some manner of silent exchange seemed to be taking place. Some nodded, but most blinked or changed their facial expression in some way. Chanson was departing for Equestria? He was leaving? Princess Celestia had offered him asylum, and given the state of things in Fancy, this didn’t come as much of a surprise.

“My apologies, Duc Argentée, but you will not be leaving—”

“Am I under arrest? Am I to face some mockery of a trial?” Chanson drew himself up to his full height and brought his regal bearing into play. “I demanded the cease-fire for the sake of the citizenry! How dare you be petty about this! I demand you let me go!”

Martinet sighed, a heavy sound, an exhausted sound. He did not turn to look at Chason, who had bared his teeth. Rather, he looked at Dim, and Dim found all of this fascinating and a bit perplexing. In Martinet, Dim saw a pegasus that carried the weight of the world upon his back and there was regret in his eyes, a sadness when he started to speak.

“Duc Argentée, the very fact that Princess Celestia has offered you asylum speaks volumes of your character. That Princess Eerie has sent her own blood to aid you and assist you only confirms everything I believe and makes what I am about to do far more tolerable. Fancy has fallen… the entire nation has collapsed and is no more. Everypony was out for themselves, but you… you alone have put the interests of the nation ahead of your own. Your demand for the cease-fire and challenging my authority impressed me and helped me to reach my decision.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Chanson demanded.

Martinet sighed again and his wings clapped against his sides. He appeared to be a pony on the verge of breaking and Dim wondered what must weigh so heavily upon his mind. Perhaps he was mourning the loss of his country and Dim wondered what that might feel like. Probably terrible. The hardass pegasus closed his eyes for a moment, swallowed, and when he opened his eyes once more, steely resolve could be seen within them.

“I am appointing you as Empereur, may history have mercy upon my soul.” For a moment, there was utter and complete silence. Not a sound was heard. Martinet lifted his head and his hardened demeanour had returned, leaving behind nothing soft. “The remnants of the Fancy Foreign Legion are hereby seizing control of the city of Gasconeigh and—”

“Am I to be your puppet? Is that it?” Chanson, though stunned, was quick to recover himself.

“You will be whatever Fancy requires you to be until such a time that things have improved.” Martinet drew in a deep breath and then focused his attention upon Dim. “Do we have your support? Will Istanbull recognise the legitimacy of Chanson Argentée’s rule?”

Dim did not answer right away and he was careful to consider the full implications of this. Chanson did not seem willing, but that was ultimately irrelevant. He would be made to do what was right and his sense of duty would compel him to go along with all of this. From somewhere off to his left, he could hear Jolie whispering, but he couldn’t make out what was being said.

Then, he felt a tap from Blackbird and she whispered to him, “Remember our beloved Bard.”

The words were like a kick and Dim felt his withers slump. Pâté au Poulet had come to save his home… he had died here, given his life for a fight that they did not yet fully comprehend. And for the Bard to have died only to have his country unravel and come undone, that… that was tragic. It pained Dim to even think about.

“If it helps your decision, we already have the backing of both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. In fact, Princess Luna has pledged an entire cohort of seasoned troops to help keep order in the city as we establish our capital. Princess Celestia was reluctant, but she understood the necessity. But if we are to reestablish our nation, we have a desperate need for allies.”

Chanson appeared quite troubled and his wife? Doubly so.

“You may count Istanbull among your allies.” Was he making the right decision? Did it matter? Dim considered the whims of Modesto, Mars, and Eerie. Ultimately, this was good for Istanbull, but only if the recovery of Fancy somehow succeeded. If things went wrong, if Chanson became a bloody tyrant, Istanbull—and Equestria for that matter—would look awful for aiding and abiding tyranny.

However, tyranny was just what was needed right now.

“You can’t be serious,” Chanson said, his voice cracking from strain.

Pearl Fisher was crying and the light mascara she wore ran down her cheeks, leaving behind blue-black streaks. Chanson seemed more stunned now than anything. Still standing, still rigid and stiff, Martinet was a pegasus carved out of stone. Dim wondered what he was thinking, especially after Blackbird had caused him to remember his mother.

“You let us rummage through your personal effects,” the frazzled unicorn mare that had entered with Martinet said to Chanson. “You had nothing to hide from us. You let us read your correspondence. Everything we’ve seen and every detail we’ve gathered suggest that you’re the right pony for the job.”

“And Truffe murdered the two emissaries that we sent to parley with him,” another soldier said. “You can’t run away from this. There’s no tucking your tail between your legs and leaving for greener pastures. If you leave, you’re giving the city to him.”

“There is still the matter of Truffe.” Martinet’s eyes narrowed and his lips drew tight over his teeth. “He’s surrounded by gunships and there’s got to be a thousand or more troops within his tower. If we go to evacuate the city center, he’ll open fire. If we make a move to attack him, he’ll open fire. He’s holding the city center hostage. There was a nasty exchange earlier and our position is not favourable.”

“We could send Dim to kill this asshole,” Motte suggested.

“Yes, but I can’t be ordered, I can only be bought.”

“You would ask for coin during a time like this?” the frazzled mare asked.

Dim nodded. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

“What you want, Jeebie King?”

Everypony in the room now stared at Pearl Fisher in shock and the bold mare’s demeanour suggested that she seemed to have recovered some of herself. Even Chanson appeared surprised by his wife’s words and he regarded her with one raised eyebrow. Martinet’s face also showed signs of shocked reaction.

“A slave is commanded,” Pearl Fisher said to all, “the free are compensated.” She nodded at Dim as more of her mascara ran down her cheeks. “So what you want, Jeebie King? What be your price for claiming one of the wicked as your own? What it take for you to drag him into shadow?”

“What are you offering?” Dim focused on Pearl Fisher and Pearl Fisher alone, ignoring all else.

“I fix you a meal. A big one.”

“There’d better be wine with the meal—”

“Is you a greedy guzzler?”

After a moment of consideration and enjoying the mare’s pleasant patois, he nodded. “I am fond of wine, yes, and if given a chance I will drink to excess. As the Jeebie King, I do believe I would enjoy breaking bread and drinking wine with the Empereur of Fancy.”

“Then we have a deal, Jeebie King.”

“I have one more condition,” Dim said and this got a groan from Martinet.

“I am listening.” Pearl Fisher’s ears pricked.

“This city needs purging, Pearl Fisher, and you know of what I speak. I want armed escorts for the zebras so they can do their work. Everything we do this night will mean nothing if the shadowlings aren’t dealt with. They are the source of this chaos… this unrest. They bring out the worst in creatures and they’re feeding on all of this. There will be no peace in the city until the parasites are dealt with.”

“What’s this about shadowlings?” Martinet demanded.

“The real threat to your city and to your nation,” Dim replied. “Everything we’re seeing now are merely symptoms of a much larger and far more dangerous problem. If you are going to reestablish your nation, you’ll need to purge the infestation, city by city.”

“I can do what you ask, if the Legionnaires will cooperate with me.”

“Oh, they will cooperate with you, otherwise, I’m not bothering. There’s no point otherwise. Any headway I make will be undone by the real threat to the city.”

“Can we work together, Martinet?”

“Can you explain to me what this threat to the city is?” he asked.

“I can.” She nodded. “But you have to be open minded. Know this, the Jeebie King recognises them as a threat, and so should you.”

Martinet sighed while nodding his acceptance. “Fine, we have an agreement. Let us work together with the zebras, it might calm some of this unrest.”

“Or make it worse,” a soldier said.

With a quick turn of his head, Martinet scowled at the soldier who had spoken out of turn, then returned his gaze to Pearl Fisher. The hardass pegasus was now more thoughtful than stern, and his eyes showed a keen intelligence while he studied the future Impératrice. For her part, Pearl Fisher seemed to be recovering herself and her strength of character was on display for all to see, for all to witness.

Before anything else could be said, Dim vanished in the most dramatic way possible.

Author's Note

This chapter was started on July sixth, and was finished today, on July 15th. It had extensive rewrites, where parts of it felt as though it was lagging, or going to slow. Whole scenes got cut, such as the arrival and Jolie saying hello, because, damnit, it just bogged down to the point of blah.

Sabotage and harsh judgment

A phantom sauntered from shadow to shadow, unseen, unnoticed, undetected. It moved from floor to floor, room to room, haunting the living. Upon its departure, it left behind sabotaged weapons, rendering guns useless and causing swords to become permanently stuck in their sheaths, the metal fused solid. No one noticed the phantom, no alarm was triggered, there was no sign that anything was amiss.

This was no common phantom, no, this was Le Trou Du Cul Fantôme.

This phantom rode in the elevator with two stern looking chaps, a griffon and a pegasus. They were going up and the elevator, steam driven, was quite slow. With two victims trapped in the elevator, with no easy avenue of escape, Le Trou Du Cul Fantôme struck, creating a vulgar noise accompanied by a truly eye-watering stench. Naturally, this put the griffon and the pegasus at odds, each blaming the other for le pet de la mort. Anger flashed in their eyes and the unspoken promise of violence was made.

And the cause for the elevator’s glacial pace?

The boiler had been sabotaged; soon, it would cease functioning altogether.

High above the city streets below, the phantom prowled the narrow confines of a gunship, the occupants of which were now sleeping soundly. The phantom, fearful that someone might have resisted the call to slumber, now went from room to room, cabin to cabin, ensuring that there was no wakeful soul that might cause trouble later.

When the ship had been secured, the phantom sabotaged the control room. It was repairable damage—the ship would be needed at some point in the near future and it had to function—but for tonight’s plan to end well, the ship had to be dead in the air. It would be out of commission tonight and tomorrow, until such a time it could be repaired by good soldiers with Fancy’s better interests at heart.

With the ship secure, the phantom continued his spree of bloodless sabotage.

Tucked within a secured vault, the phantom found a treasure trove of documents, the recordkeeping of evil deeds and terrible acts. The printed information was damning, but such was the banality of evil; bureaucracy always left a well-documented trail of evidence written down for all to see. Within the many ledgers was the framework for a truly insidious plot, but the phantom had no time for pleasant reading.

Everything was teleported away, whisked through the aetherial rifts.

The phantom emptied the vault, a tiring, draining task, but this evidence would be needed in the days to come. There would be questions—questions asked by angry mobs who would demand answers. Within the recordkeeping appeasement would be found, or perhaps such truths would only stoke the fires of rage. Bloodshed was to be avoided, if possible, but sometimes it was inevitable.

So far, not a drop of blood had been spilt, but that was about to change…

A figure cloaked in shadow drifted through the palatial apartment of Duc Truffe. It roamed through the kitchen, the pantry, bearing witness to the plenty to be had. Everything was well-stocked, as if a siege was anticipated. The larder was full to brimming in anticipation for hard times. All these preparations were for naught, as this siege would never happen.

In an odd twist of ironic fate, Kriegsgeist would soon end this conflict as bloodlessly as possible. Little more than a shadow wrapped in darkness, the phantom left the kitchen and began a slow, silent sojourn down the hallway towards what was sure to be the bedrooms, slipping past the guards, who now slumbered upon the floor in limp heaps. Stopping at the first door, it entered, unsure of what to expect, but ready for anything.

The phantom, the dreadful phantom, found itself in a nursery.

It was an expansive, pleasant room, and the window was covered with a steel curtain. Toys were scattered everywhere—the floor was a minefield of treachery with sharp wooden blocks and things that could potentially squeak or honk. Against the wall furthest away from the window was a bassinet, and within the bassinet were two little foals—yearlings by the looks of them—innocent sleeping babes that presented a morass of moral complications.

A mere yard from the bassinet, the phantom stopped to consider this headache.

Frail little necks could be broken with no effort, sparing them pain and what was sure to be an unpleasant future. Bad things happened in conflict and many suffered, with foals enduring the worst fates. How many peasants had lost their young to all of this? Should the wealthy, well-protected Duc be spared the pain of loss? Tonight, he would lose so much more. But what of these two? They were an unexpected wrinkle in the fabric of the plan, and like any wrinkle, had to be ironed out.

An unseen force slipped tight around their necks and there was a pause, a moment of hesitation. With but a quick flick, two lives would be ended. They would die together, holding one another—they would die in peace and be spared the violence and hardship of the troubling times to come. Killing them would be an act of mercy.

Yet, the phantom failed to act.

After several seconds of failing to act, the phantom apologised, speaking with the merest whisper: “Es tut mir leid, dass ich dich nicht verschonen konnte.”

With nary a sound, the two foals vanished, leaving behind an empty bassinet.

“Ein schlimmeres Schicksal wartet…”

At long last, the phantom arrived and now menaced the royal bedroom of Duc Truffe. He slept in his bed, alone, lost to a deep, sound sleep, no doubt believing himself to be secure. Perhaps even victorious. But the plans had changed. Chanson Argentée would not be fleeing, he would not be going into exile. For the good of the nation, Chanson Argentée would be staying.

For the good of the nation.

Bringing Truffe to trial would be the ruination of Gasconeigh. No doubt, the legal system was tilted in his favour. Those loyal to him would defend him and his interests, even in light of his heinous crimes, such as consorting with the Spider Queen in yonder mine. A trial fully exposing his wicked deeds would only do great harm to whatever remained of Gasconeigh.

How did one reconcile with such acts?

One didn’t.

A cancer was excised, cut away, removed. A healthy body had no way of making peace with cancer and living harmoniously with ravenous, consuming tumours. Truffe was a cancer. He had weakened the body of the city—the nation—he had done harm on a scale that was difficult for most to comprehend. His cancerous tendrils had burrowed deep into society, corrupting everything so that his parasitic existence could be nourished.

A cut had to be made, painful as it might be.

The corrupted tissue had to be cut away.

In absolute silence, the steel curtain that protected the window was raised, lifted, and a flood of moonlight entered his room. He was lifted from his bed and held aloft by an invisible force, a crushing, unseen hand around his neck that threatened to jellify his larynx. No scream could be heard from his mouth, now open, and he was wide-eyed with pained terror.

The phantom remained unseen.

Struck with terrific force, the window shattered, but made not a sound. Shards of shattered glass rained down to the street below, which was more than fifty stories beneath the window. Truffe, held aloft, was dangled out the window, and it was then, and only then, did the phantom reveal himself.

The War Maiden’s Absolute Invisibility shimmered and ceased to conceal, revealing a terrifying figure whose body gleamed in the silvery moonlight. Truffe’s eyes widened even more with recognition, even as his hooves scraped at his neck in a desperate struggle to draw breath. His salt and pepper mane whipped in the wind and his hind hooves dangled over a long drop with a sudden stop. But the fall would be long—it would be terrible and it would be long—long enough for him to think about everything on the way down.

“You are wicked,” Dim said in a slithery whisper. He saw recognition in the panicked, frantic eyes of the pony he dangled out the window and he was glad that he and Truffe could have one final exchange. “I’ve undone everything you’ve worked so hard for. It’s all been for naught. I’ve even stolen your legacy. Your foals are in the care of Pearl Fisher. I bet that bothers you, doesn’t it? Knowing that your perfect offspring are in the care of an islander savage. I’ll be speaking to her later about their upbringing. I do not tell you this to relieve you, but with the hopes that you will suffer all the more for the rest of your short life.”

Bright crimson spiderwebs appeared in Truffe’s eyes and the lack of oxygen was taking its toll upon him. Dim relaxed his grip, but not enough so that Truffe could draw in a satisfying gulp of air. Below, a troubled city burned and even the river was on fire. Flames rose into the night, bright orange-white fingers that reached for the cold fires of the stars above.

Truffe burst into flames—he ignited and the lapping tongues of fire consumed him readily. He screamed, but not a sound was made. The flailing of his limbs only further provoked the inferno’s hunger and it took even more of his body into its fiery maw. With the flames hungrily chewing upon their prey, Dim let go.

The distressed awe in Martinet’s eyes could not be ignored and while Dim stirred his tea with a dainty silver spoon, he studied the general’s face. Even now, as Dim prepared his tea, troops were recovering the gunships with the orders to bring no harm to the sleeping occupants. He had given an impressive list of instructions to Martinet, and then a full explanation of everything that had transpired.

Dim had his reasons for doing what he had done the way he had done it, and he counted upon Martinet’s understanding. The hardass pegasus was stunned more than anything, no doubt trying to grasp the tremendous events that had taken place this night. Commandant Graham paced the floor of the dining room, his claws clicking, and he waved his wings about with uncontained nervous fervour.

“I don’t know that we can trust them,” the agitated griffon said.

“Maybe not,” Martinet replied, “but we might be able to trust some of them. They’re just soldiers obeying orders. I want to believe that some of them meant well. We’ll have to sort them out.” The flinty pegasus’ eyes settled on Dim and with his jaw firm, he continued, “Forgive me for being blunt, but I have to say… your very existence makes me uncomfortable.”

Dim put down his teaspoon and one eyebrow arched. “I beg your pardon?”

“You… everything you just did. How is anypony safe with ponies like you in the world? Security means nothing. An entire army of guards? Meaningless. A vault? Bypassed. Every meaningful security measure that keeps a ruler safe and secure was in place… but to ponies like you, that means nothing. I’m sorry, but this has left me disturbed. Who holds you accountable? Sure, you’ve helped us, but there are others like you in the world. Who keeps us safe? How can any of us be safe? Your benevolence is appreciated, but who saves us from you?”

Holding his teacup, Dim did not respond. Rather than make him angry, Martinet’s words left him thoughtful. Much to his own amazement, he found himself sympathising with the pegasus sitting across the table. Dim thought about his own behaviour; his dangerous drug use, his hedonism, he even thought of his own roaring sense of entitlement, the idea that he was owed something by virtue of who and what he was. Martinet’s words were like a hard slap across the face.

What kept him from going bad?

It was a worrisome thing to think about.

“Forgive me, but unicorns such as yourself shouldn’t exist. Who polices your power? What stops unicorns like you from controlling ponies like us and subjecting us to your whims? I appreciate everything you’ve done. I’m glad you’ve helped us. I am extremely grateful for your aid. That said, I’ll be relieved when you are gone and I hope and pray that your shadow never darkens our soil ever again. I don’t feel safe with you around. None of us are safe.”

Dim’s ears fell as he took his first sip of tea. The door opened and Chanson entered, his eyes haunted and darkened. Martinet leaned against the table, but had nothing to say. Graham continued his pacing of the length of the room, pausing only to let Chanson pass. Dim watched as Chanson sat down and began to prepare for himself a cup of tea from the service set left on the table.

“Pearl has the foals settled in…” Chanson’s haunted eyes focused on Dim for a moment, and then his heavy, leaden stare fell to the table. “I don’t understand. Why us? Why not just some orphanage or some farmer somewhere? I’m sorry, Dim, but I cannot understand your reasoning.”

Still disturbed by Martinet’s words, Dim was in no mood to explain himself or his reasons. Even worse, his actions lent credence to Martinet’s assertions; Dim had made it clear that Chanson and Pearl Fisher were to raise the two foals as their own. He hadn’t asked, but simply commanded. Feeling uncertain of himself, he thought of the vault down deep in the mine, and the door that would only open for royal blood.

Dim’s thoughts grew more and more troubled with each passing second.

“Raising Truffe’s young shows that you are a merciful and dutiful ruler,” Graham said while pacing. “Princess Celestia would approve of such kind action. When the public hears the full extent of Truffe’s treachery, it might go bad for his son and daughter, lynch mobs being what they are. They will need protection from the cruelty of many.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry. Pearl Fisher will love them as her own. As for myself, I’ll need some time to adjust… to… everything that has taken place.” Chanson’s ears sagged even more. “I dare say that Truffe would have afforded no such kindness for my own daughter and I would desperately like to believe that I am a better pony than he. One shudders to think of Sonnet’s fate at the hooves of Truffe.”

“Truffe also had a daughter that he no doubt worried about,” Martinet said, his voice gritty and grating, as if he had been gargling broken glass and whiskey in equal measure. “Now, she is your daughter to worry about. Let that guide your actions.”

Hunched over the table, Chanson looked nothing like the Empereur at this moment. After a time, his lips parted, he licked them, and replied, “It shall. A father’s worry shall steer my way.”

“As Empereur, you are now the father of many. Let that same concern and worry steer the course of your rule.” Graham, perhaps tired of pacing, took a seat at the table. “Look, Chanson, I know this isn’t what you want, but it is what your nation needs. The Royal Pony Sisters believe in you. You’ll have help. It’s coming, be patient.” The fastidious griffon folded his claws together and leaned against the table’s edge.

Retreating into his thoughts, Dim tried to discern what shade of grey the world had become.

Author's Note

Dim took it well, being told that he shouldn't exist.

Right to exist

Blackbird was sleeping. Dim envied her state of peaceful repose. She didn’t quite fit into a pony-sized bed and her legs hung off at funny angles. At the moment, there was nothing feline about her at all, she was distinctly equine and utterly lacking in grace. Who held him accountable? That was a tough question. An impossible question perhaps, though it could be said that she held him accountable—but only because he allowed her to.

The thought was almost too much to bear and he physically winced from mental pain.

Standing near the bed, Dim listened to sound of her breathing and watched the steady rise and fall of her ribs. He had grown in power, enough so that he was alarmed by what he could do. She had called it leveling up, but he wasn’t sure what had changed him. It was more than mere experience. The ability to cast The War Maiden’s Absolute Invisibility had eluded him all his life. Over and over he had tried to burn the spell into his memory, and he had, in a sense, at least partially. He could make himself difficult to see—he could dim himself—and that had served him well for the longest time.

But recently, something had changed.

Now, he was giddy with power. He had new limits to explore, new frontiers of magic, new boundaries to push and expand. But who held him in check? Who held him accountable? What kept him from going bad? His eyes lingered on Blackbird’s face and the rapid flutter of her eyelids. She was dreaming and he knew that if he wanted to do so, he could have a look at what she was dreaming about. There was nothing stopping him from invading her privacy. She had no means to defend herself. Even worse, he could tamper with her dreams… he could give her nightmares. He could break down her will through dreams and over time, thoroughly dominate her. The power to do so was his and there was nothing stopping him.

Did he deserve to exist?

“Blackbird…” His voice was as soft as dry autumn leaves blowing about in the cold of winter. “I almost killed some foals tonight, Blackbird. What am I? I had to think about it, Blackbird. The very fact that I had to think about it troubles me. I had their little necks in my grip and all I could think about was the good reasons why I should kill them… as mercy. I wanted to spare them. That was my concept of mercy. But near the end, just as I was about to snap their necks, I thought of you. After that, I couldn’t.” With a shake of his head, he fell silent.

Pained in a strange way, he turned away from Blackbird and headed for the door. He was in desperate need of a good think, some time to clear his head. Somehow, he had to sort out his thoughts before they were his undoing. With Blackbird still lost to slumber, Dim departed to face the ache of loneliness on his own.

Sleep was an elusive beast; ‘twas hard prey to pace when one was weighed down with troublesome thoughts. Truffe’s tower had been seized and the guards—with their weapons sabotaged—had surrendered. The airships had been commandeered and Dim stared out the window, watching as order was restored. This could have been a spectacular bloody slaughter, but Dim knew and understood that these soldiers might be needed in the days to come.

He entertained thoughts of placing them all beneath a geas, but with his current state of mental turmoil, he had no idea what was right anymore, what was moral. Truffe, set ablaze, had plunged to his death and had splattered upon the street below. His death was cause for spontaneous celebration, which had caused a flicker of hope to flare to life, but that quickly turned into alarm when the celebratory mob became unruly. Now, more fires lit the night and there was little that could be done other than allow them to burn.

When the sun rose tomorrow, Gasconeigh would be a different city, and Fancy a different country, one soon to be ruled by an all-powerful emperor. Chanson, for his part, didn’t want to be emperor. With Fancy in disarray, Chanson would have to build his empire from scratch, either through diplomacy or conquest. The other cities would resist. Dim had no idea how bad things actually were, but to hear Martinet tell it, Fancy, as a nation, was no more. Whatever union there had once been was now dissolved.

As awful as it was, perhaps this was for the best.

The shadowlings had to be thriving from all of this. They would be strong, the shadowlings, and if nothing was done to contain them, they would spread out from this city like a plague. Maybe they already had. Dim thought of Martinet’s mistrust of magic and wondered how the flinty pegasus would survive in a world without powerful unicorns and alicorns, where shadowlings and their ilk ran unchecked. Though he sought solace in these thoughts, some sense of consolation, there was none to be had.

A fireball rose into the night and the explosion was so intense that Dim was almost certain that there was a rumble, some tremble in the floor beneath him. Maybe there was, or maybe he imagined it, a sort of fill-in-the-blanks sensory experience. He saw an explosion, and therefore, there had to be further sensory input for the experience to be complete. Dim wondered if there was more that he might do and he was tempted to go out onto the streets.

Behind him, a door opened and an apologetic voice said, “Majesty—”

Thinking of Martinet’s words, Dim winced at the title and felt a powerful sense of discomfort. He did not turn around, but continued to stare out the window, keeping his face hidden from view from the creature behind him.

“—we’ve caught a spy. There’s been some interrogation done, but nothing was learned. We hoped that you might have more success.”

Recovering his stoic mask, Dim turned around, thinking that, perhaps, this was just the distraction he needed. “Where is the prisoner?”

The griffon in the doorway tossed something down upon the floor and it landed with a muffled thump. At first, Dim thought it was a dirty, disgusting doll, but after a moment of intense scrutiny, he realised it was a goblin. A tiny thing by goblin standards, but a goblin nonetheless. Dim had studied goblins and goblinoid creatures as a youth, and even had a collection of pickled goblins, specimens kept in jars. As an adventurer, he had killed quite a few of them, so seeing a living one this close was fascinating.

“Leave me, so I can conduct a thorough interrogation,” Dim commanded.

“Aye aye, Majesty.” Bowing his head, the griffon backed away, shut the door, and was gone.

Goblins were parasitic breeders with remarkable sexual compatibility. They bred with anything that they could catch—anything—and had greater than average success rates with hybrid pregnancies. If a goblin fucked a chicken, that chicken would lay eggs that would hatch goblinoid spawns. They were uncanny survivors and perhaps one of the most hated of the mongrel species, seeing as how they fucked anything with a pulse.

Dim had burned out whole infestations of them during his time spent on the Grittish Isles.

This one was small, even by goblin standards, maybe about a foot or so in height. It was hard to tell though, seeing as how it was curled up in a miserable heap. Its face was almost catlike, or maybe vulpine. Reptilian characteristics could be seen, including some patches of scales patchworked among its filthy, matted hide. The most defining characteristic it possessed was one single duck foot, meaning it came from a lineage of duck-fuckers.

While it lay on the floor, shivering and trembling, Dim pulled out his pipe so that he might have a thoughtful smoke. The goblin didn’t budge, it didn’t move, it didn’t try to run away. It merely lay there, only now it made pathetic whimpers when Dim set his pipe ablaze. Though Dim was quite disgusted—the stench was nauseating—there was something else that stirred within him, something that felt a lot like pity.

“Are you a spy?” Dim asked, getting down to the dirty business of interrogation.

The creature moaned out the word, “No.” It’s voice was distinctly feminine, soft, raspy, and difficult to hear. “I tell them no. Over and over. But they keep hurting.”

“Right now, things are tense. Spies are expected. If you are not a spy, then what are you doing here?”

There was a groan from the she-gobliness and she rolled over onto her side while clutching her arm to her chest. She hissed between clenched teeth, but Dim did not perceive this as an aggressive act. Upon closer examination, he saw that the creature’s arm was twisted; it appeared to be broken in several places. Right away, Dim knew the cause and understood the previous methods of interrogation.

“Sick of sewer,” the tiny gobliness said while clutching her broken arm. “Too many darklings. Shamans can’t keep darklings away. Came up topside hoping to be pet or something. That all, I swear.”

“You wanted to be a pet?” One incredulous eyebrow lifted and Dim’s stoic mask fell away.

“Me sit in sewer and listen at drains. Topsiders keep pets. Dogs. Cats. Sometimes I watch. Seems like good life. Me many pets in one. Make nice pet. No want to be sludgesider no more. Sick of muck and darklings.”

Puffing on his pipe, Dim studied the miserable creature. So the city’s infestation was bad enough that it was even plaguing the goblins. The ponies and creatures of Gasconeigh liked their pets. And in the midst of all this uncertainty, doubt, and chaos, a goblin lass watched from out of a sewer grate and dreamed of a better life. Strange thing, life. Dim had no idea what to think of all of this, but further cruelty seemed unnecessary.

“You picked a bad time to crawl out of the sewer,” Dim said to the gobliness. “Right now, I think even the pets are dying. I bet those poofy poodle dogs are flammable… but I digress.”

“Darklings get you too?” The gobliness focused her teary yellow eyes upon Dim. “They get us. Make us fight. Kill. Hurt. Shaman salt piles not working. Sewer not safe.”

At this moment, Dim realised that he was dealing with a remarkably canny creature. Uneducated, but not stupid. It was easy to listen to her talk and think she held no meaningful intelligence based upon her speech patterns, but doing so was a mistake. In his own defense, he’d never actually tried to have a conversation with a goblin before, because his previous encounters had all been rather violent ones. A dozen goblins armed with makeshift axes and shivs did not invite meaningful conversation.

“Puke Puddle watch shamans, do what they do, but Puke Puddle get in trouble for it.”

Dim heard the creature sniffle and her dirty tears left a spreading pool of filth upon the floor. He considered her name, Puke Puddle, and wasn’t the least bit disgusted by it. By goblin standards, he was sure it was very nice. He did wonder how one earned such a name, but now was not the time for such questions. Deciding that he had seen enough death, dismemberment, and destruction, Dim determined that it was time to spare a life; he was going to save a goblin.

It was not a decision he made lightly and he wondered if perhaps the strain was getting to him. Nopony saved goblins, as far as he was aware of. They were parasites. They were parasitic creatures that did grievous harm to the natural order and there was nothing good about them. Maybe he was about to make a mistake, but this creature was pathetic. Lost in a forest of questionable morality, Dim heard the words of the Spider Queen echoing up from his memories.

As Thrennog’s creation, you are not what your outsides suggest you are. Be good to those who accept you, Dark One, and be fantastically cruel to those who would hurt or otherwise exploit you. There is no morality except for what you make.

He himself was an unnatural abomination and his continued existence was a violation of the natural order. Martinet’s words also rattled around inside of his skull, forcing Dim to question his own existence, and he worried if he was a hypocrite for thinking bad things about goblins. No doubt about it, he was in a weird place right now, the sort of weird place that drove one to save goblin wretches.

Unwilling to allow the creature to suffer any longer, Dim uttered a command word: “Sleep.”

Author's Note

Goody four-shoes unicorns get owls for familiars.

What sort of wizard gets a goblin?

A long night indeed

The incredulous look on Motte’s face was infuriating and Dim was forced to remind himself that Motte was his friend. Even worse, Dim was not accustomed to being refused anything, and this, along with his current state of doubt and uncertainty, worked a dreadful number on him. His mood far beyond soured, he entertained the notion of using magical compulsion.

“You woke me up in the middle—”

“Us,” Bailey, being the helpful sort, said. “You woke us up in the middle of the night. Dim, Motte’s not a doctor.”

Almost grinding his teeth together, Dim held his tongue for fear of saying the wrong thing. Mindful of the roaring blood in his ears and the thumping of his heart, he made himself calm down. Why was he so angry in the first place? Surely there had to be a reason, because this couldn’t be just about a maimed goblin.

“Of all the things you could show mercy for,” Motte said, shaking his head, “why a goblin?”

“Perhaps Dim is starting off small and working up to bigger things,” Bailey suggested to her counterpart.

“Then we should get him a hamster, or a gerbil or something. Those would smell better, at least.” Motte cast a sidelong glance at the comatose goblin laid out on the table. “Dim, this is like saving a tapeworm or a flesh-burrowing parasitic gut-borer. Why?”

“Do it, Motte.”

“Bailey?”

“I’ll even bathe it first.”

“Bailey, have you lost your mind?”

“No,” she was quick to reply. “We’re hurting Dim’s feelings and he’s having a rough night. It’s been a stressful time for all of us. There’s been enough killing and death. So let’s humour the whims of Dim and save a goblin.”

“But, it’s a goblin.”

Dim heard a rush of wind escaping Bailey when she sighed and then he heard her respond, “Yeah, but it’s Dim’s goblin, and we’re doing this for him. I’m sure he’ll return the favour later. Right, Dim?”

“Oh, fuck everything. Fine. Let me get my bag. Dim, get out, I don’t want you hovering over me while I work. Bailey, wash the patient… thoroughly, I might add, and then shave her arm in preparation for a cast. I need a drink. I can’t believe I’m about to patch up a goblin.”

Nodding once, Dim turned to leave.

Even though there was resolution, nothing felt resolved. All of the events that had transpired weighed heavily on Dim’s mind. From their arrival, to the cultist compound, to the assault on the bandit fort, the trip had been an eventful one. There was even some success to be had, but also loss. The Bard was gone. Yes, the Bard was gone, but he had been spared the sight of his homeland falling into ruination

The overall objective had not been met. He had failed in regards to the pseudo-alicorns and now Grogar would have terrifying new minions. The secrets of the Ascendency would be read from their flesh, like words glimpsed from some forbidden book, and Grogar would no doubt start turning equine minions into alicorns. Dim could only imagine the worst of things, the most awful of outcomes. Having fought a living one, the idea of an undead one was utterly terrifying. The world was at risk. Well, most of the world. Dim doubted that Equestria would see the worst of this, because the Royal Pony Sisters were just that powerful. Equestria was no doubt an island of stability and security in a roiling ocean of chaos.

Something pink intruded upon his thoughts, his ruminations, but not a word was said. The world took on a faint pink hue and Dim was comforted by the presence, even if it remained silent. What must the alicorns of Equestria think of the events taking place here in Fancy? Dim could only imagine how troubling they must be. The Midreach too, would feel the ripples from everything that transpired here, and the balance of power would soon shift. Slavers from Menagerie and the Black Hand would no doubt strike while Fancy was weak. The peasants who dwelled in the farmlands would be easy prey.

His failure would only make things worse.

The weight of rule, of responsibility, it settled upon Dim’s withers and caused them to sag.

Pain rippled through Dim’s mind and there was a frightful pressure just behind his eyes that threatened to make them pop right out of his skull. His tongue took on a weird metallic flavour and the cloying stench of ozone tickled his nose, threatening to make him sneeze. Just as the pain reached a sort of crescendo, it subsided a bit and a projection of Princess Cadance appeared, emitted from his horn.

“I don’t have long,” she said, her face full of worry lines. “This is taxing on both of us. Try not to worry, you’ve done well. Far better than anypony expected, really. Things aren’t great, but they’re not as bleak as you believe them to be. I thought maybe you could use some encouragement.”

Unsure of what to say or how to respond, Dim chose a complimentary opener. “It seems as though we’ve both grown in power, Cadance.”

“I’m learning how to truly spread my wings as an alicorn,” she replied, her worry lines deepening when her projection smiled. “Like you, I’m trying to find my place in this world. I’m trying to step out from Celestia’s shadow, but that’s hard to do. Here at home, at least.”

Saying nothing, Dim listened.

“Dim, I’m sorry that you had to face your mother. I can feel your pain. It ripples through my mind and makes it hard to maintain our connection.” Cadance’s projection flickered, went fuzzy for a moment, and then came back into focus. “As bad as she is, I fear that worse awaits for you.”

“Well, that’s reassuring—”

“Would you rather I lie to you?”

Dim huffed once, his ears rose, fell, rose again, and as his anger fizzled out, he shook his head. “No, your candor is appreciated. I am not myself right now.”

“This is true, Dim. You’re not yourself. You’re becoming something better. Eerie too, is changing. Your arrival gave her the courage she needed to make peace with Princess Celestia. They’re talking now and even making plans. A formal alliance might come of this. Look for the good in things, Dim.”

“Eerie and Princess Celestia are talking?” Dim’s ears rose and this time, did not fall.

“She is to be forgiven for her crimes, because she has shown a sincere desire to do right. Istanbull stands as a testament for her desire to make amends. Eerie is deeply troubled by her part in what was done to you, as well as the rat infestation that plagues Canterlot. She is sharing what she knows with Princess Celestia so that the threat can be better understood, and so that we might be able to find some way to help you.”

“What am I?” Dim asked, his voice cracking. “Just what was done to me? What do you know about Thrennog?”

“I don’t know, I’m not sure, and Princess Celestia and Princess Luna once battled with him and banished him back to the Charnel Abyss where he rules. That battle happened over the Sea of Granite in the Midreach. The land still recovers, even now, centuries later.” Cadance’s projected image rippled. “The connection is coming undone, Dim. I cannot sustain this for much longer.”

“Go then, do not bring harm to yourself for my sake.”

“That was almost a goodbye, Dim. Best of luck.”

Then, her projection crackled out of existence and Dim was left all alone.

From the lofty view where Dim stood, staring out the window, it appeared as though the slums and tenements were burning down. With the chill of autumn already upon them and the threat of winter felt in every strong gust of wind, bad times were ahead. Pegasus ponies were pushing in storm clouds, but there was too much city and not enough rain to make a difference. By Dim’s own estimation, it was a futile effort. If only he were stronger and knew weather spells, perhaps then he could make a difference. But weather spells were not his forte. He could cast a few, but nothing on a grand scale, nothing that would save what remained of the city.

Eerie perhaps could, if she knew weather magic.

For much of his life, Dim equated power as a means of saving others, but it was only now, recently, after all that had happened and the loss of the Bard that he actually believed in it. The truth of it hobbled him as much as it humbled him and powerless to do anything about it, he watched as the vast swaths of flame that engulfed the city blazed rampant, unstoppable.

After having been in his mind, Cadance had to know about his act of necromancy, but she had said nothing. When would the stern rebuke come? The swift, crushing judgment? Somehow, it was even worse to not be punished. Especially after what Martinet had said. Dim needed to be held accountable or the hypocrisy would be too much to bear.

Behind him, a door opened, there was a soft shuffle, and then Dim heard Munro’s voice say, “I had a bad dream.”

Turning away from the window, Dim saw that Munro looked nothing like himself. He was young looking, frightened, all of his straightforward, forthright, sophisticated composure was missing. The calf appeared shaken and as seemed to be the case as of late, Dim felt a rush of pity. Had he gone soft? Was something broken? Was his mind going?

“We left the wagon behind,” Munro said, flexing his fingers in a nervous manner.

Dim replied, “It was no longer needed, Munro.”

Dragging his hooves, Munro shuffled over to a rather stark chair and sat down. “I was excited when I was told I’d get to see the world. My family is not well-off, and a chance to see the world was a cause for celebration. This was not the trip I was expecting, though.”

Leaving home. Dim thought of when he left home. The outside world was nothing like what he had expected, but it was better than mouldering away in some tower. Munro folded his arms over his chest and rubbed his biceps with his hands while his mouth contorted into a scowl.

“The soldiers treat me like a soldier,” Munro said to Dim, his eyes unfocused. “My life doesn’t make sense right now. Not at all. I just wanted to be a valet. But here I am in a country not my own and I have seen conflict. I’ve been shot at a few times and I’ve seen some stuff. Done some stuff. It’s changed me in ways that I don’t understand.” Unfolding his arms, he reached up and ran his thick fingers through his flaxen shock of hair. “When I go home, I won’t be a soldier because of the caste system.”

“Nonsense,” Dim snapped, his tone far harsher than he intended. “Don’t let this silly caste system hold you back.”

“But the caste system is what holds all of us together,” Munro replied, his voice low and submissive. “Not everybody can rule, or be a soldier, or do as they please. If we all did that, there’d be chaos. Nobody would take the undesired jobs and the world would fall apart. By accepting our place in the greater order of things, we prevent the fighting that tore us apart in the past.”

Dim bit back a sardonic retort and somehow even managed to refrain from sneering. Munro truly believed this, Dim could see it in the calf’s eyes. Of course, being a member of a low-born caste, Munro would be indoctrinated in such beliefs, because that is how one kept order. Worse, there was a faint ring of truth to Munro’s words—not all were born to rule, some were born to be peasants.

There is a vault down here with me, the Spider Queen had said to him. It can only be opened with royal blood. She was a dangerous weaver, that particular Spider Queen, creating a fine fibre interwoven with truth and lies.

Dim was in no mood to untangle Munro’s delusions, or his own for that matter.

“Munro, there is a matter which I need to discuss with you.”

“What’s that?”

“There is something I need your help with.”

“Oh?”

“You see, Munro, I’ve rescued a goblin…”

Author's Note

Hope comes with the rising sun...

Morning after disaster

“Am I dreaming? It’s hard to tell sometimes. This feels off. Wrong somehow.”

