Red.
Everything was blood red.
The color was everywhere, almost completely clouding his vision. All he could see was red, no matter which direction he pointed his eyes. He couldn't move nor even speak. It was like he had a gag in his mouth and a blindfold over his eyes. Arkane could feel something cold on both of his wrists. It felt metallic and heavy. He also took notice that he was knelt down in a puddle of... something. He felt like his entire body was being restrained by chains of an unbreakable metal that locked his muscles in place. His entire body felt like he had spent hours trying to break free of the chains, maybe even days trying to escape.
There were noises. Above him, noises, loud noises were ringing. They sounded like sound would if he was the bottom of a pool. A shallow, red colored pool.
The noises were loud, loud enough to cloud what they really were. None of the noises sounded familiar. Is it alarms? Is it screaming? Machinery? He thought. The only word he could think of to describe them was loud.
The cloudy red vision and the noises never ceased. They only seemed to intensify as the seconds grew into minutes, with the minutes growing into hours, and the hours growing into days. Years seemed to pass as the noises grew so loud, he could barely hear himself try to form a coherent thought. Somehow, someway, the red was becoming as black as the night itself.
His vision slowly became clearer. He could detect shapes, patterns, movement. And even different colors. There was now orange, yellow, green, grey, and even white. More complicated colors came into the fray, but red was still the main color he could see. Ceaseless red. Unforgiving red.
The sounds were becoming clearer as well. There was the crackle, snap, and the pop of fire all around him, the shaking of the earth around him, the voice in the back of his head, congratulating him. The slow drip of liquid falling to the floor right in front of him.
Screams coming from all around him
He knew not where he was. The place was alien to him, like a new smell, a new face even. Rocks were everywhere, vibrating slightly. The entire room was shaking. He could feel himself shaking with the earth. The only movement he could make, and he couldn't even control it.
He almost started crying. Movement would have been like a delicious meal. If only the waiter would bring it to him instead of just stand in front of him. He quickly took notice of the sudden waiter standing before him. The waiter stood in front of Arkane with the meal on a pan, four feet in front of him. Each of hi bodily functions was being the devoured by the waiter, who laughed over his full mouth. With each bite he inhaled, the more stone like Arkane felt he was becoming. Stone. Meant to stay in one formation, never allowed to move, never allowed to change unless it was crushed.
Stone.
There stone spires stabbing through the waiter.
Arkane realized that there was not a waiter standing in front of him. There was no waiter eating away his movement. That would have been preferable to what he saw before him. Instead of a figure wearing nice attire, Arkane was greeted by a dark figure who was wearing torn up rags that nopony would even think about calling clothes. The dark figure merely stood there. He was looking down at the floor, his arms positioned in a way to make him look like he was playing an instrument in his hooves.
There were three stone spires through his body. Arkane could see them for a brief moment before, but now they were there to stay. There was one going through the middle of his chest, one stabbing his ribcage, and the last one going through his stomach. His left hoof looked like it was holding the neckboard of the cello and his right hoof was holding the bow. He was stuck like that. Forever.
There was blood everywhere. On the ground, on the rocks, on the figure before him, even on himself. Without any say in the matter, his head looked to his arms. There were two rusty chains holding him down, but they were loose enough to let him moves his arms around a little bit. They seemed looser than before.
There was something clutched in each hoof. In one hoof, there were entrails. They were squishy like a dog once you've squeezed it hard enough. He played with them in his hoof like it was clay or putty.
In his other hoof, there was a knife. A knife with a wooden handle and a resplendent red jewel on the tip of the handle. The blade was beaming like it was a child who learned something new. It was stained with blood.
He couldn't help but smile as he raised the knife up to his mouth and licked the delicious liquid off of the blade. He couldn't help but moan as the liquid entered his mouth. He stroked the knife with so much ferocity he might as well have been a dog licking himself.
The knife was licked clean. He could see himself in the blade's reflection. His black and red hair wet with the blood of the figure before him, his white skin stained with lacerations and specs of blood. His eyes were closed in the reflection.
How can I see myself when my eyes are closed? He thought to himself.
His eyes opened, revealing piercing, yellow eyes. His skin was turning a pallid grey.
A pony that he didn't recognize looked directly to him.
"Tasty."
Arkane Vander screamed as he awoke. The moonlit sky shone through the cracks in the cave, shining soft light into his eyes.
He sat up, throwing his hooves around like they were stuck in a hurricane. He realized that he was almost completely alone in the damp cave.
The key word being "almost."
"You know, if you had only told me that you would get that scared, I would have gone just a bit easier on you."
Arkane didn't say a word. Lying down, he adjusted the torn blanket into a more comfortable position. Assuming that the blanket was more comforting than it really was. He turned over and close his eyes tightly. He shut his ears with his hooves, almost crushing his brain with them.
"Like that will do you any good." The other presence laughed at him with a sickly smooth laugh that would break a broken heart even more.
Arkane took several deep breaths. As loudly as he could, he let a breath out of his mouth. What he would give for a timber wolf or a bear, even a hydra would be perfectly welcome to come by and kill him. They would have been a much better fate than having to listen to this psychopath.
"Oh come on, big brother, I wanna go out and play. You can sleep when you're dead. Or when Gild is dead."
"Shut up! Just shut up already."
"You have gone zero days without speaking to me. And you were doing so well, to. You almost broke your previous record of five months!"
Arkane stood up. He walked around the cave, kicking around a stone.
This thing in his head was his other personality. It showed up two years ago after he lost his horn at... the cave. Even thinking about that cave was hard for him.
Normally on any other occasion, sleeping anywhere near a cave would be way beyond the question. But tonight, he was desperate for a place to sleep. He had no bits to rent a hotel room for the night, so a cave and the blanket he always carried with him would be good enough. He slept close to the entrance. Just in case.
Just in case it devoured him.
"Let's go outside. Gild has to be around somewhere, I just know it." His other personality begged.
"We're not going anywhere. So long as I'm in control, we're staying right here in this cave.”
“That can be easily rectified.”
Arkane looked at his body. Instead of the white hue he was so used of seeing, there was the same pallid grey that he saw in his dream. It creeped its way up Arkane’s legs, surfing across his entire body. Arkane focused everything he had into stopping the other one from taking over. Pretty soon, the grey faded off of his body, reverting back to his white skin.
“Unfair. You’re stronger than I am.”
Arkane fell back to the ground, tired from the mental battle he just fought. He shut his eyes and threw the blanket back over him.
“If you won’t let me take over, then the least you could do for me is give me a name.”
Arkane shut his eyes, cracking them open every now and again.
“Come on, a name is the most powerful thing an Equestrian, or any species, can give.”
“That’s why I’m not going to give it to you.”
“Please. We can’t keep referring to me as the other presence. There has to be some kind of name out there for me."
"Ask me again when you're out of my head."
"But you can't get me out of your head. You tried. A lot."
"Don't remind me. And you're not getting a name."
"But daaaaad."
"Do you ever shut up?"
"I will never shut up. At least, not until I get my name."
"How about no name. It's quite fitting if you ask me."
"That's not a really name. I want something cool, like the name you came up with to hide yourself from Gild. Leider. Yeah, Leider, I want that!"
"How about we call you nothing, and stick with it."
"I wanna be Leider, I wanna be Leider, I wanna be Leider!"
"Fine, fine! From now on, I will call you Leider."
Leider didn't say anything else. By the sound of his silence, he could tell that Leider was smiling.