Shadows of the Night

(Author's Note: I would like to thank Moon_Fire for working as prereader, I truly appreciate it)

As the dregs of consciousness crawled away from the pit all I could think of was, dam that was one crazy dream.

Opening my eyes to a sky of brilliant white stars quickly dispelled that thought, as well as the fact that I saw I was on a dirt patch in the middle of a vast rocky expanse, in nothing but a set of grey long johns I never recalled having owned.

I began to touch the soft fabric, but stopped once I saw, what looked like, smoke streaming out my pores. Thinking back to last night, hopefully it was last night (considering it was night now, I hated to consider that I had been passed out in the middle of nowhere for any longer than that), I reached out my hand to the nearest shadow, a few yards away, and was instantly rewarded with it jumping from the ground and wrapping around my arm like a gauntlet. A side long grin slowly marched across my face. Command over shadows was mine, I really was a shade!

Regeneration, agelessness, dark sight, shadow stepping, shadow porting, shadow strength, shadow speed, so many shadows. FOURHUNDREDSHADOWS!!! And they were all mine.

I had genuine super powers.

Mulling over these recent facts, as well as my most previous memories, I thought I prudent to give voice to the onslaught of worries and thoughts now swirling in my mind with a well thought out rebuttal of fact and logic to help calm my, ever so slightly, fraying nerves.

“AAAAAAAAAAAA” *inhale* “AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaa!!!”

That worked out surprisingly well. Rebuttal done I gave look to my surrounds. I was in the middle of the only spit of dirt surrounded by a great heaving wasteland of rocks and smoking fissure. Beautiful! (hey, I don’t poke fun at people who think waterfalls or the ocean is pretty, so back off) I even spotted a volcano with lava actively flowing down its side about two miles off.

This was Equestria? Man, they’ve really let themselves go.

Further in front of me stood a wooden crate, with a simple silvery latch which I quickly got up to look at. I noticed the top had the mark of eyes surrounded by a constellation of stars was in a decidedly black sort of onyx, as I undid the latch and lifted the lid. What befell my eyes was slightly disappointing, I certainly wasn’t expecting a letter on top of a roll of black clothe.

Picking up the letter it read,

I am glad you have finally awoken (Oh don’t give me that look, I am a goddess of divination. Yes I can see that too, so stop gaping, you look silly when you do). I am sorry I cannot be here in person to see you off, but I would rather not intrude upon the domain of another goddess of the moon, myself. Inside you will find I have kindly provided you with a means of clothing and defense.

Defense? I thought as I looked into the crate. All there is is a bolt of cloth.

Looking back to the letter.

Don’t interrupt!

Yes it is, but if you would pick it up you will find it to be a long sleeved cloak. This is the Umbra Cloak, it will allow you to travel in full sunlight without any ill effect to your new powers. As I'm sure you know most of your powers have consciously made themselves known in your new form, though I should like to mention the increased strength only goes so far an to increase your endurance, your not going to be hefting half-ton opponents around like baseballs all on your own. Below the cloak you will also find traveling clothes and matching boots, a tower shield, and a blank piece of paper. To send the completed letter to your loved ones simply throw it into a fire and concentrate, hard, upon whom you wish it to go to. You are now on your own, just try to find some enjoyment for yourself. Oh, and one more thing…

*a pie launches from the letter on a spring*That was for assuming to bandy words to try and outsmart a goddess. Even if my followers would deny otherwise, there is in fact a dark side of the moon, your people, of all others should know that.

With that the now empty pie pan and letter simply ceased to exist. Leaving the rest of it squarely on my face, taking a lick of it only set me to groaning, marshmallows… moon pie.

Wiping my face off as best I could, though the end result still left me feeling sticky, I’d have to find some water to get this off eventually, I lifted the cloak from the chest. It was a thing of beauty, black enlaced with darker shades of black, I quickly pulled it on and was immediately rewarded by the feeling of a masterly crafted piece of attire I had ever been my pleasure to wear, it just felt… right. It’s hard to explain, it felt like it wasn’t so much meant for me as I was meant for it.  The breeches and boots, calf high, both also black, gave me the same impression as the cloak.

My transformation had certainly toned me out though. I would never have fit so well, or easily, into such form fitting boots. I gave pat to my stomach wistfully, I was kinda going to miss my tummy, it just sort of weirds me out how abs are kinda bumpy and stuff. (Let’s just get this out of the way, despite how logical I am, and act, there is also a side of me that for lack of a better term is mentally damaged, I’d rather not go into details so we’ll leave it at that.) My arms and pectorals were also toned as well, not bulky, but coiled and compacted. I felt energized, like I could run a marathon unwinded, in short, totally amazing.