A small blue alicorn filly seemed to swim through the air, held aloft by invisible eddies and swirling currents of magic. Somehow, she flew without flapping her wings, and revelled in the freedom offered by flight. Tiny, exuberant, she radiated foalish cheer and possessed a fine reckless grin.

“Not wrong,” she said to Dim. “Changing. Rapidly changing. Dreams of Night and Dreams of Day are to be found here. What was once two is now one, as it should be. Miraculous healing has taken place, Dim, thanks to the efforts of many.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Luna’s stars.” The filly rolled through a cloud and white puffs clung to her feathers. “Love. There are many reasons… many factors. Everything has come into alignment. For so long, the scales were out of balance, but harmony is being restored. Luna is truly joyful again and each day, she recovers a little bit more of herself. Why, I do believe that Luna could once more serve as the Element of Laughter. Not that she needs to, but she could.”

Dim, who made no effort to enjoy himself while he drifted aimlessly through the sky, gave careful consideration to the words said by the Essence of Night. Daydreams? Did such things have power? Perhaps they did. He was given to daydreams… flights of fancy. Perhaps by herself, Princess Celestia held no power over dreams—but if what the Essence of Night was saying was true, and the two sisters were merging somehow—he couldn’t finish his thought. The knowledge of something greater revealed itself, but what?

“You exist in a peculiar, precarious position,” the filly said to Dim, distracting him. “The magic of the Void has changed you. Consumed you. Altered your destiny. It has given you strength, immense strength, but it is not the strength of raw power that you have always lusted after. You now stand upon the brink of greatness, Dim… the very precipice of distinction… of significance. Something more than the Dark name that you’ve inherited. You have the means to become your own pony, just as Luna now possesses the means to become her own pony. She is free to step out from beneath the shadow cast over her.”

Dim did not understand.

“Trixie Lulamoon has become her own pony… one of Luna’s stars. Name and circumstance laid her low. The curse almost did her in. But she persisted. She found her way. Through altruism for another, because she learned to love another beyond the love she held for herself, she broke the shackles of narcissism that held her in bondage. Beatrix Lion Lulamoon became her own pony at long last.”

With a turn of his head, Dim watched his swooping, looping, barrel-rolling companion.

“Shining Armor,” the filly began. “Another of Luna’s stars. He faced madness and betrayal. Another came along and exploited his life. A foul temptress took on the form of his bride to be, and seduced him. Even worse, this vile creature took on his form, and using his form, drained the love from his bride to be, rendering her almost powerless. This heartless, disgusting parasite clung to the back of Shining Armor’s bride to be and whispered sweet, sweet words into her ears while using his voice.” The filly shuddered, shook her head, and let out a sad sigh.

“For the sake of love, they had to recover. No time was given to them to heal, to sort out the great deception that had taken place. For the nation to recover, and for Princess Mi Amore Cadenza to truly take her place as the embodiment of Love, she had to possess a love that could endure betrayal and mistrust. A love that had known the pain of cheating, though done through deception. Shining Armor was but one half of a far greater whole. In time, when his heart is ready, he will fully embrace what he is meant to be.”

A pattern emerged.

“Twilight Sparkle… Princess of Friendship. Yet another of Luna’s stars.”

“And also a form of love,” Dim remarked, catching on.

“Ah, but you are a clever pony, Dim Dark.” When she turned to look at Dim, The Essence of Night’s eyes were eyeless, but filled with stars and swirling galaxies.

“What terrible sin did Luna commit against love that her distant offspring had to be punished for it?”

“That is for Luna to discover, and for you to live with,” the filly replied, still starry-eyed and channeling the cosmos. “Tell me, Dim… what love do you represent? Why does Princess Mi Amore Cadenza have this attraction to you? For what reason is she compelled to aid you? She was Twilight’s foalsitter and Shining Armor’s soulmate. The stars continue to align. You and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza were brought together for a reason… but I don’t yet know what it is.”

“I thought I loved,” Dim said to his companion as the clouds around him grew dark. “Darling Dark. But I was decieved. Manipulated. What we had wasn’t love. I don’t know what it was. It has left me with hollow places.”

Ceasing her frolicking abandon, the Essence of Night focused her sad expression upon Dim, and floated beside him, her cosmos-filled eyes never leaving him, never looking away. Reaching out, she moved closer, touched him, and some incomprehensible force made Dim look into her eyes. Those eyes, the window to her soul; vast expanses of forever could be seen beyond those panes, but he could not turn away.

Though he did not give voice to his question, Dim wondered, could love have negative aspects?

“Your friend was hurt; great harm befell her and she endured immeasurable suffering. In response, you committed atrocities… truly dreadful acts. You behaved as a Dark would—”

“So what if I did?” demanded Dim. “Whatever atrocities I commit, I visit them upon those who meet me halfway.”

“—and yet, you showed mercy and compassion for a goblin. A goblin of all creatures. Not something a Dark would do. No self respecting Dark would ever feel even a mote of emotion for a goblin.”

“Eerie has a fondness for bushwoolies—”

“Bushwoolies are not goblins, Dim. Sane, rational ponies do not associate with goblins. Sane, rational creatures do not associate with goblins. In fact, the only creatures that associate with goblins are other goblins… but that’s not entirely true either, given how they kill and eat other goblins from strange tribes.”

Snarling, Dim tried to look away and found that he couldn’t; transfixed, he was forced to stare into the soul of the Essence of Night.

“It could be argued that Blackbird is a monster—”

“You shut your mouth!” A truly wicked rage boiled within Dim and something awful awoke within him. Spittle flecked Dim’s lips and though his nerves demanded that his muscles move, that his magic do something, he remained paralysed. When he tried to speak again, to give voice to his outrage, his tongue hung limp within his mouth.

“There’s that rage. There it is. That anger. You terrorised that fort full of bandits and that rage… that rage that I just saw, that fueled your flames. No one else loved those peasants enough to protect them… but you… you did. Blackbird is a monster… let there be honesty between us, Dim, she is not like other hippogriffs and you know that. She’s strong enough to contain the essence of the Void. The Spider Queen that you visited, you showed her considerable—no, remarkable politeness. And then there is the matter of Puke Puddle. These are all things that most would be disgusted by. Repulsed by. Disgusting primitives, Dim. Disgusting peasants. Disgusting monsters. Do you have no sense of revulsion? What are you Dim? What love do you represent?”

Dim struggled for an answer, but nothing came to mind. He struggled, he fought, every fibre of being cried out in defiance and he tried to look away from the Essense of Night’s cosmos-filled eyes. The longer he stared, the less appealing forever seemed to be. Something clenched around his heart. Why did he want to save the peasants of Fancy? Why had he cared? Why was he angry? Why was he struggling?

Around him, clouds shattered like glass and shards of white rained down. So too did the blue sky break, and all around him, reality fell apart. In moments, there was nothing else, just emptiness. Just him and the Essence of Night. Darkness settled over him like a shroud and he grew weary from his resistance.

What was he?

Why was he?

Then too, did Dim shatter, and his shards descended down into the nothingness…

Blackbird savoured her glass of orange juice, a rare and appreciated luxury. The faint, filthy rays of dawn trickled through a window blackened from smoke. An act of bravery, the steel curtain had been thrown open just so the dawn could be seen. Sitting on the floor, she peered out the dingy, dirty window and examined what was left of the city.

Overhead, the skies were almost a bloody red and billowing columns of smoke created soiled, dull crepuscular rays that brought no joy, no cheer, no sense of awe. Fires still raged and far down below, at street level, the faint pop-pop of gunfire could be heard by Blackbird’s sensitive ears.

Bombay Sable walked up to the window, peered out with her surviving eye, and made a disgusted face. She had a bright, cheerful scarf tied around her head, covering her deformity. With her every movement, her pistol and sword slapped against her thigh. Raising her paw, she pulled her wand out from its protective steel and leather sheath, then murmured the words of a spell while waving her wand about. A coppery, glittery glow manifested from the tip of the wand, and then, after a brilliant flash of light, the window was spotless—at least for now. With a faint meow, she slid her wand back into its sheath and then admired her handiwork.

“Morning,” said Blackbird to her companion.

“It certainly is,” Bombay replied, muttering her response.

“What has you in a mood? Are you okay? Missing the Bard?”

For a moment, Bombay was sad, but then her face turned from sorrow to disgust. “Dim rescued a goblin. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why. He had Motte patch it up. Munro… Munro…” Words failed Bombay and she let out a hiss of disgust. “Munro and little Argentée dressed it up. Like a doll. Somehow, somebody found a doll’s dress at the request of little Argentée. It’s like a little minotaur maid dress… or something… I don’t know. This is madness. Rescuing goblins and dressing them up like dolls?”

“They put a dress on it?” Blackbird found herself intrigued. A goblin wearing a dress. She was reminded of the time when her father had taken her to the travelling carnival. “When Dim wakes up, I think he’s going to be surprised to find a goblin in a dress.”

“Grief does funny things to a creature.” Bombay paused, her scarred face contorted, and she mewed in disgust. “I know what it is doing to me, but I’m afraid for Dim. This is worrisome. I don’t want to say anything that might upset him. Dim is not exactly stable even on his best days. Moon madness. Lunacy. His clock was wound too tight.”

Blackbird took a sip of orange juice, and it was sunshine in a dainty glass.

“I’m glad the Bard isn’t here to see this,” Bombay muttered when she returned her gaze to the window. “Those fools out there are burning up their own livelihoods. Their homes. Pâté au Poulet would be furious with them for being idiots.” Sighing, she leaned up against the window and her face smudged the glass.

“I can’t tell if we were successful,” Bombay said, her words little more than a breathy whisper. “The Bard is gone. All this happened.” She gestured out the window with her paw. “We found two dragons that we came looking for, but not those alicorns, and now we have to go home. Blackbird, did we fuck up?”

Blackbird’s response was almost too honest to bear. “I don’t know.”

“I need to know. I need to know if it was worth losing my Bard.”

“I’m pretty confused about it myself. I keep wondering, what the fuck am I doing here? How did I get involved in this mess and why am I not looking for my mother? I watched the sun come up this morning and I was just so confused. Am I a hero for a nation or a terrible daughter? I have questions… no answers. All this doubt is getting to me.”

“I’m sorry, Blackbird. It’s been hard on us all.”

“Bombay, I’m scared for Dim and a little worried. The Bard’s death… and… and being around those peasants, I think it did something to him. He’s changed. Maybe it’s for the better, but he’s got this intensity—”

“He’s pretty intense already. Like Eerie. Maybe worse. Scary. I wouldn’t want the two of them to be mad together. I’d rather be on the next continent over if that happened.”

With a gulp, Blackbird finished off her orange juice and then scowled. “I wanted Dim to care about things. To be a good pony. Or if not a good pony, at least a decent pony. But now that he cares about things, which is what I wanted, he’s even worse. He’s even more intense. I mean… the bandit fort. And everything. Caring has made Dim even more dangerous and I’m not sure I can handle that. I feel like I did something bad to the world.”

After a moment of silence, Bombay shrugged. “I see that as a good thing. The world needs creatures like Eerie and Dim. Otherwise, nothing would get done. The whole of the world would become slaves and masters. Those that sit back and do nothing, sooner or later, they become slaves. You run out of allies, one by one. You talk yourself to death and what does diplomacy do? Not a damn thing. No amount of diplomacy would make Truffe come around and play nice with Chanson. Dim did the world a favour.”

“But who does Dim a favour?” Blackbird sat her glass down upon the floor and flexed her talons. Vision blurring, she tried to blink away the sting of tears. All of this had a profound impact upon her, so what was it doing to Dim? What was the state of his soul? She desperately wanted him to be a better pony, but would her efforts to make him better only make him worse? What dreadful acts might he do out of some misguided desire to do right?

She thought of her father, Stinkberry. He said the word good was far too ambiguous. Starling, it was said, could blow the head off of somebody from well over several hundred yards away; she was a good shot—but being a good shot offered no assurances of being a good creature. Yes, good was far too ambiguous a term.

Just as she was about to say something along the lines of, “Dim is good at starting fires, but that doesn’t make him a good pony,” a breathless, panting guard crashed through the door, almost tearing it from its hinges.

“Dragon!” She practically barked out the words. “Big one! Big dragon! All mates on deck! Bring every gun to bear! To battlements! Now!”

Author's Note

A lore heavy chapter. It pulls many pieces together.

What weaknesses present themselves

The dragon was the single-most beautiful thing that Blackbird had ever seen. Gleaming silver-white, its beauty was otherworldly, profound, and after she had gazed upon it with great intensity, her vision clouded over with tears. Such stark beauty stood out in sharp contrast to the ruinous desolation of the city all around. The mere sight of it left her feeling peaceful, contemplative, and she was filled with a curious calm that she had not known since she was quite small. Her mood was such that she began to weep; the sheer dreadfulness of this wretched trip leaked from her eyes and soaked her cheeks. Everything that had happened, everything that had been done, all she had witnessed, all she had seen, it all rushed to the surface and overwhelmed her.

From the looks of things, she was not alone.

Two ponies approached the gargantuan silver wyrm; Dim and Chanson both seemed a whole lot smaller with each step they took closer. How Dim could approach such a magnificent creature was beyond Blackbird, whose knocking knees hardly allowed her to move at all. More than anything, she wanted to lay down and have herself a good cry, but now was not the time.

Emperor Chanson Argentée came to a stumbling halt, but Dim kept going.

“Explain yourself, dragon,” demanded Dim as he drew nearer.

Clapping her talons over her mouth, Blackbird was left stunned by the shocked expression on the dragon’s face. How could she tell it was shocked? What else could it possibly be? A pony—a particularly diminutive pony even by pony standards—had the unmitigated audacity to demand that the dragon explain itself. Now, the silver-white dragon was left agape and little curls of smoke rose from the corners of its mouth.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that sort of welcome—”

“I said explain yourself, dragon. Don’t make me ask you again.”

Flexing claws longer than swords, the dragon peered down at what could only be described as the bite-sized morsel making demands. Blackbird, her talons still over her mouth, swallowed and almost choked on the laughter that came pouring out of her throat. Pulling her talons away from her muzzle, she wiped her damp eyes with a many-creased knuckle while having herself a bit of a chuckle.

“A favour was asked of me. Princess Celestia made a formal request that I come here, restore order, and secure the Emperor’s rule.” Bending his serpentine neck, the dragon lowered his head down quite a ways to have a closer look at Dim, who fearlessly stood in an aggressive pose. “My name is Chromium. Your name is Dim. You and Emperor Chanson bear some of my essence.”

Blackbird heard Dim wheeze out the word, “Essence?” Now, it seemed, Dim was confused. Or curious. It didn’t matter, his bluster had been disarmed and the silver dragon had cleverly established its control over the situation.

“Oh, that’s a complicated affair. A long time ago, in a place called Skyreach, I was asked to donate some of my essence. A little something called, ‘Project Eternity.’ I doubt you’ve heard of it. Why, that makes us almost distantly related in a somewhat weird way, I suppose.” Heaving a smokey sigh, he added, “The centaurs were attempting to build a better alicorn. Well then, tiny cousin, let me have a better look at you.”

Saying nothing else, Chromium snatched Dim up from the ground and held him up at eye-level to better examine him. Blackbird, who could hardly believe what she was seeing, hiccupped. Gushing adoration, she allowed her eyes to drink in the sight of the incredibly beautiful dragon, who was now eyeballing Dim in the most inquisitive manner.

“You have Luna’s lineage in you,” Chromium said, obscuring Dim in a cloud of smoke. “But also some of Celestia’s blood. Funny how those paths cross. It’s inevitable, really. As the centuries roll on by, these things are bound to happen. The Nightmare Curse is in full effect, and there is something else… there is something else about you that I cannot quite put my claw upon. How curious. Anyhow, while many of your bloodline would succumb to the Nightmare Curse, you seem to have made it your strength. How curious that you would bend it to your will. Luna lives in fear of it, but you, you’ve embraced it. Hmm, something tells me that you do not strive for goodness, my little pony.”

“Gut und Böse sind bedeutungslos. Beide können in Brand gesetzt und verbrannt werden.”

Rubbing his shiny chin with his free claws, Chromium nodded. “I see.”

“Tust du?” Dim asked, a quick bark of brief sound.

Chromium paused to consider, and then replied, “Ja. Tue ich. Wie kommt es, dass solch eine kleine Kreatur keine Angst vor einer so großen Kreatur hat?”

“Ich habe vor, meinen Schwanz in die Sphinx zu stecken.”

“So viel Mut.” Chromium began to chuckle. “I wish you the best of luck. You’ll need it, Sphinxficker.”

“So, you’ve come to put the city in order?” Emperor Chanson Argentée’s voice cracked with every word. “Then you are welcome. We are grateful for any aid you have to offer. Thank you.”

“If all of you will excuse me, I have work to do. Now, how did that repair spell go?”

Unable to enter the boardroom, Blackbird paced, fitful and unsettled. Chromium had turned himself into a pony; a magnificent silver unicorn, a size that allowed him to enter the skyscraper, ride the elevator, and do whatever it is that they were doing in the boardroom, the place that she had been shut out of. This was irksome. She had done so much to save this place and this was her thanks?

“It’s that Spider Queen that Dim found.”

With a sudden twist of her neck in an almost boneless, supple way, Blackbird glanced down her back at Bombay Sable, who stood in the doorway. The fastidious felinoid was sculpting her claws with a fine, long file and wore an expression of casual disinterest. A thousand trains of thought all readied to leave the station of Blackbird’s mind, and she found that she could neither focus nor concentrate upon any one particular thing.

“What else could warrant a private meeting with a silver dragon?” Bombay continued, her whiskers quivering with every spoken word. “No doubt, right now, there’s a fine toothed comb going over Dim’s memories of the encounter. And you… you were kept out so you wouldn’t fret over his discomfort or worry about him. Tell me, Blackbird… does it bother you at all that Dim gets a bit friendly with creatures like that Spider Queen?”

Blackbird, distracted, replied without thinking. “Should it?”

“I’m not too bothered by it myself. No, what concerns me is just how friendly those creatures might be with Dim. Makes me think they want something from him. Just like that silver dragon wanted something from him. Seems like everybody who is anybody wants something from Dim… and as for Dim himself—”

“He is loyal to us,” Blackbird said to her companion, fearing what might be said.

“I was just about to say the same thing.”

Groaning from a sigh of relief, Blackbird felt her spine unkink. When had she gone tense? She couldn’t remember. Bombay was still filing her claws, and Blackbird wondered if maybe she should do the same. A deep breath, a shudder, and a few talon-taps against the floor passed a few seconds as the conversation hit a lul. Dim was loyal, wasn’t he? I mean, he would never be tempted by whatever promises of power that Spider Queen had offered him. He had come back for her. She made herself take a deep breath and wondered where this conversation was going.

“I worry if we’ve become his weaknesses.” Bombay’s words had all of the subtlety of a cast iron skillet dropped on a tile floor. “Maybe my loss has me thinking funny. Dim’s dangerous because he has nothing to lose. He didn’t take sides and only looked out for himself. But now, he’s sided with us and—”

“We’ve picked sides?” Blackbird wondered if she had said the right thing and when Bombay nodded, the big hippogriff felt her muscles go twitchy.

“Yes we have.” Bombay slipped her file away into an inner pocket of her coat, adjusted her belt, and then smoothed out her lapels with finicky paw motions. “I fear there will come a time when Dim’s weakness will be exploited. I’ve learned something about my associations with Eerie… if you are friends with powerful creatures, they attract powerful enemies. That fake alicorn is only just the beginning, Blackbird.”

Reaching up with one paw, Bombay rubbed the scars around her missing eye with tiny circular motions. “I need sleep.” The statement came out sounding weary and pained. “Are we strong enough to be Dim’s friends? It was already hard enough with Eerie. But Dim…” Her words faded into a breathy, pained groan.

“Maybe that’s what friendship is.” Blackbird’s tail swished as if it had a mind of its own. “Maybe we’re not strong enough… but we’ll do it anyway. Dim will be courted and hunted by powerful stuff. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll manage somehow. I plan to stick this out. Dim came back for me. He didn’t have to.”

Bombay chuckled, an unexpected but welcomed sound. “Seems to me that you are courting and hunting Dim, Blackbird. I’ve seen the way you look at him. It makes me feel better to see it. There has to be love in the world, Blackbird. The Bard was always going on about that, and he’d make exaggerated efforts to woo me. I miss him.”

Alas, Blackbird wasn’t sure what to say. She had the object of her heart’s desire and any kind words she had to offer just felt… hollow. Empty. Meaningless. Sure, she knew loss; having lost her father, but it wasn’t the same and she knew it. Bombay had lost her soulmate, her one true love, the perfect fairytale romance that only a privileged few will ever know or experience. How did one console another over a loss like that? What words could possibly be said.

“It’s all coming together, Blackbird. All the pieces are being moved into place. We’re some of those pieces. With Chromium’s arrival, it feels like somebody just moved a rook—or a queen, perhaps—across the board. A war is coming, Blackbird, and we failed. Feels like we’ve failed. We’ve lost the Bard. I’m a pawn myself, but the Bard was one of those important pieces in the back row.” Shaking her head, Bombay now seemed at a loss for words. Unable to continue her thoughts, she mewed in frustration and then said her final words: “I’m going back to sleep. If anything exciting happens, come wake me up.”

This place. Blackbird had never seen anything quite like this place. After her extended tour of the countryside of Fancy, after seeing the squalid living conditions that the poorest endured, this place truly stood out. Hot and cold air came through vents, ensuring that the room was just the right temperature. Fine carpets covered the floors. Clean running water came from faucets. Elevators saved one from the effort of running up and down stairs. Electric lights banished the darkness.

Chanson’s living quarters were rather bare, sure, but the rest of the skyscraper stood as a testament to what the modern era could provide. After seeing the worst of living conditions, this place stood out in sharp, painful contrast. A tall tower of gleaming steel, glass, and concrete. An army of staff that kept everything neat and tidy.

At the moment though, all of this mattered very little.

“Dim, are you alright?”

Exhausted, Dim only held his head up so he could sip from a steaming cup of tea. He hadn’t slept much as the dragon’s arrival had interrupted his sleep. In Blackbird’s eyes, Dim appeared frail. She moved closer, halted for but a moment, and then drew closer still. When she reached Dim’s bedside, she sat down on the floor, reached up with her talons, and with a careful flick, swept Dim’s mane away from his mismatched eyes.

“A small mind such as mine was never meant to contain the mind of an ancient dragon.”

Of course, Blackbird did not understand, but she kept her ignorance to herself. Half of Dim was covered by a blanket, but his front hooves hung out over the edge of the bed. They were in a poor state, Dim’s hooves, in need of care and attention. Chipped, scuffed, adventure-worn, his front hooves made Dim look more a vagabond than a vizard.

He needed a trim and a little work done. Unable to keep her talons to herself, she stroked his chin, where a tiny tuft of fine black hairs had sprouted. Then, with her talon-fingers on his chin, she noticed the fine black hairs on his upper lip, too. Eyes narrowing, she studied him for a bit, and then decided that a bit of facial hair suited him. Vizards should be hirsute.

She sat watching him blink, entranced by the way that his eyelids each seemed to move of their own accord. One moved faster than the other, but this changed. It was fascinating to watch—alluring in its own way. Bluish highlights danced within the silken strands of his ebony-black mane.

“Chromium told me much, Blackbird. Filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge.” Dim took a sip of tea, and Blackbird watched him swallow. “Two very different wars are brewing. The conflict of the Midreach will consume the whole of the world. But as awful as this will be, the conflict that comes after will be worse. Grogar will profit from this state of conflict. It doesn’t matter which side wins, Grogar will ultimately be the victor. If this conflict could somehow be stopped, if a peaceful solution could somehow be found, it would hurt Grogar immensely. He needs war, hostility, and death. A solution to bring peace to the Midreach might even be Grogar’s undoing, but I think that’s optimistic nonsense.”

Another sip, and then he added, “Grogar would only slumber and wait for the next conflict to arise.”

“So what I hear you saying is, even if the good guys win this coming fight, we still lose?”

Blackbird saw the pain in Dim’s eyes and then she heard him say, “Yes.”

Her talons came to rest upon the bed, mere inches away from Dim’s foreleg. She thought of everything going on here in Fancy, and though she wasn’t the smartest creature, she knew how the events here could and would affect what went on in other places. The crushing weight of failure settled upon her back and made her proud neck bend.

“Chromium says the old pantheons are reviving. And he’s right. Chantico has come back from death. In Windia, Collie Ma has been resurrected by her Thuggee cult and she roams the land, spreading great evil. The Black Hound has returned to collect the heads of depraved diamond dogs and has been seen in Windia battling the Thuggee cults. It’s as if the entire world prepares for a battle that might very well end it.”

“Get some sleep, Dim.”

“Will you watch over me?” he asked.

Aware of the moment of naked vulnerability, Blackbird made no effort to be funny. “Of course, Dim. I’ll be here when you wake. Now get some sleep.”

“As soon as I finish my tea…”

Author's Note

This might be the last chapter for a while. I am about to embark.

Brain damage

Eyes crusty, throat dry, and his horn aching from extreme overexertion, Dim wished that he had not woke. Though he was loathe to admit it, The War Maiden’s Absolute Invisibility took a lot out of him. Life was cruel, unfair, and horrid. He was powerful enough to cast the spell, but not powerful enough to sustain it without severe consequences. ‘Twas a cruel twist of fate, one that bit deep and caused no end of agonising.

It had taken a toll, leaving him weak and quite helpless.

He struggled to be free of the blankets, his legs making feeble, ineffective kicks. Lifting his head took effort, and electric jolts traveled up and down his neck and spine with his every movement. This was the cost of magic; the terrible, tragic cost, and right now he felt inches away from death. Still, as awful as it was, it was worth it. Power came at a price he was willing to pay.

A dreadful tickle lurked in his lungs, a terrible beast in waiting. He would need to smoke sooner, rather than later, otherwise he doubted his breathing would continue for any meaningful time. As he struggled, the blankets were pulled from him, and the cool air of the room graced his sides as Blackbird helped him get out of bed. With a turn of his head, he caught her expression, he saw her worry, and when their eyes met, there was a curious, almost magical moment.

They were diametric opposites, he and she, but also two sides of the same coin.

“Help me,” he rasped, words he could not ever recall saying to another living being.

“You’ve been asleep for almost two days now,” Blackbird said in return. “We need to get you sorted out, Dim. You sound terrible. Oh, by the way, Munro taught your goblin how to curtsey.”

For Dim, snark was too much effort, and he waited for Blackbird to lift him out of bed.

A deep toke drew soothing smoke into Dim’s lungs and eased the dreadful tickle lurking in his lungs. The clove-infused smoke deadened all sensation, numbed his throat, and offered cooling relief to the stoked furnace hidden betwixt his ribs. His eyeball pipe had a terrifying glow that intensified with every inhale and drew the attention of his companions.

Beside him, on a pillar-shaped table, there was an overly large snifter of Cognac and a small wedge of cheese with some grapes to tide him over. As had been promised, he was getting his meal, the feast that was his payment. A few feet away, Blackbird was compulsively cleaning and oiling her guns. Bombay was reading a spellbook with a dull-blue cover while also twirling her wand in her paw-fingers, an impressive display of dexterity.

“The Solar Stinger is a real mess,” Bombay said, still twirling her wand. “We’ll be lucky to limp home. No high-altitude travels. If we encounter Black Talon ships, we’ll be in heaps of trouble.”

Sneering, Dim lifted his snifter but did not drink.

“They’ve rigged up a new prototype Stirling engine.” Blackbird did not look up from the cylinder she was swabbing with oil. “A closed loop alcohol system. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so less fuel is needed to heat everything up. I’m looking forward to studying the system while it is in action.”

“We don’t need fuel.” Dim swirled the Cognac in his snifter. “We have two dragons and myself. If we can’t keep the system hot, then we’re all irredeemable fuckwits. Just imagine how much faster we can go not having to haul whatever fuel is needed.”

Bombay’s wand ceased to twirl, vanished up her sleeve, and she pointed a clawed finger at Dim. “He’s right, you know. I can use magic to keep a bath hot for hours, so I can probably keep alcohol above boiling.”

Meanwhile, Dim took careful, cultured sips of his Cognac.

Blackbird, her eyes glittering, changed the subject rather abruptly, as she was wont to do. “So why is it that both of you keep reading your spellbooks? Don’t you already know the spells? Seems like a waste of time. Magic seems like too much work and this is why I like guns.”

Dim exchanged a glance with Bombay and wordlessly conveyed his amused annoyance. After the exchange, Bombay closed her book, folded her arms over her girth, and when she smiled, her whiskers quivered, but Dim could not read whatever it was she was feeling.

Feeling charitable, Dim decided to share the secrets of magic with Blackbird, something that typically just wasn’t done. Still holding his snifter of Cognac aloft, he said, “The words of a spell physically transform the mind, altering the matter of the brain and rearranging the neurons. It is… it is a sort of coding system, a cipher of sorts. Not every brain, not every mind can handle this influx of information. Sometimes, repeated readings are necessary to slowly build the connections required to channel the magic. A written spell is just a completed process of automation that triggers a complex sequence of actions.

“Now, repeated readings strengthen these neural connections, making the effect of the spell stronger, or granting new insight, and sometimes, if one is lucky, you might find a better way to cast the spell. There is a mysterious connection between the glyphs and siguls used for writing spells and the eyes that is not fully understood. This is why dangerous wizards have their eyes gouged out when imprisoned.”

“Ew.” Blackbird’s lips peeled back from her teeth as she grimaced.

“Spell casting is also inherently dangerous work,” Dim continued in fine form while swirling his Fancy Cognac. “When a caster over-exerts themselves to the point of injury, to the point of getting things like nosebleeds, ruptured blood vessels in the eyes, or having a thaumaturgical stroke, they lose constructed neural connections. All those complex constructed neural connections come undone. Typically. Not always. But there is a high chance of losing the most complex, most difficult spells burned into memory. When this happens, those spells must be re-learned—burned back into memory. I have, in fact, lost spells. A wizard can only push themselves so hard before the risks manifest into very real consequences. This is yet another reason why I champion the use of the simplest of spells, because these spells tend to stick around after your brain gets scrambled.”

“Engaging in magical combat, your brain will get scrambled,” Bombay added. “Dim’s onto something though with his approach. He’s less likely to lose those spells he has burned into memory. That’s pretty clever. One time, Eerie damn-near lobotomised herself and lost almost every spell she knew after a mental battle with a mind-devourer.”

“Disgusting.” Dim hissed out the word. “All those tentacles on their face. I’ve seen a pickled one on display. I understand that they are creatures of immense power and great danger.”

“Eerie made its head explode.” Bombay said this with a emphatic nod.

“Impressive,” was Dim’s earnest response. “She is powerful… of that, there can be no doubt.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Dim.”

Saying nothing, Dim instead drank more of his fine Fancy Cognac.

Crestfallen, Blackbird shook her head. “So you can lose everything that you know. That… I don’t have words for that. Now every time Dim pushes himself too hard, I’m going to worry. And books that change your brain. That’s weird. And wrong. Confusing. I think I’ll stick with guns.”

“Using complex shields is the riskiest of moves. Sure, you’re protected”—here, Bombay paused for a bit so that she could thoughtfully chew upon her lip—“but if something strikes your shield hard enough to break it, there’s a good chance of brain damage. Losing a few spells. I’ve had it happen to me. I suppose it is better than catching a bullet with my spleen, or whatever. Guns were the great game-changer. With arrows, sling stones, and the like, there is very little chance of those penetrating your defenses. But guns? Not only will bullets pop your shields like a soap bubble, they’ll wipe spells from your memory, too.”

Sneering, his thin lips wrinkled with disgust, Dim muttered, “Guns were the great equaliser. A vizard has to be careful now, or face the consequences of hubris.”

“So what I am hearing is, I can rob a wizard of his spells.” Blackbird’s glittering eyes narrowed. “My big cannons will scramble the spells right out of a wizard’s brain, if not kill them outright.”

Again, Dim shared a glance with Bombay, and he saw her nod. This had been a beneficial exchange, with Blackbird now understanding one of the big top-tier fundamentals of magic. Dim’s mouth contorted into a skin-shivering malevolent smirk and his mismatched eyes glittered with malicious glee. He felt no sense of betrayal to the vast brotherhood of magery, no sense of shame in revealing this. In fact, a part of him wished that he had shared this information with Blackbird sooner. They would, in fact, be deadlier working together than individually.

For the first time, Dim saw strength rather than a liability. Had Eerie learned this lesson? She might have. It was a tough lesson for a Dark to learn. To trust and depend upon another—‘twas the very height of foolishness. Yet, he had seen the proof, the evidence. Together, they had been a force to be reckoned with. Their efforts as a team were astonishing. Perhaps a little rough to start, and the fight with the pseudo-alicorn had gone poorly, of that there could be no doubt.

Dim reached an understanding that could not be put into words.

“With a single bullet, I can erase years of study.”

Now, Dim squirmed. Blackbird had cottoned on a bit too well. He could see it in her eyes. She was thinking her thoughts, her naughty, terrible thoughts—and this excited him, while also leaving him terrified. Blackbird was a big excitable creature, and he had seen first hoof just what she was capable of. Never again could she be seen as a gentle giant, or a lovable oaf—she was a hippogriff among hippogriffs, predatory perfection. Even by hippogriff standards, Blackbird was exceptional, the very standard by which all hippogriffs were judged.

The Cognac burned some bravery back into his throat and Dim went still.

Infatuation was a dangerous, intoxicating drug. He offered no resistance as he was pulled into the throes of it and allowed himself a rare display of emotion. What others saw, he had no idea, but the warm sense of affection that he felt softened the hard edges of his features. When he coughed, he re-lit his pipe and filled his lungs with soothing, numbing smoke that deadened the electric agony transmitted by his nerves.

“So how do spells get into spellbooks?” Blackbird’s head tilted off to the left, then to the right, and after thinking for a bit, her expression settled into one of piqued perplexity. “I mean, this seems unbelievably complex. If you write a spell, you’re changing another creature’s brain. So how does that work?”

Dim’s mismatched eyes had a rare moment where they both blinked in synchronised perfection. It was a rare thing to have happen, like hen’s teeth. His ears leaned back, giving him a beautiful, almost feminine profile from the side. After a short, abrupt exhale, his lips drew tight against his teeth as he began to speak:

“How it works is unknown. Theoretically speaking, any creature capable of magic is also capable of scribing magic. However, the ability to do so is complex and takes a great deal of mental fortitude. Concentration. You have to allow yourself to slip into a meditative trance and then the spell just sort of writes itself. It is a sequence of every condition needed for the spell to happen, the means to shape raw magic into something controlled and orderly.

“A spell starts off as chaos. Thought put into action. With but a thought, I can set something on fire. That is simple and requires no real effort. But what if I wanted to burn something that didn’t wish to be burned? Something that had some rudimentary means of fire-protection. Well, I would need to dispel those protections and then commit to ignition. That can be done with raw magic, a series of thoughts, repeated until successful results are achieved. These correct actions can be coalesced into a sequence and that… that is a spell that can be scribed. Your experience can be turned into glyphs… siguls… committed to paper, and shared with another. That is a simple spell. There are complex ones.”

“Dim works with a lot of raw magic,” Bombay said, which drew a hiss out of Dim. “He does. And I mean that as a compliment, Dim. There’s no shame in working with raw, unshaped magic. I envy your ability, if I can be honest.”

This caught Dim off-guard. “Really?”

“I wouldn’t say it unless I meant it.”

For a moment, Dim started to think of his mother, his family, the Darks in general, but then he pushed those thoughts from his mind. He did not need to remember their ridicule, their derision, their mocking ways. Because he lacked the raw power that they flaunted, he had turned to experimental magic, raw magic, and finding new ways to work with the simplest of spells. Bombay was sincere—there was no way he could doubt this—and her kind words left a curious prickling in his heart.

“Thank you.” Dim couldn’t believe the words that had just left his mouth, nor could he believe the sincerity with which he had spoken them. Now, he was every bit as perplexed as Blackbird, lost in a social exchange that he had no real understanding of.

Just as he was about to say something else, Motte stuck his head through the door and said, “Get ready to eat!”

Author's Note

Next: Goblin some din-din.

When the dead demand rememberance

Puke Puddle was wearing a dress. Unable to help himself, Dim’s lip curled back into a sneer—it was a reflexive action that was second-nature to him. Perhaps the most noticeable change to Puke Puddle was that she was immaculately clean. Her pelt was reddish, making her look more vulpine than feline. She wore a pink cast that covered her arm from shoulder to wrist, with a bend at the elbow, and a makeshift sling hung from her tiny, fragile neck.

The fingers that emerged from the cast were most certainly reptilian.

Just behind her, Munro hovered, waiting for approval. The young minotaur was fidgety, unable to hold still, and showed more than just a little concern for the tiny goblin that didn’t even reach his knee. Though he would never admit, not even under the pain of torture, Dim was touched by what he saw. His valet, a remarkable creature by any standard, showed genuine kindness for the goblin that he had been made responsible to care for.

For Dim, it was a much-needed reminder that there was good in the world.

“Go on, show him. Do it.” Munro made a gesture with his big, beefy hand.

When these words were said, Puke Puddle became quite bashful—she hemmed and hawed, squirmed, and tried to smooth out her dress with her free hand. After taking a deep breath, she bent both knees, grabbed a hank of her dress in her clawed fingers, and curtseyed. Unsure of how to react, Dim stood stoic, unmoving, his lip still curled back into its customary sneer.

After what felt like two minutes had passed, he said to Munro, “You taught a goblin to curtsey.”

Without even a second passing, Munro replied, “It seemed proper.”

Dim had no response to this, but his cheeks drew tight and his mouth—his mouth almost contorted into a smile. Bowing his head, he bent his neck until he was eye-level with Puke Puddle. “You’ll have to curtsey when you meet the Empress. The Impératrice, if I remember my titles correctly. I’m positive that she’ll be impressed.”

“Dim, you’re bringing a goblin to dinner?” Motte, incredulous, began to shake his head.

“We’re invited to a meal. The goblin is with me.”

Motte snorted, but said nothing else.

Blackbird, unable to remain silent any longer, shoved Dim out of the way as she pushed past him, and then she sat down on the floor in front of Puke Puddle. Reaching down, she adjusted the goblin’s dress, and engaged in other Blackbird-esque activities while saying, “You’re very pretty in that dress. I don’t have a nice dress, but then again, I walk around on all fours. I don’t think I could curtsey to save my life. Now, you remember the stuff that Munro taught you about forks and spoons, don’t you?”

The gobliness offered up a frightened nod.

“She took to using tableware with ease,” Bailey remarked. Then, looking Dim right in the eye, she added, “She doesn’t like being naked. Or dirty. Dim, your goblin has standards.”

Dim’s aristocratic sneer intensified. “As well she should, being my servant. I can’t have her being shabby and disgusting, looking like a vagabond—”

“Yeah, having her look like you would be bad,” Bombay cut in, and in doing so, became the target of Dim’s soul-curdling stare. “When you arrive at dinner, they’re going to introduce you as Prince Raggamuffin.”

“And my loyal feline follower, Lady Guttersnipe, the Back Alley Yowler.”

Bombay’s tail went exclamation point straight, but she said nothing.

Bailey asked, “What does a cutie mark for sarcasm look like?”

Ignoring all of this, Dim returned his attention to the small, helpless, pathetic creature that looked utterly bewildered by everything taking place. “Stay close to me. Remain calm and quiet, and everything will be fine. If anypony says anything derogatory, I’ll rip their aorta out”—here, he made a long, dramatic pause, and when the tension had matured a bit, he added—“through their asshole.”

“Well, the Prince has his loyal retinue, let’s go eat. I wonder where Jolie and Gratin are?”

“Motte, If you have to ask…” Bombay added a dismissive wave of her paw to her words.

It took a moment, but Motte reached a moment of realisation; upon doing so, he smiled. “We did keep poor Gratin away from Jolie.” The grizzled combat engineer chuckled for a bit, finally visibly relaxing, and good cheer returned to his eyes. “Let’s go eat.”

Dim had entered the room expecting a formal affair, but was pleasantly surprised when he realised that this was not meant to be. Pearl Fisher was dressed, but not exquisitely so. She was also their host, a surprising position for an Impératrice to be in. Jolie and Gratin were already seated, and from the looks of things, Jolie was quite pleased with herself.

At one end of the table, Chromium was wearing the body of a unicorn and reading a book.

“Forgive me, but my husband will not be joining us.” Pearl Fisher’s ears dropped into an apologetic position. “The past few days, they have claimed their toll from him. He is spending time with our foals so that he might recover himself, so he be himself once more.”

“Ah, but he is not the beautiful one whose company I sought,” replied Dim.

