Prepare
I’ll have to summarize a lot of things that happened in a quick manner so that this won’t take a lot of dry, boring time. First off: Dice is awesome in a Chuck Norris way! Both in body and mind, he is truly a badass! He never backs down, and he usually sides with the losing part just to get into trouble (he told me more stories). Second: Acorn knew the road after talking with Breeze a little, so we walked without further problems (except for me having to carry Dice as a suggestion from Breeze so that I would strengthen my wings). Third: There were no bumps on the road. My mind however, had a different story altogether. There were headaches, voices, mental pictures and... Well... I’ll just take it from there shall we?
“I gotta say kid, flyin’ aint’t a strength of yours by a long shot yet. I’ve met a lot of good flyers, and a good pegasus flies with or without a pony on his back as if it’s nuthin’,” Dice said, seemed like the backside to being that badass is your lack of patience for us ‘lesser beings’. “Give him a break will you, it takes a Pegasus months to learn how to alter clouds and weight,” Breeze said to my defense. He would know better than anyone else after all, so Dice decided to shut it for the rest of the trip. Acorn ran on the ground so that she would better recognize the tracks. But I had a feeling that she would’ve done just fine even in the air, because she ran non-stop in a pretty narrow path after a while. She knew these parts of the woods, hell she even pointed out that it would take her fifteen minutes to run from where she was! In the distance I couldn’t see anything but trees. And the some trees. And then we stumbled upon trees. BEFORE WE WERE SURPRISED BY trees. But as I was flying, my mind went cloudy. The world around me went back and forth, left and right in addition to a headache. I slowly lost a little altitude, but Dice gave me a small thump in the back of my head. Suddenly Acorn said halt out of the blue. Breeze was going to ask her if something was wrong when she pointed her hoof at a door!
“What in the hay? Where did this come from?” Breeze said in confusion, he inspected the door. And it looked normal. Now, why am I saying what HE did instead of what I did? Because meanwhile, I went for a kamikaze run into the ground. Dice however, was badass enough to jump off in speed and land safely while I kissed the ground. The weight of carrying him was simply too much for me to handle. "How on earth do other pegasi pull it off" I thought. I had to pull my face out of the ground (literally), but somehow my nose remained intact. Equestrian laws of physics reduce physical damage? Awesome! “Oh fer the love of- get up ya pile of potatoes, you’ll rest later,” Dice said. As ever, he sure knew how to motivate me... “Welcome to my home sweet home,” Acorn said with the biggest smile I’ve seen yet. “I’ll ask grandma to make you guys something! Oh, she’ll be thrilled to meet you! Just wait here,” She said before opening the door and disappearing down some stairs. Except for the door - the tree which the door was attached to - looked pretty normal. Dice leaned down under a nearby tree and closed his eyes. Breeze walked around the tree with the door, he still couldn’t believe the perfect craftsmanship that was used to make such a well-hidden house. In the meantime, I looked around a little. Then the headache returned in full strength, with the wibbly-wobblyness, the loss of balance and the rest of the package.
(Acorn) I almost tripped as I beamed down the stairs. I was more excited than ever! Oh, it was going to be so great! I had never had any visitors there before, and I had almost never met anypony other than grandma for most of my life! I ran around in the living room yelling for her in excitement, but I was met with silence. I barged through the bedrooms, the food-cellar and even the secret room from when I was a foal. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. I panicked a little, and started to fear the worst. I checked mother and father’s empty room, and looked in the library. But she was nowhere to be found! I gave up looking for her and decided that I should tell the others. At least we could find something for Dice’s wounds, but I wouldn’t dare to attempt to make any potion for Blank just yet. Disappointed, I went back to the others.
I just couldn’t think of anywhere else she could be! But my mind was pulled away from grandma when I heard a tree fall outside. “What’s happening?” I said. Dice and Breeze stood close to the door. With their backs towards me, lowered heads, and their hooves dug into the ground it looked as though they were ready for battle. And they were. Blank was standing next to the broken tree, breathing heavily. “Wh-” “Shhh,” Breeze hushed me. “Listen,” he said. “You pile of worthlessness, why do you keep on? Why not just lay down? It would all be SO much easier for you and everyone else,” Blank said. “Oh shut it, you damn well know it wasn’t my fault. You damn well know I did everything I could. And you DAMN well know that I will never let anything bad happen ever again!” He yelled to himself. Something very strange was going on here, but more questions appeared as I realized something: His eyes were black again.
“RAH!” He screamed as he threw himself towards a tree before kicking it so hard it was nearly ripped out from the ground with roots and branches. The tree was severed in half, and splinters flew everywhere. One of them flew towards us and dug into the ground where Breeze stood. Luckily, he jumped out of the way. I on the other hand, tripped backwards and down the stairs. “Ouch,” I said while rubbing the back of my head. I was unharmed, but this was bad. VERY bad. I just didn’t know what to do then. I got back up on my hooves and ran back up. To my surprise, Blank wasn’t in a rage anymore. He was crying on the ground, with his hooves over his head. I looked at Breeze, he just shrugged. “Acorn?” I heard from to my left. Grandma stood there with her head tilted to the left, and with two buckets of water attached with a rope hang over her back. “Grandma,” I yelled in excitement. I galloped towards her and gave her a hug, spilling the water in the buckets. She hugged me back, because I had never been gone in the night before. “I thought you had run into trouble. Thank goodness you are safe. But who is this,” she said while inspecting Dice, Breeze and Blank, looking more surprised for each of them she recognized.
