Crazy, Mad, Insane

"Are you sure you're going to be alright?" Shining asked as he reached the wooden hut. He placed his sword to rest against the outer wall, making sure to place the tip on a stone rather than on the mossy ground around it, and watched as it reflected the rays of light filtering through the trees, a slight emerald tinge to them.

A muffled response came from his white drawstring bag. At least, it had been white the day before, now it was mostly red and already turning to black where the blood had started to dry. At least he'd never put anything important inside.

"Oh, sorry!" Shining quickly removed the bag from his shoulder and carefully placed it on the ground, then opened it to take out Zecora's decapitated head.

"Worry not, kind stranger," the head replied, "I am not in mortal danger. My body back together I'll stitch, it takes more than beheading to kill a witch."

"So do I just leave you on the porch or..." Shining looked around.

"That will do. Farewell to you."

Shining placed the head in front of the hut's wooden door, taking a bit of time to look at the engravings. "You said there's a town over there, right?" he asked, pointing with a hoof at the forest.

Zecora didn't give a proper answer, her mouth occupied with the doorknob, but she grunted affirmatively.

Shining began to march away. "One last thing," he said, turning around as he heard the sound of the door creaking open followed by that of Zecora's head falling inside. "How do you speak with your head chopped off? Don't you need lungs, or a throat?"

Zecora went through the rather complicated motion of turning herself around with nothing but her tongue, only to answer Shining's question with nothing but a stare.

"Let me guess. The answer is magic, right?"

Zecora kept staring.

"Oh well." Shining's sword flew up to his side, pulverizing the timberwolf that had tried to pounce on him in mid-air. Shining wiped some dust away from his back and shoulders without even looking at the direction from which the creature had leaped from, then began to walk away. Three more were killed as he made his way out of the forest, after which anything else gave up on trying to attack him.

He finally emerged from the forest, entering the outskirts of Ponyville. There he found three armour-clad guards circling what looked like another pony, dressed with a long purple robe that covered the entirety of her body. The only things left out were the head, the face wearing a white smiling mask with downwards curved eyes, and the front hooves, encased in some sort of golden armour. A golden collar and shoulder pads of the same colour completed the ensemble, and the only distinctive characteristic that could allow someone to recognize the potential wearer of the costume was the long, curly and messy raspberry coloured mane sticking out from behind the mask.

The guards seemed to be intent on attacking the masked pony, swords drawn and pointed at her. Shining walked closer to the scene, and one of the guards noticed him.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" the guard addressed him.

The other two turned towards Shining as well. "Boss," one of them said to the other, "isn't this the guy who got that dragon sent after him? Is he the one who killed that thing?"

"It's him." The larger of the three guards studied Shining with an interested gaze. "So," he asked to the unicorn, speaking louder, "is it true? Did you kill the dragon?"

The guard who had noticed Shining first, to whom the other two were giving their backs, was suddenly cut in half.

The other two turned at the sound of his body splitting, only to see his right and left halves fall to the ground with a dull thud, blood begging to spray from his insides and quickly pooling around his remains.

"What the fuck?" the smaller guard exclaimed.

"Let's get out of here!" the other replied, running away.

Shining walked up to the masked pony. "Everything alright?"

The pony nodded. "Welcome to Ponyville. You can call me Pink 13."

"So you're the mandatory reference, huh?" Shining got a better look at her. "Name's Shining Armor," he said, extending a hoof.

The other pony took his hoofshake.

"Any place where I can get something to drink around here?" Shining looked around.

"Sweet Apple Acres is that way." The pony pointed with a hoof.

"Thanks." Shining began to walk away. "Nice scythe by the way."

He walked for a while through the dusty yellow roads of the small town. Anyone who might have been there seemed to have no intention of meeting him, and he found nothing of interest during his short trip, the creaking sound of the wind as it drifted between the cracks of the boarded up windows of the seemingly abandoned buildings his only company. Finally, he reached the farm, and began to make his way across the rows of withered trees.

"Open this door or I'll tear it down!"

Shining looked up, startled from his thoughts. The two guards from before were now in front of the barn, and the larger one was knocking against the door. Together with them was another guard, a pegasus this time.

"So, what's the matter?" Shining asked, getting closer.

"This guy refuses to open and - Hey, wait a minute!" the guard said, turning around, "You're the one from before!"

Shining looked back over his shoulders. "Me?" he asked, pointing a hoof to his chest.

"Yeah!" The guard began to walk closer to him. "And this time that freak is nowhere around to save your ass. You know," the guard said, taking out his weapon, " I don't think you really took out that dragon. Nice sword you got there."