Ears splaying out, Pearl Fisher’s eyes narrowed. “The Jeebie King is a flatterer. Do make yourself at home. There is wine, as promised.”

With a fine, aristocratic saunter, Dim approached the table and sat down at the end opposite of Chromium, who had not yet looked up from his book. Then, the others began to sit down, and the table became quite crowded. Dim’s companions, all of them, ponies, a hippogriff, a minotaur, an Abyssinian, two dragons, and one goblin all gathered together. As they sat down, he looked at them, feeling a certain odd kinship with them, even those he hardly knew.

With time, he would know them.

“Before we start,” said Jolie as she sat up straight, “we should take a moment to remember the Bard. Let us tip back our glasses and remember him.”

The words struck Dim, and something deep within him shifted, a physical sensation that curdled the bowels. That was the problem: he did remember the Bard. The wounds were still fresh, still raw, so much so that tending to them was unpleasant, a squeamish task subject to procrastination. Suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to be alone.

In a tragic turn of fate, the scent of wine brought no comfort, offered no relief.

Dim watched as his glass was filled and with a sigh, collapsed in upon himself, slouching down. It occurred to him that Puke Puddle never curtseyed for the Impératrice, which only seemed to add to his melancholy. He missed his friend and wondered to himself, had the Bard been properly avenged? Was his death made worthwhile? Dim had no way of knowing, no means to determine if Pâté au Poulet’s loss had been reconciled.

Gasconeigh was in ruins, but could be saved.

He felt weak, tired still, as if he could go back to bed, close his eyes, and lose himself in a slumbersome abyss. It was only now, after his friend was gone, that Dim realised just how important those valued moments were. It was like a precious resource that there was far too little of, and now that it was gone, he was left wanting more.

Loss hurt.

It hurt like nothing else and Dim knew that at any moment, any one of his companions might die. Their lives meant something to him—and this bothered him because he couldn’t bear the concept of loss. It was easier—safer—to have nothing. A lone vizard for hire, life on the road, going from place to place, never to settle in one spot for too long. It felt as though a mistake had been made—yet he could not deny that he was a better pony for having made it.

“The Bard was the best of us,” said Dim whilst raising his glass.

All around the table, others followed his example, even those who did not know the Bard, and this made Dim feel better. Even Chromium had joined in, enigmatic, mysterious Chromium, the silver dragon whose powers rivaled that of any alicorn. Respect and decency were sorely needed things right now, seeings as how the Bard’s homeland had fallen into barbarity. Here they were, sitting together in a high tower, safe from all but the worst of threats.

Alas, others did not share in this great fortune.

When the last glass was raised, Dim drank. The first swallow was bitter, for reasons unknown. It might have been the wine itself, or the memory recalled upon drinking it. But warmth, like a gentle, reassuring dawn spread as that first drink was swallowed, and with warmth came sweetness, fickle though it might be. Tilting his head back, Dim emptied his glass in just a few swallows.

Something was wrong with his eyes; his companions were blurry, indistinct, and try as he might, he could not focus on them. Also, his eyes were curiously moist, a most unpleasant condition that he loathed and despised. He filled his own glass before anypony else could, and then he destroyed it in the most aristocratic way possible.

“The Bard was a fine fuck.” Jolie’s words stunned all present and many heads turned to look at her. “No, he was a magnificent fuck, as is befitting the one who might have been the Alicorn of Love. He was a giver, he was gentle, but also a randy little shit who was into some kinky deviance. The world is a lesser place without him.” Then, holding her glass in her fetlock, the tiny mare raised it high in salute. “The world has a shortage of fine fucks and we mourn every precious one lost.”

“Here here,” said Bailey, also raising her glass.

After pouring more wine, Dim raised his as well.

Following Jolie’s lead, together, they drank. Dim emptied yet another glass and he was feeling better now, well enough to eat. A pot of cheese bubbled in front of him, there was a platter of bread, fruit, and vegetables, as well as a collection of long-handled forks. Then, without realising the danger of doing so, Dim glanced over to check on Puke Puddle to see how she was doing.

She clutched a tiny doll-sized cup that had been thoughtfully placed out for her.

He was forced to close his eyes, because the moment was too much to bear. His emotions roiled, churned by the heartwarming sight. She was mourning somepony that she did not know, and her weird, almost vulpine face had been so solemn during that brief moment when he had looked at her. Now, it was said that goblins were brutish, unfeeling creatures, and just now, he had witnessed otherwise.

Of course, it was also said that he was a brutish, unfeeling creature.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Blackbird looking at him. Her eyes were two brilliant green jewels lost in a swirling, shimmering, glossy void of darkness. She was easily the blackest shade of black that he had ever laid eyes on. Perhaps it was the wine, but Blackbird was quite pleasant to look at right now, beautiful, a feast for the eyes.

Blinking caused a trick of the eyes, and for a moment, he saw Darling Dark superimposed over Blackbird. More blinking fixed this, but the memory, once summoned, would not go away. The dull claws of melancholy did not make clean cuts as they raked through his mind, but rather shredded and mutilated his grey matter. His magic faltered—so much so that he was forced to switch streams and his telekinesis alternated between the two colours of his mismatched eyes.

Ears pricking, Dim could almost hear Darling singing.

“The Jeebie King keeps company with haints.” Pearl Fisher’s patois was thick with concern and she stared at Dim with piercing, knowing eyes. “You be lost in the company of the living, Jeebie King. Come away from those haints and be with us warm ones.”

“How…” Dim gulped, but could not swallow the lump in his throat. “How is it that you know?”

“I sense what cannot be seen,” was Pearl Fisher’s cryptic response. “A moment ago, I felt the cold. It feels like a grating on the bones.”

Not caring about what he was saying, or what others might think of what they heard, Dim spilled his heart out to Pearl Fisher. “Before she died, she saw a pale pony, and he was surrounded by shadows. She’s haunted me ever since. I keep seeing her face and sometimes I can hear her singing.”

“You not crazy, if that what you think. It real. Real enough, anyway.” Pearl Fisher poured more wine for Dim, her eyes warm with concern. “Eat. Drink. Spend time with us living. Don’t give the dead a reason to go a-hainting. They can’t go where life is strong.”

Wary, Dim wasn’t sure if he believed this, but he said nothing aloud. For now, perhaps it was better to let the issue drop. If they couldn’t go where life was strong, how could he have seen Darling just a moment ago? Perhaps it was him, the outsider, alone in a crowd. This thought was unsettling, disturbing, unpleasant.

Here he was, remembering those departed. In remembering the Bard, Darling had come to call. If Pearl Fisher was to be believed, it was more than just a trick of the mind. It unnerved Dim that Pearl Fisher seemed to know. Just how had a unicorn learned zebra spirit-magics? Such a thing was possible, the evidence for it was right in front of him.

Chromium, his silver hide shimmering, scillilating in mesmerising ways, cleared his throat and said, “The dead are not welcome here. That’s enough of that.” A flash of light burst from the tip of his horn and the room filled with a life-affirming warmth.

Right away, Dim felt the difference. His thoughts calmed, his heart slowed, and he almost felt at ease again. Though it trembled, he raised his glass, placed it to his lips, and emptied it in just a few swallows. Then, after he set his glass down, he decided that he much preferred the company of the living.

Author's Note

Now, off to work on something else...

An invitation into the light

The food was good, but did little to satisfy. And the wine? Much the same. Darling’s brief appearance had draped a pall upon Dim’s mood. While there was regret, not to mention pain, he was more reflective, more introspective than anything else. Whilst he ate, he questioned, wondering how things might have been. Hindsight gave him wisdom, and with wisdom, he gained clarity. With clarity, he saw a much larger picture.

Even if he had stayed at home, at some point his mother’s nefarious plans would have come to light. Home would not have stayed home for long, and they would have had to flee: this outcome was inevitable, unavoidable. This would have been a terrible outcome, Dim knew, because then he would have stumbled into Grogar’s clutches with none of the sense of self he had found during his time on the Grittish Isles. Why, he might have embraced Grogar just for the sake of comfort, or from boredom, or just to continue his deadened, muffled existence.

His companions laughed and Dim was distracted, but not so much so that he lost this train of thought. That Dim, his previous self, was the very embodiment of weakness; soft, spineless, sniveling, with no discernible sense of character. As for the Dim he was now… he allowed his eyes to go from companion to companion, except for Blackbird, because he was fearful of what he might see.

Their fight was his fight. Why? There had been times rather recently that he had convinced himself that he knew the reasons, but now he doubted. Yet, this doubt was not the self-crippling kind. No, this was introspective, self-searching doubt. He had honest concerns about his own motivations, and Martinet’s words echoed in the depths of his mind, as did the Spider Queen’s.

A part of him longed to speak to Chantico.

“Dim.”

The sound of his name caused all of his thoughts to tumble. It was a commanding voice, imperious even, and while it had been a friendly, kind voice, it was nothing like that now. Holding his fondue fork aloft, Dim locked eyes with Chromium, the dragon who wore the body of a unicorn. His voice was cold now, utterly devoid of warmth or emotion. Dim realised he wasn’t being spoken to, but rather, spoken at.

“Why do you take refuge in shadow, Dim?” Both of Chromium’s forelegs came to rest upon the table and the not-unicorn leaned forwards. “If you would only step into the light, Dim… embrace it. You would not be so vulnerable to these… intrusions. Your deviance puts you, as well as your companions, at risk. Why do this to them?”

An unsettling quiet settled over the table; even the clink of tableware and glasses seemed muffled. Dim had no answer, at least not at the moment, and Chromium’s words had laid him bare. The not-unicorn sipped from his wine glass, grimaced, and set his glass down on the table. Dim, unwilling to reveal just how shaken he was, nibbled on the cheese-soaked bread skewered upon the end of his fondue fork.

“Look at you… look at how you have risen above your base nature. You are powerful, Dim… of that there can be no argument. But, if only you would step into the light… you could become truly great. Your name would be remembered through the ages. For good things, mind you. Not infamy. Cast aside your degeneracy and step into the light, Dim.”

Eyes narrowing, Dim sneered at the dragon wearing a unicorn body. “You know, I don’t go telling you to step into the shadows with me. I’m not nearly sanctimonious enough. There is something to be said about that, I feel. As a force of righteousness, Chantico chose me to be her herald… not some pompous, bloviating, self-righteous windbag.”

“This emotion… this passion… this fire. It burns for no cause other than your own. With your great wit, you advance no great cause other than your own selfish ends. There are nobles, Dim, and then are nobles. Those truly born to rule. As it stands right now, you are an asset to no one, not even yourself. Your indecision has left you vulnerable, weak even, to the advances of the Enemy. But you could be doing more. Look at what you have done here. But this… this is a half-hearted effort.”

“Your flattery is but nettles, insults in the guise of compliments. Is this what passes for the manners of dragons?” Dim saw a dark shadow pass over Chromium’s face and was filled with wicked glee that he was careful to not reveal. “Do the righteous have no need of table manners? No respect for their hosts? How is it that I, a creature you denigrate and attempt to shame, has better etiquette than you do? Say what you will about my degeneracy, but I have impeccable table manners.”

“You have no respect for goodness—”

“I think you mean to say I have no fear of you and I do not kowtow to your self-righteous, haughty demands. Your aloofness disgusts me. You dragons could be doing more for the world. But no… you only came to help at the request of another. While you and your kind did nothing but revel in your own glory, how many died here? How many suffered? How long was this decline allowed to happen while capable creatures such as yourself did nothing? Fuck you, and fuck your lazy haughtiness, wyrm.” Then, remembering his manners, he gestured at the two dragons he rescued and added, “Present company excluded. At least you two were out helping the world.”

Prominence seemed downright horrified by this exchange, and averted her eyes.

Motte—who cast fearful glances in Chromium’s direction—cleared his throat and said, “If I may, I’d like to call attention to the fact that Dim has a point. You elder dragons do nothing until it suits you, all while looking down at us and calling attention to our shortcomings.”

“We can’t get involved in everything, because you short-lived creatures are always in some state of conflict. Your societies change too rapidly for us to keep up. At one point, when slaves rose up against their masters, the right thing was helping their masters keep order. Now things are topsy-turvey. When slaves revolt, whose side do we take? The changes that you and your kind enact… change for the sake of change… and always so quickly. Some things we allow to happen and then we let history be the judge of who was right, and who was wrong. It is difficult to tell when it is the right time to become involved. Everything seems to be a crisis with your kind.” Chromium, who spoke in a calm deadpan, poured himself more wine while he kept his gaze focused on Dim.

Blackbird squirmed in her seat, almost as if she was sitting on a hot coal, and Dim wished that she wouldn’t be so distracting. Her face contorted in all sorts of ways, her talons flexed, and behind her, her tail flogged empty air. Just as Dim was about to say something to Blackbird about what she was doing, she had her own words to say.

“Uh, did you just defend slavery? Is that what passes for good?”

“It was acceptable at one time,” Chromium replied, still speaking in an emotionless deadpan.

“I thought good was immutable.” Blackbird leveled her predatory gaze upon Chromium, and this drew his attention away from Dim.

“It was noble. The masses were given purpose, meaning, and laboured for the greater good. Now, look around you. Look at the squallour. These creatures have no purpose, no meaning, and each of them works for a cause no greater than their own survival.”

“That sounds an awful lot like slaver talk…”

“You’re utterly incapable of seeing the bigger picture with your short, insignificant life. This is why we don’t get involved. Our views and your views are utterly incompatible.” Though his voice did not change, Chromium frowned.

Before anything else could be said, Prominence spoke, and did so with great eloquence. “Ember is trying to form a dragon homeland. She feels that we’ve sat back and done nothing for too long while the world suffers around us. We’re capable of great good, but we’ve done nothing but look after our own selfish interests for far too long. That’s why Thod and I were sent out into the world, so that we might learn to do better. We’re dragons. We are mighty, mighty dragons. Do we have a noble reputation? No. We’re jerks. Selfish, greedy, hoarding jerks.”

“Prominence,” Chromium began, his deadpan gone and his tone chiding.

But he was cut off when she continued, “Ember’s great shame is that we didn’t do anything until this gathering conflict affected us. We’re being hunted. Butchered. The big dragons have gone into retreat, hiding in their secret places until this trouble passes, while us little ones are stuck trying to fend for ourselves. We have no friends. We have no allies. We’re hated because of how you elder dragons have acted. We’re paying for your inaction. We have no goodwill and now we’re forced to beg for assistance. We have not lived up to our potential.”

“Ember is wrong for what she does. We dragons should not get involved.”

Prominence bristled, and now, so did Thod, who reacted poorly to his companion’s anger.

“Then why are you here, helping is?” Blackbird demanded.

“Because Celestia asked of me a favour,” Chromium replied without hesitation.

“So your idea of good is to take a long nap and wake up and check if the world is better or worse than when you were last awake?” Blackbird’s claws drummed against the table and while she waited for a response, her pointed teeth scraped over her lips.

Chromium did not respond. He sat there, drinking his wine, his eyes flashing in some incomprehensible, but clearly menacing way. Dim could feel the tension in the air—and the magic too. He was almost certain that Chromium’s scales had been left a little bent from this exchange, and that the ancient dragon was angry.

“You tell Dim to step into the light… to do good, while your kind nap for centuries, leaving us, and your own young to suffer as the world takes a turn for the worse.” Blackbird’s claws ceased drumming, and now tore deep gouges into the wood. “Hypocrite!” She spat out the word with as much vehemence as she could muster.

“I’ll not be judged by such insignificant, short-sighted creatures.” With that, Chromium vanished.

“I need some air!” Blackbird bellowed as she hurled herself away from the table.

Dim watched as she rose; he considered joining her, but there was fondue to eat, as well as wine to drink.

One by one, or in pairs, the companions excused themselves away from the table. Not long after Blackbird’s departure, Bombay left as well. After that, it was Motte and Bailey, with Motte saying that he had things to do before they departed, but never once mentioned what those things were. Jolie and Gratin were next, with Jolie politely informing them that she wanted to make sure the Solar Stinger was ship-shape.

Even with her guests leaving, Pearl Fisher’s cheerful demeanour never faltered.

Munro was enjoying himself, and so was Puke Puddle by the looks of things. Her fork was far too large for her, but that didn’t stop her from trying to make it work. Prominence was distracted—so much so that she said nothing, nothing at all, and stared down at her plate while she ate. As for Thod, he just sat there, grinning, beaming, just being the happy dragon that he was.

“Things is what they is,” Pearl Fisher said, smiling a warm, gracious smile. “Not all of us walk in the light, and that’s okay. The Weavers, for all their supposed goodness, they walk the Middle Path.”

Dim, intrigued, allowed his face to show it.

“There be goodness in the Middle Path.” Pearl Fisher’s eyes were bright, attractive, and it was easy to see why Chanson was smitten with her. “Or so I’m told. If I be honest, I never gave it much thought. They do what they do, and I do what I do. Weavers don’t tell me what to do, and I don’t tell Weavers what to do. Why would I?” She shook her head hard enough to cause her ears to bob slightly.

“Jeebie King, you saved a goblin. Is that not goodness? Those of us who truly embrace goodness and light, they have no mercy for such a creature. No tolerance. It shames me to say so, but we good ones look after our own. Those that look like us, talk like us, and be like us. There is a lesson to be learned here, because… I don’t talk like them, look like them, or be like them. Unicorn I might be, but I am more zebra than pony. Those that Chromium might call good took our island, colonised it, and made my kind slaves. So much was said.”

Munro sighed.

“You sigh. Why?” Pearl Fisher asked.

“Oh…” The minotaur calf, put on the spot, held out his hand. But then, after a moment, he relented, and chose to speak. “At home, we minotaurs have a caste system. It is called good… but… I’ve been questioning it. I have doubts. I’m not so sure that it is good. It’s order, and I suppose that is good… but is order good? I mean, slavery is a form of order, and tyrants can keep the peace. But is peace beneath tyranny good?”

“That be the danger of leaving home, young one. We get exposed to other thoughts and we question what we know. Some are threatened by that. This I know, as there are many here who feel threatened by me.” Pearl Fisher’s smile faltered for a moment, and her eyes grew dark. But this did not last long and her sunny disposition asserted itself.

“Going home is going to be hard,” muttered Munro to himself.

For Dim, going home was impossible, but he found himself sympathising with his valet in spite of his own selfish thoughts. He glanced at the two dragons, the young ones, one of whom had disagreed with her elder. What was home like for her, he found himself thinking. She had left, and like Munro, her horizons had been expanded. Broadened. Going home might be difficult—or easy, it was impossible to tell.

“The peace of tyranny,” said Dim to those listening, “is akin to the quiet of the grave. Individuality is crushed. The self dies. Be fearful of quiet places where none dare speak, nor will they look you in the eye. This is what I have learned in my travels.” A rare smile graced his face, though he was not aware of it when it happened. After a moment, he nodded to his tablemates, and had one final thing to say: “Please, excuse me. Thank you, Pearl Fisher, the meal was lovely. You’ve been a most gracious host.”

Author's Note

This chapter has been a work in progress for a very long time...

Heat and humidity

Power earned is not the same as power given or power taken. For reasons unknown, these words bounced around Dim’s thoughts and gave him pause. Puffing away on his pipe, trailing clouds of clove-infused, sweet smoke, he went looking for Blackbird. What was power? For that matter, what was good? These were distractions, but good, welcome distractions. Chromium had given him much to think about, much to reflect upon.

Up to this point in his life, Dim wanted power for the sake of power; this felt like a perfectly natural, perfectly reasonable thing. But now, he desired power for other reasons. Power to keep his friends safe. The power to make things happen, things he felt were the right things. He wanted power to defend those who had no power for themselves.

Blackbird’s decency had thoroughly infested him in the worst of ways.

Martinet’s words haunted Dim, more than he would ever admit. He wondered what Martinet thought of Chromium, but lacked the motivation to go and ask. As he puffed on his pipe, he thought about how complicated his life had become, and all of the things he thought about now that he never gave much consideration before.

Such as the fact that he believed that he could trod the middle path and still do right.

The problem with a moral compass, as Dim saw it, was that it only ever gave one direction. If one went in another direction, any direction, one was moving away from the only direction that mattered, that was acceptable. For Dim, detours were perfectly acceptable. Prefered, even. One had to stop and see the sights that the moral countryside had to offer.

Hearing the sound of Blackbird’s voice, his hatless ears pricked.

When the door opened, Blackbird’s head swiveled around in an almost boneless, unnatural way, and she watched as Dim entered. Without his hat, a whole lot more of him was visible—all of the right parts of him. His glossy black mane glistened with bluish highlights and his curiously curved, pointy ears held the attention of her eyes. Dim wasn’t handsome in the traditional sense, as he was confusingly feminine. Blackbird suffered for her interest, which often left her puzzled and more than a bit confused.

Ambiguous attraction had its ups and downs.

“Look, Dim,” Bombay said to him as he entered the room. “Look outside. Watch!”

Whilst Dim approached, sauntering in the way that only he could, Blackbird regretfully tore her gaze away so she could look out the window. Chromium was outside performing impossible feats of magic, and it was a treat to watch, even if she was quite infuriated with the silver dragon who had said such infuriating things.

Now looking like a proper dragon, the immense silver wyrm waved his claws around like a conductor, and with each movement, each wave, each gesture, buildings assembled themselves. Bridges reconstructed themselves. Water mains ceased leaking water and severed ends reconnected. In mere moments Chromium made repairs that would otherwise take months, or even years. Even the cobblestones raced along the broken boulevards and pieced themselves together like a puzzle.

“Are those ponies—”

“Yes, Dim. They’re worshipping the dragon,” Bombay said before Dim could finish his question.

“Hmm,” Dim hmmed, and then went “Hmm” again.

He now stood by the window and Blackbird could see him from out of the corner of her eye. When she breathed, she could smell him, the scent of cloves, of cannabis, of Dim. She could easily wrap her talons around his boney neck, and almost around his body. At the moment, he was clean, well-groomed. When he was at his aristocratic best, she found him most appealing, but there was something to be said about him when he was disheveled.

But, his mismatched eyes were his most intriguing feature, and out of all of him that could be seen, she liked those most of all. She allowed herself a moment of heady infatuation, a girlish moment of secretive immaturity that almost made her giggle. Dim was not a giggler, nor did he laugh much. He was not given to frivolity, and there were times when Blackbird wished that he was a bit more playful. Dim had his faults—but she could accept those.

“I have no idea how old he even is,” said Dim, his words somewhat obscured by the pipe held in the corner of his mouth. “It is strange to me that I have some of his essence. No matter how I try, I cannot wrap my head around that fact. We are different creatures, he and I.”

“What did he mean when he mentioned the Nightmare Curse?” Bombay asked. “When the two of you talked, was that brought up? Are you going to become a Nightmare like Princess Luna did?”

“I am not a mare.” Dim’s snark had a perfect deadpan delivery. “Chromium told me that Luna’s descendants attract madness and malevolent forces that tempt them. He called it, ‘inherited weakness,’ and said that it affects all of us in some way, every single one of us who have a drop of Luna’s blood. The worst aspects of it ignores most of us, but those of us who show signs of strength, those of us who are exceptional, this shadow haunts us.”

Blackbird found herself more than a little intrigued by this conversation, for all kinds of reasons. She wanted Dim—in fact, she had plans for Dim, and this looming threat cast a shadow over her plans. This did not discourage her, far from it, but it did make her cautious. Wary. It made her thoughtful of what might be.

“And you’ve made it your strength?” Bombay asked.

At this, Dim shrugged and his thin body rippled with movement. “I’m not sure how. Chromium didn’t say much on that subject, so I am left in the dark on this issue. Perhaps Luna might have more insight.”

“Maybe it’s because Princess Luna strives to be good, and struggles to do so, and you... you just struggle to be you. If you walked in the light, as Chromium suggested, then this malevolent darkness might come along to suffocate you, Dim.”

“Perhaps.” Dim shrugged again and Blackbird felt tingles in her feminine places.

“I wonder how this affects Eerie.” Reaching up with her paw, Bombay rubbed her fuzzy chin and her whiskers quivered. “She has extraordinary fits of melancholy. It’s hard to tell if it is her past, her nature, or this malevolent shadow that causes those. I don’t know, everything feels so ambiguous.” Reflecting her thoughtful mood, her tail curled into a question mark and stayed that way whilst she rubbed her chin.

The three of them watched as the dragon performed miracles down below. Blackbird was distracted, Dim was introspective, thoughtful even, and Bombay seemed to enjoy rubbing her chin. When it seemed as though the conversation might give way to quiet, Blackbird wished that her companions would keep talking. She longed to hear the sound of Dim’s voice, as something about it was comforting, reassuring.

And also pleasurable.

Lost in her thoughts, Blackbird reached out with one talon extended, slipped it beneath Dim’s forelock, and with a flick, she flipped it up and away from his face. It would only fall down again, but that was fine. That was good, expected even, as it gave her a reason to touch him again. He wickered—a sound that made every muscle in her body tighten, especially those in her secret places—but he did not shy away from her. Things were getting better, easier perhaps.

Without warning, Dim plucked his pipe from the corner of his mouth and Blackbird was downright startled when it was jammed between her parted lips. It was only when it lightly clicked against her teeth that she recovered herself. Sheepishly, she puffed on the pipe and allowed the lightheaded feeling of bliss to overcome her. Then, with just as much unexpected suddenness, the pipe was pulled away and Dim resumed smoking.

“I’m going to leave you two be,” Bombay said, almost whispering. “Don’t do anything rash.” Her tail now bushy and slashing the air behind her, she backed away from Blackbird as she exhaled, and once she was a few steps away, Bombay turned for the door.

At long last, they were alone, with no pressures or obligations. Just the two of them, or perhaps the three of them, it was difficult to say. Dim sat on what could be charitably called a couch; it had thin cushions that only offered a minimum of comfort, and an imperious wooden frame, with naked, uncushioned arms. It was the sort of thing one sat on out of necessity, but not for very long.

As for Blackbird, she sat on the floor, just in front of the couch, which allowed a somewhat rare eye-to-eye encounter with Dim. She had seen him at his best, at his worst; she had seen him from every conceivable angle during their travels. But she prefered seeing him eye to eye. He wore no goggles, no hat, nothing that obscured his face, his perfect, wonderful face.

There was a dangerous sense of romance here, and she knew it. A young hippogriff, not well versed in the ways of the world, a creature fresh off the farm. The rural community that she called home never offered her much other than a stark, black and white view of the world, with grey reserved for stormy days or ashes in the fireplace. Good was good, bad was bad, and the only evidence she had of variance was the love story of her parents. Seeing the world and all it had to offer was overwhelming, to say the very least.

Then came that day in Tortoise-Tuga.

Dim had come into her life and caused the death of sense.

Blackbird was thoroughly consumed by her infatuation, dangerous though it was. She had deviated from what she knew was important; the search for her mother. The whirlwind of events that surrounded Dim had swallowed her, devoured her, and there would be no climbing out of this gullet. There would be no leaving, as she had invested too much of her sense of self into his recovery, his well-being.

But she was not without reward; she understood her father now.

“We need to talk about the third pony in our relationship, Dim.”

She could see that her words had caught him off guard. For the briefest moment, he was naked, vulnerable, and she could see his panic. It was a rare sight, seeing him exposed in such a way. Reaching out, reaching up, she placed her left talons on his right foreleg and caressed him. This was undiscovered country, a new horizon, and Blackbird only had her gut instincts to guide her way. A vague star that offered no direction, but the only star she had.

“What was she like, Dim?”

“Like myself, she barely met the Dark Ideal,” he replied in little more than a whisper. “But I suppose that didn’t matter. We weren’t meant to be Darks, from what little I’ve gathered, but vessels for Thrennog’s heritage. Whatever that is. I suppose family pride forced us to superimpose our own image upon Thrennog’s masterwork.”

The bitterness in Dim’s voice caused Blackbird to wince, but she did not turn away.

“She was not a good student. Darling lacked focus, she lacked drive, ambition, imagination, and she was content to be meek. Punishment came often for her. In hindsight, she had to suffer, as they wanted her submissive, but to be too meek, too weak, ran against the Dark Ideals and invited torment. I suppose there was a fine, fine line. We are to be subservient to one another’s whims, but also—”

His words trailed off abruptly as his face contorted and his breathing quickened.

What he said next surprised Blackbird. “I like how things are between you and I. Take right now for instance. We could have had a moment to ourselves. Just us. The two of us. But you brought up Darling. Your sense of altruism compels you to help me, even at the cost of your own happiness and comfort. I don’t understand what motivates you, but… I appreciate what you do. What you do makes me want to be a better pony, though perhaps not in the way Chromium would recognise.”

A hot flush blossomed in Blackbird’s nethers, and then washed over her body, causing her skin to prickle. It grew unbearably hot beneath her wings, and she could feel the humidity rising back in her fuzzy hindquarters. Dim appreciated her. The words, his words, buoyed her spirits and the dark shadows cast by all of the horrid things that had happened now seemed a little less intense. A little less consuming.

Her own reaction terrified her, but also thrilled and titillated her. As her backside continued to moisten, her mouth grew dry. Overcome with emotion, she leaned in until she could feel Dim’s hot breath on her muzzle, and it was then that she felt the cold, icy prickle of terror. Things were complicated. Everything was muddled, mixed up, and confusing. Crazy.

Reaching out, she wrapped a curl of Dim’s mane around her extended talon-finger. The silkiness of it, the softness; it was like the finest spun silk. Her mane had thick strands that were smooth only just following a wash, but grew coarse with sweat and toil. His eyes were moving, she could see them as they jumped around, no doubt going from feature to feature on her face.

With her free talons, she plucked Dim’s pipe from his mouth.

Her mouth and lips were far too dry for kissing Dim, but she did it anyway. Leaning in, she tilted her head off to one side, pressed her muzzle against his, and invited him inside by parting her lips slightly. Both of them hesitated, but she treasured these awkward moments, she relished them for what they were. When the kiss finally sorted itself out, it was everything her heart hoped it would be.

Author's Note

Gute Nacht

Tangled sheets and blankets formed unwanted lumps in all of the worst places. Blackbird lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling while listening to the sound of Dim breathing beside her. The sounds he made worried her, left her body tight with anxious energy. It felt good to be doing nothing after a long day of doing mostly nothing. Half-awake, half-asleep, she thought about the kisses—and there were many kisses to think about.

Nothing had happened, and nothing needed to happen. Just kisses. Many kisses. But then Dim’s melancholy returned, and with it, Blackbird suspected the return of Darling’s spectre. But Dim had not sent her away—in fact, in the moments and hours that followed, they shared a closeness that Blackbird did not believe possible. Not many words had been said, but they had lounged together, enjoying each other’s company in companionable, compatible silence.

Not the awkward, cringy, unwanted silence.

Dim was dozing, but sleep was elusive prey for Blackbird. The wine on her breath tickled her nose, but the booze in her blood did nothing to help her slumber. What she needed—what she wanted—was to rub one out. Blackbird needed to have a go at her kitty-slitty and work out her frustrations, but this felt like an impossible dream at the moment. She thought about humping and delighted in just how delightfully dirty of a word it was.

A girl had needs.

As powerful as her needs were, she wasn’t ready, and neither was Dim. For now, this was enough. This was good. He was right there beside her, and that was enough. She wanted to roll over onto her side, but that would mean flopping about and trying to find that perfect position where she wasn’t laying on her wing in some terrible, uncomfortable way. It would also mean disturbing Dim, as he was currently laying atop one of her wings at the moment. Well, partially. His head rested upon a warm, feathery, comfortable place, and she was certain that doing so brought him comfort, at the cost of her own discomfort, but that was fine. That was okay.

The thunderous crack of gunfire utterly destroyed the peace and stillness of the night.

Blackbird lept from the bed and caused Dim to tumble to the floor. One shot. From the other rooms, the rooms of her companions, she heard shouting. As Dim roused himself and picked himself up from the floor, Blackbird was arming herself, as one tended to do when one heard gunfire in the middle of the night. She heard Dim snarl and the cold light that emanated from his horn brought no comfort, no reassurance.

Their door slammed open and Blackbird brought her revolver to bear, pointing it at the dark silhouette in the doorway. It was Motte, and he was armed with his crazy-ridiculous quad-barreled shotgun. Biting her lip, Blackbird lowered her gun and tried to steady her nerves. Bailey was just behind Motte, her mane all wrapped up in curlers.

The rough, barked shouts of soldiers could be heard in the hallway…

Magic at the ready, Dim had a look around the crowded hallway to determine what he could about the situation. Munro was wearing only his breeches and held his revolver in a trembling hand. Puke Puddle was right behind him and Dim could not help but notice that she was wearing a nightgown. In different circumstances, he might have taken a moment to enjoy the sight, but now was not the time. Motte and Bailey were armed to the teeth and ready to respond. Even Prominence and Thod had come out of their room and were trying to keep their tails from being trod-upon.

“Bombay.”

Something about the way Motte said her name chilled Dim’s blood. Bombay’s door was closed and she had not responded to the sound of the gunshot. A peculiar, unwanted queasiness overcame Dim, and he found himself frozen in place, staring at the door while a cold sweat began to dampen his hide.

“Why hasn’t Bombay come out of her room?” Blackbird asked in an almost foalish sort of way. Shoving Bailey aside, Blackbird made her way to the door, but then hesitated before entering. “Bombay, are you decent?”

Dim saw Motte’s jaw clench.

Jolie and Gratin—whose room was in a different hall, a different wing, rounded the corner, with a great number of guards following them. The little mare and the big griffin were sweaty in appearance, downright messy, and it was painfully obvious what they had been doing to pass the nighttime hours.

“Open the door, ‘Bird,” Motte said, his voice cracking.

Nodding once, Blackbird did as she was bid.

One leg could still be seen twitching. Bombay’s paw dangled down from the side of the bed and her paw-fingers still flexed. Next to the bed, on the floor, was a pistol, and a curl of smoke could be seen rising up from the barrel like a question mark. The head of the bed was a mess, and the less time Dim spent looking at it, the better.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Blackbird, followed by retching.

In a rare moment of tenderness, Dim pulled her away and turned her around to spare her from the awful sight. Doing so came with consequences, as Blackbird’s hot, chunky puke splashed all over his front hooves. The stench of bile and soured wine rose up to assail Dim’s nostrils and before he could react, Blackbird blew chunks yet again.

“You dumb fucking cunt, how could—”

“Motte, don’t do that!” Bailey stepped closer, but then retreated when she saw the look upon her counterpart’s face.

“We would have sat with you!” Motte’s voice was ragged, torn by rage. Grinding his teeth together, he lifted up a chair and then smashed it into the wall. “You could have told us! You didn’t have to be alone! You kept telling us everything was okay! Why did you lie to us?” Grimacing, grinding his teeth, he began to kick around the splintered remains of the chair

After gurgling and almost choking, Blackbird spewed with terrific force, enough so that the contents of her stomach bounced and splashed, soaking everything in the blast zone—including Dim, who in a moment of perfect stoic endurance, just stood there. Munro clamped one hand over his mouth and shaking his head, retreated from the room.

“For fuck’s sake, Dim! Don’t just stand there, get Blackbird out of here!” Blood trickled from the corner of Motte’s mouth and his lip was already swelling. “Fucking bloody Tartarus! Bombay, how could you do this to us? Look for a note! There’d better be a fucking note! Dim! Get Blackbird out of here!”

Motte, furious though he was, was right. Dim tugged on Blackbird, but she did not respond. Then, in a moment of calm that defied the crisis, Dim knew that escorting Blackbird out would just make a huge mess of things. What he needed was a more direct means of departure, a means to get right to the bathroom so the both of them could get cleaned up and not leave a mess on the carpets.

Drawing the aether around both himself and Blackbird like a curtain, Dim withdrew.

Blackbird was a sorry sight. She lay in the bed, curled up into a fetal position. For now, she had stopped sobbing—but Dim knew that it could begin again at any moment. Getting her cleaned up had been a difficult task; she was a big, heavy creature, with a lot of her to go around, and she had bawled the entire time. Dim’s heart was not ready for this assault and his raw, recently recovered emotions were far too vulnerable.

Painful as it was, he did not try to hide from what he was feeling, and allowed it swallow him. Seated in a chair beside the bed, he stared into the ashen depths of his pipe and thought about Bombay’s final hours. How endlessly long the nights must have been for her, how they must have stretched on, unbearably, with dawn but a distant torment—because the daylight hours held no comfort.

He thought about his own mental state after Darling’s death, and how his grief had been expressed. His mind, eager to torment him, recalled the hazy memories of the massacre. His own downward spiral had been quite spectacular. A part of himself felt guilty for thinking of himself, for reflecting upon his own troubles while Blackbird suffered beside him.

Without so much as a single knock, the door opened. Dim lifted his head, squinting, almost hissing in pain as the light from the hallway dazzled his eyes. In the doorway was a foal-sized silhouette, which Dim could not make out given his current state of blindness. He raised one hoof, as if to ward his eyes from the light, and turned his head away.

“I thought I’d check on the two of you.” Jolie’s voice wavered to the point where it sounded as though it might crack. “Everything has, uh, been cleaned up. The room. The carpets. Bombay. What a mess.”

Blackbird whimpered.

“Had to put Motte down. Laudanum or something. I don’t know. He lost his shit completely and started smashing stuff. Bailey is looking after him now. Motte couldn’t find a note. No reason. No message. No final goodbye. I never thought I’d see the day when Motte cracked. He’s a fortress. Bailey is holding together, but I’m scared that it’s an act. If Motte can crack, then so can Bailey. They’re the same pony.”

Blinking rapidly, Dim tried to recover his eyes.

“Since it was so quiet I came to check on both of you. And maybe to talk. Shit, I don’t know. Gratin is taking this hard and he wants to be alone. I don’t want to be alone. I can’t be alone. Wasn’t sure where to go. So I went around checking up on all of us, hoping I could find a place to stay.”

Saying nothing, Dim gestured at the bed.

“You don’t mind?” Jolie’s usual confidence was nowhere to be seen.

“We don’t mind.”

Blackbird’s phlegmy words were not the least bit inviting, but it didn’t matter. Jolie approached the bed, hesitant, her ears back and her tail low. When she lept up, she stood on the corner, uncertain, but this did not last long. Blackbird, reaching out, grabbed the tiny mare and with a yank, pulled her close. Jolie was doll-sized compared to Blackbird, little more than a stuffed toy, and the small red mare vanished from Dim’s still-dazzled view.

“I still can’t believe that Gratin sent me away.” Jolie’s words were muffled now, smothered. “How could he send me away? I needed him. How could he not need me?”

Dim didn’t know. He didn’t have an answer. Dealing with grief was something he hadn’t yet figured out. Again, his thoughts turned to Darling, and he could feel hot, fresh wounds opening up. First Darling, then the Bard, and now, Bombay. Darling was a pony that he had feelings for. Not love, as he had once thought, but something. They had shared something, even if it was unwholesome, the bond they had was no less real for all the manipulation.

As for the Bard, Pâté au Poulet was his friend. The start of friendship was still friendship. Some friendships lasted for a good long time, while others didn’t. Dim realised that his friendship with the Bard was special because of what it had taught him—that is to say, friendship. And not the sort of weird, infatuated friendship he shared with Blackbird, but another, different type of friendship.

He and Bombay had bonded over what they had lost. They shared their grief and had grown close. Had he failed her? Could he have done more? Had his selfishness cost him a friend? Perhaps if he had been paying more attention—no. He interrupted himself and reminded himself that not a one of them had seen this coming.

The self-flagellation continued, unabated; perhaps if he had been a better friend, Bombay might not have offed herself. Closing his eyes, Dim tried to think his way out of this mess, but his brain kept finding new ways to twist the knife in the wound. If only he and Blackbird had made her stay, rather then spend time alone with one another. Bombay and Blackbird had been spending so much time together; they had grown close. And Dim, being the selfish sort he was, wanted Blackbird’s time for himself.

Grief, like a malignant cancer, grew. Dim, aware of his own shortcomings, conscious of his own failings, allowed it to overwhelm him. He needed this pain, this punishment. His friends deserved better, and they would have better. Maybe he wasn’t the best pony, and while goodness was not his way, friendship offered its own light.

It was a light that he could at least tolerate.

Author's Note

The holidays are a rough time. Reach out to those you know who've become a bit quiet.

War begins

The city was familiar somehow, in some weird way, but Dim did not recognise it. Tall towers, with decorative minarets made from gold, silver, and copper; cupolaed conical roofs sat like crowns above beautiful, gleaming spires; granite cobblestones left smooth by centuries of use. This place was a wonder, a magnificent destination…

This place was Canterlot.

