Pain. Rage. Fear. Isolation. It was all he knew. It was all he felt. He had been abandoned. He had been tortured. He had feared the pain. And he had hated it.
These were the only things on his mind as he stirred in his sleep, the eternity of repeating desolation... And how they enjoyed it.
The Shadow was his only friend, the one thing that kept him warm in the cold of his isolation... The only one who hadn't abandoned him. He was grateful for his master... He would not disappoint him.
Light.
That was Tall Mac's first thought in over a millenia. There was light shining on his face, turning his closed eyelids orange. Then a second thought came.
Darkness.
He didn't like this light. It felt cold and empty, promising something it didn't have, could never hope to give him. He just wanted the darkness to smother him, and bring him back to slumber. But the light was prodding him, urging him, needing him, continuously, till finally Tall Mac mustered up the strength to speak his first words in a very long time.
"Five more minutes..." He mumbled out.
...What a delightful sound that was after a few hundred years. Nevertheless, the light continued it's prodding, until finally Mac was forced up and out of his... Crypt, it looked like, now that he opened his eyes. A stone indentation in the stone floor, in the perfect shape of a rectangle. To the side was what looked like the matching lid, cracked for some unknown reason, the perfect size and shape to cover it. Stretching, he stood confused for a moment.
"Wha...? Where am I? What happened?" How did he get here? Who had put him there? He had no memories of what happened, except... Except the pain. Those ponies did this to me... They must have! They must have finally got what they wanted and left me here to die, abandoning and laughing at me like everypony else. Well guess what? Mac chuckled darkly at this thought. I'm still alive!
Studying the rest of his surroundings, he found himself in a large cavern, littered all over with rocks and stalagmites, stalactites hanging down to meet them, waiting to squish together and take a bite out of whatever was unfortunate enough to be between them.
Directly above his crypt was a hole in the ceiling, sending a shaft of light down to meet his resting place, covering it wholly.
"So that's what it was..." It looked empty, like it was shining false light, a lie that held no weight or strength, something dead. Yes, that's what it was. Dead. It was a corpse, being moved like a puppet, like it was raised from the grave to awake him from his.
Shaking his head from his reverie, he focused more on the cave around him. He couldn't distract himself from his mission... Whatever that was.
Looking harder then before, he saw a square of stone missing from the wall closest to the lid. It was black. It was dark. And it was warm. This... This felt alive. A dark heart of life in the emptiness of death... Much like himself.
Clearing his throat, he called out to it. "Pardon me, friend, but do you know the way out?"
And surprisingly enough... It answered.
Not verbally, of course, but it did change form. Slowly, the shadow deepened, like a sideways well, lengthening without growing larger. And at the end of it, a flash of light. Not dead light, like before. This one had life.
Smiling in gratitude, he bowed his head to it. "Many thanks for your kindness, friend." Stepping forward, he walked through it, drawing closer to the light...
~Several thousand years ago...
"...Light, you stupid fire, light!" A red pony yelled in vain at the pile of stick in front of him.
Tall Mac sighed. Ripper had been at it for half an hour now, and the banging rocks were still no closer to lighting the pitiful pile of sticks. At this rate, it would be dawn before so much as a candle lit.
He glanced over towards the rest of his family, their forms all covered in thin blankets, shivering in the cold of the mountainous landscape as they huddled together. Their exodus had been tough going so far. There had been nothing but barren wasteland for miles upon miles, making it a slow and dreary journey for them.
A small, light-green colt coughed and looked up at his mother, exhaustion in his eyes. "Mommy, why did we have to leave home?" He asked with wide-eyed innocence. "It was warm and comfy there... Can we go back?"
Sadly looking down at her son, Forest Grove smiled weakly at him. "We can't, Lime Light. It's no longer our home." She grimaced as she thought about the invasion. "Someone else has it now..."
"Who would be such a meany that they'd take our house, mommy?"
Tall Mac flinched as Ripper angrily shouted, "They didn't stop at your house, kid! They took all our homes! They took our land! They took our country!" Frustrated with his futile efforts at fire, he turned on the scared Colt.
A yellow mare stood up and blocked his path to the colt. "Red Ripper, please! Yelling at this foal will not solve our problems!"
Ripper just shoved past her. "It can't make it worse, Petunia." He growled out. "He needs to hear this. We ALL do." He angrily walked up to the colt and his mother, steam rising in his head again.
Everypony looked up as he continued his rant. "You wanna know who took your home?! You wanna know who's to blame for you being cold?! For why we all had to leave?!"
Belatedly, the scared colt cautiously nodded as his mother hugged him closer.
Calming down to speak clearly, Ripper looked around at all of them, almost literal fire burning behind his eyes. "King Grover took our land... He stole our homes... Stole our lives!
"Equestria is at war with Griffonstone, and they're to blame for this."