Shining brought his sword in front of himself and looked at it. "Yeah, it's pretty nice. I should have known you'd like it, it must remind you of yourself."

The guard stopped. "What?"

"Well, it's a bastard sword. Or a hand-and-a-half sword, though I don't see why they would call it that considering we don't have-"

"What did you just say about me you-"

The cross-guard of Shining's sword impaled the guard's palate, the blade held floating in the air in front of him by Shining's magic, and blood began to spill from the wound, dripping down to the ground through the pony's open mouth.

"I was monologuing," Shining said in an eerily calm tone.

The blade began to lift itself, and then its trajectory curved backwards. With a powerful trust of Shining's magic, the sword reached all the way to the back of the guard and then pierced him between his shoulders, passing all the way through him to have the end stick out of his chest and shattering the upper portion of the pony's spine in the process.

Shining removed his sword from the corpse. "-hands," he concluded.

The remaining earth pony guard watched horrified as his captain was mauled, then stared at Shining in shock. He stood there shaking for a few seconds, then turned around to run away.

The remaining pegasus took off, seemingly headed towards the forest. Shining aimed at him and launched his sword. The blade hit its target in the air, going straight through the pegasus' right wing, and the pony began to fall towards the ground. The combination of the shock caused by the injury, the inability to use his wing and the added weight of the weapon made him plummet helplessly at increasing speed, until he eventually crashed on top of a tree, the jagged branches tearing into his flesh and leaving him impaled there.

Shining magically recovered his sword and walked up to the door. He knocked, but no one answered, and after an attempt at opening it he found it was still locked. He left his sword to rest against the side of the barn, then used his magic to unlock the door and open it. "Weird you'd put a normal door on a barn," he commented, walking in.

Big Macintosh looked up from the glass he was cleaning. He was standing behind a long counter that spanned the entire length of that side of the barn, behind him an open door to a flight of descending stairs and a few mostly empty bottles sat on shelves affixed to the wall. An expression of mild surprise coloured his face as he saw the unicorn. Beside him, the only other presence in the room was a mulberry mare slouched over the counter, a bottle clutched in her hoof, seemingly passed out.

"So, is the place open?" Shining closed the door behind himself. "I'll take one of whatever the strongest thing you sell is." He walked up to the counter and sat in front of it, to the mare's left.

Still a little unsure, Big Mac took out a couple of bottles and a new glass from below the counter, then mixed the contents and passed the glass to his right to the unicorn. "...You're the one who killed that dragon?" he reluctantly asked.

Shining took his glass and stared to fidget with it. "Yeah, yeah, I'm the Chosen One, Dragonslayer, Knightrider of Doom and all that jazz." He stared at the bottom of his glass.

Big Mac, who had resumed in his cleaning the glass he was holding, stopped again and looked up at Shining. "The fuck's a knightrider?"

"No idea, but it sounds cool. I'll have to ask whoever decided on the name if I ever meet them."

Berryshine jumped in her sleep and fell off of the counter.

"Name's Shining Armor, by the way. Yeah, yeah, I know, 'you don't have any armour on'." Shining sighed. "Well sorry if the cover art doesn't match the story, but it's the best we could find." Shining brought the glass to his lips.

Big Mac returned to cleaning his glass, giving a sideways glance to the unicorn.

Shining tilted the glass, then stopped. "Things have been rough lately, haven't they?"

"I..." Big Mac looked down. "Can't say they haven't."

"You know," shining said, bringing the glass away from his lips and absent-mindedly playing with it, "there's this widespread belief that the Princess doesn't like her detractors. Don't know what could have started it, though. But I can tell you, she certainly doesn't hate them."

"She doesn't?"

"Quite the contrary. She finds them delicious." Shining brought the glass to his mouth and downed the contents.

"It takes some guts to drink something from someone who has all the interest in killing you." Big Mac looked at Shining, interested.

"Well, luckily I have some extremely good guts." Shining got up and began to leave. "By the way, next time you try to poison me go with twice the dose you used today, that might be enough to make me a little sleepy."

Big Mac stared in disbelief as the unicorn walked away completely unharmed.

Shining reached the door and opened it. "So your sister's held prisoner in the ruins in the forest, right?"

Big Mac's expression remained one of disbelief, though the reason was now different, and he only managed to nod.

"If I save her, do I get to fuck her?" Shining asked.

No answer came for a little while. "...Nope," Big Mac managed after a few seconds of silence and confusion.

"Oh well, I tried. She should be back here by tomorrow." The white unicorn walked out, closed the door, grabbed his sword from where he'd left it and began to head towards the forest.