Not a soul could be seen in the streets, not one iota of evidence that suggested life existed. Shop windows were empty, barren, a retail desert. Traffic did not fill the streets. Dim’s ears strained at the sound of silent emptiness, because this sort of quiet was deafening. Overhead, the sun and moon were one in the sky, a beautiful ghostly eclipse that dazzled the eyes.

Dim walked alone among the narrow canyons of Canterlot, trying to find his way.

Overhead, the moon called to him, tugged at him, he could feel it in new ways that made no sense to him. Canterlot was a city built atop the Canterhorn, a tall mountain peak, and it seemed as though the moon was directly overhead. He wondered if, perhaps, that was the purpose of Canterlot—to be closer to the celestial bodies overhead.

All alone, Dim stopped and stared up in awe as the sky was ripped away like a veil torn asunder. The other planets came into view; Terra Secundus, Terra Tertius, Terra Quartus, all of the others as well. He knew the sky was mostly an illusion, but his understanding of it was limited. Of all the planets now in view, Terra Secundus was the most fascinating, and the most terrifying. It was cracked, almost right in two, and a vast section of it was missing—a section roughly the same size as the moon.

It was a truth hidden away for a reason, and Dim, a student of all things obscure, knew why. History—family history—was something in which he was well versed. There had been many moons over the eons. Moons came and went. They were expendable. Replaceable. Few ponies understood the true power of the alicorns—the real, actual alicorns, and not second-rate imposters.

A colt came trotting down the lane, a unicorn, and he seemed completely unperturbed by the horrifying truth overhead. Dim studied the colt, trying to make sense of what didn’t feel right. But the colt seemed to be a perfectly normal colt—in a city completely abandoned.

“Where is everybody?” Dim asked.

The colt gave him a blank stare in return. “Every… body?”

Dim sighed at the realisation that he now spoke as a foreigner. “Everypony. Where is everypony?”

“Celebrating the new princesses,” the colt replied.

“Princesses?” Dim lifted his head. “Plural?”

“You’re a stranger.” The colt took a step back and visibly shivered.

“I’ve just been away for a while.” Dim used his most charming, most charismatic, aristocratic voice. “Now I’ve returned. Tell me, what has happened?” This colt was almost certainly not a colt, but for now, he played along.

“Nightmare Moon came back,” the colt said to Dim. “Twilight and her friends had to fight her. Nightmare Moon was strong though, and whole lotta stuff was destroyed. Like Ponyville. The Elements of Harmony turned Twilight and her friends into princesses and now, with Celestia gone, Twilight and her friends will rule. We have six princesses.”

This was a bit too weird. Dim, reserved as always, studied the colt and hoped that something about the situation would reveal itself, something that might explain what was really going on. The very fact that the colt had showed up when he had, and the fact that Dim had no memory of coming here, of arriving here, these things together suggested that something was amiss.

While everything overhead was rather impressive, there was something off about it. It was like… a movie projected upon a screen. It lacked depth and realism. The world around him lacked movement, life, save for one colt that had appeared out of nowhere. This world lacked life, and was most certainly not real. If this was a dream realm—and it might very well be—then somebody had very poor control. It took incredible will and power to bring dreams to life, and this place was dead.

“You’re too smart,” the colt said, his eyes glittering.

“Who are you?” Dim asked. “And what is going on here?”

In response, the colt transformed. He turned blue, his legs grew long, as did his neck and body. Wings sprouted from his side and his horn gained exceptional length. As the colt transformed into Luna, her prankster’s laugh echoed up and down the empty streets of Canterlot. Dim’s uncertainty grew by a magnitude, and he did nothing to lower to his guard.

“Your power seems lacking,” he remarked, hoping to provoke some manner of response that might reveal more. “This”—he gestured at everything around him—“is amateurish. My powers in this realm have only begun to develop, but I could do better than this sophomoric effort.

Luna’s eyes blazed with a ghastly inner light.

“Do you wish to see a display of my power?” she asked with susurrant sibilance.

Dim began to suspect that this wasn’t Luna, which lead to other questions, many questions. He was dreaming, except maybe he wasn’t. This might be a dream realm, but not Luna’s dream realm. It was still most likely a dream realm however, and as such had rules. If there were rules, he could bend them, shape them to his will. He would be far stronger here than in the waking world—that is, if his hunches proved true.

The dominating blue mare stomped her left rear hoof and her silver shoe rang out like a bell against the cobblestones. Dim fell left—he fell sinister—and when he hit the cobblestones, he fell through them. For a brief moment, it was as if he was suspended in some thick, viscous liquid, but he fell through the barrier. Then, he was falling right, no, rising, until he was in a standing position.

He was still in Canterlot, but not Canterlot. All of the angles were wrong, with no square corners. Somehow, he had been rotated, flipped, turned upside down and was now standing on the underside of whatever place he had been before. The shadows were all wrong, distorted, alive and moving. Everything had a dark, dusky haze about it, the gold did not shine, the silver did not reflect, and the copper seemed dull. This was a dark, twisted version of Canterlot, with leaning, crooked towers, and violated geometry.

It was as if he had fallen through the surface of reality, or dropped through a mirror. Down was now up, up was down, and whatever place he had been previously was beneath them. This… this was a place of nightmare energy and he could feel it sinking into his very soul.

Perhaps he was wrong not to fear it.

He felt strong in this place, alive. He suspected that he was supposed to be awestruck, or afraid, or have some reaction that weakened him, but this was not the case. Luna, who was most certainly not Luna, was studying him, watching, waiting for his reaction. He chose to appear neutral, save for his fine aristocratic sneer. He just wouldn’t be himself without his sneer.

“You and Twilight both might very well be the smartest mortals of this age—though for very different reasons. I didn’t think I could fool you, but I did think that I could play with you for a while. Long enough to find some weakness. Curiously, I think you are actually stronger here. At least there is still something to take away from this encounter.”

For now, Dim withheld his retaliation, hoping that he too, might learn something.

“You gave your mother fits, Dim. You broke the projector. She was quite beside herself, or at least she was until the projector was broken, and then she was alone.” The unknown entity tittered at her own joke, but Dim was not the least bit amused. “You really messed things up with Uttu, Dim. Uttu needed to be made to answer for her crimes.”

Almost absentmindedly, Dim willed a clove and cannabis cigarette into existence, lit it, and began smoking. Most-Certainly-Not-Luna watched him, one eyebrow raised, and seeing that she was momentarily distracted, he took the opportunity to blow smoke in her face. Uttu, Dim reasoned, must have been the spider abomination down in the mine.

Luna’s doppelganger coughed and Dim took note.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Ah,” Not-Luna replied after coughing. “Who do you want me to be?”

The blue alicorn’s pelt rippled, almost like pond water after a pebble had been dropped in. Distortions traveled out, borne by ripples, and the midnight blue hue turned purple. Like a sunrise, the dark purple-blue grew brighter, and warm, rosy pink could be seen. Muscles bunched, feathers rustled against one another, and Luna’s ethereal mane ceased to flow. It changed colour too, taking on shades of violet, dusky rose, and pale gold. Her eyes rolled up into her head in a most unsettling way, but only for a moment, and when they rolled back down they were a radiant purple-magenta.

Now, the doppelganger was wearing Cadance’s body.

“Unless you can queef the Battle Hymn of Equestria, I am not impressed.”

Not-Cadance’s eyes flashed with a malevolent inner light.

“Your mother was right. You really are infuriating. While Twilight is all about that goody-goody friendship, you make enemies with astounding ease.”

“I tend to cause unease in the simple-minded,” he replied in pitch-perfect aristocratic deadpan.

The creature wearing the appearance of Cadance now had its proverbial and literal feathers ruffled. Dim sensed and saw anger—the beginnings of anger, but anger nonetheless. He was almost certainly in some kind of dream realm, or the underside of a dream realm, which might be a nightmare dimension. Grogar had his own dream realm now, and Dim suspected that was where he was.

But he didn’t know who—or what—he was dealing with.

The unknown creature underwent yet another transformation. Again, its pelt rippled, moving, undulating like wide ocean waves. It shrank a little, losing height and mass, and darkness devoured the vivid pink like a ravenous malignant cancer seeking healthy, living flesh. This time, the eyes shriveled, decaying away, trailing viscous jelly down the unknown creature’s cheeks.

It was becoming him…

No, not him.

Darling.

A sapping malaise consumed Dim’s flesh, his innards, and a cold sweat drenched his balls, which were crushed in an icy grip not but a moment later. His innards writhed like agitated serpents and he felt queasy. Guilt took on life of its own and he started hearing Darling’s voice inside of his head. No words could be made out, as hundreds, maybe thousands of things were all being said at once. It was the very essence of madness—and Dim could feel his mind going to places where his heart would rather not.

His concentration suffered, his will faltered, and waves of weakness washed over him.

“I don’t understand why this bothers you,” the doppelganger said to Dim as it advanced. “In fact, I am completely mystified. I don’t get it. What is it about this form that disturbs you? Do you wish to share? Do you wish to talk about it, to snivel incessantly about your weakness as you do with Blackbird?”

As the unknown doppelganger drew nearer, Dim retreated, woozy and queasy.

“The very fact that you fail to understand is evidence of your weakness.” Dim’s voice wavered now, rising and falling in pitch, and there was a certain unsettling screechiness to it. “This is further evidenced by your supreme idiocy right now, trying to provoke me into a reaction. You don’t know what I hold in… what I hold back.”

“Show me!” the doppelganger demanded.

At the moment when it mattered most, Dim faltered. He thought of the more pleasant moments between he and Darling, moments that could be considered innocent, if anything between them could be innocent. There were happy moments—though they were happy moments polluted by corruption and moral filth. Darling’s laughter echoed in his ears, a most unpleasant, shrill, mocking laughter.

Dim found himself shrinking, turning into a foal. He was losing himself a little at a time, and felt terror when he wondered what would happen if he kept shrinking. Was he being undone just a little at a time? Unraveled like a sweater? What exactly was being drawn out of him?

Did he want to save himself?

He wasn’t sure if he could fight right now, but he might escape before weakness overcame him. Gathering what little bit of himself that he could, he stomped his right rear hoof—and the effect was immediate. He fell right, as if he was rotating on some unknown, unseen, unfathomable cosmic pivot. His hooves were rooted to some nonexistent spot. In an eyeblink, he struck the cobblestones, and began to pass through them as they transitioned into a weird, incomprehensible liquid state.

Then, he was rising leftward, returning to an upright position. This realm was a little brighter, a little better, a little kinder to his senses, though not by much. Dizzy, disoriented, Dim struggled to regain his senses, because he knew a fight was coming. Something was trying to pull him back through, to drag him back to the underside of the dream realm.

The rules here were very strict; everything was a facsimile of something else, and in borrowing that form, it also borrowed the rules associated with that form. He watched, his balls still frozen in fear, as his doppelganger phase-shifted through the cobblestones. How could he fight this creature wearing Darling’s skin?

His escape had not gone as planned.

Sweating, shivering, Dim wondered if he would have to kill Darling for a second time. Could he muster the required cruelty? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. Nothing made sense right now—there was only grey fog obscuring his inner-vision. In desperation, he grabbed the moon overhead; it was flat, a mere projection on some incomprehensible ceiling, but the moment he touched it, it rapidly gained reality. It peeled away like a sticker, waved around in two-dimensional space for a bit, and then began to protrude into three dimensional space, inflating almost like a balloon.

When Dim dropped the moon, the Darling-doppelganger fled. The moon came down, crushing buildings, which crumbled into glittering sand that flowed like liquid. There was a terrific racket as the moon impacted Canterlot, and it began to roll around amongst the towers like a bowling ball Tartarus-bent to find pins. The moon was only a dozen yards wide or so, the same size that it had been when projected on the ceiling. It had weight and mass though, and made a fine distraction.

“Perhaps I’ll drop the sun next,” Dim said as he tried to recover himself.

Everything around him was being crushed to sand—the very same sort of sand that could be found in the eyes of sleepers. Witnessing this place made it real, a sort of quantifiable reality, but it was, at best, ephemeral, little more than sandcastles in the mind. All around him, the city of Canterlot was crumbling as the moon rolled rolly-polly to and fro.

“It’s funny, Darling… I once promised you the moon!”

In the distance, he heard screams, but could not see the doppelganger. Dim took this chance to recover, to breathe, to restore his damaged sense of focus. The dream-sand swirled around him, just a little at first, but then it became a vortex, and then a sandstorm. Dim stood in the eye of the storm, unharmed, and he rose up from the ground, carried aloft by the power of dreams.

Ruined buildings reformed into terrifying, nightmarish forms, hideous amorphous masses that were constructs of Dim’s will—and Dim now dreamed of shoggoths, things once swallowed by the Void. For that was the thing; Dim was a well of nightmares, a drowning pool of infinite, unknowable depth. The Void had seen things, done things, it had consumed things best left forgotten—and Dim was the Void.

Dim was the cover over the well, and some things were best left undisturbed.

With a sneering snarl, he unleashed his hounds. The amoeba-like lumps of nightmares made from eyes moved with surprising speed. They glowed with an eldritch green light, witchfire, and the protoplasmic constructs showed no signs that they were once sand, having been transmogrified into their unliving existence through Dim’s will.

Did you think it wise to taunt me in the realm where I am Prince?

All around Dim, the sands of what used to be Canterlot transformed into a nightmarish, grotesque parody of Tartarus. Bubbling, burbling calderas formed, lakes of fire, seas of magma, and terrifying creatures rose from their depths. Dim remained suspended, held aloft in a swirling dust devil made of the very particles of dreams.

You are but motes of corruption. Mere scraps of inconvenience. It is my sworn duty to hunt down and exterminate the foul things that creep into the realm of dreams. This place is but a polluted, befouled mockery and once I have fully ascended, I shall bring my armies here and wipe this blasphemous smear on reality from existence. You have made an enemy the likes of which you can barely comprehend!

Dim could not see it, but he heard the doppelganger say, “Contagion, I’m going to need a little help!”

Again, the dream realm, this false-realm shifted, and the nightmarish Tartarus that Dim called forth began to crumble. Fires extinguished themselves, glowing seas of magma went dark, and little by little, the lights went out. Solid things became sand again, and the glittery, gritty particles began to drain away, swirling into some unseen, unknowable, incomprehensible void.

Everything faded into nothingness, which could easily be mistaken for the dark. The light died as everything went away. Even Dim’s conjured pets succumbed to the sudden shift, the protoplasmic blobs dessicated, evapourated, and they blew away into dust. Dim felt something primordial draw near, and once again, he felt his blood run cold.

For he was the Void in its infancy, not yet come to power.

A shapeless, amorphous mass rose up from the primordial darkness, and Dim, suspended in a cradle made of nothing, felt terror like he had never known. Laughter echoed through the empty spaces, Darling’s laughter, and it was every bit as mocking as it had been in life. It stripped away his will, his resolve, and once again, Dim found himself crushed by weakness.

Two eyes like glowing, infernal pits could be seen, framed by a face that had no discernable form. A face that writhed, that wiggled, a face whose surface crawled with something that Dim could not make out. But his ears could hear, and he heard a scurrying sound, the faint, disturbing rustle of fuzzy bodies sliding against one another behind the walls, beyond vision, the very sound that caused foals to go still and silently scream in frozen terror in their beds.

“I sense… a sickness within you.” It was as if a thousand screechy, squeaky voices all spoke at once. “Ah, consumption… one of my many sources of power. Through consumption I turn the strong weak and feed my many offspring. We gain sustenance and succor through all the coughing, the hacking, and the misery. Your mother gave us this great, parasitic gift.”

Dim felt a dreadful tickle in his lungs, and ground his teeth together to stifle the cough that threatened to come barking forth. There were rules here, and he was subject to those rules. He could feel his lungs shriveling, flooding with phlegm, and his breathing, what little breathing he could manage, became soupy. Weakness made his muscles quiver, and the lack of oxygen caused white-blue stars to go dancing before his eyes.

“I am Contagion,” the shapeless, formless figure said. “As you have no doubt concluded, I am the embodiment of disease. Not just of the flesh, but also of the mind. Nightly, I creep into Luna’s realm, and prey upon her subjects. I siphon off their strength and make it my own. I burrow like gut worms into their mind, their bodies, and soon, very soon, I will infect the very souls of the living.”

Dim struggled to draw breath, but coughed and spluttered. It felt as though he was drowning now. He listened to the gurgling within his own lungs and wondered what happened if he died here in this realm. All of his showy bravado had abandoned him, and for all of the power that he had, right now, he was as weak as a kitten.

“You are destined to lose,” said Contagion. “I will feast upon the poor that you and your kind ignore. Your callous mistreatment of those beneath you has given me strength you can barely comprehend. For every one of your kind that lies dying in the gutter, an endless number of my kind are birthed, given form, meaning, and purpose. Your whole society is built upon the backs of those beneath you, crushing the very life out of them, squeezing them, and I have come to sup their juices. Your way of life is my strength.”

“We will fight you,” Dim gasped, defiant.

“You will do no such thing,” Contagion replied. “You and your filth. All of your society is a factory for filth. Pollution. All of your shiny toasters, blenders, and appliances of convenience, whose byproducts are pollution, the sweet, sweet milk upon which we suckle. You’re befouling the very air you breathe. You shit in your own nests, as the saying goes. The water which you depend on, you poison and pollute. Yet, your kind called my kind dirty. We rats fed upon your contaminants. We lived in your filth. We ecked out a miserable life in your sewers. We lived in your tainted shadow and suffered from your many poisons.”

Contagion paused, and then continued, “We have been engineered to exploit the worst aspects of you and your kind. Now, about this consumption that I sense…”

“You’ve told me the means of your undoing—”

“I’ve done no such thing.” Contagion leaned in closer, his face a mass of writhing shadows. “Will you stop the endless, ceaseless production of your factories? Will you abandon your cities? What of the coal, the very thing that fuels your never-ending industrialisation? Will you turn off your machines? Even now, the pace of industrialisation picks up in preparation for a war, the likes of which this world has not seen in eons. As you prepare to fight, I grow strong. Will you reverse the course of established history to stop me? I think not. In fact, I am certain that you and your kind will march onwards to oblivion, and it will be there that I shall meet you. You will walk willingly into my jaws, all for the love of your shiny, meaningless treasures, and the appliances that make life bearable.”

Dim began to suspect that his mother had doomed the world, and he hated her all the more.

A hand rose up out of the darkness, and it wrapped around Dim, crushing him. It was a hand made of rats. Dim could feel them clawing at his skin, climbing over him, and clinging to one another. A collective of rats, a hive-mind of rats, a synaptic nexus of rats. What a way for the world to end. He tried to say something, he tried to be defiant, but he couldn’t breathe. The hand was crushing his body while the lung butter clogged his airways.

And then, the rats were inside of him. He felt them forcing their way in, crawling in through his mouth, clawing and digging at his anus, biting and tearing at the soft, exposed flesh of his stomach. The deafening squeaking muffled his own screams, screams loosed as the swarming creatures burrowed through his insides. Of all the pain, the pain in his lungs was the worst—it was a pain that tore into his very soul.

“I will draw upon your strength and make it my own,” Contagion said in a dispassionate deadpan. “As you weaken, I will grow strong. We will grow strong. My offspring will learn to use the powers of the Void. Every bloody wad of phlegm that you cough up will be a reminder of what we take from you. Honestly, I am surprised at just how easy this is. I… We expected a fight. But this encounter has been nothing but disappointing. At least Flicker is a worthy enemy. You… you are like the dreams that make up your substance. Little wisps of perversion and loathing, signifying nothing.”

Dim tried to scream yet again, but his mouth was full of rats—many rats.

Light appeared.

Brilliant, beautiful, silvery rays of moonlight pierced the darkness. Claws could be seen, massive claws that tore into the velvet curtain of the black emptiness and tore it asunder. Silver claws that shone with a brilliant, hope-giving light. Dim felt the rats retreating, clawing and tearing their way out of him to rejoin their brethren in the body of Contagion.

An enormous clawed hand reached into the empty space of dead dreams, pulling aside the foundations of this reality, and a majestic silver snout poked in. Chromium shredded the barriers and more brilliant silver light spilled forth—followed by Princess Luna and her shrieking, echolocating host.

Contagion let go of Dim, dropping him to deal with the unexpected intruders that had disrupted this private moment, and Dim, with no will, with no focus, no concentration, plummeted into nothingness. The bat winged draconic pegasus ponies poured through the rift by what had to be the thousands, and Chromium, a gleaming titan, kept ripping and tearing, widening the gap.

Princess Luna was not alone, she was merely the advance, she and her forces bore the brunt of entry. Contagion swarmed to meet them, to counter them, even as others came through the sundered rift. Dim plummeted into darkness that knew no bottom, a pit which had no boundaries. Twilight Sparkle blazed like a burning, defiant star. She was wreathed in magenta flames. Her arrival did much to push back the darkness, and a great many hisses and squeaks could be heard from Contagion because of her sudden appearance.

Chromium, having opened up a mighty big tear, lept for Contagion, and the two grappled, suspended in the nothingness. Luna and her swarm beset Contagion as well, while Twilight brought her magics to bear. Horns blared, mighty horn blasts that echoed through the nothingness, and Princess Celestia appeared, arriving in a manner that only she could. The majestic alicorn—ablaze for battle—rode in a chariot drawn by a dozen phoenixes. She held an enormous hammer aloft and rallied her forces with a terrific battlecry.

Another slipped in, almost unnoticed. A slender pink figure darted through the torn rift, almost unseen in Princess Celestia’s flaming wake. As the others engaged Contagion in battle, the pink figure, all alone, folded her wings to her side and dove into the black abyss below, the place where light went to die—the place where Dim had fallen.

The blackness coalesced into something else entirely, something even more foul. No, it wasn’t blackness, or darkness… it was the absence of existence. Dim wasn’t sure how long he had fallen, but the battle above had long gone silent. He tumbled down end over end, and though he couldn’t see them, Dim suspected that his innards fluttered in his wake like festive ribbons.

Even the explosions bore no light down here. Dim couldn’t even hear them, but he could feel the magic as it happened. Such dreadful magics were being brought to bear, the most dangerous, most fearsome magics, the sorts of magic that could crack a planet in two—or rip a fresh moon out of a spare planet. Unable to muster up the will, the focus to save himself, Dim continued to plummet towards whatever fate awaited him.

Then, for a moment, he saw a faint light far above him, or at least he thought he did. It might very well be a trick of the eyes, a false light, the lights one saw sometime in absolute and total darkness. As he descended into the crushing depths of the abyssal nothingness, he admired the darkness, for he had no fear of it.

You have cost me much.

Dim knew exactly who the voice belonged to, but for whatever reason, he was not afraid.

So much has been spent pursuing you, trying to draw you in. So much wasted time and effort. A part of me wishes to be done with you, but I cannot allow these continued slights against me to pass. You will be made to answer for what you have cost me. You will serve me. You will be the servant that you were created to be.

“How much more will this cost you, then?” Dim barely recognised his own raspy, soupy voice. “I will not serve—”

Then one by one, I will destroy your friends. I will ruin everything you love. I will whisper hopelessness and despair into their ears, poisoning their hearts, minds, and souls. They will die… all of them will die. One by one, I will lay them low and bring them down. They will die wretched deaths, with whatever means I have at my disposal.

“Dim! Don’t listen!”

The sound of feathers in the darkness, followed by a faint, flickering pink light. But the light did not endure, and was smothered by the absence of existence. Something drew closer, closer, Dim felt something blaze to life within him, it burned through the very core of his being, restoring warmth, hope, and revived some of his will.

“Fight back! Dim, you have to fight back, or we’re both lost! I cannot overcome this darkness!”

Oddly, the sensation of falling seemed to slow. Like a dull orange ember, Dim’s will flickered, but it was enough to revive his inner flames. He tried to cast a light to help his companion—but nothing. Where she had brought but a moment of light, he could do nothing. Bleak despair began to creep back into his mind, and with it, the tiny fragile ember of his will threatened to be extinguished.

Foolish embodiment of weakness, why did you follow him down into oblivion? There is no escape from my clutches. This is a nightmare from which you will not wake. With your foolishness, you have doomed the world.

“Love is not foolishness!” the feminine voice roared. “My love sustains me, even in this place, whatever it is! I have pushed past my fears because of my love for another! I will brave this darkness!”

He is not deserving of love. I have seen into your heart. I know your secret. You fear that you nurture a monster that might destroy the world that you love so much. You speak in hushed whispers with the others of your kind, plotting of ways to bring about his end, should he betray you.

“I cannot deny that! What you are saying is true. But my hope sustains me, as it does right now. Dim might very well destroy the world… it’s a gamble to save him, but a gamble I’m willing to take. Without love, he will destroy the world. Love is the only thing keeping him out of your grasp, Grogar!”

For Dim, a dreadful truth had been revealed—but he bore Cadance no malice. No sense of resentment could be found within him. He suspected that he should feel resentment, that he should be angry, but… Cadance was his friend. What she was doing seemed entirely reasonable. It was nothing personal, just ensuring the survival of the world—which she really couldn’t be faulted for.

Grogar’s influence was smothering them both, extinguishing existence. This was still a dream realm—just a very bad part of one—and it had rules. He thought about how his smoke had made the doppelganger cough. Contagion’s rats had ravaged Dim’s lungs, doing alicorns knew what to his health. Rules, though sometimes flexible, had to be obeyed.

For existence to return, Grogar’s essence had to be contained somehow. It had to go somewhere, and if it could be siphoned off fast enough, then perhaps, maybe, Cadance could save them both, because Dim knew that he was in no condition to save himself, at this moment. All he had left was his defiance, his spite, and his contempt. Not the sort of virtuous things that Cadance relied upon, but they would have to do. She had come after him though, at great risk to herself, and potentially, if Grogar were to be believed, the world itself.

What might happen to the world if the Princess of Love was trapped in a nightmare from which she could not wake up? Her body might live, but her influence would be weakened. She had come down into the abyss with him—she had followed him into the sort of darkness that he knew would drive most ponies mad. What sustained her?

Contagion was not the only one who could learn from this. A part of Dim had been torn away—ripped away—yet again. Yet, this was a foolish mistake; Contagion’s intrusion had left something behind. Unintentionally, something had been given in return, and Dim drew upon it now while thinking of Cadance.

Grogar’s essence had to be contained somehow, and Dim knew of only one way.

Dim closed his eyes—not that closing his eyes mattered. But when his eyes opened, it was not Dim who had opened them. The Void hungered. It was always hungry, always in need of nourishment. It fed upon waste, upon detritus. A being whose purpose was to devour the abhorrent aberrations that reality rejected. What opened its eyes was a hungry, injured infant.

Grogar ceased to be a source of existence-extinguishing terror and became food.

Dim’s consumption—his disease—had become his nature; to consume.

So he did.

Opening his mouth, he breathed in, struggling, fighting to fill his lungs. No, not his lungs. This was not air he was breathing, or in need of. He sought out magic, but he had to be careful, as he did not wish to devour Cadance. No, Cadance would remain unharmed, because she had done him no harm.

The three-way contest of wills shifted as Dim focused on the suffocating deadness that was Grogar’s essence. It had the very taste of wrongness about it, and Dim, not knowing of the consequences, not caring, drank deep. Right away there was a reaction, a howl that rose up from the abyssal depths, a keening multi-voiced wail that sounded as though reality itself had cried out in pain.

“Dim! What are you doing! Don’t do that!” Cadance’s voice was one of absolute and utter panic, and could barely be heard over Grogar’s keening wail of agony. “Dim! Stop! This is how the world ends!”

Cadance was right, and that was Dim’s plan. This realm—a world unto itself—had to end. An infant Void was no World-Eater, but a dreaming infant Void could dream of eating whole galaxies, much in the same way as a foal could devour whole jars full of cookies. This was his purpose after all, to devour and consume. Dim had been repurposed, a new path had been set before him, and now, brimming with an odd sense of hope, he began his journey.

As if confirming his suspicions, Dim saw a flickering pink light come into view. It wasn’t much, but it was light, and it cast a faint halo upon Cadance’s face. Her teeth were bared, gritted perhaps, and her eyes shone with an inner fury. The tip of her horn glowed with the intensity of a tiny pink sun, and little by little, this light crept along her body, banishing the nothing that clung to her flesh.

“No… how is… how is this possible… Dim… you’re controlling it! The others were wrong! You’re no mindless devourer! Keep doing it! Keep doing it! I trust you! With all of my heart, mind, and soul, I trust you!”

The words buoyed Dim’s spirit and ignited a fire in some forgotten cold place within him. She wouldn’t say those things unless she meant them, not now, not in this place, not when Grogar could draw strength from treachery. Grogar’s anguished wails—a veritable choir of the damned—now delighted Dim. It was the sweet sound of suffering.

What are you doing?

“I have chosen my own way,” Dim replied, still drinking deep and gaining strength by the second. “I might have been born to be a replacement, a spare that was made necessary by circumstance. My mother and others tried to reshape me, repurpose me into something else. Celestia and others have used me for their own purposes, but I do not fault them for that, as it is far more merciful than destroying me outright. I will not be a slave. Nor will I submit to the whims of another.”

Cadance’s light grew ever brighter, and Dim’s darkness did not consume it.

“Pursue me at your own risk, Grogar. Send your hounds, you coward, but do not come for me yourself. I will fucking eat you. How many years has it taken for you to slowly gather the power that I am consuming right now? You can’t escape me. If you could, you’d be gone already. So all of you that is present right now, all of yourself that you sent, your strength is my strength. You are the abomination of abominations. As I fulfil my purpose, I gain strength.”

You will pay for this in time—

“Release Cadance,” Dim demanded.

Never!

“Release Cadance and I will let you go with some of your power still intact.”

“Dim, no! Don’t you dare!”

“Relinquish your hold upon her soul and I will let you escape, Grogar. Release her from the nightmare and I give you my word, I will let you go.”

You have shown yourself to be a creature of your word. Why do this? You have me at a disadvantage. You could come away from this with the strength to secure your freedom. You wouldn’t need to appease the alicorns or grovel at their hooves for your very existence. Overall, I find your need to bargain confounding.

“Dim! I mean it! Don’t you do it! You have the means to weaken him considerably! My life is worth that cost! Dim, I will never, ever forgive you if you agree to this!”

“I have done much that is unforgivable,” he murmured to himself. “What is one more thing? What is a grain of sand in a desert?”

“Dim, no! We have him! You can drain him right now and then pick up the fight! Luna will know your mind if you let her look! She’ll know what you’ve done and why you did it! You’ll have the strength to fight Grogar! My life is a small price to pay.”

How do you abide such weakness?

“How do you live with such obtuse stupidity?” Dim returned, as more of Grogar’s essence flowed into him, filling up the empty spaces, bringing with it knowledge and understanding. He knew that he had the strength to free himself now, but not Cadance. She would remain submerged in nightmares, asleep forever. He could not allow that. She had come for him at great risk to herself, and he would return the favour.

If he didn’t, then what was the point of friendship?

Somewhere, the battle against Contagion raged. Dim had a vague awareness of it now, he could sense it. It was still in this realm, but in a distant place above the abyss he had sunk into. Cadance was fighting and more of her light was spreading, but he knew that she could not free herself. She had waded out into a pool of tar, and he had been the bait. No doubt, she had willingly, knowingly waded out into the tar, and Dim, knowing that she listened to her own sense of self-preservation, he realised that he loved her for what she had done.

“With every passing second, I grow in power while you wane,” Dim said to Grogar. “What shall it be? Linger as long as you like, Grogar.”

She is free!

With these words, Cadance vanished, and Dim could no longer sense her hope and goodness. Her light—his light—was gone. She would wake up in terror, no doubt, her heart racing, but she would wake up, and that was all that mattered. Feeling that Grogar was owed no words, Dim released his hold and ceased the dreadful suction.

Somethingness flooded into the chasm of nothingness and Dim was lifted, he rose upon rising currents. His thoughts turned to Darling—and became painful, penitent thoughts. He could not save her. Oh, he might have saved her, in a sense. He could have spared her, but her mind and soul were lost, and a creature was more than a body. Darling Dark was doomed to darkness and there was nothing he could do about that. She had foolishly blundered into dark places seeking power, or whatever it was that the foolish filly had wanted.

Cadance had come down into the depths, she had braved the darkness. Not that she had anything to gain; far from it, Cadance had everything to lose by doing so. But Cadance had descended into darkness for him. It baffled him as much as it inspired him. She had risked so much… and for what, exactly? Love was clearly no misguided, foolish notion, as Dim was starting to see, and friendship was no act of intolerably idiocy.

She would be angry at him, no doubt. There was a distinct possibility that Cadance might not forgive him. He could live with that, if he had to. This was a burden he was willing to bear. She had risked everything, she had braved potential great loss, and for what? For him? He thought of his own friends, he thought of Bombay, and finally, his thoughts turned to Blackbird.

As Blackbird was so fond of telling others, he had gone back for her. It was something he didn’t have to do. He could have walked away and spared himself a lot of trouble. But he hadn’t. He made a choice to go back and rescue Blackbird for reasons that he wasn’t sure he understood or could comprehend. And Cadance… Cadance had followed him into darkness.

As Dim rose out of the abyss from which he had tumbled into, he considered following Cadance into the light.

Author's Note

Whew.

In love and war, one thing remains constant

“This just keeps happening.” Blackbird dabbed at the thin, runny blood that soaked the corner of Dim’s mouth and hissed when all she managed to do was smear it around, which made everything worse. “It’s like he’s not safe in his sleep. He keeps having these dreams. I don’t know what to do. Dim goes to sleep and then he’s suddenly in danger, or going off into weird places.”

“If it is any consolation”—Chromium paused, perhaps to pick his next words carefully—“I do believe he will be much safer from here on out. Things did not go as the Great Enemy intended. A great power awoke within Dim. The Great Enemy is many things, but stupid they are not. They will not make the same mistake twice. Dim is the undisputed master of that particular battlefield.”

“What happened?” Blackbird tossed the bloody cloth aside and turned around to face Chromium, who was wearing his unicorn guise.

“A battle—”

“Don’t fuck with me!”

Blackbird moved impossibly fast for a creature her size, and it was almost as if she had vanished from one spot, only to reappear in another. Somehow, she had turned darker, blacker, as if her impossibly black pelt had found new realms of darkness to explore. The very light itself seemed to dim around her body, and she was cloaked in a dark haze that blurred her silhouette. She was on Chromium in seconds, and her left talons circled around his throat. In the span of a fluttering eyelid, she had lifted him up from the floor and began squeezing him so hard that his eyeballs threatened to pop right from his sockets.

“Say ‘A battle’ once again, you cocksucker, and I don’t care what you are! I’ll twist your head right off!” She shook him—violently, she flung his tiny unicorn body around like an unwanted doll—all while her talons tightened around his throat. A curious darkness engulfed her body, as light shimmered and warped around her. “Stop fucking around with me and tell me what I want to know!”

Chromium was flung to the floor, where, after the intense impact, he lay still for a moment. After a second or so, he began scraping at his throat with his hooves while trying to suck air through his crushed windpipe. Blackbird loomed over him, menacing, black shadows visibly dancing along the ebon expanses of her pelt. She raised her talons again, and weird tendrils of concentrated darkness swirled around her black claws.

“You and Dim both are changing.” Chromium’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. He still clutched at his throat, trying to breathe, a victim of his chosen body’s weakness. “Give me a moment to recover, and I will tell you more of what is going on, I give you my word.”

“Fail to tell me what I want to know,” said Blackbird to the prone unicorn beneath her, “and I’ll use this body of yours as a scratching post!”

The wet, raspy sound of Dim’s laboured breathing worried Blackbird, but other than the coughing and the blood, he seemed a bit more at peace in his sleep than usual. Everything that Chromium had just told her left her unsettled, alarmed, and anxious. But there was also the dragon’s reassurances that from here on out, Dim’s slumber should be mostly untroubled. Reaching out, she wiped more blood away from Dim’s lips, so the pillowcase wouldn’t end up stained.

“Dim has changed,” said Chromium in a quiet, strained voice, “and you with him.”

Blackbird focused her intense, predatory gaze on Chromium, who was still rubbing his throat with one hoof while keeping a wary eye on her. She couldn’t blame him for being so guarded. But what did he know, anyhow? She was in love, and love made you reckless. Impetuous. Plus, Chromium was arrogant. Smarmy. A bit of a prick. Then again, Dim was also all of those things. But the difference was, she liked Dim. Chromium? Not so much.

“From what we’ve been able to gather, Belladonna was supposed to probe Dim’s defenses.” Chromium paused and with a slight turn of his head, he looked at Dim. He wore a unicorn’s face, but his expressions were utterly alien. Whatever expressions he made beneath the unicorn mask didn’t translate well to a mammalian face and the overall effect was unsettling.

“Of course, Dim caught on—”

“That’s what Dim does,” Blackbird said, not caring that she was interrupting.

“Not only did Dim figure out what was going on, Dim figured out how to exploit the rules of their nightmare realm. When he wrested absolute control away and took over, it gave us the opening we needed to invade their dream realm and take the battle to them. It was a tremendous failure on their part, because now Princess Luna can enter to go raiding at any time. Contagion was severely weakened in the attack, though we know he will recover. And as for Grogar…”

Blackbird’s ears went rigid.

“Grogar has lost much of his power. Power that took him years to amass. The Great Enemy made a move for power, failed, and it cost them dearly. Dim has come away stronger… though, so has Contagion if Princess Luna is to be believed. This is not my area of expertise. Time will tell, I suppose, and we shall see when Contagion has fully recovered. For now, he has gone into hiding.”

The whole bed creaked and shuddered as Dim coughed, and more fresh blood glistened on Dim’s lips. Right away, Blackbird moved to clean it up, and she chewed on her lip while thinking about everything that Chromium had said. A battle had been won, it seemed, but at a cost. Dim stirred a bit as she wiped his lips, his eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake. He murmured something that she could not make out, and then drifted back into a deep slumber.

She couldn’t recall a time when he had ever slept this soundly.

Why, he almost looked peaceful right now, and that… that was disturbing.

“Dim has earned my respect.”

Blackbird could scarcely believe her ears.

“He did something that I can’t understand. A part of me wants to be angry with him, but another part of me respects what he did. Though for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why he did it.” Chromium drew in a deep, rattling breath and his bloodshot eyes became unfocused. “It is absolutely confounding.”

Several responses formed on Blackbird’s tongue, but none of them seemed adequate.

“He negotiated with Grogar for Princess Cadance’s release. It’s infuriating… Grogar could have been drained… weakened… set back. Princess Cadance foolishly went where she shouldn’t have gone. She disobeyed direct orders from Princess Celestia. That filly is foolish… headstrong. She has all of the painful stupidity of youth… and I want to be angry with her as well.”

Chromium sighed.

“But Princess Cadance followed Dim down into a nightmare from which there would be no waking. Grogar had anchored a tiny part of himself there, a portion of his soul. Animancy. Grogar created a Tether of Torment and was prepared to hold Dim’s soul until such a time that his will could be crushed and his essence harvested.” Chromium’s brows furrowed, and for a second, he almost managed to appear as a unicorn when he made an expression of concern and confusion.

“That same spell would have held Cadance also, and eventually, Grogar would have drained her as well. But Dim did the unexpected”—Chromium’s eyes darted towards Dim’s direction—“and something within him woke up. Something terrible. Something that Princess Celestia fears a great deal. It woke up and all of a sudden, Dim wasn’t trapped in a nightmare abyss with Grogar… no… Grogar was trapped in a nightmare abyss with Dim. Princess Luna said she could sense the old goat’s terror, his fear, and it chilled her very soul.”

Unable to stop herself, Blackbird giggled. It escaped before she could do anything about it, and she saw Chromium cast his stern gaze upon her. She tried to stifle her giggles, but that only made things worse. She saw the silver unicorn shake his head and as more giggles escaped, he clucked his tongue.

“This isn’t funny.” Chromium now spoke in a raspy deadpan. “Dim could have prevented the suffering of so many. An uncountable number of innocents might have been spared had Dim held on to Grogar’s soul. But Dim bargained with that monster, and let him go so Cadance could be saved. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why.”

Blackbird thought of when Dim came back for her. He could have left her to a terrible fate, but he hadn’t. She understood, and she knew why he bargained with Grogar. Dim didn’t give a damn about the greater good—no, all things considered, he was rather selfish. She wondered if there was some way that she could explain this to Chromium, but a part of her wasn’t sure if the dragon would ever understand. Chromium was a creature of harmony and goodness—of harmonious goodness—and Dim was not. Neither was she. As a hippogriff, she was naturally chaotic, as her various parts strove against themselves. She was half predator and half prey.

As for Dim… he was whatever he was, and he was pony-shaped.