"Dice Blackmane, Breeze, this is a strange fellowship you have found my dear. And what is this,” she said. Walking towards Blank, who was now dead-silent once more. His eyes was still black, but he laid motionlessly on the ground with his eyes open. Grandma stared deeply into his eyes, and then she whispered something into his ear. Whatever she said had a mighty effect. Because he responded with a short scream of pain before he held his hooves over his ears. “Acorn, would you please show our guests inside? You can cook something together and give Mr. Dice some bandages while I make something for your friend here,” she said before going into the house again, leaving us and the buckets outside without a word.
Inside, grandma had opened a door to a room I never knew existed. It was hidden behind one of the bookshelves. “Grandma?” I asked. It seemed she had a few secrets I didn’t know about. I knew she knew how to make potions, how to heal wounds and the effects plants had. But that room was just... Wow. It had everything a skilled alchemist would ever need. She had told me stories about alchemists that tried to turn things to gold, but I never knew... “This day had to come sometime; I always intended to show you this room Acorn. From this room, you can help others, you can cure diseases, you can save lives,” she said. “But this is not MY legacy Acorn, this is your mother’s. She built this room, and used it to heal others. She asked me to show it to you once you needed it. And now you do,” she said. She I looked at her in both shock and confusion. Mother had left something for me?
Grandma pointed a hoof towards the living-room. “The brown one is in dire danger. To help him pull through, he needs this potion,” she said before shuffling in between some recipes on one of the shelves. There were dusty tomes everywhere, but this one wasn’t hard to read at all. It read ‘self-insight’. There were so many things to do, so many things to mix, so many procedures that had to be perfect. “It seems so incredibly complicated, what does it do?” I asked. She only replied “It will save your friend,” before she left the room. It was mid-day, but I worked like never before. I studied the tome, but failed at some points before correcting myself. But at long last, I fell asleep on the tome. Luckily, none of the ingredients were in heating. We were all sleeping, except for Mr. Blank.
Beauty is no joke, and because of that I can’t make fun of looking at the beautiful moon. The moon was way clearer, bigger, and shinier than back home. And here’s the thing about beauty: You can describe it as much as you much as you want. But in the end, you can never really describe how beautiful something really is. You can just point out some of it. And that’s why I never say a thing when I’m gazing at beauty; I wouldn’t know where to start. I heard a crash inside the house, seemed like something fell from a shelf or something. I could hear low voices, and then I heard hoofsteps up the stairs. “Trouble sleepin’?” Dice asked. “Not at all, I would just prefer not to,” I said. “Yeah, the shadow can do that to ya. Did the others know?” He asked, seems like he thought of the others as well. Because I was more than a little dangerous in this state.
“Yeah, but they are probably as clueless as me for what it is. It seems like they are hiding something from me,” I said. The others had told me about my black eyes, they told me about me ranting to myself and they told me about how I destroyed those trees," I said and raised a hoof at the broken trees. But I could still feel how they were hiding something from me. And now was the moment to find out. “Care to explain the rest? I’d rather know what’s taking over my mind if you know what I mean. And you seem to be holding some answers,” I said to him. I really wanted to know. You know, just in case I find myself standing over the bloody corpses of everyone I hold dear... Again. “Yeah, I reckon’ if anyone should be told ‘bout the shadow then it’s gotta be you. Can’t have you pransin’ about, not knowin’ a thing ‘bout how ya might die. After killin’ off everyone ya hold dear that is,” he said like it wasn’t too big a deal, while I sat there with my slowly dropping jaw.
“First off: Don’t worry. You’re not the first one, n’ others have survived without killin’ nobody,” he said. And that was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. I emptied my lungs with the air I had held for thirty seconds without knowing so. “Second: The shadow turns you against yourself, twistin’ your grip on reality 'til ya let go. And ya must NEVER let go, ya hear!” he said while staring with glaring eyes into my own. Then he sat back again and looked up. “Third, remember who ya are. You’ll never get yourself back if ya lose yourself,” he said, full of thought. “What!? But I’ve suffered memory loss! I can’t even remember a thing before yesterday night!” I said, the panic was striking my chest. But Dice just smiled. “If your memory was wiped clean, ya would’ve been a log. Ya can walk, you can talk. Heh, ya can even fly some even though ya only had a day at best of trainin’ before your wipeout. The memory is there son, ya just gotta get in there n’ find it,” he said.
Dice was incredibly convincing. And with those words he had gained my respect. He knew what to say, and he knew more than most about personal life-lessons. “Acorn’s sleepin’, she’ll get right back at workin’ at your potion tomorrow. It should be ready then. You know, sleepin’ ain’t such a good idea since the shadow makes every dream into a nightmare. But it might give ya a chance to face him. Maybe even square off a little,” he said before standing up. “The one thing that helps people the most when they fight off the shadow, is that it tries to become part of ya so that it can twist ya. So twist it a little the other way, will ya?” He said over his shoulder. But then he turned around. “Oh, and one last thing. Tell him that uncle Dice says hello will ya?”