Things died down fairly quickly. The weeks passed as the weather cooled and the Harvest finished. I buried himself into finding a suitable way to get revenge on his mortal enemy, my mental fragmentation lending me single-minded focus, only wandering out of the basement library to grab a bit of food once a week or to test a hypothesis.
Gladas returned to her Appleton-side shop, waiting for the generations to become used to, accepting of the presence of the Lich Next Door. Agatha brooded, staring out the window and occasionally practicing on her instrument. I barely noticed the rest, all but ignoring their existence as they did mine, no matter how outlandish their appearances were. I sometimes noticed a half-rotted skeleton boring its glowing red sockets into my head. The only reaction I gave was to send him my maniacal green gaze back until he got bored.
It was one year after my arrival before something began changing. Nobody noticed much besides cooler average temperatures. Even summer was a bit breezier than the last. Nobody until Agatha tracked Gladas down and ordered her to start buying or making as many cold weather clothing as possible, and then dropped a giant bag of gold bits in front of her.
It took several months and several confused ponies, but by the end of the year, everyone, including the residents of Appleton, had at least one fairly insulated cloth covering. Clothing research wasn’t all that good, Twilight, but we got by with what we had. That was when I got my cloak. My first one.
I question why you think I would manage to keep a piece of cloth presentable for over 1000 years without the thing becoming a pile of colorful dust.
It was the color of burlap, like most things were in the day if you were going for cheap. Stuffed with wool, they were a bit better than the rest. I spent most of my time in the basement anyways. The only thing that changed was that Gladas popped by one day to warn me when heavy snowfall was coming, so I could avoid freezing solid by accident, and when it was warm enough to go out without preparation.
It only took five years before Gladas never returned to tell me the outside was warm again. At 1165 years from today, the Eternal Winter began.
Yes, it indeed the same one you’ve heard about for the Heartswarming Tale. Our community was at the far edge of that squabble. All that happened was that contact with neighboring towns and cities soon became cut off as travel routes were buried in an ever thickening layer of snow.
I didn’t notice, of course. Normal brains wouldn’t be able to use “100%” of their capabilities. All that resulted in was seizure. What I did have was in-equine focus and stamina, and the ability to ignore more than half of my bodily needs.
And so, after sixteen straight years of theories, almost the entire accessible library to me consumed, countless experiments, combined with indomitable stubbornness, my dream was realized.
1154 years before
A small black ball sits on a windowsill. Once every six hours, a small bubble of pink wafts out of the ball, and fades away into the snow-bearing winds. Two weeks pass by, without notice. Later, in the shadows of the night, a small, nearly identical buzzing ball bobs in from the slightly warmer forest, swaying to and fro, mesmerized into the cold by the enticing scent.
The second creature creeps silently through the snow-covered field and peeks at the curiously tasty-smelling object sitting on the windowsill. When the first ball shows no response, the buzzing parasite hovers next to it, sniffing. At that exact moment, another small bubble of pink smoke drifts out, and into the open jaw of the insect like creature. The creature buzzes loudly and shudders at the hypnotizing scent. It opened its surprisingly massive jaws and clamps it over the black ball.
BZZZT!
The second’s beady eyes bug open in terror as electrical energy surging out from the first’s zap its muscles, freezing it into place. It struggles, but to no avail. After only a moment, its wings stop shuddering, and relax.
The second sits motionless for another hour, before its eyes snap open once more, glowing with ethereal blue. Its jaws slacken, and buzzes backwards. It sends its gaze downwards, into the open, equally blue eyes of the first black ball. The black ball shudders, and raises its tattered wings, kicking away swirls of snowflakes as they begin buzzing.
The pair fly off towards the forest, their eyes naked with hunger. As the pair entered the protected canopy, the meager warmth within its shade was enough to melt the frozen grit and blood that had clung onto the first’s shattered shell. The two then split up, the second quickly darting backwards towards a hidden tree that pulses strangely in its memory. Upon reaching the tree, it finds a tiny, green egg. Its own fractured memory was not enough to recognize the tiny egg it had left behind merely a day previous before being captured and drained by patient zero.
Its new instincts, however, was enough to tell it that this was what should be renamed as “food.” And so it did, slamming its fangs into the egg, draining it until turned grey and lifeless. But the parasite was still hungry, and darted off into the forest to feed its neverending hunger, leaving the drained egg behind
Despite the egg’s corpse-like state, its growth accelerated, soon ripping its desiccated shell open to reveal a pockmarked, ball shaped parasite, similar in decay to the first carriers of the plague. It too, was hungry.
Within a few days, the wobbling, buzzing horde spread across the forest and killed with the callousness of carbon monoxide.
After merely a year, the eradication was complete. Without food, the zombies were unable to go on, and fell to the forest floor, struggling silently as the forest reclaimed their bodies. With the threat eliminated before it could even begin, unification was delayed by twenty years.
What few civilizations that remained huddled quietly together to prepare for decades of freezing snow, with no end in sight.