“Princess Cadance would have been an acceptable loss,” said Chromium while rubbing his throat. “Things change with time… a few centuries from now, she might have freed herself, or been freed. Some little pony might have been born and their destiny might have been to free her, or to even replace her. Harmony and existence are a river. The flow cannot be stopped, but sometimes, the river takes a new course. Losing Princess Cadance would have only been a minor, temporary setback. The river flows regardless.”

Hearing Chromium speak in such a way made Blackbird both angry and sad, though she could not say why. Try as she might, she could not understand his position, no more so than he could understand hers. What he found acceptable, she found monstrous. But then again, she was mortal, and perhaps short-sighted. She found herself biting her tongue to hold back hasty, heated, angry words, and she thought of her earlier outburst when she had seized the silver unicorn by the throat.

“What possesses you short-lived mortals to make the impetuous, short-term decisions that you make? Do you not understand long-term gain? Is your thinking limited to the mere seconds, minutes, and hours that you live? Please, don’t strangle me again. I just want to understand.”

“Those seconds, minutes, and hours are all we have,” Blackbird said while flexing her talons. The questions, his questioning, infuriated her for reasons she could not understand, but she sensed that he wasn’t trying to goad a response out of her. He just sincerely did not understand, and some of her rage turned to pity. “This is why Dim is a far more likeable creature than you are. For us, suffering even a second feels like years sometimes. I know how it was for me. Dim came back for me, and he saved me. He didn’t have to do that. Dim didn’t need me. But those minutes of torture felt like entire years of my life… you… you just have no idea. Dim… he tried to spare this Princess Cadance pony that fate… but you… you would let her suffer. In my eyes, that does not make you good, it makes you callous and cold, you cold-blooded fucking reptile.”

“I suppose I deserve that.”

“You’re damn right you do. Everything about you is insulting. Your contempt for us—”

“I don’t hold you in contempt!”

“Shut up, or I’ll rip your head off.” Again, Blackbird felt her talons flex. “Your every word drips with contempt for us and our miserable, short lives… yet you allow us lesser creatures to worship you and your glorious self. I just lost a friend last night because those seconds, minutes, and hours became too long to bear for her. And you… you… you fail to understand just how precious those seconds, minutes, and hours are. They’re all we have. We only get a finite number of them. One of my best friends threw all of the seconds, minutes, and hours she had left away, because she couldn’t face spending them alone. Or maybe it was for some other reasons, I don’t know. A part of me wants to believe she did it for love. Tell me, Chromium, do you love?”

The dragon wearing a unicorn costume did not reply. Blackbird studied his eyes, hoping to read something of his nature, a glimpse into his soul, perhaps, but peering into those depths she saw nothing familiar, only alien, unknown intelligence. The only thing she could make out was that he was thinking, and he continued to make weird, uncanny expressions, draconic expressions that did not translate well to a mammalian face.

“I allow others to worship me for their benefit, not my own. It makes them happy. It gives them purpose and meaning in their lives.”

This was not what Blackbird expected Chromium to say, and it most certainly was not what she wanted to hear. Everything about these words was infuriating, and as her blood began to boil her jaw clenched tight. Was he just trying to change the subject because he was uncomfortable with it, or did he perhaps deem that she was unworthy of an answer?

Tendrils of black shadow danced along the lengths of Blackbird’s talon-fingers.

“This Princess Cadance pony,” began Blackbird. “From what I understand, she’s the Princess of Love. It stands to reason that her interest in Dim is specific to love. If Dim did not love, then I don’t believe that Princess Cadance would do whatever it is that she is doing. You said she disobeyed orders… well, I’ll tell you why she did it. Love, you idiot. We do stupid, incredible things for love. I almost ripped your head off for that very reason. No doubt this Princess Cadance pony loves Dim. And as for Dim himself, Dim is learning how to love. He’s trying, which is a damn sight better than what you’re doing. When others worship you, they love you, but you, you do nothing to return that. Princess Cadance showed that she loved Dim by following him wherever it was he went, and Dim, for all of his faults, and he has many, he showed a little love in return. That’s why he did what he did, you lizard-brained ignoramus.”

“No offense”—Chromium made a dismissive wave with his hoof—“but that almost seems detrimental to your own survival. You said it yourself, you do stupid things. How do you survive such foolishness and rashness? How have you… all of you… not wiped yourselves out by now? I’ve seen your nations rise and fall. Whole empires have been built, brick by brick, only to crumble back into nothingness. I’ve watched this world end several times now… and for all of my intelligence and wisdom, I cannot explain your tenacious survival.”

Blackbird, frustrated, wasn’t sure that she was smart enough to argue her point.

“All of you are such marvellous creatures. Your songs. Your music. The culture and art that you make. All those frivolous things that you do for the sake of beauty… I do admire that. Whole lifetimes spent in pursuit of beauty. You and your archeologists, you even study the aesthetics and the beauty of those who’ve came and went before you. I admire these things about you, but I cannot comprehend you.”

For reasons she could not explain, Blackbird felt mollified by the dragon’s words. The shadows dancing along the length of her talon-fingers poofed into wisps of nothingness and she felt her volcanic anger subside just enough that some of her reason returned to her. She realised that Chromium was trying, which might explain why he was here, tolerating her insults. Blackbird wondered if she could be a better representative of her kind.

“I watched your kind and even shepherded your kind when you were but primitive beasts that barely had a language of your own. You were fascinating, you truly were. While others of my kind were content to eat you, I rather enjoyed watching you. I made it my business to teach you things, and for this, I faced endless ridicule from my own kind. When I went into one of my long slumbers, I genuinely worried if you and your kind would be there when I woke up. I had trouble imagining a world without you. All of you were such delightful creatures.

“I woke up from one of my long slumbers, and found evil in the world. Real evil. Terrible evil. And rather than banding together to fight this evil, all of you were busy fighting each other. Griffons were eating ponies. Proto-unicorns were busy exploring the depth of their magic and unleashing unimaginable horrors into the world. The world became one of nightmares, so much so that it even became dangerous to me and my kind.

“After another long nap, I was quite delighted to find that you and your kind hadn’t quite destroyed yourself just yet, but you were well on your way. Even though my kind told me I was insane for doing so, I tried a claws-on approach. I made what you would call slaves of you and your kind. It was for your own good. I made you stop fighting and I did everything I could to force some civilisation into your tiny, furry, fuzzy heads. I brought harmony and order. Things improved.

“A few naps later, and there were centaurs. Beings not at all native to this world. But they came here and did what I could not. They uplifted you and your kind. The centaurs spread out in search of answers. They didn’t start as centaurs, but as something else entirely. A species that quarreled, bickered, and battled themselves almost to extinction.

“But they changed themselves. Changed their nature. They grafted bits and pieces of other species hoping that would alter their state of being. These centaurs, not yet centaurs, roamed the universe looking for other life that had evolved, and they tried to understand. They attempted to forge life, and refine it, as one does with steel. Equine natures were chosen, selected… because equines were sociable herd animals. And the centaurs, whatever they were before becoming centaurs, were not. They were murderous brutes.

“Whatever they were, they found it so repulsive, so horrific, that they erased their own memories of it, because they could not bear to live with their own past. And here, on this planet, in this place, the centaurs rediscovered themselves. Refined themselves. And you… all of you… you were uplifted. Your potential was recognised. Perhaps because they feared their own past, the centaurs attempted to usher you past what was sure to be the worst parts of your future.

“You ask me if I love. I do. I love a great deal. I feel a tremendous amount of love for all of you as a whole, though I will confess that I have trouble with the individual. But yes, I do love. I’ve watched you because I love you. I’m here, in this place, trying to make things right because I love you. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m trying. Celestia is very dear to me, and her thoughts, her opinions, her feelings, they matter to me. I envy her, you know. She has this marvellous connection to life that I wish I had. So not only do I love, but I also feel jealousy.”

All of Chromium’s words—and there were many—landed like a suckerpunch to Blackbird’s guts. She had no wind, no words, no reply, she could not even muster up any sort of response. It had never occurred to her that a dragon might feel jealous. She felt tiny now, little, insignificant and insecure. How little she knew. All of her anger, all of her bluster left her, and she found herself in an odd position.

She wanted to help Chromium, and she found it tragic that she had no idea how.

Author's Note

This space for rent.

Sorting out the details

“Tell me, Dim… what do you remember?”

Blackbird turned her head away from Chromium so that she might look at Dim. The question caused Dim to look up from his steaming hot cup of tea and she noticed a faint tremble in his body—evidence that he was holding back a cough. The parlour was barely a parlour, it was so stark, so devoid of stuff and things, but it was comfortable. Cosy even, in its own way.

“Very little,” Dim replied with a slight shake of his head. “As with all dreams, recollection is hazy at best. I am aware that something happened, but I cannot recall what took place.”

Again, her head turned, this time to face the silver unicorn sitting in a sturdy wooden chair. Chromium frowned, or maybe scowled, but it was not a unicorn’s expression. It was more akin to the sort of look one might make when creating a parody of a unicorn, or performing a really bad impression of what they thought an upset unicorn should look like. Blackbird thought of everything said by the dragon, but was too emotionally exhausted to feel much of anything. With her head turned, she heard Dim slurp his tea, and this was followed by a soft, raspy sigh.

“Would you like to remember?”

Every muscle in Blackbird’s body tensed as she once more turned her head.

He did not respond right away, but sat sipping his tea. Blackbird’s sharp eyes focused on the rim of the teacup, searching for traces of blood, but it was a bad angle to spot such things. With Dim’s hemophilia, the bleeding might take a while to stop—if it did at all. She wanted nothing more than to take whomever had done this and rip them to shreds. Blackbird had the name, but what she lacked was the means to reach him. It. Whatever Contagion was.

“That’s a dangerous question,” said Dim in response, his words like two pieces of parchment rubbing together. A kind of crinkly, crackly sound that was somehow both dry and wet at the same time.

Something about the sound make Blackbird think of autumn leaves in the wind.

“You are an unexpectedly dangerous pony.”

Dry, raspy laughter could be heard from Dim, and Blackbird was shocked by the sound. To be fair, it was a rare sound, something not often heard from Dim. It was not sardonic laughter with a ring of sarcasm, nor was it haughty aristocratic laughter that she found strangely appealing. This was just Dim laughing—and perhaps enjoying himself.

For the first time in a while, Blackbird found herself relaxing somewhat.

“I mean no jest,” Chromium continued, sitting rigid in his wooden chair. “You faced off with two godlings… beings of exceptional power. You came away weaker from one, but stronger from another. By the way, Princess Luna told me to tell you that she acknowledges your supremacy.”

“What does that mean, anyhow?”

Chromium shrugged.

Holding his tea aloft, Dim lifted a crusty slice of day old bread and munched it. Blackbird found the way he ate attractive for reasons utterly unknown to her. Perhaps it was the exquisite movement of his thin lips. The way his nostrils flared just before he took a bite. Dim showed so little enthusiasm for anything, but magic, along with food, one might get lucky and witness his aristocratic ardor.

“I would like to remember,” said Dim around a small mouthful of bread.

“This is a tearing of the veil.” A look of concern was now plainly visible on Chromium’s face, and there was nothing alien about it. “Remembering dreams in total clarity is the first step to becoming like us. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Blackbird, confused and lost, heard Dim say, “I do. But now, I have to ask, why help me become like you? We don’t see eye to eye, you and I.”

“We share a common enemy…” Chromium’s words trailed off, but the dragon wearing a unicorn disguise recovered. “You did something that I respect, even if I don’t agree with it. Or understand it.”

“That is not a good reason.” Dim sipped his tea, nipped off another bite of bread, and then studied Chromium while chewing.

“You deserve to remember—”

“Again, not a good reason.”

“Do you wish to remember or not?” Chromium asked, impatient.

“I would.” Dim swallowed. “But I am trying to understand why.”

“I find myself in the same position. Asking why. You are a selfish, self-serving prick. You’ve left a wake of chaos and devastation behind you. First, the Grittish Isles, and now Fancy—”

“Don’t forget Tortoise-Tuga,” Blackbird said, helpful as always.

“Indeed.” Chromium’s silver eyebrows furrowed together in an odd, uncanny way. “Burned right down to the sand. But that… that is no big loss.” A pause, long in nature, as the dragon collected his thoughts, followed up with, “You saved Princess Cadance.”

“Princess Cadance saved me first.”

The furrowing of Chromium’s brows intensified.

“Is it so hard to understand that I pay my debts?” Dim’s words almost seemed mocking now, his customary antagonistic manner had returned. “Princess Cadance has saved me many times over. Again and again. Repeatedly.” His eyes darted in Blackbird’s direction for a moment, but eye-contact was quickly returned with Chromium. “Princess Cadance has been with me for every step of my recovery. I’ve… reclaimed myself. I have her”—lifting a hoof, he pointed at Blackbird—“and the others. Even if I’ve lost a few along the way. I understand that I’m not allowed to keep them.”

“Which brings me to another subject I wanted brought to your attention.” Reaching up, Chromium began to absentmindedly rub his throat. “It is good that you are loyal to Princess Cadance. She is young… foolish. Still trying to prove herself.”

“If necessary, for her sake, I will ignite the sky, set the seas to boil, and turn whole mountains into molten oceans of fire.” Dim’s eyes narrowed and for a few seconds, he visibly struggled to draw breath. “I pay my debts.” These words were raspy, soupy, and rather liquidy in sound. “Even to you, Chromium. Even to you.”

“This is about debts? About what you feel is owed?” Even as a unicorn, Chromium seemed incredulous.

“Is that so hard to believe?” Dim drew in a shuddering breath, and then gulped down some tea. “It’s all a system of what is owed and who owes what. Grogar and the others, they’ve taken from me. My mother, she’s taken from me. Blackbird? I owe her. Princess Cadance? I have outstanding debts. Chantico, whom I serve, I owe her much.”

“So this comes down to accountancy. Keeping the books. You’re just… you’re just a—”

“Mercenary?” said Blackbird, doing her best to be helpful.

Chromium threw his hooves up into the air and let out an exasperated huff.

“Say, Dim”—Blackbird fought back the urge to smile as she spoke—“I brought you that nice cup of tea and some bread. What’ll that get me?”

“My continued loyalty and maybe a few dramatic, theatrical moments where quite a number of those deserving end up dead in horrific, artistic ways. Probably something involving fire.” Then, without further ado, Dim tore off another small bite of crusty bread and began chewing.

“So let me get this straight… the fate of many… the fate of the world potentially rests upon you keeping Dim indebted to you?” Chromium’s hooves lowered and his eyes, his confused, frightened eyes, attempted into peer into Blackbird’s very soul.

Raising her right talons, Blackbird said, “I do so solemnly swear to use my kitty-slitty for the sake of good. Don’t you worry, I won’t let this power go to my head.”

Chromium closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then another, and then a third. After the third, he opened his eyes, glanced at Dim, then stared at Blackbird, all while rubbing his throat with one hoof. Whatever expressions his face made were unreadable, mostly because of just how fast his expressions changed, rapidly going from one to the next.

“Is this a game?” he asked. “Is this all just an elaborate ruse? A bit of jest?” Chromium’s expression settled on something that almost appeared perplexed, though perhaps a bit weird in some vague, undefinable way.

“Dim straight up assassinated somepony in exchange for dinner.” Blackbird leaned forwards. “The guy was an asshole, so I’m okay with that. I think all of us are okay with that. Us being our little group. We let the nice ones live, but the naughty ones? They die in such a way that the nice ones get a reminder to keep being nice.”

The sigh that Chromium heaved sounded rather defeated.

“There was something else that you felt I should know?” To Blackbird’s ears, it sounded as though Dim struggled to make the words happen. How was he holding back the urge to cough? Force of will? His indomitable self-control? In silence, she began to worry.

“Yes. But first, drink a bit more tea. You sound awful.” After a pause, the silver unicorn added, “There’s a lot for you to remember.”

The medicinal tea was bitter, yet soothing as it trickled down Dim’s parched throat. He thought of Bombay, he couldn’t help it, she stayed in his mind and would not go away. Already, she was missed. There were other thoughts, other things that flitted through his mind, like the dream he had. He would remember soon enough, but had no small amount of hesitation about total recall.

Blackbird was antsy and the big black hippogriff would not sit still. Something about her had changed; now she gave off a distinct magical hum that his magic sense could not ignore. It was intriguing, and made more so by the fact that it mirrored his own distinct signature. Surely Chromium sensed this as well, and Dim wondered what Chromium might have to say.

“Princess Luna had much to say when we conversed in the astral realm, after the battle.” Chromium shifted in his stark, plain wooden chair, and something about his demeanour suggested discomfort—though physical or mental, it was impossible to discern. “It is about Darling…”

Dim almost choked on his tea. A dreadful, whooping cough caused his small, slight frame to shudder, and with each barking hack, he saw stars go streaming through his vision. It took all of his willpower to force the cough to cease its assault upon his body, and he sat in his chair, his barrel heaving as he took slow, deliberate breaths.

“Princess Luna doesn’t know what it is,” said Chromium after Dim had recovered a bit. “Princess Cadance isn’t the only one who can channel herself through your horn. When you see or hear Darling, the magic is coming from you. Princess Luna believes it to be some kind of nightmare dream magic woven with necromancy. She also knows that it leaves you deeply troubled, unsettled. Even guilty.”

Without even thinking about it, Dim averted his gaze.

“These emotions… this… guilt… it leaves you vulnerable and more susceptible to malignant magics. Like those used to manipulate your dreams. Princess Luna can’t even tell if it is actually Darling or your memory of Darling that is tormenting you. It could be either. She suspected that it might be possible in some way to use necromancy to revive a memory as a form of dream-spirit. Animancy might also play a part. She can barely understand what it might be, and sadly, Princess Luna has no idea how to fight it. This magic is unknown. New. And worrisome to all. If it can be used on you… it can be used on others.”

“You said that Dim would be safer in his dreams,” Blackbird blurted out.

“I did.” Chromium nodded. “And I meant it. But just as Princess Cadance can project her will through Dim, so too can others. His waking hours can be tormented. Hallucinations and illusions can be forced upon him, channeled though his mind, and through his horn, which is directly connected to his mind. It is the inherent weakness of being a unicorn.”

Sipping his tea, Dim savoured the bitter liquid whilst he thought about what was said.

“None of you are safe around Dim. This… malevolence that hangs over him like a cloud, manipulating his mood and influencing him, Princess Luna suspects that it will have subtle effects upon all of you as well. Especially those of you with troubled minds.”

Upon hearing this, Dim closed his eyes and tried not to think of the obvious.

“She doesn’t know how powerful it is, or what it is capable of. But if Dim can see and hear Darling, then it stands to reason that your senses can also be manipulated. Toyed with. Be mindful of what you see and hear, Blackbird. The ears and the eyes are gateways to the mind. Leave them unguarded at your own peril.”

“Can nothing be done?” Blackbird’s worried voice reached Dim’s ears, though he could not see her reactions.

“The best one to help Dim is probably Eerie,” Chromium replied. “She has much knowledge of influence, being a master illusionist, as well as her psychic gifts. If anybody can teach Dim how to ward his mind, it will be her. She blocked Princess Cadance, so it seems reasonable to assume that she can block out other influences as well. And perhaps teach Dim how to create a fortress of mental will.”

“Bombay”—Blackbird’s voice cracked and Dim opened his eyes so that he might see her—“did she… was she… I mean…” After her words trailed off, she gave Chromium a pleading stare.

“There is no way of knowing.” The silver unicorn now wore a recognisable expression of sadness on his face, and his ears drooped in a familiar way. “It is best not to torment yourself over this. There is no way of knowing after the fact. If you dwell on this, it will only create further weakness.”

Dim felt his guts contort. He knew that he would dwell on this. How could he not? Already, the emotional agony was settling in and making itself at home. There would be no way to ease his mind, no way to ever know for certain, no means to ever get blissful reassurance. Bombay was dead. Gone. Out of reach. Would she too, haunt his waking hours? Would he hear her voice? His blood ran cold when he thought of the horrifying possibilities.

What if she accused him of murder?

Author's Note

Soon, all of this will be wrapped up, and we'll be leaving Fancy.

What glorious stars

“Blackbird… there is something I must ask of you.”

Even as Dim spoke, he saw the change come over Blackbird’s face, a faint expression of worry perhaps, or maybe anxiousness. She was holding a piece of toast smeared with butter, sardines, and garlic paste in her left talons. At this moment, in this pose, with the look upon her face, she was perfect. Dim leaned in, captivated in some way that he could not understand, he dared not try to comprehend, and he allowed the crack in his hardened heart to widen just a little bit more, pain be damned.

“This is complicated—”

“That’s the nature of proposals, Dim.”

Such words. They gave him pause. This was, indeed a proposal of sorts, though perhaps not the one she was wanting, or expecting. The one she was anticipating. A quick deep breath did nothing to prepare him, so he tried again, and still again, though he felt no readier for his preparation. When it occurred to him that he was making futile efforts, a deep, shuddering breath wracked his body and almost made him cough.

“Perfect memory has awakened something within me, Blackbird. Having such a clear vision of the past, and all that has happened, I remember in perfect detail how you came for me after I withdrew. That’s the thing. I remember everything.” He paused, uncertain for a time, and then found his tongue after some quick soul-searching. “Seeing the past so clearly has revealed some of the future… of this I am fairly certain.”

With slow caution, Blackbird nipped off a bite of her toast and waited.

“I have always feared that the darkness was evidence of my damnation. But nothing could be further from the truth. The darkness is my salvation. My reward. Dark… is not evil. Blackbird, there is something I must do, and there is something I must ask of you.”

In silence, her face a wizened mess from apprehension, Blackbird chewed her toast.

“I must become the darkness. No more wandering about in confusion, fearing the light but also foolishly believing I need it for my salvation. It is time for me to embrace the darkness and accept that it is not evil. But—”

“Yesh?” Blackbird said around her mouthful of food.

“If I am to embrace the darkness,” he continued, wheezing out each word, “then I ask that you be my stars. The night is merely blindness without some meaningful form of radiance. Something has to define the darkness, lest it be mistaken for absence—”

“Dim, I had no idea that you were a romantic.”

It took Dim a moment to realise that these words did not come from Blackbird. Her lips did not move, nor was it her voice. Distracted, his neck hot and prickly, it took him several painful, embarrassing moments to make sense of the situation. A deep breath did nothing but make his lungs tickle, and he felt what was sure to be a cough rolling over in anticipation of escaping.

“Jolie… I have killed for lesser offenses,” he said at last.

“Yeah, I know,” the little red mare replied while she trotted to the table so that she could sit down. “So it took death to soften your heart a little. I did not expect that.” She clambered up into a chair, grunting with effort, and when she sat down, her head barely peeked over the table’s edge. Her muzzle crinkled when she looked up at what Blackbird was eating, but smiled when she turned her attention upon Dim.

Warm fondness mixed with icy annoyance and Dim wasn’t certain which was the stronger. He maintained his calm, steady, aristocratic manner, at least on the outside. On the inside, however, he was fighting a losing battle against the urge to cough and the constant, steady tickle inside of his lungs sapped his will.

True to form, true to self, Blackbird let go with a thunderous belch that caused Jolie’s mane to go flapping in the fetid, sardine-scented gale released by the braptacular hippogriff. Dim was both disgusted and impressed, and as the gurgly burp continued, he managed to derive some small sense of satisfaction from Jolie Rouge’s uncomfortable squirming.

“Ugh! Carnivores!” Jolie waved her stubby legs around, but to no avail.

When Blackbird wiped her mouth with her foreleg, Dim turned away and looked out the window. The city was blanketed beneath sooty grey clouds, like an infant with a caul or a corpse beneath a shroud. Depending upon the state of one’s optimism or pessimism, the city was either being reborn or now existed in a state of curious undeath, the fascinating fate of some cities as they continued to linger. The sight of it filled him with melancholy, but also an annoying, pokey sliver of hope that very much felt like something sharp lodged in the tender folds of one’s frogs.

Cities existed, even if they shouldn’t, and something had to be done with them.

They were a blight, a cancerous canker upon the land, and the roads were the tendrilous appendages that spread through the body so that new cities, new growths, could be established. Yet, for all their vulgarity, they had a necessity to them; progress meant cities so that civilisation could flourish. Without cities, without civilisation, all of the world would be disgusting primitives—a rotten circumstance indeed.

Try as she might, Jolie Rouge could not wave nor ward away the stink.

Beyond the window, which was greasy and ashen, miracles took place in steady succession. Buildings rose from their fallen, shattered state. Crooked narrow streets were widened, made straight, made better, because the destruction and reconstruction allowed for much needed improvement. These narrow, confined arteries were widened, which would allow for new blood to flow into the city. What Chromium restored had a sense of harmonic order, something that the city had lacked in its previous incarnation.

“What is to be done with Bombay?” Dim asked when his meandering thoughts returned to the present situation.

Blackbird’s face remained playful, but her eyes were sad. Jolie on the other hoof, hid her emotions far better, and when her head turned, Dim had trouble reading her face. She was good at this, Jolie was. He already knew that she was troubled though, so this attempt to conceal herself was meaningless. A steady rain began to fall and left streaks on the sooty, greasy glass. It seemed as though the rain could not improve things, make things better, it could only make a greater mess.

“She’ll be taken to the cultist compound,” Jolie said, almost whispering. “She belongs with the Bard. Perhaps in death they’ll have the peace they did not know in life.” The little red mare sighed and then folded her forelegs over her barrel. “As one great romance ends, another begins. Are you two doing okay? I need to know that you are okay. Gratin is being a moody catbird and nothing… nothing feels right. Nothing feels good. I don’t wanna go home and report on all we’ve lost. I’m taking all of this a lot harder than I’m letting on. My ship is all shot to shit. All my friends and loved ones are grieving. Fancy has fallen. Going home is gonna be awful.”

After a shuddering inhale, she continued, “No closure. Bombay just did a hard exit stage left. I keep wondering if she did it because she knew going home would be hard. Facing the music. She was responsible for keeping the Bard alive. His protector… he was a powerful asset. Going home a failure is hard… but to go home a failure and grieving over what you’ve lost… what you’re to be protecting… and having to answer for that, I can’t imagine what that must feel like.” Squeezing her eyes shut, the foal-sized red mare shook her head from side to side, and her forelock swung to and fro with each turn. “Or maybe I can. As a captain, I am to look after my crew. I’m heading homeward with empty bunks. I have to answer for those… I gotta answer for those.”

Reaching out, Blackbird lifted Jolie from her chair, hefted her like a small, squirming sack of potatoes, and pulled her close. Dim stared at them both, unblinking, he did so until his eyes stung with the need for moisture. When he did finally blink, it was a slow, unwilling act. Far more moisture than was strictly necessary flooded his eyes and with a turn of his head, he faced the window once more.

This… this was why he needed Blackbird to be his stars.

He did not resent Jolie for her interruption. Far from it, actually. Bombay had retreated to give he and Blackbird a moment alone—and that did not end well. He was aware of some sense of change within himself, but at the moment, he had no understanding of how to plumb its profound depths. With perfect memory came something else, an awakening of a sort that he could not comprehend, an attunement with the world that was still too new to understand.

Other changes had been wrought, other understandings, such as the passage of time. He had a keen awareness of it now, how little he had. How precious each moment was. Time flowed like torrents of blood that gushed from sundered flesh, each spurt timed, not to a beating heart, but to a ticking clock. As much as he wanted to be selfish and keep Blackbird to himself, to do so would be a contradiction to the very reason he had feelings for her. She was a magnanimous creature, gregarious, a magnet that drew in needy souls.

Such as his own.

For her to be his beacon, his stars, he would have to share her.

Lost in his silent contemplations, he became distracted when he saw the pink tint in his vision; so involved was he, so wrapped up in this moment was he, that he failed to notice the glorious pink intrusion. This felt good and right, sharing this moment of goodness, of growth, after Cadance had been witness to the very worst he had to offer. He thought of Chromium’s many words and wondered what he’d given up for Cadance, what had been lost. Thinking of everything in terms of loss seemed wrong somehow, felt wrong. What was gained?

This he did not know.

Love had almost been lost to the world, almost as if there was some dedicated effort to eradicate it. First the Bard, lost, and then Cadance. What If was a dangerous game, a game where not-knowing was projected and the very worst was imagined. It was speculation—but of a dangerous variety. Cadance had almost been lost, if one could accept that, and not in a battle at home, as one might expect, but on a battlefield incomprehensible to most.

The War had begun and it had multiple fronts.

“When do we leave?” asked Dim.

Held in Blackbird’s forelegs, Jolie squirmed a bit in clear response to the question before she answered, “As soon as possible. Everything that has happened here has no doubt set off a chain of events and we’ll need to react to them before they go out of control. The Black Hand will no doubt want to take advantage of the chaos here. An army of slavers is no doubt on the wind right now. The vultures are coming to pick the bones. Flying home, we’ll probably have to avoid whole fleets of Black Talon ships.”

This caused Blackbird to sigh.

“We’re in no shape to fight, either. I’m not sure if we’ll even get home. Everything is just sort of cobbled together. The ship is not ship-shape.” Jolie’s eyes closed and she went still against Blackbird. “Why does Gratin have to be such a moody catbird? I really need him right now. But he’s off being moody and sulky and doing whatever it is he does during times like these.”

In spite of it all, this did not feel hopeless—just difficult beyond comprehension.

Dim, in a rare mood, allowed his face to relax into something that was almost a smile. He pulled out his pipe, his smoking kit, and went to work, performing a series of actions with no real thought. Outside, thunder rumbled as a late-autumn-early-winter storm drifted into the city from the west. Perhaps the storm would help to cleanse the city.

A storm would help clean up the physical filth, but the shadows that lurked beneath the city required a wholly different cleansing. Dim understood why Gratin might have pushed Jolie away and upon further reflection of this fact, he concluded that it would be best if they left sooner rather than later. They were vulnerable right now, with raw emotions, and weak of will. He did not think ill of his companions for their weakness, a fact that truly gave him pause.

He had been raised to combat the supernatural and the unseen; they had not.

If anything, it was a reason for him to take up the slack and do more. But what? Somewhat confused, Dim sat there, packing his pipe, uncertain of what to say or feel. These changes that had been wrought. He’d been undone. Remade. Reconstructed. Where there had once been doubt, fear, and uncertainty, he now had resolve and clarity. Well, the beginnings of clarity, anyhow. There was still a lot to put together.

“When we leave,” Dim said to Jolie, offering what reassurance he could, “Gratin will be more attentive. Do not begrudge him his behaviour. He is not himself. None of us are truly ourselves right now, save for Blackbird and I, perhaps.” His eyes met with Blackbird’s and he saw understanding flash within them.

She knew.

Like himself, Blackbird had changed, and profoundly so. She was his counterbalance, the weight of reckoning that righted his scales. As he grew in power, so would she. Hers was the power to hold him accountable, a power she had forcibly seized for herself after wheeling and dealing with incomprehensible powers who were little more than metaphors given substance. Blackbird was, indeed, his stars, and when his night grew darker her stars would shine all the brighter.

Fearing the need to cough, Dim lit his pipe and hoped for sweet relief.

Author's Note

A lot of this was written while tripping balls with a high fever. I don't know if it is any good or not, but I'll leave it to the reader to decide.

In death, a kindred spirit

There were a lot of things in life that Dim just did not understand, and Blackbird’s reasons for letting him travel with her was one of them. He was a mistrustful sort, paranoid, suspicious, and being this kind of creature, he found it rather difficult to relate to those who were not. The flying vardo was drifting now, and the batteries were full, much to Dim’s relief. There was nothing quite like a ship that was constantly sinking to excite one’s senses.

She was surprisingly equine, given that she was so catlike. But she wasn’t like a housecat, no. Dim’s only reference that he had to go on were the descriptions of big cats that he had read in books, and she fit them. Sure, she had hooves in the back, and talons in the front, but there was just something about her. She lacked whiskers, but had slitted eyes, meaning that her genetics had been a random crapshoot. Worst of all, she seemed as though she was easy to distract, though perhaps she was acting. It was possible that she was acting.

“I find it odd that you didn’t seem all too bothered about me setting Grenadine on fire.” Dim, who had been silent for a while, felt strange for having shattered the amicable silence. “I mean, it bothered you, I think, but your reaction… was lacking.” While he spoke, he saw her expression darken.

“I’ve seen some stuff since leaving home,” she replied.

“I too, have seen stuff.” For now, Dim decided to keep his interactions honest and direct.

“No,” Blackbird replied, shaking her head, “you, you do the stuff that other ponies, other creatures see. I’ve shot a few creatures, and each time, I hesitate, because I don’t want to do it. But you… you just set him on fire. You’re like my mother.”

Scowling, Dim could not tell if this was a good thing, or a bad thing. His eyes narrowed, and his stomach gurgled, having not yet decided if it wanted to keep the food he had eaten down. The half finished bottle of rum was right beside him, but he felt no need to partake of it at the moment. His companion was an enigma, and drinking her in was far more satisfying than rum.

“Why did you let me come with you?” Dim asked. “I’m clearly crazy. I’m not dumb, I know what I am like. I don’t understand. If you’ve been at this for a while now, long enough that you’ve seen stuff, surely you must know that you shouldn’t trust ponies like me. I’m dangerous. You don’t strike me as being stupid.”

“I have to trust that there is still good in the world,” Blackbird replied. “My father… every night he slept next to a hippogriff that had tried to eat him. He loved her… he really loved her, and every single day, he helped her face the reality that was her life… living… being the sort of creature that she was. It was hard for her to come around, and she had to work hard to be good, when it comes naturally to so many. I’ve had a few companions already that haven’t worked out. Some had trouble understanding that no means no. One I had to drop into the ocean. I might have to drop you into the ocean… but I’d rather take the risk and reap the rewards, should they come.”

“Fair enough.” Dim nodded, taking relief that he could be sincere right now, and not have to be sarcastic.

“I have to trust somepony.” Blackbird’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “My mother had to trust that somepony could love her, and my father had to trust that my mother wouldn’t change her mind and eat him. The entire community I was raised in had to learn to trust her, and she had to learn how to trust them. My entire life was spent hearing stories about the importance of trust.”

This was… intriguing. Dim had no reason to trust anything; indeed, he had grown up in an environment that, in hindsight, trust had proven to be a weakness. He had trusted his mother—because a foal should trust his mother—and Darling had trusted him. Each of them had violated one another in some way, though his mother had gone beyond the pale with her monstrous actions, leaving both him and his half-sister Darling wrecked as ponies.

A downright chilly breeze blew through the open windows, and Dim wondered about the altitude. It was a curious thought, given the other subjects that his mind dwelled upon, and it served as a distraction. As he sat there, shivering, he realised that he wanted to be trusted again, and that he wanted to trust, even though such an act was folly.

Then, in a fit of extreme paranoia, he wondered if the pink voice had something to do with this strange feeling of longing, manipulating him somehow. A part of her, whomever she was, was lodged in his mind, that is what the Sea Witch had told him. Perhaps a better question was, why did he trust the Sea Witch? He didn’t know, and couldn’t answer.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to turn off the light, and go to bed.” Blackbird reached for the rather dim electric lamp, never once taking her eyes off of Dim. “Good night. You should try to get some sleep.”

“I am going to sit in the dark,” Dim replied, and he thought about climbing up onto the roof. He had ways, the means to do so, and not go falling to his death in the ocean below. He could also get himself into the top bunk, should the need arise. Of all the options he had, there was one thing that stood out in his mind, and that was keeping an eye on the batteries.

He didn’t trust this scrapheap to remain in the air.

The morning broke to reveal a glorious coastline horizon, which Dim studied through his goggles. This was no island, ‘twas rather the mainland, or so he thought, but he didn’t quite know where he was. Through the night, they had drifted north and east. Now, with a steady wind and the rather clever sail below them deployed, they rushed towards the distant land, soaring about five hundred feet or so above the blue-green water.

Dim had never seen a sail beneath a vessel before.

It had been awhile, since being on the mainland—being around civilised ponies—and there was a growing nervousness as the land grew closer. The continued silence of the pink voice threatened to unhinge him, to be his undoing. A part of him needed to be scolded, to be chastised, because his moral compass had broken at some point and he no longer knew moral magnetic north.

There was only the living and the dead; with Dim still among the living.

Even in the balmy updrafts, the warm, pleasant currents that rose from the ocean below, Dim was shivering, suffering from the withdrawals that plagued him. He had quit in the worst place imaginable, in a pirates’ den, and somehow he had remained true to himself, purging himself of his addiction to opium and coca. The hashish was fine, it didn’t present the glaring weakness that the heavy narcotics did, but he was starting to suspect that the alcohol would need to go as well, now having met Blackbird.

She was sitting on the roof of the flying vardo with him, repairing a small fishing net with a netting needle. Blackbird was a fascinating creature, self reliant, and as evidenced, smart enough for a disgusting primitive. The fact that he was attracted to her filled him with self-loathing, and he was repulsed by his own burning curiousity about her felinoid female form. Even worse, this curious sense of lust only highlighted the fact that he had been celibate since fleeing his home, and the knowledge of his own sexual dysfunction left him overwhelmed with shame.

While he could, in fact, get an erection, they came at inopportune times, and never when he wanted them to happen. The suggestion of sex, of stimulation, the very notion caused him to go flaccid, and even manual gratification had proven impossible. But Blackbird, this chimera, this creature-salad, she awoke something within him, something that he wished had remained in slumber.

“I would like to be sane again someday,” Dim blurted out, unable to bear the silence a moment longer, and he was quite shocked by the sudden betrayal of his mouth. He sat there, blinking, the brim of his hat wobbling in the stiff wind, wondering what had just possessed him to say what he had just said. Sanity was a loaded concept, for Dim, as it meant so much more than just mental health. He realised, he knew, being sane again meant having a sexual outlet.

The netting needle never paused, never faltered, never ceased to move, but Blackbird did lift her head. No sign of teasing could be seen in her face, no mocking expression, just a patient thoughtfulness while she sat there, nodding as she continued weaving. The lack of reaction was almost maddening, Dim expected something other than serenity, he needed something else, something like flint striking steel, or some other charged metaphor to take place.

“So, what have you learned about your mother so far?” Dim asked, trying to alleviate the awkwardness that had settled over him and Blackbird like a flock of unwanted, incontinent seagulls with irritable bowels. Anything was better than this, anything.

“She left to track them down,” Blackbird replied, and there was pain in her voice, a pain that Dim understood all too well. “She found their number, their names, and she went to track them down. Killing was her business, she took to it like a duck takes to water. My dad, he said that she didn’t have that little twang of conscience that made her pause before doing something bad.”

Pausing, Blackbird shook her head for a moment, and the wind rippled her wing feathers. “No, my mother had to work at being good, and it was hard for her. She had grown up alone, she had been left to fend for herself, and the world made for a poor parent.” Her tone of voice hardened and the netting needle picked up speed in her deft, dexterous talons. “She was a good mother, though, my dad was always telling her that, I guess he was trying to reassure her.”

In silence, Dim clutched the half full rum bottle, unsure if he wanted a drink.

“The first bandit she caught up to was a diamond dog named Gris Gris. I found out about him in a little fishing and pearl village about a hundred miles away from where I was born. He had settled down there, found a nice bitch for himself, and was running a protection racket on the fishers and the pearl divers.” Blackbird began to shake her head, and it was obvious that she had some trouble continuing. “I found out the story from the residents of the village, and it ain’t a nice one.”

“I have no interest in nice stories,” Dim remarked.

“No, I suppose you don’t. I’d imagine that you and my mother would swap stories and get along just fine.” The netting needle stopped, and she squeezed the net in her twitching talon-fingers. “I don’t know how much of the story is true, but the villagers said that she ambushed him. She blasted out both of his knees, then went around his homestead, doing what she did best. Killed his bitch, and then one by one, she butchered his pups right in front of him. The accounts vary a bit, but one part remains consistent… after she got done killing his pups, she cooked them up and served Gris Gris his last meal. She made him eat every bite, and then she killed him by gut-shotting him and leaving him to bleed out. The townsfolk said they could hear his howls of pain for days before he finally expired. Not a one came to help him.”

“It is a fitting end, I suppose.” When Blackbird’s eyes narrowed into thin slits, Dim regretted his words, or at least he thought he did. He couldn’t tell what she was feeling, with his experiences in empathy being woeful and inadequate. “I might have done worse… look, Blackbird, you might not understand what I am about to say, but your mother was right to do what she did. These disgusting primitives… they are slow to learn… slothful, wilful, ignorant… they are insolent. Teaching him a lesson would have done no good. No, revenge had to be taken and a point had to be made. I do not think that made your mother a bad pony… uh, creature. She cared enough to make a point, and the world was left a better place because of her instruction.”

“I don’t even know how to respond.” She blinked, shook her head, and then sat in silence.