Pulling on the gloves, I stood to inspect myself. I looked amazing, deck out in all this black I couldn’t help but feel like a member of Organization XIII, with the nice exception of not have a giant useless zipper on the front of my cloak.

Turing to the tower shield, hexagonal casket shaped and nearly as tall as I was, was lifted easily from the bottom. I was amazed at how light it felt, I was either very strong (well that was true in a sense) or it was very light (and given the sheer size was probably the case), but it looked to be made of some sort of genuinely black metal. Light, but incredibly sturdy, covers a large area, the perfect shield. The back had two sets of straps, fiddling around found that one set was for wearing on my right fore-arm,  the other was a simple back strap. Not feeling in any present danger I just let it hang behind me as I grabbed the last thing from the bottom, a parchment of the purest white I had ever seen, folded it up, and stuck it in my pocket.

Now over the present rush, I probably should have been worried about being in the middle of nowhere with no food or drink, but instead I decided to test out my powers. The first, of course, was shadow manipulation. The first things I was able to create were simple shadow-gangers of me, as substantial as the shadows they came from, but still three-dimensional. I must admit that I squealed at this, shadow puppetry has always fascinated me, and now I could do it with my mind. Stretching my thoughts to more of the shadows around me I called them to see what other forms I could make. It was pretty fantastical, but it remained that the bigger I wanted to make, the more shadows I would need, so my life size Majora’s moon wouldn’t happen, which is a shame since he had such a nice smile.

I stayed there for hours letting my mind wander over all the little shadow creations I could make. Wrecking miniature shadows cities, fighting Godzilla over said city. I could have gone on for hours more if my stomach hadn’t started growling.

Food! What was I going to eat, where was I going to eat, not anything out here in the wasteland. Panic started to creep up on me, until I remembered I wasn’t human anymore, I was a shade. One, I didn't technically need to eat excepting extreme exhaustion, though I guess one's body changing form would certainly cover that, and two, Shades could teleport through shadow, I distinctly remembered reading that. Specifically two different kinds, short and long distance, the latter of which required one to have a precise picture in ones mind and the previous was basically just a small jut out around fifteen to twenty feet to the next shadow.

'Probably best to start small,' I thought  as I straightened myself up and tried to picture myself going forward as I took a single step forward. The immediate effect was the tiniest sliver of vertigo, though that mostly came as a forced feeling from my head. I was fine, if a bit disorientated. I took another couple of steps, catching my breath each time as the world blinked out as the horizon got noticeably closer. This was going to be fun, but my stomach was still growling, so I figured it would probably be a bit better if I tried to find food. There obviously wasn't any here, and the only place that I had any picture of would have to be Ponyville. As nice as it would be to meet some of the ponies there, I was a little worried about their reaction to a tall biped walking around them, but I needed food.

Sitting down to concentrate, and hoping that I was just near the dragon migration route rather than some apocalyptic version of Equestria, I called the shadows around me, thinking hard on a familiar apple orchard that stretched on for acres. I know it wasn’t the most chivalrous idea, but if that apple-bucking episode had taught me anything, that orchard really is just too big to notice a few small apples taken from it. I’d make it even, eventually, not like I was planning to steal them. The darkness just started to coalesce when I thought, ‘god, I hope I don’t have to deal with Rainbow Dash’. She really does just rub me the wrong way, especially with how she holds the dichotomous position of claiming to be an athlete, but yet always has more than enough time to simply sleep upon her eyrie of clouds above everyone else .

***

Shadowporting was easier than I thought it would be, I was a little dizzy, looking back if I weren’t already so close to the shadows I probably would have felt worse. But everything had made it safe and whole so I was rather please all in all. That was until I realized where I was.

I was inside a cloud. As interesting as that sounds, it really wasn’t, there really is just so much you can do with cloud, and that’s just shape it into different walls, which were all lumpy looking, giving me the impression that the whole design seemed rather half-baked. The only things that made it look anything but drab was the furniture. I was clearly the in main living room with circular rainbow rug, red wood table, a few other odds and ends, but who else but Rainbow Dash would have a life sized portrait of herself above the hearth.

Note to self, do not let mind wander while trying to move across vast spaces. I got lucky this time as I shuddered to think about how I could have easily ended up fused to the inside of a mountain, something which no amount of healing would save me from.

Enough of that though, I had to get out of here. I was all too familiar with Rainbow’s classic ‘crash first ask questions as your doing it’ approach, and I was in no hurry to have a pegasi break my spine with a flying tackle. She was of course there, her loud snoring from somewhere off proved that much. So I walked, not bothering to tip-toe, with my steps muffled in the cloud, to find some sort of exit. Locating the nearest door I started to push it open when a niggling thought burst through the dam to the stream of logic ‘aren’t winged creatures the only one who can stand on clouds?’. And with that the floor beneath me gave way with a small poof.