Stepping out of the tunnel of warm darkness, Tall Mac looked around the alley he found himself in.
Two tall brick buildings rose to either side of him, feats of architecture he had seen in few places before, things that would be considered genius in his day. The building on his right had a doorway letting out into the alley, while on his left there were metal cans with a questionable smell coming from them. Dirt and grim covered the brick walls and concrete road around him, leaving it a faded dark color.
All in all... It was the most beautiful thing he had seen in millenia.
I'm free... There's nopony to torture me... Nopony to cage me up... I'm free! Tall Mac grinned in pure happiness, before thinking of his kindly benefactor. He had to thank The Shadow for this freedom. He had planted the door there for him, the shadow that released him. He would repay his kindness by completing... Uh... What was the mission again?
A door creaking shocked him out of his thoughts, and he instinctively flattened himself against the back wall of the alley, pressing against it. Hard.
The door on his right opened, and, holding some sort of black bag in his mouth, out walked...
No... NO!
Out of the doorway walked Red Ripper.
Except... He was dead, right? He had to be dead!
And still... There he was, carrying the shiny black bag to the metal cans and dropping it in.
He started to seethe in anger as his vision flashed red. His torturer was here... It didn't matter how or why, but all that mattered was what he did next.
Stepping along the wall, he silently crept behind Ripper, slipping in through the doorway right before it closed behind him.
The room they had just entered had a hardwood oak floor, and yellow painted walls, and had pictures lining the walls of Ripper and various other ponies.
As he followed his target down the hall, Tall Mac noticed just how stealthy he was being. Glancing down at himself, he saw...
A shadow.
More specifically, his shadow. Just, his shadow.
Looks like The Shadow left more than just that door when he freed him.
With an invisible grin, Tall Mac hurried after Ripper, gliding across the wall as a shadow, ducking under the low hanging pictures, and hopping over the ones hanging lower than that. It made no difference, as he stalked Ripper up a flight of stairs, trotting right behind the only other shadow in there.
Ripper finally stopped and pushed open a door with some weird writing on it, the room beyond dark compared to the bright stairwell before it. Perfect place to strike...
Rising off the wall behind him, Tall Mac rose up, eyes flashing red, and shoved the red stallion through the doorway.
"Gah-!" Was Ripper's short scream before Mac bore down on him, tackling him to the floor and knocking the wind out of him. He held Ripper there, one hoof pressing down on his barrel, the other reaching out for... Something.
Ripper gasped and scrabbled at the hoof holding him down, unable to move the incredibly strong leg there. "Who- Who are you?! What do you want?!"
Tall Mac glared at the red stallion before him, trembling beneath his leg. "It's Mac, Ripper you know good donkey plot. And you know what I want..."
He felt a weight in his hoof and, not thinking about where it came from, plunged it forward and into Ripper's barrel, straight at the heart. He grinned in satisfaction at the look of surprise and horror on Ripper's face, the life draining from his terror-ridden eyes.
"This is for our mother..." He spat, releasing the dead body.
Blood sprayed out of the wound, pouring out at his feet, soaking the carpet he was standing on, turning it the same color as Ripper's fur.
He tried to feel satisfaction or joy, even horror at what he had done. Instead, all he felt was coldness. A coldness as deep as the tunnel that brought him here. There was no joy in what he had done. There was no sorrow. It was simply what had to be done.
And now the he had done it... There was nothing here left to do.
As he was about to turn away when he noticed something squirming inside the cut on Ripper's chest. Looking closely,he saw...
Darkness.
Blackness.
Shadow...
Maybe there was something more to do after all.
Reaching down with his hoof, Mac poked the shadow peeking out from the wound, and it reacted by drawing closer and clinging to it. Watching it swirl stirred a memory inside him. No, not quite a memory... A command. His mission. His debt.
Tall Mac pulled on the shadow, dragging it out of Ripper's body, grunting at the resistance it had. This wasn't easy work. It felt like dragging a Manticore by the tail, something better left undone. Though...
The Shadow needed shadows. No matter how hard this was, he would do it. He didn't know why, but he would do it. He would get this shadow... For his master. His savior.
With a final heave and tug, the darkness popped out of Ripper's heart, collecting in one hoof. With a flick of his leg, it rapped around it, safe till he made it home. Speaking of such...
"Take me home, shadow."
And with that, he pitched forward and fell through the ground.
Babs was scared. She shivered in fear as she brought the blankets closer to herself.
What she saw didn't happen... Right? It couldn't have! Her uncle couldn't be-
No! He's not! But still...
Babs Seed had a very hard time convincing herself it was a nightmare, as she lay awake, immobilized by fear.
She would know it wasn't in the morning.
Author's Note
Aaaand... Done! Please tell me how bad it is and what you think will happen next! Till ze next time.