“You can’t reconcile with stupid.” Dim found the words waiting on his tongue, though he feared saying them. “But there is a cure. Those who have come looking for me, to claim me, to take me, to try and subdue me or kill me, they were stupid. They were foolish, they were weak… and one by one, I cured them. Even somepony I loved a great deal… I had to cure her of her disease, this sickness of her mind. Your mother, she was a healer that cured with lead pills, while I cleanse disease with fire and magic.”

Blackbird snorted, but said nothing.

“I didn’t ask to be this way,” Dim said, feeling the need to defend himself, to explain his actions. “I didn’t want to be this way. I didn’t want these things to happen, and a lot of bad things happened. Just as your mother was raised by a cold, indifferent world, and suckled from an existential teat—”

“My mother had a beak,” Blackbird interjected.

“—my own mother shaped me like clay, raising me from birth to be a monster. In time, you will understand the width and the depth of my words, and you will no doubt flee from me. You would be right to do so. I am damned, and have gone beyond the reach of redemption.”

“Bullshit.” Blackbird tossed her head from side to side, and her green eyes flashed with anger. “My mother… she could have been redeemed… she did awful things… terrible things. She still settled down and lived a life of decency, a life of goodness. If my father hadn’t been murdered, she’d be at home right now, singing, laughing, and loving, and I’d be right there with her. She’d still be the good creature she struggled to be.”

Sighing, Dim dreaded his own response. “But life had to go and bring out the worst in her, didn’t it? Murderers, madponies, killers and the like… they don’t get happy endings. Life has a way of stealing serenity away from them. So it will be with me. That’s why I can’t go home. I can’t make right what I’ve done. The best I can hope for is to finally lose.”

“I don’t agree.” A dark scowl robbed Blackbird’s face of beauty. “I don’t agree at all. My father… he put too much hard work into saving my mother, into redeeming her, in bringing out the best in her… that means something! I’ll not have that meaning stolen away!”

“My apologies.” Dim bowed his head, staving off the desire to say more, realising that this was not an argument that he wanted to win. “It was not my intention to upset you, and I feel bad for having done so.”

Blackbird gave him a dark look. “I won’t hold it against you…”

Author's Note

Alright, I'm coming out! Any man I see out there, I'm gonna kill him! Any sonofabitch takes a shot at me... I'm not only gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his damn house down!

—William Munny.

Blessed, burning assurance

One by one, Dim laid out various items he would need upon the table. The room was dark, the window covered, so he could operate without his goggles. His whole body glistened with sweat—it poured from him in fat, glistening droplets—and it appeared as though a dreadful palsy had consumed him. This was a dangerous gambit, and he knew it. Right now, he was weak, far weaker than he was letting on, and he suffered from a damaged will.

He needed a fix.

Needed medicine.

A cure.

A small glass phial filled with foxglove extract rolled over the table until it clinked against another glass phial. Foxglove. The poison was a special blend, somewhat magical, designed to make the heart stop. There were spells that could only be cast on the verge of death, that in between state, and Dim had dabbled in a few of them. He had the poison, he had the cure, and he had the courage to go where others would not.

Dim knew poisons, he had grown up with them, and the memory of his own mother poisoning him through Darling was still a fresh scab on the surface of his mind. Love poison was vile, a toxic, almost irresistible taint. He hated his mother and her evil ways, but he admired her cleverness and skill. He pulled another glass phial from his bags and held it up to his face so he could peer into it. By the faint light of his horn, he saw that the bottle of lysergic acid diethylamide was about half empty. Or was it half full? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. It was a precious, costly material, and he was running out.

The unnamed colt sobbed, blubbering away, and was getting on Dim’s last nerve. Blackbird was trying to comfort him—or perhaps she was trying to console herself by being kind—and she stroked his neck with her talons. Gesundheit stood near the door, squinting in the near darkness, and a grim expression could be seen on his face.

“What’s the plan?” the pegasus asked.

“I suspect the mark is necromantic in origin,” Dim replied, saying each word with slow caution and care. “I will need to alter my perceptions to see it. I might be able to break the connection, if it is what I suspect it is, but first, I will need to kill myself.”

Blackbird whimpered, a distinct foalish sound of fear.

“I assume this is a temporary death?” Gesundheit made an equine sound of worry deep within his throat. “Is this necromancy?”

“I don’t know.” Dim’s reply was honest. “Maybe? Might be. Perhaps. It is dangerous to make assumptions. There is power at death’s door for those foolish enough to seek it out. To exist in that precarious state. There is a grey area between life and death.”

“I’ll keep going with my assumptions, and guess that you’ve been there? That you have pierced the veil?” Gesundheit’s ears now angled over his face. “As a druid, this bothers me—”

“Because your magic comes from life, and druids are an anathema to the undead.” Dim nodded, a slow movement, and he looked Gesundheit in the eye. “Yes. I have been there. When studying the stone circles on the Grittish Isles, I experimented in many different ways, trying to tap into the magic there.”

Gesundheit grunted.

“I found other ways to tap into the magic of the stone circles, the wells of magic built over salt and chalk,” Dim said while he closed his eyes and thought of the sensation of that magic. It was very much an intoxicating substance to him, and he longed to feel it once more. “The Grittish Isles are a lawless place outside the major cities, and little is done to stop wizards from dabbling with the forbidden arts. Like so many others, I dabbled, but only a little.” Opening his eyes, he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, wishing that he had some opium laced salts, and lamenting that he had none.

Harsh Winter had made a name for himself killing the dabblers that had gone too far.

The sweating was growing worse and Dim felt itchy all over. No doubt, the stress of the moment was getting to him, and this was bad because he would soon need to focus all of his available concentration. There was no telling what he was facing, or what danger he was about to put himself into, or how far he would have to go. Pushing past the veil was potentially dangerous, and it went without saying that failure would be fatal.

His thighs felt as though they were stewing, and his sticky, clingy scrotum felt galded.

Squirming, he peeled his scrotum away from the chaffed flesh of his thighs while he wiggled his backside around, hating the sensation of the sweat that condensed in the underside of his dock. There were no known words for how miserable he was, and there seemed to be no relief to be had. The room felt like an oven and his own sweat pooled around his hooves.

“What will happen to me?” the colt asked. “Where will I go? How will I ever be safe again? I don’t want to live looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Maybe it would be best if you just killed me now so—”

Blackbird slapped him hard enough to cause his head to whip around, and his neck crackled. Stunned, the colt’s head wobbled on his neck, and he mewled from the sudden pain. Gesundheit stared at Blackbird, and she stared back, daring him to say something. The sounds of dripping could be heard from where Dim was standing.

This was not Equestria.

“Was that necessary?” Gesundheit asked.

“He just asked us to kill him,” Blackbird responded. “I gave him a little pain to remind him that he’s still alive. It’s kinder than killing him, by far.”

“But was it necessary?” Gesundheit gave Blackbird an imploring stare.

“During one of my mother’s bad spells”—Blackbird paused for a moment and in the faint light, pain could be seen on her face—“my mother thought about killing herself and she mentioned this to my father. He just about slapped her beak off and he let her have it. I don’t think he was wrong for doing so.”

Gesundheit sighed, but said nothing in return.

“Before we begin, I desperately need a drink.” Dim drew in a raspy breath and tried to steel his nerves while his hind legs kicked around, trying to unkink his balls. The skin was rubbed raw and the pain was approaching a point that could only be described as blinding. What he needed was a good long soak in a tub.

Or maybe a good long sit in a creek.

Dim’s mismatched eyes, one pale pink, the other a soft amber, glimmered in the reflected light from his horn. The colt lay in the bed, whimpering a bit, but calmer after having drank a glass of dark brown ale. Blackbird sat at the head of the bed and had a thousand-yard-stare that pointed down towards the floor.

She had been given instructions to administer the antidote should Dim find himself unable to do so, and he was trusting her, as much as it galled him. He had to trust her, and she had to trust him, and somehow, they had to play nice together. Dim was not one for playing nice with others. Not only that, he had been careless with his toys, Darling in particular.

“I knew a druid with two different coloured eyes,” Gesundheit mentioned in passing while Dim continued his final preparations. “She said she was normal until she went to the Grove. Afterwards, she started seeing stuff. Strange stuff. She’s become something of a seer.”

“Unicorn?” Dim asked, his attention diverted for a moment.

“Earth pony,” Gesundheit replied.

“Fascinating.” There was no sarcasm in Dim’s voice.

“She was a refugee from Windia.” Wings rustling against his sides, Gesundheit turned his head to look at the colt lying in the bed. He reached out and patted the frightened pony on the leg in a gesture of affectionate kindness. “She was a strange one.”

“Huh.” Hearing this, Dim found himself at a loss for words.

It was time to have a look. Every nerve in Dim’s body screamed from the tension, but there was no helping it. He summoned his wits, gathered his courage, and applied the lash to his mind. In the dark, he was the master. This was his birthright, his kingdom. He was the master of this domain. Focusing on his innate superiourity, Dim gathered his confidence until he felt he was ready to begin.

“There may be screaming.” Dim’s casual announcement did not go over well, and every other occupant in the room cringed. At the moment, Dim was nothing like the noble that he was born as, but appeared more to be a drunken, swaying, burnt out sawbones afflicted with delirium tremens that found refuge on the very outer edges of the frontier. He was no doctor, but he was about to perform a major operation, a potential extraction.

This was not Equestria.

This was a frontier, of sorts. A nowhere land populated by the brave, the foolish, the craven, and the foolhardy. In Baumhaus, Dim was the closest thing they had to alicorn royalty, and like any other dweller of the frontier, they would have to make do with what they had, even if it was substandard or dangerous.

Given his poor state of mind, Dim might’ve been remiss in remembering all of what he needed.

The lysergic acid diethylamide burned something terrible, and Dim writhed with his eyelids squeezed shut over his burning eyeballs. Before he knew it, he was smelling things with his ears and hearing things with his nose. Electricity arced over his tastebuds and his magic sense began to bleed into his other organs.

“The burning is assurance that everything is normal!” Dim screeched as he tried to force his eyelids open. “The burning lets you know it’s working!”

The first thing he saw was Blackbird, and seeing her almost blinded him. She might have been one of the blackest creatures in existence, but right now, she was one of the brightest. White-blue fire danced along every curve of her body and the flames were thickest around her feathery wings. Gesundheit was much the same, burning with the same brilliant glow. The colt in the bed shone with dark light, as black-purple flames wreathed his body.

Dim of course, burned black, and was a visible void in the darkness.

Wormlike astral projections crawled along the colt’s skin, blinking in and out of existence. Dim had never seen anything quite like it, and he struggled to keep whatever was left of his sanity intact while the lysergic acid diethylamide gained potency. He could see the mark now, it was a rotten spot of decay that stood out in sharp relief against the otherwise healthy flesh.

When Dim reached out a hoof to touch the spot, something reached out of the ulcer for him. “Shit! You have ass tentacles! Fucking ass tentacles!” He jerked his hoof away from the reaching, seeking tentacle that had emerged from the decayed patch of rotten, necrotic flesh. Dim’s sanity took another blow that no mere mortal should bear, and his mind reeled from the realisation of what he was seeing while he looked upon this spiritual infection.

His first instinct was to set everything ablaze—including himself—to bring a violent, burning end to this infection. He fought back against the urge to purge and watched as the phantom tentacle retreated back into the diseased, blistered flesh. It was quite literally a corruption of the colt’s cutie mark, which now had a defiled eldritch glow. Faint yellow lines could be seen pulsating in the swirl and stars of the mark.

Even worse, Dim understood what he was seeing. By polluting destiny, the colt could be controlled, changed, corrupted, and anywhere he went, they would know. This was evidence of the most insidious magic Dim had ever witnessed. He could hear the scent of ink in his ears, the scratching of pen against paper reverberated inside of his nostrils, and a strange pink hue filled his vision as something awoke inside of his head.

Yes, the Pink One. He could feel her inside of there, and he registered her silent horror.

Still, something about the pinkness in his mind gave him courage, it filled him with resolute determination and shored up his battered mental defenses. A bizarre calm radiated through him in waves and he felt the Pink One’s silent horror turn into a caldera of seething righteous indignance.

KILL IT, DIM! KILL IT! LISTEN TO YOUR AWAKENED NATURE! I KNOW YOU SENSE WHAT HAS AWOKEN WITHIN YOU! LASH OUT WITH RIGHTEOUS FURY AND SMITE THIS EVIL!

He and the Pink One were now in one accord, and indeed, his awakened nature was also in agreement. This… abomination had to go so the colt could be saved. It now felt as though he was underwater, and he could feel pressure pushing in from all sides, a pleasant crushing sensation that squeezed copious rivulets of sweat from his gaping pores.

The knowledge of what needed to be done was clear in his mind. “I need a mirror. Any mirror will do. Go and fetch me a mirror, and do it now.” Dim closed his eyes, squeezing them shut, anticipating that the door would open and flood the room with light.

It was Gesundheit who went racing off to do Dim’s bidding.

Author's Note

3:44 am.

Spread your legs or spread the word

As it turned out, art was in fact, therapeutic. With a scowl of intense concentration, Dim moved the stone around like clay, using a stone-shaping spell. It was something he had learned quite some time ago, a common trade spell. Well, common being a relative term. Not every unicorn could cast stone shaping magic, but some could. Not at all a common tradespony, Dim attempted to create a statue, a shrine to Chantico.

Pteroșani, he felt, needed a shrine to Chantico. After so much destruction, Dim was filled with an odd compulsion to create something, so he did. He felt his representation of the half dog, half cat creature was a pretty good one, with a fierce but fair face, and wide, welcoming paws. When he was done, he would enchant the paws to burn with self-igniting flames, a symbolic gesture to ensure that the fires of the hearth could always be kindled.

It was like digging a well so that there would always be drinking water. Fire was common, even easy now, but this wasn’t always the case and keeping the fires of the hearth lit used to be a time consuming chore. Many creatures lacked magic and had to make fire the hard way. Dim, a well-read unicorn, had read many a tale of firekeepers, unicorns whose responsibility it was to go from home to home to keep the fires lit for earth ponies and pegasus ponies.

There was a bit of a crowd watching him, but he ignored them and remained focused upon his task. Like a potter sculpting clay, or a painter trying to blend just the right colour, Dim strove for perfection. Oblivious to those watching, he was unaware that a unicorn colt was now the proud bearer of a brand new cutie mark. Or that a mare was contemplating the great mysteries of life, that is to say that she wondered how the same unicorn that had almost destroyed the town could now make something so meaningful and beautiful.

A long time ago, wizards were the lifelines of the communities they served, travelling in vast circuits, fighting monsters, pushing back the wilderness, keeping the darkness at bay, maintaining the wards, and keeping the fires lit. There was something about Star Swirl’s Charge, a list of commandments and standards left behind by Star Swirl himself, but Dim couldn’t remember what these were. What he did remember was that his mother had dismissed them as meaningless drivel.

His mother dismissed a great many things as meaningless drivel, leading Dim to the conclusion that Dark Desire was a unicorn that had somehow lost her way. Unicorns had obligations, they had duties, there was an unspoken, seldom mentioned commitment to being a unicorn, and the Dark family had been lax in keeping this sacred trust. Much of his family had mocked these things, but Dim had clung to these stories, these tales, these powerful narratives. Knights and wizards who had done great and wonderful things.

The Dark family had retreated to their tower, their sanctuary, and in that dank space, they had thoroughly corrupted themselves. Their proud, noble bloodline, their royal bloodline, it had once been populated with heroes unbounded. Some of the greatest threats to Equestria had been put down and laid to rest in the dirt because of the Dark family. There was still an Equestria because of the Dark family.

Now, it seemed, those Darks who remained sought to destroy what they had once held so dear.

A family that had once been the moral guardians of a fledgeling nation were now the embodiment of moral decay, the toxic runoff of decadence, privilege, and complacency brought about by rampant hedonism, by licentiousness, by self-indulgence, by degeneration. Morality, once like a gleaming suit of steel armor, had rusted, the joints were seized, and what had once been the symbolic defense of others was now stricken with immobility. Trapped inside of a rigid, immovable, rusting hulk of what had once been everything great and good, the Darks had been consumed by their own depravity.

Dim himself had drank from this chalice of corruption, this wineglass of wickedness, and had not found the contents therein to his liking. Much to his own dismay, he had still sampled far too much, imbibed all too willingly, and if the truth were to be told, he had no good excuses for his own actions. The books had been there as moral compasses all along, from a tender age, and Dim too, had sinned with complacency. He had only pushed the cup away from his lips after overindulgence had made him lazy and ennui had become a consuming cancer in his mind.

Reaching out with his magic, he tweaked Chantico’s nose, hoping to get it just right.

There was no excuse for what he had become, but there was penance.

Dim sought expiation, but as one who stumbled around in the light, he lacked direction, understanding, and purpose. He was as blind as newborn, as blind as he was on the very day he had left his home and had stumbled through the crowded streets of Canterlot, a babe still damp from bloody, terrible birth. For one so blind, trying to explain morality was like trying to describe the colour blue—an impossibility. To achieve morality—to see and understand the colour blue, as it were—one first had to achieve vision.

And Dim had only just opened his eyes.

Self-igniting flames were not difficult enchantments for Dim, merely time consuming. Not helping matters at all, not in the slightest, Blackbird acted as a distraction, doing immeasurable harm to his concentration. She was—for whatever reason—in high spirits and this meant being a pest. At the moment, she was playing with his spear, which appeared to be more of a javelin in her talons, or perhaps a pilum. It just wasn’t long enough to be a spear in comparison to the sheer bulk of her body.

And what a body she had.

Dim could see why some would be disgusted while others might be intrigued. She was up above him, sitting on the edge of a roof, showing off her wings, whistling, and twirling his spear like a baton in a flashy display of dexterity. All Dim could think about was, if Chantico’s essence was in the spear, was she getting dizzy right now as Blackbird spun her about? If she was, it would fall on Blackbird to appease her, there was no way that Dim was going to take the blame for that.

With a cackle of satisfaction, flames erupted from the left paw of Chantico’s statue and did not sputter out of existence. Pausing, Dim considered the colour of the flames. Fueled by aether, not by wood, oil, or coal, changing the colour of the flames was easy, with easy being a relative term. Years of extensive study and schooling, along with a thorough understanding of the application of spell matrix interlocking to produce subtle changes in how the aether burned allowed him to do this with ease.

Snorting, he snuffed the flames and they sprang back to life in seconds. Satisfied, he began to nod, knowing that no storm, no blizzard, no bit of foul weather, nothing of the physical world would stop these flames from burning. That said, the enchantment could be undone, but there was nothing he could do about that. For Dim, his only obligation was to make the fire, others would be responsible for protecting it.

For Blackbird, it seemed, whistling was not enough and with her chest puffed out, her wings spread, and her eyes wide, she burst into song: “Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing; wasn't that a dainty dish, to set before the king. The king was in his counting house, counting out his money; the queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey. The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose. That naughty little blackbird, ‘twas baked inside a coffyn. She became the king’s favourite dish and he nibbled on her of’en.”

Looking up from his work, Dim let slip the first thing that came to mind: “I might not be a king, but I have a chance to eat like one.”

In growing shock, It took Blackbird a moment to register Dim’s words, her ears rose and fell, she blinked a few times, and then she looked down at the lewd little pony below her. “No,” she whined, “you made the song dirty… my papa used to sing me this song! You horrible fiend, I can never un-hear what you just said! Ugh!”

When Dim made no response, she continued, “He would kiss me when the song was over and blow raspberries against my neck. I knew it was coming, but I never bothered trying to stop him or escape. Sometimes he would make ‘om-nom-nom-nom’ noises… and I’d laugh myself silly.” The hippogriff paused, drew herself into a more dignified position, and shook her head. “I miss my father. I gotta find my mother.”

Just as Dim was about to try and say something reassuring, a bell began to ring.

The airships of Equestria were beautiful things, made to look like whales, fish, or birds, and they were built with an aesthetic in mind. This airship was clearly not from Equestria. Black smoke shot out of the back end in crepitative blasts and the entirety of the thing offended Dim’s sensibilities worse than Blackbird’s vardo. It had all of the aerodynamics of a castle’s cornerstone and appeared to be trying to batter the air rather than slip through it with grace and ease. It was the very spirit of industrialisation, given grotesque shape and offensive form. It wasn’t even symmetrical; on the left side a large steel tank could be seen protruding from the hull, with an enormous brass nozzle that dangled down like a floppy, oversuckled nipple dangling down from a mare overrun with far too many foals.

All around him, ponies were scrambling. Carts were loaded in a hurry, barrels were being rolled out, and more bells were ringing. In all of this chaos, Dim remained calm so that he could focus on finishing his enchantment, something he intended to do before he left. Leaving a job undone was… wrong. For all of Dim’s faults, of which there were a great many, he did tend to finish what he started. Harsh Winter, wizard for hire, had a reputation, something Dim valued.

Overhead, a wide swingarm crane folded out from the side of the airship as it began to maneuver itself over the marketplace. Pegasus ponies flew up to greet the ship and the overall mood of the city of Pteroșani was ecstatic. For all of Brand’s pessimism, perhaps this place would survive. In Dim’s experience, survival had many meanings, not all of them good. A slave did not survive in the same manner as a warlord, and said warlord did not enjoy surviving as a king might.

Smoking a fat joint slick with clove oil, Dim watched as the town scrambled, his project now finished. Chantico stood with her paws extended and pink flames flickered from her upturned palm-pads. He peered out from beneath the brim of his hat, his goggled eyes protected from the cruelty of the light, and the long silver stem of his cigarette holder glinted in the midday sun.

It was time to go, that much was for certain.

Blackbird was already gone to gather their few possessions. Not much was left after the burning of the vardo. Dim had lost some of his books and his copious notes about the strange magic of the Grittish Isles. His spellbooks had survived—they were warded against the many hazards of magic, after all—but his many modifications and improvements to the standard fireball spell that he had written in his journal were now just so much ash.

It was painful, to be sure, but Dim had started with nothing but his own wits. He had what was important, which was also what was bothering him: Blackbird. Just like his notes, his writings, his musings, his many insights into the world, magic, and the workings of a fireball spell, she too could be destroyed. She was vulnerable, something that could be taken away from him, and there was a part of Dim that resented life for doing this to him. For all of the many strengths that friendship offered, crippling weakness was the counterbalance.

Amidst all of the hubbub, Dim was distracted by a squeaky voice asking him, “Who is Chantico?”

Turning, he saw a unicorn colt, who, just a half-an-hour before, had his cutie mark appear. The colt was looking up at him with eager eyes, a glowing horn, and he seemed to be brimming, almost bursting with curiousity. In the foal, Dim saw something of himself, almost as if he stared into a mirror. A love of learning was present and keen intelligence was evident.

“What is your name, little one?” Dim asked.

“I’m Briar Burr,” the colt replied, and seeing that Dim wasn’t so bad, he rushed to be closer. “I just got my cutie mark! Flames! I’m going to do magic! Sizzle! Pow! Ka-BOOM!”

“Those are noble aspirations.” There was nothing mocking in Dim’s voice, no sarcasm, in fact, there was a strange, almost out of place gentleness to his words. “Tell me about your parents, Briar Burr.”

“My Mum-Mum is a miller and my Dud-Dud is a chemist.”

Smiling, Dim felt a profound sense of relief. “So you want to know more about Chantico, do you? I only just met her myself. I went out on a quest to battle the Jaguar Witch and in doing so, I revived Chantico from her slumber.”

“Tell me more, please!” The foal’s voice was pleading.

“Before I do, little one, tell me… how do you feel about burning the wicked?”

Author's Note

Hopefully, he never goes door to door...

The Pale Prince

Eerie moved with a fine, elegant grace, and Dim found himself slipping back into old habits. No longer was there a need to skulk about while trying not to draw attention to himself. He wore his imperious sneer like a crown and his self-esteem seemed to have scabbed over just enough to begin healing. Dim was tired of living as a hobo, a vagrant, a vagabond. But he would not throw away what he had learned, or the perspectives he had gained, no. They were valuable to him now, so very precious. Something within him had changed, though he could not say what it was. A fight was brewing and he had a chance to make a difference; he had an opportunity to be noble and prove his worth. He thirsted for actual prestige and did not wish to rest upon the laurels of his family history as others were content to do.

A multi-coloured horde of bushwoolies clustered around Blackbird, who followed along behind, regaling them with a story about a monster that lived in a lake. Again, somehow, Blackbird had made friends and Dim now wondered how she did it—what magic did she possess that allowed her to gain affection with so much ease?

“—and then, with a woosh, everything was on FIRE! Because that’s what Dim does, you see, he sets things on fire! WOOSH! The stench of tentacled burning lake monster is terribad!”

Overcome with pride, Dim’s sneer intensified.

Dim knew a study when he saw one, and this was a study, an opulent study fit for a king. Fine rugs covered the floor. Furniture of exquisite design filled the room. The bookcases were all shaped stone, with additional cubbies in the walls. The overall colour theme of the study matched the White Hand, and also the minotaur sitting in a high backed chair.

A curious looking creature, the minotaur almost seemed to be an albino, though perhaps not. His hide was a pale, pale white, and his eyes were a startling shade of almost luminescent blue. Slender of build, the bull minotaur had two fine prosthetic hands with the most curious array of crystals protruding from his mechanical forearms.

“Modesto, this is Dim and Blackbird.” Eerie turned to face Dim and reversed the introduction. “Dim, Blackbird, this is Modesto.” Again, Eerie turned and she focused her intense, piercing gaze upon the striking white bull minotaur. “Modesto… how did your dawn meeting with the emissary from the Fancy Foreign Legion go?”

“Well, I think?” Modesto possessed a quiet voice that radiated an intense calm. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, the both of you—”

“Enough with the formalities,” Eerie said, cutting in as she sat down in a chair beside Modesto. “Who did they send? What sort of pony?”

“An earth pony, Eerie, why does it matter?” Modesto, confused and perhaps a little bit overwhelmed, glanced in Dim’s direction before turning his full attention towards Eerie. “Why does tribe matter?”

“Dim, explain to Modesto why tribe matters in this instance,” Eerie commanded in a voice of supreme authority.

Once more, Dim was a colt getting tutored in the Dark Spire. Endless hours of learning, memorisation, with intense study of almost everything. Failure meant punishment, and punishment meant pain, some of it quite intense, depending upon the degree of negligence to one’s studiousness. Failure was just not tolerated well, and every Dark was expected to live up to the Dark Ideal.

“They sent an earth pony because they trust that your intentions are good,” Dim replied, droning out the words in a near monotone. “Had they sent a unicorn, they would have been suspicious of you potentially using mind altering spells or magical coercion, and the unicorn might have been able to defend himself against that. Sending an earth pony is a symbolic gesture, in comparison to a pegasus pony, because earth ponies are seen as peaceful while the pegasus tribe is seen as warlike. So their emissary reflects their peaceful, trusting intentions.”

“Wunderbar.” Eerie clapped her front hooves together once and a beaming smile spread almost ear to ear. “Modesto, pay attention. Do you see the difference? Dim and I are born to rule… just as you are. But this is what separates a proper king or a prince from a petty warlord. Education, my dearest Modesto… it isn’t enough to simply take a throne, sit on it, and give yourself some silly title. No, you must rule. And to effectively rule, you must be educated. Do you understand, Modesto?”

Bowing his head, the pale minotaur replied, “Yes, I understand you, Eerie. Thank you for your patient instruction.”

When Eerie reached out and placed her hoof upon Modesto’s upper arm, Dim saw the truth of the matter. The pride in her eyes, her gentle touch, her warmth, the affection that could be seen upon Modesto’s bovine face—this was a mother speaking to her son. An icicle rammed itself though Dim’s heart, causing him to jerk and shuffle on his hooves. The depths of his sinuses burned and there was a strange, awful pressure building around his eyes. Eerie was now stroking Modesto, congratulating him in some soft way, giving him praise and tenderness.

Just as something was about to happen, something truly dreadful like his face leaking once more, Dim allowed his rage towards his own mother to consume him, and in doing so, every conflicting emotion in his body died in the fiery, consuming conflagration held within the blast furnace that was his hatred. After a moment, nothing was left but emotional ash and emptiness, and Dim cleared his throat to get rid of the lingering tickle.

“We might yet make allies of the Fancy Foreign Legion…” Eerie heaved out the words as a contented sigh while making herself comfortable in her chair. “Darling Blackbird, Dim, do sit down. Make yourselves at home. Go on, do sit down.” She pulled away her hoof from Modesto and made a ‘do-as-I-say’ gesture with it.

Blackbird, who seemed comfortable with things, flopped over onto a chaise lounge and then began lifting her mob of bushwoolies off of the floor so they could sit with her. She picked them up by the hair—which they did not seem to mind at all—and plopped them down all around her. The bushwoolies—all of them—seemed bewildered by their good fortune.

Watching Blackbird as she was so friendly with the help, Dim shivered a bit and then moved to take a seat. As he sat down, Blackbird had picked up one of the bushwoolies and was now combing out some tangles with her claws, which seemed as though it was a nigh impossible task. After a few seconds, Dim’s demeanour softened a bit, and with a maudlin expression that he was utterly unaware of, he watched as Blackbird tried to play hairdresser with a bushwoolie.

“I have spent a lot of time with Eerie watching you,” Modesto said to Dim in a voice whose softness belied his size. “It is my sincere hope that you will help the White Hand. I would be most grateful.”

Hoping that he had not misjudged the light levels of the study, Dim pulled off his goggles, blinked a few times to get the stinging to stop, and then focused on the pale minotaur. The mechanical hands were perhaps his most interesting feature, but there was also his slight build. Well, slight being a relative term for a minotaur, anyhow. With his goggles removed, Dim saw that Modesto’s horns were almost translucent and they were not quite as thick or heavy looking as other horns might be on other minotaurs.

“We are all dark dwellers here,” Modesto said while chuckling, a genteel and subdued sound to Dim’s ears. “Mars insists that Eerie favours me because of his preference for the day. He is a bull of the sun, but I am forced to be careful when I venture out. The daylight does not suit me.”

Eerie’s chair was close to Modesto’s and Dim guessed that the two of them must have spent a great deal of time in those chairs, together, spending many hours in study. This room had no windows, not even illusory windows, and even Dim found the light level to be quite tolerable after some time spent adjusting. Eerie was smiling, which Dim found unsettling, because it was a sincere, happy smile, and the Darks typically had sardonic smiles if they ever smiled at all.

“It is my intention to help, but purely for my own reasons,” Dim said, making a terse reply with but a few sparse words.

A shrill laugh came from Eerie and she made a circular flourish with her hoof. “Dim is offended—”

“Of course I’m offended!” The words came out as a nasal aristocratic whine.

His nostrils wide and flaring, Modesto asked, “So, am I to understand that somebody must burn for that?”

“I doubt it will make me feel better, but it is a start.” Dim tilted his head to one side, narrowed his eyes, and focused his burning stare upon Modesto’s ice blue eyes. “Recently, some griffon shot me in the hat. In my hat. I was offended.”

There was a loud gulp from Modesto, who said nothing but squirmed in his seat while shooting a few furtive glances over at Eerie. Blackbird, surrounded by bushwoolies, began to laugh, and each of her hairy little friends all had worried looks, no doubt worried that Dim might start to laugh again.

“Ah, Modesto… here is something you still need to work on; presence. See how Dim creates a delightful sense of dangerous charm? You need to project more and develop your presence. How others perceive you as a ruler will do more to determine the fate of your subjects than you realise. Though… I would go for something a bit more welcoming than what Dim projects—”

“I project nothing!” Dim snapped and with a shower of magical sparks, he conjured his hat from his room. Holding it out for Eerie to see, he shook it at her, trying to get her to see the hole. “My head was in this hat!” Now, he was almost screeching with aggravated annoyance. “Things keep shooting me! I was shot in the throat! It still pains me greatly and getting shot in the hat hurt my pride… those griffons signed their own death warrants in their own blood. I came to collect my due.”

Eerie’s lips pressed into what could only be described as an aristocratic duck lipped moue and she stared at the hole in the hat while making dyssynchronous eye blinks that mirrored Dim’s own. “Oh!” she whined, fuming, and for a brief moment she gritted her teeth together, seething. Hot with fury, she fanned herself with her hoof while protesting the cruelty of the universe in which an innocent hat had been made to suffer. “Uncouth! Put it away! I can’t bear to look!”

“Hey, Modesto, you ever get the feeling that the Darks just aren’t like the rest of us?”

“All the time, Blackbird.” Modesto cringed and shied away from the scathing glance that Eerie shot in his direction, but made no effort to apologise. “Eerie said that Majid had to die for his poor etiquette, it was the only way she could continue to exist in this universe.”

“He was positively dreadful!” Eerie whined while she shuddered with revulsion. “Why, when I politely asked him to remove his hairy, filth-encrusted backside from the throne, he refused me. Uncouth! Uncouth! Also, he was decidedly smelly.”

While Eerie gave voice to her reasons, Modesto kept rolling his eyes as he shook his head from side to side. Sneering, his dimples in full view, Dim decided that he liked Modesto and decided that he would need to get to know the minotaur prince just a little better. The sound of Blackbird’s laughter caused his ears to perk and Dim tossed his hat down upon a nearby table.

The first peals of barking, grating laughter escaped from Eerie’s mouth like a lunatic fleeing an asylum, and at the sound of it, Dim also started with his dry, hacking chortle. The bushwoolies, having experienced this once, fled the scene, vanishing beneath couches, chairs, and disappearing behind bookshelves, until at last, Blackbird was left all alone.

“Aw, all my friends left me because these two weirdos had to start laughing again.” Blackbird snorted to work up a pout and then glared daggers at the two Darks possessed with demented, obscene giggles.

Not a single bushwoolie could be seen anywhere.

Author's Note

Imagine a cutie mark for a bushwoolie hairdresser.

Snuggle! Don't struggle

For whatever reason, Yuny wasn’t quite as annoying or grating as he was when Blackbird had first met him. Upon their first meeting, she had an intense dislike of him and almost roughed him up, but now—though she could not explain why—she was rather fond of him. Oh, he was a little uptight, one might even call him a bit anal, but he was just doing his job. Blackbird gave him an amused expression as he fussed and fretted over a minotaur calf’s jack, which was emblazoned with the symbol of the White Hand.

“Blackbird,” Yuny said as he brushed off the minotaur’s narrow shoulders, “this is Munro. He will be joining you in your job to protect Dim. Munro has been trained since the time he could first walk to be a valet. He has finished his classroom education and now it is time for a practical hands on approach.” Turning his head, the jasper jackal addressed the young calf. “Munro, don’t be shy, This is Blackbird, and you are to obey her every instruction. You are to do as she says, when she says it, and you are to follow her instructions to the letter. Am I understood?”

The calf, eager, nodded.

“He’s a little young,” Blackbird quipped.

Turning about, Yuny cleared his throat while looking Blackbird right in the eye. “The lives of minotaurs revolve around the number five. At the age of five, the first of their responsibilities are pressed upon them. At the age of ten, like Munro here, they cease classroom learning and begin doing what they will do as adults. At fifteen, they can become apprentices and can have a recognised title for themselves, should they serve with distinction and earn it. At the age of twenty, all of the rights of adulthood are granted.”

“That’s a lot to take in all at once.”

“Quite,” Yuny replied, “and I even left out the fact that there is a strict caste system at work here. Munro is the pride of his family, who, in the past, have been rather lowborn. All of their hard work has paid off and through Munro, they have been given a chance to advance their status. Through the meritocracy, hard work is recognised and rewarded. Isn’t that right, Munro?”

Again, the calf nodded.

Blackbird took a moment to study Munro, a young minotaur. His coat, what was visible and not covered by clothing, she couldn’t decide if it was red or brown or both. The tuft of hair sticking up from between his stubby, curved horns was flaxen and stood out in sharp contrast to the faded yellow of his eyes. Minotaurs, she had noticed, all tended to have yellow, rather than whites to their eyes. In the midst of the yellow, copper could be seen, glittering with eager intelligence.

“Munro, how do you feel about all of this?” she asked.

“Oh,” he replied in a voice of practiced calm, “I am ever so excited.”

The Bard, drinking wine and nibbling on cheese, snorted, and Bombay began to giggle. Blackbird too, found herself chuckling by the absolute lack of enthusiasm in the calf’s voice. Even with the laughter, Munro seemed eager to please, and didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest. Because of this, Blackbird decided right away she liked him, and made a gesture for him to come closer.

“Come over here, with us, and get away from Yuny. He’s a creep, you know.” Blackbird’s words drew throaty snickers from Bombay, and Yuny rolled his eyes.

With calm assurance, Munro did as he was bid and came towards Blackbird with a stiff, starchy gait, which could only be described as ‘refined elegance.’ Watching him, she was certain that Dim would like him, at least she hoped that Dim would like him, otherwise, things would get really interesting really fast.

“How shall I address you?” Munro asked as he drew near.

“Call me Blackbird, that’ll be fine. I’m just Blackbird Coffyn, nothing less, nothing more.”

“Very well.” Munro bowed his head and then stood there, ramrod straight, waiting.

Without turning her head, Blackbird’s eyes focused on Yuny for a time, then back on Munro, and then were returned to Yuny. Bombay was strumming something on her mandolin, and Munro was standing as still as a statue. To say that Blackbird had concerns would have been an understatement, and she drew in a deep breath as she readied herself to give voice to her worries.

“We’re about to go into a fight—”

“Oh, not to worry, Munro has had a fair amount of firearms and combat training. He’s a little slow to aim, but he’s a crack shot.” Yuny folded his forelegs behind the small of his back and his tail wagged for the first time. “You only need to arm him. He will also gladly clean and service your guns, sharpen your bladed weapons, I assure you, he can do all that is required of him. I hold the utmost confidence in his abilities.”

“Well, alright then.”

“Now, if you will excuse me”—Yuny bowed at the waist, his tail still wagging—“I have to go and speak to Motte and Bailey about their duties to Prince Dim. I cannot stay.”

“Say hello for me,” the Bard said as Yuny stood straight.

“Sure thing,” Yuny replied, and then the busy jasper jackal hurried off.

The struggle between Dim and Eerie could only be compared to snails trying to race. Both were weak, frail, neither one of them had any sort of meaningful strength. Eerie, it seemed, was in the mood to be affectionate, and Dim, being Dim, responded as if it were torture. For Dim, it was torture, and he would rather be stabbed with red-hot pokers than be kissed or cuddled by Eerie.

“Must you?” His question, almost a growl, was asked as he tried to wiggle free.

“Yes,” Eerie responded, “I feel so much love and hope right now. We are safe to be a family, Dim. I feel bubbly inside and my body feels so light—”

“That’s probably gas, now unhoof me right this instant! I do not wish to be present when your nefarious crepitations begin!”

“Dim, please say that you forgive me—”

“For this embarrassment? Never!” Kicking about, Dim fought to get his hooves beneath him so he wouldn’t be so helpless.

“At last, I shall have what money cannot buy! I shall be a perfectly normal loving aunt, with a nephew to dote upon! I will have a wellspring of healthy, perfectly normal loving affection! This is so much more satisfying than mere power and influence!” With each and every word spoken, Eerie redoubled her grip around her prized nephew, and there was a curious faint pink illumination that could be seen in the irises of her eyes. “Everything that was lost shall be restored!”

“No!” Even as Dim screeched in protest, his body betrayed him, and some dreadful part of him wanted to return Eerie’s infectious affection. His vision was oversaturated with a pink hue and some unknown emotion urgle-gurgled through his guts like the effervescent, frothy bubbles of explosive, rocket-blast diarrhea. Death, swift and terminal, was preferable to this sensation.

“I’ve done you wrong, Dim. Forgive me!” Eerie pleaded as she gave Dim a familial nuzzle with her fuzzy muzzle. “My actions contributed to your suffering and for this, I am truly sorry. Let me make it up to you, Dim. This has been the driving motivation in my life—to do right for all that I have done wrong, and I was one of the ponies that made your life what it is. Forgive me, I beg of thee!”

Something gave way and Dim thought of Darling. He thought of his cravings for forgiveness, for redemption, a chance to make things right. Little by little, his struggles ceased, and even though it was more than a little uncomfortable, he allowed Eerie her affectionate embrace. While everything in the library around him was cast in a revivacating pink hue, Dim thought of somepony other than himself. Eerie had needs, just as he did, powerful, motivating needs that drove her to do things, just as his own compulsions influenced his own behaviour.

It occurred to Dim that Eerie truly was suffering from her guilt, just as he suffered from his own guilt, remorse, and contriteness. His own soul suffered deep, terrible wounds from these feelings, and it stood to reason that, if this hurt him, then it had to hurt Eerie. For most ponies, this was something learned in foalhood, but for Dim, the lesson came late in life. Like a slap in the face, it struck him, robbing him of his senses, his reason, his coherency.