I’ll admit I was… frazzled, by this turn of events. I screamed for about four seconds, the ground rapidly approaching me, as my life flashed before my eyes, all the way up to the point where I became a shade. Then it hit me, I don’t have to worry about hitting the ground, under the shadow of the cloud blocking the moon I was under I could just shadow step to the ground. Smiling I reached to the darkness… and hit the ground even faster with a sickening ‘thunk’ as I immediately blacked out.

***

I awoke in bed, gasping, fearing the fall I thought was still about to happen.

The sun was streaming in from the nearby window to my right. My body felt all tingly, I must have slept funny. Looking down to my bare arms found no shadow stuff coming out my pores. I frowned, “Guess it was a dream after all.”

Thoroughly dejected at this turn of seemingly cruel events, I had never had a dream that felt that real before. I knew I should have been happy that I had had a dream period, which came around every seven or eight months for me, but I just couldn’t get over it.

Sullen and unaware to the rest of my world I sat in this funk for a few minutes until a weird clopping noise, like coconuts bangin’ together came from outside my room, which now that I was giving it a proper look around was clearly a hospital, white tiles, white wall, A white privacy curtain, the usual sort of thing. I wasn’t attached to any I.V. bags, or any machinery for that matter, so I guess I was doing well enough now.

Maybe it hadn’t been a dream so much as a delusion. Maybe I had just been though some sort of detox and was only now coming out of it. Guess that lady was just a charlatan who had slipped me something.

I let out a sigh as a gasp came through the dividing curtain to my left as a distinctly, white equine head, wearing a nurses hat, popped across it, with pupils swiftly dilating.

*gasp* “It’s conscious!”

Okay, not a drug induced dream, I thought. Because if there were any drugs on Earth powerful enough to give such vivid hallucinations, while my mind clearly didn’t feel muddled or fuzzy, then it would be the number one drug there. All this popped off in about two seconds, as I said, “And why is that cause for alarm?”

“Because you were found early this morning, in a crater, with a shattered skeletal structure, reportedly with blackened ash streaming off you. Your rescuer grabbed you and hauled you to this hospital where by that time the movement had caused some of your bones to break the skin, but as soon as you were left alone they began to visibly sink back into your skin. We didn’t think we could do anything for you at that point so we just put you in a bed and hoped for the best. What are you?”

As much as I’d have would have usually thought on how much worse it could have been, the question struck me pretty hard, I wanted to say a shade then bust out a Captain Morgan stance, but with my skin clearly a, somewhat, healthy shade of white, yeah I was a bit of a nerd so I really didn’t have a tan, and just said, “I’m not really sure anymore” with a sigh.

Suddenly very aware of my nakedness, especially in front of the fairer sex, I coughed and asked if I could have my clothes back. What is it with hospitals and wanting you down to nothing anyway, don’t they realize that if they’re using a stethoscope to check your breathing and heart then you should be able to keep your pants?

With an ‘oh, of course’ her horn glowed pink as my clothes flew in from behind the side curtain as she continued to stand there.

“A little privacy please” I politely intoned. To which I only got a turn of her head and a truly confused answer of, “Why?”.

Right, ponies are always in the buff, why would they have any idea of this sort of thing. But I was undeterred, “because I do not wish to be seen with my genitals on display in front of a lady.”

To this she scoffed. “I’m a doctor. I see that and much more on a daily basis. Now that you’re up you’re not leaving my sight until you fill out some basic paperwork on your stay, and only then will you be free to go,” she said with a well practiced death glare. You don’t mess with doctors. I gulped and gave as much an affirmation as I was able. Then, rather sheepishly, got up, turned away, and began putting my clothes on.

I just couldn’t figure it out. I strapped on my pants and boots. Why didn’t I feel connected to the shadows anymore? Put on my gloves and began to lower the cloak around me and felt a rush as I became aware of the darkness in the hospital, until my head popped from the head hole.

Oh right, I was standing in direct sun light, the one thing that basically negated nearly all my powers. That explained why I felt so tingly. So I pulled up my hood and felt the darkness around me settle, it was… comforting, but even though I was under my new blessed cloak, I could still feel the rays of the sun beating down upon me like some vengeful spirit trying to rend me. I then slid my shield to my back (glad I didn’t have anything like a sword or they might have confiscated it from me, peaceful places can be weird like that) and was beckoned to follow the unicorn as she left the room.