As Eerie continued to cling to him, Dim realised that he had the power to help another pony, and all he had to do was be kind. What did kindness cost him? Not much. Perhaps some of his dignity, but as a currency, a means of exchange, he understood that he would get something in return, something that he too, craved.

What cost was kindness? Affirming the suffering and pain of another? It was an emotional investment to be sure, but surely, he could spare a tiny part of himself so that another might benefit. This is what the knights of old did, they gave all of themselves. Eerie wasn’t asking for much, just his forgiveness. Kindness, one of Equestria’s founding virtues, something that the knights of old were measured by.

Glowering, his face wrinkling from the intensity of his scowling, Dim ceased his struggles and allowed Eerie to lavish her affections upon him. “Ich vergebe dir,” he muttered. “Geliebte Tante.”

Perhaps he had said the wrong thing, because Eerie burst into tears and began sobbing.

The ponies in the mirror were almost a reflection of one another and Dim stared straight ahead at them as Eerie scrubbed the blood from his face. He could not deny that this was somehow relaxing, maybe even more than just that. Yes, he might even call this cathartic. Eerie’s eyes were spiderwebbed with fine, red lines, and every so often she let out a sniffle. Having his face scrubbed like this went beyond his scope of experience as a Dark, and Dim was certain that this was quite a moment for Eerie as well.

Alas, no Dark could leave a peaceful moment be.

“I have been inside of Princess Celestia’s head,” Dim said as Eerie scrubbed on his chin with a light touch, her face scrunched in concentration. “I have seen… things. She is like me—like us—she has a heavy heart for past misdeeds, Eerie.”

“What are you saying, Dim?” Eerie’s soft inquirement caused Dim’s ear to pivot and twitch from side to side.

Now unable to draw this out, Dim got to the point, but felt bad for even saying it. “I do not believe that this is Princess Celestia’s fault. She is too careful, too purposeful to have caused this, even with experimental spells. I will confess, I have long believed that she wished to destroy me, because of what her sun does to me, but now I place the blame for that upon my mother… I think. Anyhow, I do not believe that Princess Celestia would leave behind such a dangerous element that might bring harm, even by accident.”

“Are you saying that I did this?”

“Yes.” The pain in Eerie’s voice ripped at his insides, but Dim did not back down from his position. “Princess Celestia is ageless… timeless… she knows the length and breadth of magic, no doubt. You, on the other hoof, I believe that you attempted to use your psychic influence, and I believe that to be the culprit.”

Eerie sighed, hung her head, and continued to try and rub away the dried, scabbed blood on Dim’s muzzle. The pity that Dim felt for her, he could feel it bruising his insides, and even more confusing, she wasn’t denying it—standard operating procedure for Darks everywhere, deny everything, admit to nothing.

“Even worse, her agent, whomever that alicorn was, she was willing to take the blame for this mistake, even though I do not believe her to be at fault. Rather than have us bicker with one another, or be filled with ill will towards one another, she graciously gave us an out by placing the blame squarely upon herself and her co-conspirators.”

“I will confess to trying to forcibly push her out by saying her name,” Eerie admitted, her voice strained and stretched thin.

“Say it now,” Dim demanded, and Eerie pulled the hot, wet cloth away in surprise and shock.

“Dim, no—”

“Say it now, with no psychic intrusions.”

“Dim, you have made your point.”

“You don’t get to decide when I’ve made my point,” Dim said in a thin, reedy, nasal whisper. “My points are made on my own discretion. If you wish to be family, then you need to stop fucking me.” Eerie’s defiance continued, wearing on his last nerve, and he could feel his dreadful, fiery temper gaining heat and intensity within him. “Now, say it.”

Eerie’s lip protruded in a moody, aristocratic pout and the wet cloth was tossed back into the steaming basin of water. Unable to look at Dim, she looked at Dim in the mirror, his reflection, which had its baleful, dreadful holocaustic stare fixed on her. Ears pinned back, tail tucked low, Eerie stood with her hooves close, almost touching, with everything about her broadcasting apologetic submission. The reek of ozone filled the air, along with the pungent aroma of terror-induced sweat.

“Princess Cadance.” This name was murmured, a fearful utterance, and Eerie dared not raise her voice above a whisper. “Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.” Nothing happened, nothing at all, Dim didn’t do so much as flinch, but Eerie, perhaps realising her own fault in this, most certainly did.

Watching Eerie suffer was not satisfying to Dim, not at all, in fact, it left him feeling empty and achy inside, a most peculiar condition. Gloating had always felt good—a grand thing to experience—but victory now felt like a soul-sapping malaise and tasted like ashes. There was nothing gratifying about this and if anything, he found Eerie’s suffering… repulsive? No, that couldn’t be right, because he didn’t find Eerie repulsive, not at all, but her wretchedness could not be savoured and her dolor brought him no fulfillment.

“I forgive you,” he said in desperation, hoping that this uncomfortable, unpleasant condition that now existed could be somehow dispelled. Like a chamber pot brimming with feces, he wanted this unpleasantness away from him. “I forgive you and bear you no malice.”

“Thank you, Dim… that means much to me…”

Author's Note

Nefarious crepitations. :applejackconfused:

Burnt offerings

“Dim… Dim! A word with you if I may… please… please, hold up and hear me out!”

Though he didn’t want to do so, Dim paused for a moment, holding up a wedge of cheese beside his head, waited, and listened to Modesto, who thundered down the hallway to catch up. More than anything, the pale minotaur appeared to be confused, shaken, and could even be described as out of sorts.

Modesto came to a lurching halt, his fingers curling and uncurling while little wisps of steam rose from the vents in his arms, and in a surprising move, hunkered down so he wouldn’t tower over Dim. It was quite a bit of effort to be polite, and Dim appreciated the gesture. Still, Dim wasn’t too happy to see the pale minotaur who thought so little of him.

“I watched you,” Modesto said, sounding foalish—calfish?—sounding younger than his usual self. “I watched you during the trials. At first, I couldn’t get a good reading on you, but at the end, you surprised me. I want to say that I was in error about you.”

In response, Dim’s upper lip curled back into a fine, aristocratic sneer.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” Modesto confessed while he recoiled from Dim’s reaction. “Hours ago, you killed a pony with the bends. I cannot even begin to fathom why you did what you did. But with that griffon… you… you actually made sure that justice was served without taking his future away from him. He will not grow to be a hated convict or a mistrusted felon… I do believe that in time, he will be freed from the dark shadow hanging over his head and will have a better, prosperous future because of what you have done. You are more like Eerie than I thought.”

“And I suppose this is supposed to make up for how you spoke of me earlier?” Dim asked and he saw remorse flash in Modesto’s eyes, followed by something else that Dim did not recognise.

“I am young and I am allowed to make foolish mistakes, on occasion.” There was a clink from Modesto’s mechanical fingers and his eyes fell down to the floor. “I am a creature who strives for harmony and order. It is the foundation of everything I believe in. There are times when my faith is shaken, because Eerie is a powerful force for order, but not necessarily for harmonious morality. As for you, you adhere to neither… there is no harmony to be found in you, and you court disorder as your ally.”

Dim waited while Modesto drew in a deep breath.

“But I cannot deny that what you did today was unequivocally moral. Denying it would be betraying my own ideals. But I am having trouble accepting that one such as you is capable of moral behaviour—”

At this, Dim snorted and Modesto became apologetic.

“Morality comes from virtue… from harmony. Order is the rigidity that gives morality its strength and conformity makes harmoniousness possible. Consider a song… the singers must sing together for harmony to be achieved. But you, Dim, you sing your own song—”

“So far, for all of your efforts, all you’ve managed to do is be vaguely insulting and say that I baffle you, but with a plethora of fancy words.” Dim began to chortle with glee when he saw Modesto’s face grow a choleric red. “You are little more than a boy that is desperate to differentiate himself from his mother, while still valiantly trying to please her by exclaiming how grown up he is.”

Modesto began to sputter, but could not make words to respond. Dim laughed, a shrill, mocking, aristocratic laugh that was frightfully nasal, and he turned tail to walk away. His laughter became muffled when he nipped off a dainty bite of his cheese, but still, he laughed and Modesto was left stammering.

What else could it be but the horrid beginning of a most dreadful friendship?

Perhaps there was something to be said about Modesto’s ramblings about morality and harmony. Dim, stricken with a strange, clinging melancholy, a malaise that sapped his will to do much of anything, watched while Blackbird helped to look after the many slaves. Some had been injured in the conflict, while others had been injured prior. All of them were pitiful, many showed signs of abuse, some had lash marks, others had broken, crooked wings, and a few had been hobbled.

Now, almost all of them were terrified of kindness, just as Dim himself was paranoid and suspicious, always worried about the ulteriour motives of others when they did something nice. There were a few that showed no signs of emotion at all, just a blank thousand-yard stare at nothing in particular, and something about the plight of these poor souls filled the empty spaces within Dim with a maudlin, stifling rage that made it difficult to draw breath.

Eerie moved about the miserable, huddled masses, a matronly force of order that stood defiant in the face of so much heartache. Bombay was by her side, assisting, comforting, no doubt using her silver tongue for some good, to win trust and offer reassurance. What good was reassurance when one had nothing? Dim shook his head, was thoughtful for a time, and corrected himself; they had something. The kindness of strangers did exist.

Even the Bard had made himself useful, acting as a translator, but Dim could tell that the poor Bard would not be on his hooves for much longer. Dim’s misery was compounded by his own sheer exhaustion, having performed not one, but two exceptionally powerful spells this day, on top of a few winks from here to there. Now he was having trouble with his telekinesis, which sparked, fizzled, and didn’t want to work.

“What is to be done with them?” Dim asked of no one in particular and there were many who turned to look at him where he sat atop a wooden crate that had once been filled with apples.

Bombay paused, stood up straight, turned her head to look at Dim, and then replied, “They shall become citizens, if they so desire.”

“But what of home?” When Dim asked his question, he saw many faces sag with dismay, which made him feel worse.

“The former colonies where these creatures come from is now overrun with war and strife.” Bombay’s powerful voice carried through the area and there was something uplifting about it, even though she spoke of a dreadful subject. “What home is there to go back to? For most of these creatures, going back would only mean being captured again. These are not soldiers, nor rogues, nor wizards, but common creatures brought to us through extraordinary circumstance.”

The most cynical, most jaded part of Dim manifested and his mind’s eye saw with perfect clarity the exploitation that was going on. He blinked, winced, and his body grew tense. No, he didn’t want to believe that. Nein! His left eyelid quivered behind the smoked glass of his goggles and he tried to shove these unwanted thoughts out of his head. But the thoughts persisted, the unsettling notion that these slaves had progressed from one obvious form of slavery to a less obvious, kinder, gentler form of slavery, that of being indebted, beholden to their liberators.

While Dim wrestled with his unwanted thoughts, the mental pain became a physical one just behind his left eye, and it was as though a spike had been driven into his temple. A peculiar metallic flavour lingered on the sides of Dim’s tongue and every muscle in his frail body bunched up tight while he exerted all of his will towards making his thoughts cooperate.

“Dim?”

Blackbird’s voice cut through the fog of his mental fatigue and something about her dulcet, husky tones cleared his head. She was close now, her talons upon him, and without realising it he leaned into her touch. Rubbing his cheek against her knuckles, Dim’s mind quieted and his taut muscles began to unbunch.

“Dim… you’ve grown… brighter.” Blackbird sounded mystified, but Dim failed to notice. “You faded out after that tooth restoring potion and you looked a little duller. I guess it finally wore off, because now, you look like you did when I first met you. Sleek and shiny, not washed out and faded.”

So far gone was Dim that he didn’t care about whatever it was that Blackbird was talking about.

“I just saw it happen… like, right now. Eerie, tell me I’m not going crazy.” Blackbird rubbed her knuckles against Dim’s cheek, trying to soothe him.

“I sensed strange magic, but I have no idea what happened.” Eerie’s voice sounded far too neutral, as if she was hiding something by controlling her voice, and Dim, even in his subdued state, picked up on this fact. “Dim, go rest. It has been a long day for you. Blackbird, look after him. I will come to check on him when I am done here.”

Clucking her tongue, Blackbird shook her head from side to side. “Okay, I’m gonna get you into a bath for a good long soak, and maybe that will sort you out. I have no idea what happened, but you’re acting funny, Dim. Well, funnier than usual. Not your usual funny. Come on, come with me.”

When Dim was lifted, he found that he didn’t mind, and he was slung over Blackbird’s broad back like a sack of potatoes. Oh, Blackbird had a very nice back, it rippled with muscles, was warm, and nice to cling to. With vigourous abandon, he began to rub himself against it; soon, his troubles were forgotten and all thoughts of morality perished.

Dim was acting… peculiar. Almost as if he was stoned, but not in his usual way. In some weird way, he was almost… affectionate? He was clingy and touchy-feely, but his actions didn’t seem overtly sexual to Blackbird. Today had been a long day for Dim; he had conjured up an explosive butterfly that had glassed the shooting range, caused a horrific death to a unicorn that might have deserved it, and then had presided over a trial—yes, Dim had endured a long day.

Now, he sat in a deep basin of hot, steaming water with a dull, vacant expression upon his face. What Dim needed (and Blackbird too) was a good smoke. With her tongue sticking out, Blackbird’s whole arm was lost deep inside of Dim’s hat, where she knew that he kept his smokes, but she couldn’t seem to find them. She found all manner of other things though, which she pulled out, examined, then stuffed back in, things unwanted; a half-eaten wedge of cheese, now slightly stinky; one teaspoon, maybe stolen, and she might have been the one who had purloined it; one derringer, loaded; one black feather, maybe one of hers; a glass phial of some unknown liquid; another phial, this one marked with a skull and crossbones; the skull of what might have been an owl; a small gold bar intended as currency, marked with the Grittish standard; a bomb whose fuse was far too short; and then by accident, Blackbird pulled out an all too familiar spear.

With an ominous crackle of aetherfire, Chantico manifested, rising from the spear-tip, and she rose like a sleeper arising from slumber. She stretched, moaning and groaning, yawning, and did nothing to hide her embarrassing, rigid, ramrod-straight morning tail-boner that stuck out behind her like an over-excited exclamation point.

Finally! I am free from my cheese-reeking confines! I sense terrified mortals in need of hope and sustenance.

Blackbird, whose ears buzzed from Chantico’s strange, almost incomprehensible voice, raised her talons in polite inquiry. “Before you go, have you seen Dim’s smokes?”

Hang on, I have. Blaze up a burnt offering for me, will you?

Chantico snapped her claws together and Dim’s silver cigarette case poofed into existence, along with his silver cigarette holder. The sleepy ancient entity yawned again, reached down, tousled Dim’s mane, gave his ear one affectionate tug, and then strode away. Blackbird realised with some great sense of shock that Chantico was real—that is to say that her body had a terrific solidity to it.

My time is short and I can only hold my new body together for so long. I must go and make the most of it. Look after my devoted servant, in whom I am most pleased.

And just like that, Chantico was gone, leaving Blackbird alone with Dim.

Author's Note

And now I probably have to explain what happened so many chapters ago and how this continues a major thread...

Nous sommes des bâtards

The sun was almost directly overhead but the day had grown cooler. A strong wind blew down from the north and with it came dull grey clouds. From the west came a cool breeze and Dim knew the weather would soon change with the wind coming from two directions at two different altitudes. This was, however, a passing thought, because he was more concerned about Blackbird. She was, at the moment, eating an apple, and her lips were still greasy from the tin of sardines she had devoured. This was after she had said that she wasn’t hungry and had no appetite.

An airship chugged by overhead, a houseboat by the looks of it, and it left a trail of sooty black flakes falling behind it. A ship meant freedom; the ability to go anywhere, live anywhere, and to move to where opportunity presented itself. As with everything else around him, Dim hardly noticed, so focused was he on Blackbird.

It didn’t feel right to talk about it, or to ask questions. Dim had no real understanding of why she was upset and he felt as though he was cluelessly missing out on something that might be obvious to everypony else. Rather than embarrass himself, or make a fool of himself, he remained silent but supportive. At least, he hoped that he was supportive.

“Want some wine?” he asked while offering his half-empty bottle to Blackbird.

Much to his disgust, she took it; when her greasy, sardine-soaked lips wrapped around the top, he shivered and wished that he had thought this through. After a swig, he heard her say, “Oh, it’s half-full. Thanks, Dim, this is actually really nice of you.” Then, raising it to her lips once more, she leaned back and chugged down the rest of the bottle in such a way that Dim was left dumbfounded.

“Bombay, you look jittery,” Blackbird said to her friend and companion. “Do you need some wine too?”

“Maybe.” Bombay shrugged and continued to work on her claws with a file. “Fighting messes with my head.”

“Yeah, the conditioning,” Blackbird said while she seemed to perk up. She nodded, but then she began shaking her head from side to side. “I don’t understand. How can an assassin have an aversion to violence? I don’t mean to cause you pain, Bombay, but I don’t quite understand everything.”

“It’s complicated.” Bombay’s response was terse and sullen.

“Blackbird…” The Bard lifted a bottle of wine out of a wooden crate and his eyes darted downwards to look at the label. “When Bombay acted as an assassin, she was mindwiped. Basically, her will was overridden and her body was used like a marionette puppet. You can’t have someone as dangerous as her suddenly turning against you.” Rolling his eyes, the Bard slipped the bottle of wine back into the straw-filled wooden crate and let out a snort. “Ghastly.”

“Oh.” Blackbird’s long, triangular, tufted ears fell and her whole body shuddered.

Tapping the side of her head with her claw file, Bombay said, “All the training is still up here. Everything I learned. Everything that was forced into my head. Accessing it is the hard part. It’s easier when my friends or those I love are in danger. I can just push through. Eerie says I am healing. Getting better. She says that I can use this for a better purpose and that gives me the strength to go on.”

“Uh, we have guests,” Munro announced while he pointed skyward with his finger. “They have friends.”

“Oh, damnit, I knew that they just wouldn’t let Blackbird walk away from this.” The Bard spat out the words as if they had a bad taste and then he launched into a stream of Fancy vulgarity that made the air around him shimmer like summer heat rising from the road.

Garrulous and Giselle returned, along with two friends, both male hippogriffs. All of them stood in the grass a short distance away and Dim’s first instinct was to fireball them where they stood. The largest of them all, Garrulous, stepped away from his companions and approached with what could only be described as an aggressive posture.

“You should know,” he began in a calm, confident voice, “that there are five of us. The fifth has a bead on one of you right now, I know not whom and I really don’t care. We’ve found too nice a prize and being a female of breedable age, we just couldn’t let her go. Sorry, this isn’t personal, it is just a matter of our survival. History will judge our actions as being just, once we’ve established ourselves.”

“There is about to be five less of you in the world,” Dim replied in a way that only he could. “The history books won’t even remember you when I’m done. Nopony remembers ashes.”

“Hand over the girl.” Garrulous remained calm, commanding and as verbose as ever. “If this turns to conflict, one of you will be instantly killed. With us being hippogriffs, statistically, we’ll survive this. We’re faster, bigger, stronger, smarter, we are perfection… and you are not. So spare yourself some trouble and cooperate. This can only end badly for you.”

“Oh Garrulous…” Dim breathed out the words while summoning as much compulsion magic as possible. “Garrulous… Garrulous… kill your companions!”

At that moment, Dim winked, vanishing from where he stood, and his companions all scrambled. Just as Dim retreated into the aether, he felt something passing through his insubstantial form, the place where he had just been standing a fraction of a second ago. The thunderclap of gunfire had come from his left, so he focused on that and went off to deal with the lurking sharpshooter.

Garrulous meanwhile had taken to the air, drawn a pistol, and was now shooting at his companions, who had scattered in different directions. Two had taken to the air and the other two had taken cover behind trees. Shots rang out through the confusion and Garrulous was caught in a deadly crossfire. The Bard went scrambling when the crate of wine had a hole blown through it, and wine spilled out like blood onto the floor of the wagon.

Motte and Bailey had created forward cover for themselves, a mound of earth that they hid behind. Bombay, pistol in one paw and sword in the other, made a mad lateral dash for the trees while bullets kicked up dirt around her hindpaws. Blackbird, pistols akimbo, took to the air, zigging and zagging.

Munro grabbed the Bard, hoisted him into the air, and then ducked down behind the wagon in a protective crouch. Bailey had her carbine out and was trying to draw a bead on one of the airborne hippogriffs. A bullet hit the top of the dirt mound that Bailey had taken cover behind and the grimacing unicorn mare was forced to drop down lower or possibly catch lead with her face.

Garrulous shot Giselle, grazing her wing, and she now made a mad effort to escape. A shot rang out from behind the trees and Garrulous’ neck opened up in a blossom of scarlet. He tumbled through the air, blood spurting from the two holes in his neck with rhythmic pulses, and then a second bullet tore a gaping hole in his thigh.

“You motherfuckers shot the wine!” The Bard’s feeble scream was drowned out by the stuttering chatter of the gunfire exchange. “I hope Dim sets you on fire!”

Dim found the hidden sharpshooter perched in the crotch of an old walnut tree. He popped in and out of existence with great rapidity, and was shocked at how quick she was. Somehow, she was putting bullets in the exact spots where he had appeared moments before and he marvelled at her downright supernatural speed. She was almost like Blackbird in this regard, and Dim found that he actually felt a twinge of remorse for what he was about to do, because destroying something so perfect just felt wrong.

But Dim lived to destroy beautiful things…

With a flicker of magic, Dim set the walnut tree ablaze. All of it. The panicked hippogriff was flushed from cover and she flew away, smouldering while clutching her rifle. Flames crackled along her wings and the stench of burning feathers filled the air. It was a good looking rifle, though Dim knew very little about these sorts of things, and there was no point letting it go to waste. Reaching out with his mind, he tore it from her talons and then stoked the flames that consumed her wings.

Screeching, she fell from the sky, trailing black smoke. Dim heard explosions, loud pops, and it took him a few panicked seconds to realise that the sharpshooter’s ammunition was igniting as the hungry flames consumed her body. Frustrated, he cursed under his breath that the valuable bullets were being consumed, but at least he had saved the scoped rifle.

With the sharpshooter disposed of, Dim winked away to return to his friends…

And found them gathered around Giselle. She was the last one alive and she lay on the ground, gutshot and stabbed, by the looks of it. Beak open, she panted, clutching at her stomach with her talons while writhing in pain. An ever widening pool of blood spread through the grass and dirt around her, making a slow creeping advance upon those who surrounded her.

“Garrulous allait être un père,” she said while her talons clutched at her ruined stomach where her innards could be seen glistening. “Ayez pitié, s'il vous plaît.”

“Non, pas de pitié. Nous sommes des bâtards,” the Bard replied.

“Je vous maudis tous…”

“Foolish girl.” Motte shook his head in disgust. “Probably got plucked off of some farm someplace around here and then you had your head filled with delusions of grandeur. If you’d just stayed at home, if you’d just stuck with your culture and your traditions, you might not be dying in the dirt right now.”

“Somepony do something,” Blackbird said to her companions and Dim noticed for the first time that Blackbird had been grazed. “It’s wrong to let her suffer like this. Please!”

No one did anything and Giselle let out a bubbly shriek, which left her gagging. Her twitching talons snagged on a loop of intestines and whole ribbons of her insides came spilling out onto the grass like slithering, slick serpents. Blackbird turned away, unable to watch the unbearable sight any longer, and the whole of her body trembled as she began to sob.

“I did that to her,” she murmured.

With a gurgling shudder, Giselle surrendered her spirit and then went mostly still.

The walnut tree in the distance still smouldered, though Dim had put the fire out. Once mighty, the tree was now charred black, as was the land around it. Pegasus ponies and griffons had flown over, and a few passing travellers had stopped. All of them kept a fearful, worried distance from the companions and talked to one another in hushed tones. Motte and Bailey had stacked the bodies of their fallen foes into a pile and Dim had set them ablaze. Bombay was cleaning up spilled wine from the floor of the wagon and the Bard sat in the grass looking quite unhappy.

The wine had been shot after all, and a whole row of bottles had suffered an ignoble end.

Munro had collected the guns of the hippogriffs and was now sorting through their supplies, looking for anything useful. He found a map—which he kept—some ammunition, some food, and a collection of papers in a wooden scroll tube. The fastidious, meticulous minotaur was unscathed, unbloodied, and seemed undisturbed by everything that had just happened.

“Blackbird”—Dim tried his best to be comforting—“you shouldn’t feel bad about this. She met you halfway. That is how these things are. By choosing the life she did, she put herself in a position to be killed. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It is only happenstance that you and she crossed paths. You did no wrong.”

Blinking, Blackbird wiped her eyes with the edge of her wing and then stared at Dim for a time. Dim wondered what she was thinking and if what he had said had somehow made her feel better. If, for whatever reason, he had made her feel worse, he hoped that he could fix it somehow, because an unhappy Blackbird left him feeling miserable and out of sorts.

“Yeah.” Bailey sounded remarkably chipper for a pony that had just been shot at in battle just a little while ago. “Dim’s not wrong with what he said. I know it might not feel good right now, but once you think about the alternative… once you think about going with them and what would have happened, you’ll feel better.”

“I wonder if she got the same pitch,” Blackbird said, thinking her morose thoughts aloud. “Did she even have a choice? What if she left home to keep others safe? I’ll confess… I thought about going with them to keep all of you safe, and then maybe escaping later. Or something. I don’t know. We don’t know her reasons and it feels wrong to just make assumptions. Maybe she felt that she just had no other choices. Maybe she thought that she was doing the right thing. It’s easy to think that sometimes. It can be easy to justify stuff… like now.”

“She pointed a gun at us,” Bailey said in return and she shook her head to and fro while she grimaced. “It doesn’t matter what her reasons might have been. No justification can be made for her choice to shoot at others and take part in abductions. She and her stupid friends crossed the wrong group and paid for it with their lives. You can’t waste pity on stupid.”

“I guess you’re right.” Blackbird seemed to shrink and her whole face sagged. “When you say it like that everything feels so cut and dry… even though I don’t want it to be.”

“Looks like rain.” Motte craned his head skyward, studied the sky for a short time, and then returned his attention to Blackbird. Moving closer, he examined her wound, the bloody red line that went from ribs to hips and let out a powerful snort of disapproval. “Let me see what I can do about patching that up, Miss.”

“Yeah, it stings a little.”

“It’s a flesh wound.” Motte leaned in a little more, squinted, and then pulled his head away. “One little spot looks like it might need stitching. It’s not gushing, but it is deep enough that it’ll stay a slow, steady trickle that might not stop. Right about there, where your hips widen.”

“Yeah… my big, wide, foal-bearing hips.” Twisting her head around, Blackbird looked back at her wound, winced, and then jerked her head back around. “Eew. That’s worse than I thought. I bet when the adrenaline wears off, that’s gonna hurt. Do whatever. I don’t wanna look.”

“Hang on, let me go and get my medical supply bag…”

A steady rain fell upon the oilskin cover over the wagon and the battle was now behind them. Dim, cosy and dry, looked at the Bard and felt an odd sense of pity. The earth pony was passed out, exhaustion had claimed him and now he was lost in a deep slumber. With the rain came an unpleasant cold and Dim had thrown a heavy woollen blanket over Pâté au Poulet’s body, knowing just how frail his companion was.

Just behind the wagon, Blackbird could be seen walking in the mud. There was something almost juvenile about her right now, because she stomped in the puddles, squished the mud between her talons, and had a sort of glum, or perhaps dejected playfulness about her. Somehow, after a brutal firefight, the best part of her—though perhaps a little subdued and shaken—still shone through. The sort of irrepressible goodness she radiated gave him hope. Blackbird had found the wine bottle half-full… which was somehow endearing, though he could not say why.

Watching Blackbird frolick, Dim allowed his thoughts to drift.

Author's Note

The wine got shot... :fluttershbad:

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana

Was it dark? Light? Blackbird couldn’t tell and she didn’t trust her senses. She could see, but she had learned enough to know that whatever it was she thought she saw didn’t mean much. The eyes played tricks here, and whatever there was to be seen was no more real than the filly following after her. Perhaps illumination had no use here, and things were visible because they wanted to be seen.

Like what she saw in the middle of the room. There, in the middle, curled up atop a pile of pillows, Blackbird saw a slumbering foal clutching a… staring at it, Blackbird had no idea what the stuffed toy was, but looking directly at it caused her feelings of intense discomfort. Something about it was just plain wrong and Blackbird got the distinct notion that it didn’t want to be looked at. Why couldn’t Dim just have a stuffed bear, or a stuffed chicken, or something cute and fuzzy?

Because then he wouldn’t be Dim, a voice within her head told her, and it was hard to argue with this voice.

“What is that?” Blackbird asked in the softest whisper she could muster, though she feared the answer to her question.

“An act of kindness,” the Essence of Night replied, also whispering. “The Void’s gift.”

“Yeah, but what is it?” Blackbird tried to make herself look at the stuffed toy, and found that she could not. Her vision fuzzed over, she saw double, then triple, and then experienced a state of supernatural super-nausea.

“It’s a stuffed tarrasque. Ain’t it cute? I can still see the Void giving it to him. Dim is shocked and left happy, because he wasn’t expecting this act of kindness.”

“No.” Blackbird froze when Dim stirred in his sleep, and the idea of his discomfort caused her some panic. “I only see Dim sleeping… so what’s the deal? I thought the Void was dead. Isn’t that his body in that weird space?”

“It is. His existence terminated there. He died to bring you here. The Void had a promise to keep.”

“Promise?” Blackbird’s confusion was growing to be too much to bear.

“The Void promised that, with the last of his strength, he would bring Dim comfort. I can see him doing it right now. For being a monster, the Void was very sweet and kind, as centaurs tend to be. Though he became a devouring horror, he never lost that aspect of his nature. The centaurs loved their projects… all of them… perhaps a little too much.”

“I only saw him when he was dead,” Blackbird said, and upon reflection, she felt as though she had missed something meaningful, something vital, some great thing now forever lost.

“Look closer,” the tiny alicorn filly said to Blackbird while she stomped one hoof against the blanketed floor. “Closer…”

Something within Blackbird’s mind gave way when the filly’s hoof hit the soft blanket floor and time was freed to move in all directions. For a moment, she saw the Void as he was coming, as he was going, and while he stayed. He appeared as a centaur foal, an equine body with four legs, and where the head and neck should be, a slight simian form protruded.

Dim too, was out of focus, and doing many things at once. Crying. Throwing a tantrum and thrashing about. Sleeping. Creating his Pillow Fortress of Seclusion. She saw it all, everything at once, and it made her brain ache. Why was she not mad? She knew that she should be and a small part of her balked at the stark horror of what she was witnessing.

Just as things became a little bit too unbearable, the scene before her focused. The Void entered, his thin hands folded before him, his head bowed, his simian face was solemn. Dim, atop his pile of pillows, wept, ignoring the Void’s approach. The centaur, though appearing to be a foal, had aged wisdom in his eyes, an eternity of life. Blackbird could see it, sense it, somehow she knew of it.

All of it stretched out before her like terrifying taffy. The Void had seen whole galaxies come and go. He had witnessed universes dying and had watched them be born. During his tenure as the Void, new stars had blazed into existence and old stars suffered violent deaths—but in doing so, gave life to other things. Realities had come and gone, some destroyed by the Void himself.

“Why do you weep, little one?” the Void asked while he approached.

“It hurts. Everything hurts.” Dim’s words were muffled because his face was buried into a pillow.

The centaur came to a halt, folded his equine legs beneath him, and kneeled down beside Dim. Reaching out with one hand, he rested it upon Dim’s neck and with his other hand, he smoothed out Dim’s tail. Blackbird, frozen in time, unable to move, watched all of this as it happened, and she found that she could not blink, nor did she need to.

“I could feel the spiders biting me… it burned my blood… it was too much.”

Upon hearing this, Blackbird recoiled; she had done this to him—she had said to do whatever it was that was necessary to save him. Repulsed by her actions, she felt like retching, but trapped in stasis, she could do nothing, nothing at all but listen.

“That is only physical pain… though awful, little one, I doubt that is what brought you here. Tell me, little one, what has hurt you so? Speak to me… we have all the time we need.”

When Dim spoke, his voice came from everywhere, all around him, from every nook, crevice, and cranny in this reality, but not a sound came from his body. “Weaver Indigo died, and it hurt. I hardly knew him. He barely existed. But he died, and everything in my mind, everything that makes me who and what I am, it all tumbled around and settled into new places. I had this glorious moment of understanding, I saw what I could be, what I wanted to be, and I felt this great sense of purpose… I wanted to make his death matter… it inspired me. It caused things within me to awaken… it made me feel... Weaver Indigo made me care...”

When Dim said nothing else, the Void rubbed his neck, an act of comfort. “And?”

This question was met with silence. Blackbird too, waited, frozen in her stasis, her mind begging to be let go from this unnatural state. She realised that right now, at this moment, she was privy to the very secrets of Dim’s soul, his most private, most secret parts, and it felt like betraying him to intrude in such a way upon his privacy.

“I wasn’t strong enough.” Dim’s voice was a whisper that came from everywhere and nowhere. “In the stories, the knight was always this heroic saviour. The wizard always saved the peasants. Might made right and right won the day. Me? I could save no one. I failed. I couldn’t stop what was happening. I couldn’t save the helpless. I couldn’t even save myself. After mustering all of my might, I found myself lacking. In the aftermath, I saw myself for what I truly was, and the pain proved to be to much to bear.”

“And what did you see?” the Void asked, still rubbing Dim’s neck.

“A bully and a thug,” Dim replied, his voice now muffled in the pillow once more. “I was careful of the battles I chose to engage in. Calling myself clever, I went after those whom I knew had no chance of defending themselves against me. As Harsh Winters, I made a name and a reputation for myself, preying upon those that had no hope, no means to thwart me. My reputation was a finely crafted illusion, a lie with enough truth mixed in to make it satisfying.”

“And then, I suppose, the one time where it truly mattered to you, the one time where you sincerely wanted to do the right thing, you found your efforts all for naught?”

Dim writhed for a moment and then curled into a fetal ball, burying his face between his forelegs. “My guile and trickery were not enough. My malicious mischief was nothing in the face of real power.” Reaching out one foreleg, Dim pushed the centaur’s hand away and then covered his face once more. “This time, it mattered. So much was at stake. That… thing was an engine of wanton, rampant death. For a moment, I saw what others must see in me, but this was the real thing, and I… I am the author of my own myth.”

“But… you did something. Even though you faced overwhelming odds and you were outclassed, you faced the danger and put yourself in harm’s way.” The Void leaned forward, placed his hand upon one of Dim’s ears, curled his simian fingers around it, and gave it a tug. “Weaver Indigo had only his life to give, little one, and he gave it. But you… I sense that you have so much more. Are you really going to just give up? Is this to be your end?”

“I’ve been in the company of real heroes, and I am not one of them,” Dim replied, squirming beneath the Void’s touch, but unable to get away. “I have seen the truth… the Bard… myself… there are many of us… failures. Contingencies. Backups. We’re not even has-beens, we’re what-might’ve-beens. The world is full of us, let them fight and sort it out amongst themselves. I’m done.”

“And there was a time when I would be set upon you, to clean up loose ends.” Closing his eyes, the Void leaned against Dim’s pile of pillows, and Dim as well. “But my time nears its end. For too long, I have cleaned up the cosmic machinery and consumed the detritus of existence. I know not what comes next, but all of this nears an end.” Saddened, the Void shook his head and used his fingers to scratch behind Dim’s ears. “What if I gave you the power to change things?”

“I am unfit to wield it.” Dim’s tiny legs kicked and wiggled, but he was unable to get away from the centaur trying to comfort him. “Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve said? I’m craven… I am a coward. For quite some time now, I’ve been in the company of real heroes, those that have done truly great things. Me? I’m a fraud… if you want a real hero, go find Blackbird. There’s your hero. I am nothing compared to her. She does things for all the right reasons.”

“Funny,” the Void responded, shaking his head, “but I have this nagging suspicion that if I spoke to her, she might say the same thing about you.”

“I think not.” Dim’s eyes closed and once more, he attempted to bury his face into the pillows beneath him. “If she knew the truth about me, she’d be disgusted.”

“I am certain that you believe that.” The Void pulled himself away from Dim, but remained kneeling on the floor beside him. “And by sealing yourself away in this place, you’ve become the author of your own truth. You have no way of knowing or proving that you are wrong, so you can rest assured in the truth of your own making.”

The blanket entrance parted and Blackbird saw a blue alicorn filly enter, looking panicked and fearful. She paused just inside of the entrance, and Blackbird became aware that the Essence of Night was now in two places at once. Some sort of silenced communication took place between the filly in the entrance and the centaur, and it ended when the Void waved his hand at her. Turning about, the filly vanished through the blanket entrance and was gone.

Blackbird realised that the Essence of Night and the Void prepared while she had approached, for Blackbird that was to be was coming. Even worse, Blackbird realised that she was now in multiple places at once, and it made her feel sick in some weird, unknowable, unfathomable way. She lacked the omniscience to deal with this sort of warped reality, but she held on, determined to bear this for Dim’s sake.

“So… the pain of living… the pain of failure… it proved to be too much?” the Void asked.

Dim’s whole body writhed at these words and the centaur’s face fell.

“I didn’t mean to cause you pain, but I suppose I did inadvertently.” Reaching out, the Void held Dim’s hoof in his two hands. When Dim tried to pull away, the centaur held on with one hand, while rubbing Dim’s fetlock with the other. “I don’t think you’ve truly failed before. After you left home, you were canny enough to engineer your successes, which kept your ego going. That soothed the pain of living, I do believe. You left home and found yourself in a harsh, unforgiving world—the same world, I might add, that many are forced to scratch out an existence in. Rather than experience it, you deadened yourself to it through chemical means. You altered your reality to the point where it became artificial. Now, when faced with the harshest aspects of life, you’ve retreated, here, to this soft place.”

More than anything, Blackbird wanted to rush to Dim’s side to comfort him, but she lacked the means to move. Was Dim disappointed with her? Envious? She tried to imagine what might be in his head, but drew a blank. Why couldn’t Dim see his own part in bringing down the alicorn? Though Blackbird couldn’t say how or why—she did not understand magic in the slightest—she knew, she knew that Dim had played a role in the false-alicorn’s defeat. Dim had weakened it, robbed it of magic somehow, and that was the only reason she had been able to strike. When the alicorn and Dim had locked beams together, Dim had done something, but she could not comprehend what had taken place.

With a sad smile, the Void let go of Dim’s hoof and then he began waving his hands about. A peculiar black glow engulfed his fingers, a luminescent darkness that made Blackbird’s brain balk at the sight of it. This was a contradictory thing, a thing that defied itself, and was contrary to its own existence. The brilliant darkness took shape, it solidified as the centaur wove reality together, or maybe the Void was ripping reality apart: it was difficult to tell for Blackbird, as this went well beyond her limited mortal comprehension.

The Void was making something though—the Essence of Night called it a tarrasque—and watching as it took shape caused Blackbird’s eyeballs to vibrate in the most unpleasant way. It was crafted from glowing darkness, given form and shape. Blackbird wanted to look away, she couldn’t bear to keep looking, but she was stuck and this was torture.

Though still a foal, the Void appeared to age in some way—he appeared tired and wan. His hands shook and there was a fierce, sad intensity in his eyes. With his creation finished, the centaur paused for a moment to examine it, and then he drew in a deep breath. Placing his lips near the stuffed tarrasque, a cloud of swirling, liquid darkness exited his mouth, which went into the toy. Again, he breathed in, drawing in as much as his lungs could hold; when he exhaled once more even more of the strange gooey darkness came out and went into the stuffed toy.

A violent convulsion overcame the centaur foal for a moment, he shuddered as if he was taking bad medicine, or enduring something unpleasant. Blackbird could see the pain in his eyes and his hands trembled in the most dreadful way. He was undoing himself somehow, breathing his existence into the stuffed monster.

“Do you know what this is?” the Void asked while holding out the stuffed toy to Dim.

Dim’s eyes opened and he lifted his head. Blackbird saw him blink, but he seemed to suffer no ill reaction at the sight of the tarrasque, whatever it was. In fact, Dim’s face seemed almost peaceful somehow, the innocent, joyful look that foals have when offered a surprise gift that made them happy.

“That’s a tarrasque,” Dim replied, his voice wavering.

The centaur struggled to tuck the toy between Dim’s forelegs and once he did, he leaned one elbow against Dim’s pillows to prop himself up. “Very good, little one. Keep him. It is a gift. My gift, from me to you. Not many foals would appreciate a snuggly tarrasque.” Wheezing, the centaur struggled to draw breath and seemed to be growing weaker with each passing second. “Do you accept this gift?”

Dim nodded and hugged the stuffed monster to him. For a moment, he was blissful and Blackbird, though she was having trouble watching all of this, felt a profound warmth in her heart. Dim seemed happy—for Dim, anyhow, and Blackbird couldn’t help it, she wondered how messed up one had to be to find a tarrasque cuddly. She couldn’t even focus her eyes upon it without feeling as though her head might explode, or that her brain might liquify and go dribbling out her nose. Dim was special.

Perhaps embracing grotesquerie was some important aspect of monsterhood that Blackbird had not yet explored. If she stayed with Dim long enough, she would need to embrace that part of herself, otherwise she might never truly give Dim the understanding and appreciation that he deserved.

“I promise you, with the last of my strength, I will bring you comfort,” the Void said to Dim. “Sleep now, little one. Get some rest. I give you my word that when you wake up, you will find comfort.”

“How can you promise such a thing?” Dim’s voice was that of a vulnerable, mistrustful foal.

Extending one hand, the centaur touched the tip of one simian finger to Dim’s nose and said, “Sleep now, little one.”

Dim collapsed right away, falling into slumber. The Void struggled to rise and Blackbird saw the Essence of Night’s head poking through the blanket entrance. She came in, her face pained, sad, and went to the centaur foal’s side. In silence she stood as he looped his arms around her neck, and she helped to pull him up. When he stood, he almost toppled over, and the filly had to help him with her stubby wings.

“You’re dying,” the alicorn filly said to the centaur that clung to her.

“I don’t belong here,” he replied, “my universe collapsed long ago. I have long outlived my purpose. Do not mourn me.”

“Actually…”—the filly let out a displeased huff—“I’m a bit upset at what you’ve done.”

Together, the pair moved towards the door, the centaur dragging his hooves every step of the way, and he said to her in reply, “He will do right with it. Dim has seen and experienced the abuse of power and he said that he is unfit to wield it. He confessed that he is craven, and a coward. With great courage, he bared his very soul to admit that he is a bully and a thug. He might not be worthy now, but he will spend his life trying to become worthy, for such is his nature.”

“But you were wrong to give it to him—”

Who are you to tell me that I am wrong?

Cowed, the filly’s ears went limp and she shied away from the centaur that clung to her.

“Take me to the entrance of this sanctum. There is one more task that I must finish, one more promise that I must keep. I know what will rouse Dim from his state of defeated ennui. Dim is a shadow, and a shadow without a body is a broken thing that should not be. This must be corrected… and then I can rest.”

“You’ll work yourself to death, Void—”

“That is the plan, Night. Now take me to the entrance.”

Together, they exited.

Blinking, Blackbird found that she could move again, so move she did. In the corners of her vision, she saw things, ghosts of the past perhaps, things that were, and still perhaps lingered. Dim lay sleeping on his pile of pillows, still snuggling his stuffed tarrasque. A million questions danced between her synapses and all of her senses were still blurred from what she had just experienced. Things grew even more confusing when she saw herself entering Dim’s inner sanctum out of the corner of her left eye. Time was a fluid thing that ran in all directions.

From out of the shadows, a tiny filly pounced, black, sleek, and vaguely catlike. Like Dim, she had mismatched eyes and there was something very much like him about her. She also had teeth like a bear trap and a leonid tail. Startled, Blackbird jerked away and the filly landed where Blackbird had stood but a moment before.

“Papa needs Quiet time,” the filly said in a low voice, and then, before Blackbird could respond, she vanished, becoming so much substanceless shadow.

From the darkest corner, a pair of baleful green eyes could be seen staring, burning like witchfire in the darkness. Blackbird knew that she was being watched, but by what? Were these guardians? If she disturbed Dim’s body, would these awful creatures come and flay the metaphorical flesh from her metaphorical bones?

“Beware of what lies Lurking,” an unseen voice said, the very same voice of the filly that had been seen just a moment ago.

Annoyed, the Essence of Night’s horn flared with brilliant blue light, and the suggestive shadows retreated. Blackbird, thoroughly unnerved, felt a terrifying prickle in her belly and cold chills pierced her spine. Things—whatever these things were—had retreated, but were not gone. The green eyes had vanished but something still watched her, something terrible and unknown. Something not entirely wholesome or natural.

“What’s going on?” Blackbird asked while she crept closer to the Essence of Night.

“You made a deal with the Void,” the alicorn filly replied, “and he has kept his end of the bargain. Though I am displeased with what has been done, I do take pleasure in knowing that you will suffer tremendously for your foolishness, mortal.” There was a giggle from Blackbird’s companion, and it was not a pleasant sound, not at all.

Hearing it, Blackbird cringed.

“Yon prince lies sleeping,” the Essence of Night said to Blackbird in the most haughty manner imaginable. “Go on, wake him up. Be the heroine you long to be. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered—you get the idea, I hope. You’ve endured every test thrown at you. I made you face the worst things I could muster in the dream realm, and you’ve pushed past them. You stumbled into a realm that should have been your undoing, and not only did you survive it, but you found a sponsor willing to assist you and pull you out. You learned how to navigate the entryway, you thought your way past three dimensional thinking, and when it came down to it, you were able to reject your inner-brutishness so that you could bypass Dim’s defenses that kept out things that might hurt him.”

Astonished, Blackbird blinked a few times.

“And then, I threw the truth at you and allowed your mind to be stretched in ways that a mortal mind wasn’t meant to be stretched. At this point, you should be howling mad, but somehow, you’ve endured. Since I can’t be rid of you, and something prevents me from tossing you out, I am left with only one recourse—”

“And that is?” Blackbird asked, eager to get to the point.

“To give you what you want, with the hopes that you might go away. You’re no longer a mere monster, but an abomination. In your mad, foolish rush to reach Dim, you’ve become like him. Something obscene, something offensive to reality. You’re too thick-headed to even understand what you have done, but you have become the surrogate for the Void’s offspring. His essence now remains in both you and Dim… and his essence will become an integrated part of this reality now because of your actions. A part of him will continue to persist now through your bloodline, now and forever.”

Blackbird, the wee little nipper that she was, puffed up at being called an abomination. She hadn’t even made real peace with being a monster, not yet, a chaotic amalgamation of assorted parts that existed in contradiction to one another. This hurt—even worse, this was a hurt that she had trouble fathoming. Her grasp on everything that had just taken place was tenuous at best, and she regretted her previous cruelty… the Essence of Night was getting the last laugh, so to speak.

“Dim, wake up.”

From Dim, there was no response, not even a snort, and Blackbird was at a loss for what to do. It seemed that there was one final test, one last obstacle that remained in her way. Almost stumbling, not used to being in such a small body, Blackbird clambered forward to the pillow pile where Dim rested and tried not to think about what had just been said.

It stung a bit.

“Dim?”

Shadows swirled around the edges of Blackbird’s vision, the stuff of dreams perhaps, and she wondered how much of this her mind had constructed in an attempt to understand it. Why, she might be in quite a different place—Dim could be sleeping atop a mountain of skulls for all she knew, but she doubted that. When Dim burned things, he seldom left skulls behind.

Reaching out, mindful of her stubby claws, Blackbird poked Dim’s sleeping body with her knuckle. Nothing happened. Now a bit miffed, she poked him again, and when nothing happened—again—she let out a frustrated yowl while the Essence of Night stood rolling her eyes in exasperation.

“Wakey, wakey!” Grabbing Dim’s hoof, she gave it a gentle yank, but nothing happened.

Frustrated, Blackbird began prowling, moving in a circle around Dim’s pillow pile, but her stubby legs were far too short to stalk about properly. Her tail slashed from side to side, her claws snagged against the blanket floor, and nothing about her body behaved the way she wanted it to. Dim was little, rather cute, and in his current sleeping state, did not at all resemble the pyromaniac arsonist that he was known to be. Why, he almost appeared innocent, except for the fact that he hugged a stuffed toy that had the most dreadful wibble to it.

“You’re pretty stupid, you know that?” The Essence of Night sat down upon a pillow and gave Blackbird a leaden stare. “For a time, I thought you immensely clever for having made it this far, but right now, I am having second thoughts. Luck is your greatest asset, the very core of your being, and there is such a thing as dumb luck.”

Lifting her right talons, Blackbird almost held out her middle claw, but that would be mean. Biting her lip, she resisted the urge and returned her attention to the slumbering prince. The very sight of Dim was confusing, because especially at this age, it was impossible to tell if he was a colt or a filly. Blackbird knew that he was a colt, but seeing him now was jarring in a way that she could not express. Having felt the pain of being different, of not being like the others, Blackbird knew for certain that Dim would have trouble around other foals—he would be teased and bullied to no end.

“Your empathy will not wake him, but it is admirable, Dodo Bird.”

Blackbird, tempted to use the Essence of Night as a scratching post, had to bottle up her feelings and let this insult slide. So the Essence of Night had to know what Blackbird was thinking, and that made sense—how else would one manipulate dreams? Chewing on her lip some more, Blackbird chastised herself for not realising this sooner.

Once, Blackbird had scratched up the sofa a bit, and Stinkberry had hit her with a scold. It had knocked her right over, floored her, and had made it very clear that scratching things was not okay. After the fact, when the sobs and sniffles had subsided, her father had cuddled her to make everything better. Narrowing her eyes, Blackbird glanced in the direction of the blue alicorn filly, and saw her narrow her eyes in return.

“You wouldn’t dare,” the alicorn filly said to Blackbird in cold deadpan.

The scold worked in the dream realm and might very well work here. Blackbird had never really used it all that much, because it only worked on those who were clearly in the wrong and capable of feeling guilt. It was a conditional asset and after leaving home, she had found herself in the company of creatures whom she doubted could feel guilt.

It might wake Dim up…

“No, no, no!” The Essence of Night gave her head a vehement shake and threw her forelegs up into the air in frustration. “You’re so clueless and this is so simple. He’s a sleeping prince, you numbskull earth pony freak!”

“Look,” Blackbird said while forcing herself to remain calm. “I know what you are trying to do. You’re trying to bait me so I rage and hulk out and then get blasted out of here where strong things should not be. You want to have a good laugh at my expense. I’m not having it.”

Folding her forelegs over her barrel, the alicorn filly let out a harrumph and frowned.

Not knowing what to do, Blackbird sat down near Dim’s head and stared at him, frustrated. The Void had put Dim to sleep, so this was magic, and Blackbird had very little experience with magic. Maybe pinching him might work, but that would mean hurting him, and she already felt bad for allowing him to be pumped full of spider venom.

“Just kiss him already,” the Essence of Night said, huffing out the words. “On the lips.”

Recoiling in horror, Blackbird almost fell over and shuddered in revulsion. “Oh gross!” Balanced on her hindquarters, she covered her mouth with her talons and tried not to gag at the very thought. Every fibre of her being shivered at the very idea and her tummy started doing flip-flops in reaction to her disgust.

“Really? Out of all the of the trials that you’ve had to face, this is the one that trips you up? Honestly, I don’t understand this aspect of horror that exists within the mortal mind. It is probably the most common sort of nightmare that happens for the very young. I don’t get it. Look at you… you literally physically eviscerated an alicorn and then blew it to bits… but right now you’re a big scaredy cat-horse-bird creature. What gives?”

Unable to muster words, Blackbird whinny-mewed.

“Come on… just do it. You kiss him and his eyes will open and you’ll be the first thing he sees and this is how the heroic knight rescues the damsel.”

Still clutching her own muzzle, Blackbird considered the Essence of Night’s words. Dim could be a damsel. He was feminine enough. She had kissed him before, but that was different—he was attractive then, but repulsive now. By turning herself into a wee little nipper, by thinking that she was little, harmless, and soft, she had changed some fundamental aspect of her very being.

“Hey… better still… touch his pee-pee!”

This made Blackbird almost swallow her own face and she could feel her own guts trying to slither out of her various orifices in a desperate attempt at escape. Squeezing her hind legs together, she endured a full-body shudder of revulsion. Mocking laughter filled her ears and Blackbird’s face burned with shame. Some things were just too awful to think about.

“I think I goofed with that first dream sequence,” the alicorn filly said, clutching her sides whilst she chuckled, gleeful at Blackbird’s suffering. “I should’ve dialed back your age and had Dim try to play doctor with you. That would have been hysterical. Mistakes were made!”

Blackbird knew what had to be done—this annoying trickster spirit had to be proven wrong—and this meant smooching Dim… right on the lips. At the very thought, her mouth went dry, her tongue turned into a strip of dry leather, and her parched lips clung together, unwilling to be parted without pain. Somehow, she had to find the courage to go on.

She had seen Dim’s pee-pee and had been unnerved by it. Once, when he was sleeping, he had rolled over onto his back, spread his legs, and there it was, unsheathed. It was nothing like other cocks that Blackbird had seen, for Dim’s wizard wand possessed a most unusual, most unnatural shape. The memory was too much to bear and Blackbird could feel the sting of tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Aw, don’t cry about it… it’s not funny if you cry.” Sighing, the blue alicorn filly slid off of her pillow and came over to where Blackbird was sitting. “You mortals and your feelings. This is why the dream realm is necessary. To clear the junk out of your brains. It’s the danger of living in a magic-rich reality. Dreams take on a life of their own, sometimes. I used to be a grown up too, but then the old dream realm began to fade away and the new dream realm took its place, and now, I’m kinda stuck like this. The next few eons are going to be rough. You know, the old me wouldn’t be feeling pity right now, or guilt, or much of anything really. Cheer up.”

“What happens if I kiss Dim?” Blackbird asked while holding back her sniffles.

Heaving a sigh, the alicorn filly sat down and rolled her eyes. “The two parts of the Void’s magic will reconnect and a spell of immense power will activate. I’m not sure what will happen, but I am certain that Dim will wake up. You see, the Void used animancy, soul magic, but not the evil, harmful kind. He put part of himself into Dim, and the other part of himself into you, and when you and Dim act together, the whole of the Void’s power will be channeled. You and Dim aren’t the only ones though… the Void saw his end coming and prepared. He and the Nameless One went galavanting around, searching for worthy vessels. Part of the Void went into the Black Hound—the part of him that could consume and devour souls tainted and left irredeemable by evil. He’s been a real pain in the neck on his way out. It’s a bit of a crisis.”

“I’m sorry you’re having a rough time,” Blackbird said to her companion, and she put as much sincerity into it as possible, hoping that she was honest about her feelings.

“Grogar’s war has spilled into the celestial realms,” the Essence of Night said in a soft voice. “You actually meant what you said. I’m sorry if I was a jerk, but it is my nature. Dim’s too. We’re supposed to antagonise and cause emotional reaction. It is our purpose and calling. We really can’t help it. Dim is an asshole because he’s a celestial. If this burden did not rest upon his back, he’d be a much nicer pony.”

“I’m sorry I was mean to you.” Blackbird thought about her apology, and found that she was actually sorry, even more so now that she knew that this obnoxious behaviour couldn’t be helped.

“You know, you’re nice, Blackbird. You are kind. Very few creatures would tolerate Dim and I. Even though you lost your temper, you’re being nice right now when it matters. Dim and I aren’t meant to be liked. Luna… is not meant to liked. If we were good, and kind, and sweet, we would have trouble scaring souls back into the light. We have no choice but to be mean… to be jerks. We have to be cold, merciless, and callous. If we aren’t, then souls are lost to darkness… and that hurts. It hurts more than you could imagine. Your mortal mind can’t even begin to comprehend the agony. So as terrible as it is, we have to do the ogrish things that we do, and it’s awful.”

Not knowing what to say, Blackbird draped one of her short, stubby forelegs over the withers of the alicorn filly beside her and pulled her close.

“You know what you need to do,” said the Essence of Night while allowing herself to be comforted. “Just like I know what I need to do. As icky as it might be, you need to kiss Dim.”

“And what is it that you have to do?”

“Hurt a friend.” There was a sigh, followed by a pained silence, and then an explanation. “Blackbird, you’ve been given immense power. I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to be extra-hard on you to keep you in the light. Please don’t hate me, but I don’t have a choice. The dreams will come. I couldn’t stop them if I tried my hardest. I feel bad now. You will be constantly tested for your worthiness.”

Resigning herself to her fate, Blackbird nodded. She had made the deal, oblivious to its consequences, and now she had to live with what she had done. “No hard feelings. I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

“We’ll see… you did find your way here, after all.”

She had made her way here and Blackbird knew what needed to be done. A lifetime of unpleasantness awaited her, starting now. Withdrawing her foreleg from around the alicorn filly’s withers, Blackbird tried to get her lips to pucker. There was a war to fight; she and Dim would be strongest together, with him serving as her shadow, and she as his protector. What this meant, she didn’t know, but she would find out.

Dim looked so peaceful, cuddling his stuffed tarrasque.

“What is the Void’s power?” Blackbird asked.

“Erasure,” was the hesitant reply. “Obliteration. Absolute abomination annihilation.”

This didn’t do much to answer Blackbird’s question and she realised that she was stalling. Licking her lips, she tried to pucker up again, and felt queasy. Why was this so hard? Forcing herself to lean in, Blackbird found herself almost snoot to snoot with Dim. Reaching out, she brushed his mane from his eyes, a tender gesture of affection, and stroked his ears in that way that she knew he liked. Her black talons ended in claws that could flay the flesh from Dim’s bones—but didn’t, because Blackbird knew how to be careful, thanks to her father.

“Undead and unnatural beings… demons, eldritch entities, eye tyrants, unnatural horrors… the things that escape from the dream realm... you and Dim will have an intimate knowledge of their weaknesses. You will be a bane to the unnatural.”

Blackbird leaned in a little closer and summoned up her courage.

“Your mother’s guns,” the Essence of Night said just as Blackbird’s lips hovered mere inches from Dim’s. “Many search for them. This is why Chantico agreed to help you. Those revolvers were forged from the remains of Grogar’s bells, including the ancient bells that banished him long, long ago. I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but I did. Besties?”

Glad for a reprieve, Blackbird nodded. “Besties.”

“Good. Now pucker up, buttercup!”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Blackbird pushed her face forwards and smooshed her lips against Dim’s, which seemed far too small. Far too late, she realised that her lips had connected with a nostril, and her tail retreated into her sweaty, clenching crack, where it would need to be dug out with a pry bar later.

Trying again, this time Blackbird’s lips actually connected with Dim’s and something magical happened…

Author's Note

Um, with each edit it grew longer. It was like I was stroking the words or something. I'm really very sorry.

Also, cliffhanger.

I'm not sorry about that. Not at all.

Never bring a zombie to a cannon fight

The course of the river had been changed, but the ground below was still a bog filled with near-frozen fetid water. Dim took everything in with a weathered eye whilst he peered down over the rail, looking for some signs of trouble, ambush, anything. The gunship—a craft that was sixty feet in length and bristled with twenty seven long guns on each side—brought no comfort, no feeling of safety nor security. He had been distracted by the brass pegs that secured each and every plank of the deck, but now his mind was focused. This ship was purpose built for one scenario in particular, and the guns were all mounted in such a way that they could all be aimed downwards. It was a ship designed for colonial rule, to pacify unruly mobs that held delusions of grandeur about casting off the shackles of rule. The very design suggested cruelty and oppression, death from above. There was no tyranny like that of a controlled, oppressive sky.

“No sign of an army,” Commandant Graham said in a voice that held only the suggestion of unnerved concern. “The mine should be right ahead.”

“Commandant,” said a clearly nervous pistoleer, “what if they’ve scarpered?”

“Then we follow the example of Dim Dark over here, and we hunt them down like dogs. I dare say we have longer legs than they do.” The commandant’s calm broke and he shook his head. “There’s nothing in the rulebook for this. Nothing at all ‘bout serving at home. Nothing ‘bout what we’re doing and what we have planned to restore order. We sail into unknown skies, my friends. When this is over, we might all get put down or we might get medals. I have no way of knowing.”

“I am positive that this is great on morale,” Dim deadpanned with an aristocratic sneer contorting his face in unpleasant ways. “Forget the rulebook and the rules of engagement. Do what is necessary now and pay no mind to an uncertain future.”

Commandant Graham cocked his head and gave Dim a penetrating, curious stare. “Is this how you survive?”

“I tend to make up things as I go.” Dim found his own honesty pleasing. “A sharp mind can rapidly adapt to chaos and exploit it for the advantages it offers. A dim-witted dullard will only stand about, confused. I am Dim the Destroyer, not Dim the Dim-Witted. Having a plan would get in the way of that. Though, there are times when I face a problem with a specific approach in mind.”

“Yes.” Blackbird nodded, her face split by a nervous grin. “It’s called the ‘burn everything to the ground’ approach and so far, it seems to be working. Well, except for that time with the fake alicorn monster. That left a little to be desired.”

“Quite.” Dim shot his companion a cool smirk.

Engines humming, deckplates thrumming, the gunship progressed further into the great unknown…

Why was there so much shouting and barking of orders on a gunship? Holding a borrowed spyglass, Dim tried to get a better look at the horror on the ground below. These creatures were mangled, missing legs, had gaping wounds, and yet they still shuffled about. Then, while having a spy at them, he could feel the wrongness, the fear, and panicked shouts could be heard from the crew.

Terror, like a devouring cancer, spread through the ranks. In the boggy mists below, bodies could be seen, bodies both animated and dead… or undead, as the situation revealed itself. There wasn’t much of an army down below, not much of an army at all, and even though the dead were everywhere, there was a surprising lack of bodies for a location that was supposed to be thousands strong.

So there was clearly something wrong.

A foul miasma rose from the marshy ground festooned with bodies. Many of the trees were blackened, burned, and smoke still rose from a number of places. There were signs of a battle here, a struggle—a fresh one too. Craters, burnt trees, pools of magical residue that Dim was too disgusted to touch with his mind… he realised that they were too late. Grogar’s agents had been here, and had left behind quite a mess.

Around the mine was machinery, things such as pumps and the like, no doubt, and a scattered collection of low buildings that were all in ruins now. This whole area had been hit hard. A sinking feeling settled around his heart when he realised that the pseudo-alicorns that he’d come to destroy were probably being shipped off to parts unknown.

“Undead! Undead off the port bow! Bring the ship around and show ‘em our sides!”

Dim could feel the ship springing to life beneath his hooves. Below him, there was three stacked gun decks, with nine guns each, and all twenty-seven guns were being brought to bear. He could obliterate the abominations below with but a flick of magic, but he was tired. It had been a long night, and from the looks of things, it was about to be a longer day.

“Shield eyes, incendiary phosphorus rounds being deployed! Brace steady!”

The thunder of the guns was deafening and Dim squinted to protect his eyes as white streaks filled the skies. Belowdecks, the fast-firing turrets made a terrible stuttering chatter. Overall, he found the experience beautiful in its own morbid way. Everything on the ground was being systematically purged from existence, but there was still the matter of the mine. Something dreadful remained down in the depths, and Dim knew that he would be the one to go and find out what it was.

While everything burned to ash, Dim began his protective spell preparations.

A structure had been built over the yawning maw of the mine, but it was gone now, with naught left but ash and debris. From the wound in the earth, a hot, fetid wind rose, bearing an indescribable stench that burned to breathe. Fear, magical fear, rose up in waves. With a turn of his head, Dim studied his companions, trying to discern what they might do, how they might react. They were brave, he had no doubts of that, but this was magical and even with his wards, a creeping terror could still be felt. It whispered in the back of the mind and made scurrying sounds, like thousands of tiny hairy spider legs sweeping over a floor.

Dim wanted to think that he felt a familiar presence, but he was almost certain that it was his mind playing tricks on him, a component of the horror magic. Motte stood ready with his quad-barreled shotgun, and though he seemed resolute, something about his eyes said much about his condition. He was tired, they all were, and a weary mind was a vulnerable mind.

If only he was more powerful… a sense of regret lurked within Dim’s mind. He could only resist this fear, not banish it completely. Eerie could dispel this, of that there could be no doubt, but the best that he could do was merely shore up his defenses. For him, it would be enough, but for his companions… the outcome remained uncertain. The stench of burnt necrosis threatened to make his stomach turn, but he ignored the protests of his body, as right now he could ill-afford the distraction. A lack of focus might prove fatal, which was why this magical horror was so terrible.

“Are we actually going to do this?” asked Bailey, who cowered a short distance away.

“We don’t have much choice.” Motte glanced at his counterpart for a time, then turned his attention to Dim. “I can hear whispering inside the back of my mind. I keep trying to listen to it so I can make out what is being said—”

“Don’t,” Dim warned, and he gave Motte a cruel scowl for emphasis. “Endure.”

Motte almost said something, but then licked his lips and nodded.

“Something is wrong,” Blackbird said, almost whispering.

Rather than dismiss her, Dim decided to trust in Blackbird’s impressive senses. “What is wrong, Blackbird? Can you tell me?”

“I don’t feel stronger,” she blurted out. “On the ground, I always feel a little bit stronger. Or a whole lot stronger. I don’t know how it works and I’ve never paid it much attention before but I am paying attention to it now because something is wrong.”

“Fascinating.” Though risky, Dim reached out with his mind and tried to get a better sense of the magic here, which felt as though it had soured. After an attempt that left him feeling exposed and vulnerable, he gave up, as he wasn’t sure what he was feeling, except that the magic here had a kind of malaise to it.

With a weary turn of his head, Dim looked at the mine entrance and had second thoughts.

Dripping water proved to be almost as annoying as the whispering voices that plagued Dim’s mind. After a straight drop—the lift had been ruined—he and his companions found themselves on a steep incline with a slick and treacherous floor. It was hot down here, too hot, and Dim found it quite difficult to keep breathing as the tickle in his lungs grew worse.

The susurrant, sibilant whispers seemed to grow in number with each step, a distant Tartarian chorus of the damned. There were torches on the walls, but they offered very little light, a maddening effect of magical darkness that left Dim even more concerned about his companions. His own sanity was a tenuous thing—he knew it and lived with it—but being a bit mad afforded him a certain level of protection from magics that clashed with sanity and willpower. This… this would not break him, but he feared for his friends.

Ahead, the passageway turned about, no doubt forming a switchback that lead further down into the depths. The floor was moist, almost slimey, and the walls glistened with rivulets of trickling water. Decay and worse smells polluted the air, but Dim had an alchemist’s nose and could tolerate legendary stenches if the situation demanded it. Something could be heard ahead, past the corner where the passage switchbacked.

“Just the four of us,” said Blackbird through chattering, clattering teeth.

Bailey responded in a hushed whisper, “Munro and Bombay were too tall. Biped disadvantage.”

“My asshole won’t stop clenching and the cramping is getting pretty bad.”

“Blackbird”—Motte’s voice had a hard kindness to it—“try to relax your sphincter.”

Alone, Dim chortled and his demented mirth seemed to echo in the passageway. His ears pricked at the sound ahead, which he suspected was a zombie. He rounded the bend, cautiously poked his head around the corner, and had himself a good glimpse at the next steep incline. Much to his alarm and concern, there was nothing, nothing at all. No zombie. The auditory hallucinations were now outside of his head, it seemed. At least his moment of mirth brought a little relief.

This passage was steeper, almost too steep, and Dim cast a minor cantrip upon his hooves so that he wouldn’t slip, trip, stumble, or fall. The darkness seemed a little thicker here, more alive. For some reason, it reminded him of home, and a part of him felt the most awful sensation of homesickness. It left him filled with shame, to miss the home that had warped and twisted him into whatever he was now. He pushed it from his mind, or tried to, as heightened emotions were no doubt part of the insidious whispers of horror that plagued his mind.

“I can hear my parents arguing.” Blackbird’s tufted ears perked, trying to locate the sound. “Thing is though, my parents rarely bickered. Stinkberry just wasn’t the sort and Starling liked the quiet. But I can hear my parents fighting, and it sounds nasty. I used to have bad dreams about them fighting when I was tiny.”

Hearing this, Dim paused and considered the magic at work here. Dream magic in the waking world? Perhaps. It could be done. He lacked the defenses to counter something like that. This horror magic was quite unlike anything he had ever encountered, even worse than the banshee he had faced on the Grittish heaths. As bad as the banshee was, this was worse in some ways, mostly because he wasn’t sure what it was, but he suspected that it was some kind of necro-somnium thaumaturgy.

Torchlight flickered and the lingering shadows gathered like a theatre troupe ready to put on a good show. A great many things could now be sensed on the distant edges of Dim’s perception, and from the whimpers that came from behind him, his companions as well. Though it pained him, he knew what needed to be done, because they would follow him until their minds fractured from the strain.

Turning about, he faced them and said, “You need to go. All of you. Whatever lies ahead, I alone must face it.”

Blackbird stared at him, anger flashing in her eyes, but also terror. Her face was damp and she was sweaty with unbridled fear. Motte and Bailey exchanged a look with one another, and then both turned to face Dim. Fearing that they might resist him, Dim wondered if he would have to compel them with magic and make them leave for their own good.

“I can’t protect you,” he said, trying to explain, “and this is only going to get worse. There is an unknown magic here and all of you are more vulnerable than I. Go. Begone. I am already weary and forcibly sending you away would only further deplete my magic.” Whilst he spoke, he could see the agony in Blackbird’s eyes. She was loyal, Blackbird, perhaps stupidly so, and he had no doubts that she would follow him into Tartarus, even to her detriment.

“Be careful, Dim,” Blackbird said while her face contorted with emotion.

“I hate to say it, but Dim’s probably right.” Motte’s jaw firmed and his cheek muscles went taut while his eyes glittered with reflected torchlight. “Alicorns preserve you, Dim. Just come back to us, okay?”

“Some of us were born to walk a darker path.” Bailey leaned against Motte, perhaps seeking comfort. “It shames me to admit this, but I’m glad you’re sending me away. I belong in the light. Come back to us, Dim.”

If there was one thing that annoyed Dim more than anything, it was saying goodbye—and yet, this felt apropos for the moment. He had no idea what he was getting himself into and there was no promise of return. This might very well be the last time he saw them… these creatures that were his friends. Yes, there was no denying it, they were his friends and he had grown close to them during their travels. For whatever reason, this revelation only made things worse.

Turning about, his lip curled back into a sneer, Dim turned to face the darkness alone.

Author's Note

Alone.

But now it's over, for you and I. Into the end...

Whatever had just happened was nothing at all like Blackbird expected. There should have been a big showy flash of magic. Dramatic spellweaving. Chanting perhaps. The room should have blazed with blinding, bewildering magic. But none of that had happened. Chromium had simply cast a spell, murmured a few words that she could not make out, Dim had closed his eyes, and then, nothing. Nothing at all. A whole lot of nothing, which wasn’t much of anything at all, except for maybe a wagonful of disappointment, which really couldn’t be measured at all.

“There, it is done.” Chromium’s eyes were thoughtful and a bit narrow. “You know, I could change you in all manner of ways. I can turn ponies into alicorns, for example. But this is exactly why dragons like me should not get involved. Because we can change things. Upset the balance. For the wont to do good, we could destroy everything with our good intentions.”

Dim’s eyes opened and his head wobbled on his slender neck. “Then why do this at all? Why help me? You’ve become involved. Why? What do you hope to gain by helping Princess Celestia and Princess Luna?”

Blackbird wondered if Dim was okay, because he looked more than just a little woozy.

“Long ago I became a connoisseur of bitter minerals, and even more bitter truths. Many years ago, a plucky little Sun Princess drew me to her cause. She made me believe in the good that could be done. We debated much, she and I… it lasted for almost, oh, I do not know. Maybe a year? In the end, she convinced me that the far greater evil was to do nothing at all. I honestly do not understand how she managed to convince me of this. But she did.”

Chromium sighed, a heaving sigh that was somehow far too large for a mere unicorn.

“I exist in an odd place as a dragon. I have changed. I have drastically changed. Recently, I have discovered that I am at odds with my own kind. They’re doing more than just hiding, you know. The eldest of my kind are departing. Leaving. Abandoning this world to find another. Some of us were not even born on this world, but we came here after fleeing from some catastrophe or some great cataclysm. While the others are fleeing, I have chosen to stay. It seems I am a fool and that I have taken leave of my senses.”

Blackbird sat chewing on her lip, almost to the point of drawing blood.

“When Princess Cadance broke away to go after you, I was reminded of why I chose to follow a tiny, foolish, plucky Sun Princess. When Princess Cadance dove into darkness, it awakened in me many fond memories, one of which was Princess Celestia’s insistence that even doing the wrong thing was better than doing nothing at all. That inaction was the worst of crimes against the universe. I do not know what to say. It is likely that I could sit here and jabber away for a thousand years and still not say what it is that I am feeling right now. Dim, I would like to have you as a friend, if such a thing is possible. We might not see eye to eye, but we both want the same thing, I think. You might not walk the path of harmony and light, but you are loyal and you can be trusted to do right by Princess Cadance. That is enough. You will do right by her, and that is enough.”

“I will not betray my friends,” Dim said to the dragon wearing a unicorn’s skin. “Chromium, I would be honoured to count you as my friend. I would like to believe that we have a better understanding of one another now. My destiny calls me to other places. Not all of us are beckoned to walk in harmony and the light, but it does not mean we champion the cause of evil. I am Chantico’s champion… a cause that, perhaps, I should spend more time focusing on. To cleanse evil, I must go where evil lives. The darkness has no sway over me, and I do not fear it. I have become it. Embraced it. Dark is not evil. It is merely a place outside, away from the light. There is much I see clearly now that I have… awakened.”

Chromium nodded. “Into the darkness… just as Princess Cadance did when she went after you. Perhaps there is a lesson in all of this. Some bitter truth. Princess Luna lives in darkness as well. I have never fully understood Princess Luna, nor do I fully understand Princess Celestia’s trust in her sister after all that has happened. Perhaps I am at fault, and there is a lesson to be learned.”

“Perhaps,” Dim replied.

“You show me great kindness with your gentle response. No bile, no acid dripping sarcasm.” Chromium’s brows furrowed.

“Are we not friends?” Dim asked.

Chromium started to say something, but Blackbird saw him falter. She heard him sigh and watched him squirm in his seat. Dim was plenty snarky with his friends, downright antagonistic even, especially with her. What was going on and why was Chromium squirming? Was Dim trying to make a point? He did that, sometimes. On occasion, it was infuriating, but right now, at least in Blackbird’s eyes, Dim was making an effort to be nice. Had Chromium’s spell woken up something else in Dim? Was this just friendliness? Maybe Dim was grief-stricken. She was certainly grief-stricken, but was doing her best to hide it. Overwhelmed, Blackbird began to twiddle her thumb-talons.

A dragon and a unicorn were trying to understand one another. Chromium was a creature of powerful goodness, and Dim… Dim was not. In fact, Dim might not even be a unicorn. Blackbird shivered when she thought about it, but she wasn’t about to judge Dim on what he was on the outside or the inside. He couldn’t help that he was a monster, no more so than she could. She was a hippogriff—a hippogriff frequently mistaken for a sphinx, but still a hippogriff. A creature of story and legend. But she didn’t want to be seen as a hippogriff, with who she was and what she did as a second thought, if it was even thought of at all. She wanted the world to see Blackbird—who just so happened to be a hippogriff.

“We are indeed, friends. Dim, rest and recover. Take some time to allow everything to sink in. Meditate.” A strange expression formed on Chromium’s face, like storm clouds advancing upon an unsuspecting picnic. “As my friend, I cannot allow you to go into darkness unprepared. Before you leave, I will teach you the basics of dragon magics. I will awaken your dragon essence. Because you are my friend, I trust that you will do good with it. That you will use this knowledge to serve Princess Cadance, and the rest of your friends.”

“I would be honoured to accept your tutelage.”

The tickle in his lungs made him want to cough and the pain was almost to the point of being unbearable. Dim knew why; with his mind awakened, the hazy mists had been parted and he had perfect recollection of the dream. Contagion would be dealt with, but at another time. Dim had more important matters to attend to, such as his friends.

It felt strange to have awoken with such a sense of purpose. This was almost like discovering his destiny and gaining his mark, but far more pressing. An urge, a desire, an irrepressible need. He had gone to sleep and had woken up as a different Dim. A better Dim, perhaps. The cancerous sense of loneliness had been excised and the emotional curtain of separation had been torn away. There were things that needed to be done now that his eyes were open and he could see.

But first, there was what he felt was his first real test of his new self. A task that needed to be done. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it was necessary, and he owed his friends the best possible version of himself. So much was obvious now that wasn’t obvious before. Everything had been made clear. Chromium had revealed a whole new world, a world with infinite possibilities.

Now, the only issue was time. The passing seconds had become the enemy. There was very little time, and he was now keenly aware of it. His mind had, perhaps, become a little too aware of things, and Dim wondered if he now had an immortal perspective in a mortal body. He wasn’t sure and he had no way to tell.

Rounding a corner, he came to a stop just outside a door and took a deep breath…

Bombay’s body had been cleaned up, but very little could be done about the gaping hole in her head. She lay on a steel table, her arms at her side, her body wedged in place with wooden blocks. Her tail did not twitch, it showed no signs of life. It had none of its constant, ceaseless movement, and Dim could not help but recall that her tail moved as though it had a mind of its own.

All of the crusted blood had been cleaned away, along with the bits of brain matter. Not much of her face remained, and as awful as it was, Dim made himself look. While dead bodies had never really bothered him much before, what he saw before him bothered him now. Turning away would be cowardice of the worst stripe, and worse, disrespectful of Bombay.

The room smelled of disinfectant and funerary chemicals. It made his lungs hurt, but Dim would not be turned away. Each breath was laboured, tortured, it was a struggle to just keep breathing, but none of that mattered right now. Dim wasn’t sure what mattered at this point. When Blackbird brushed up against him, he almost jumped right out of his skin. She wrapped a wing around him, pulled him close, and he did nothing to resist her, though some small part of him wanted to push her away.

Blackbird smelled of tea, of gun oil, of leather, and fragrant floral soap. When she moved, Dim’s ears heard the creaky squeak of leather, the soft clank of metal, and the rustle of feathers. She was armed, even now, and there was something comforting about that, something reassuring. He rubbed his cheek against the cool, smooth leather of her bandolier, and his ear grazed a holstered pistol.

“I’m sorry, Bombay,” Dim said, his voice weak and little more than a strained, bloody whisper. “You can’t hear these words, but I wish you could. There’s a lot of things I wish for. I wish I had been a better friend. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so selfish and self-centered I might have noticed your pain. I might have been there. Blackbird and I might have kept you with us.”

Dim shuddered and felt Blackbird do the same.

“Maybe the grief would have passed. If you had held on, the dark of the night might have passed and the sun might have rose for you. But you did what you did and I don’t begrudge you that. For you, the war is over. The struggle is over. For us, it is just beginning. We’ll carry on in your stead… both you and the Bard. We’ll keep you in our memories. In our thoughts.”

Blackbird’s wing tightened around him and Dim struggled to hold in a cough, fearing that if it escaped, he might not be able to stop coughing. A wet wheeze could be heard with each shallow breath, and the ghosts of coughs-that-would-be could be heard moaning and groaning in his lungs. With his blood freezing in his veins, Dim forced his body to cooperate as he leaned his head forward and touched Bombay’s paw with his sensitive, quivering nose. There was no movement, no warmth, no reaction. She did not affectionately stroke his cheek one final time as he had hoped, there was no reassuring pat, there was nothing at all.

“Goodbye, Bombay.”

Dim wished he had more words to say. He hated saying goodbye and avoid situations where it was necessary. Up to this point, he hadn’t really cared enough about anypony—anybody—to even be bothered to make the effort, as he valued his own comfort more than just about anything else. Saying goodbye was an inconvenience, an annoyance. Or, it had been. Saying it now left him strangely unsatisfied, unfulfilled. Now, he could not help himself, he found himself thinking of others he had met during his journey, and he wished that he had bade them farewell.

What had he done to himself?

Blackbird drew in a deep breath, causing her leather bandolier to creak. Was she about to call attention to the fact that she hadn’t heard him say these words before? Every muscle in his body tensed as he waited and the tension grew unbearable. Much to his dismay, the silence persisted. He found that he wanted Blackbird to say something. Say anything. If only she would start blabbering away as she was prone to do, he wouldn’t be agonising over his own thoughts.

Now, he felt trapped, and there was nothing left to do but to awkwardly back out of the room, with goodbye as his final words. This was awful, unbearable, and for the first time in his life, Dim found himself desperately wanting assurance that wasn’t his own. Trembling, he nosed Bombay one more time, one final time, hoping for some miracle revival, some restorative mending of body, spirit, and soul.

But she remained cold and unmoving.

A flood of self-loathing washed over Dim, and he could only think of one thing to say in this wretched, repellent situation. The words, waiting, were bitter on his tongue and burned like bile in his throat. Self-hatred burned like a furnace within him, and his lungs ached with every feeble breath.

“Goodbye, Bombay. You were loved.”

Author's Note

"..."