The Winter

by DannyJ

Chapter 3: Where We Find Strength

It is not until two weeks after I was nearly devoured that I dare to leave the safety of my cabin again. The ordeal left me weakened, and I had to spend some time recovering. I remained in my cabin for that time, eating and drinking the bare minimum to conserve supplies, getting plenty of bedrest, and spending my every waking moment doing the appropriate mental exercises to restore my magic.

Most ponies don't have to do what I do to keep going. For most ponies, there is never any risk of running out of magic. We are a social species. We keep together in our towns and cities, or in old times, in our herds, and we let our friendship and love for one another feed our magic. Emotion is magic. Or at least, it is potential magic. Friendship and love willingly shared is great magic indeed.

I have no friends. I have no love. I live alone out in this desolate place. So when I tax myself too heavily and my magic begins to run dry, as it often does, only my own emotions can prevent me from burning myself out. I must force myself to feel every extreme, and then I must internalise it all, else it might escape into the environment where it is no use to me. It's a trick that I picked up from a book which once belonged to my wife. It has saved me more times than I can count.

It is as I leave my study after one such session of magic-building that I throw on my coat and prepare to go out into the forest once again. I am not fully recovered, but I can walk on my leg again, and I am not at any risk of burning out my magic now. I foresee no need to perform any more blood magic in the near future. The wards I created in a hurry two weeks ago are still holding, and I don't usually need the extra wards in any case. Normally, the ones on my curtains do the bulk of the work.

I sigh as I push the front door open and step outside. I can only imagine how much easier my current life would be if I had only been born a unicorn. Unicorns don't have to perform elaborate rituals with material components to do magic. Not for simple spells, anyway. If I were a unicorn, everything would be easy.

Or at least, if I were a unicorn, these Celestia-forsaken beasts probably wouldn't think of me as such an easy target.

---

I return to the cabin later in the day with far more firewood than I usually bother to collect, and I stack it high in a pile around the side. Like I said before, firewood is the only thing I have worth trading. I can't grow anything out here, and town ponies aren't interested in meat or hides. I know that griffons trade in such things, but I've never seen a griffon in Barnsley. Come to that, I haven't seen a griffon anywhere since... I can't even remember. Certainly, I was a very young stallion back then, whenever "then" was...

It'll take at least a week of non-stop work to get enough firewood to be worth trading, but I have no other options. My supplies are low, and I'd rather not move on to a carnivorous diet. Meat is edible, but it is foul, both in how it is obtained and in taste.

As I settle in for the night and lie in front of the fireplace, I hear a tapping on the window.

"Go away!" I scream. "Go away!"

There is silence.

I smoulder to myself a while, glaring at the window which the sound came through. Intense as it is, not even my gaze can pierce the curtains covering it, but nonetheless I try.

"Hmph."

As I turn away and back to the fire, the tapping comes again. I feel my eye twitch.

"You monsters just don't know when to quit, do you?"

I climb to my hooves and grab the fire poker in my mouth. Quiet as can be, I creep across the cabin and over to my front door. The window being tapped on is right next to the door. I don't know what it is about this particular night, of all nights, which makes me want to go outside and physically confront the creature. I haven't even contemplated such a thing in years. I do not have the fortitude to fight one of them, nor the proper equipment, but for some reason, tonight, my blood is boiling. That this is an act of foolishness and that I will probably die somehow does not even enter my mind.

However, as I lay my hoof on the door and get ready to leap outside, a thought strikes me.

How are they by my window in the first place?

This one, singular thought is what stops me from throwing my life away. It forces me to stop and think. If something is at my window, then two possibilities lie before me: either the barriers have finally failed after two weeks of protection and relatively peaceful nights, which would be unusual, as they should have lasted a lot longer than that, or this creature tapping on my window right now is not one of the usual suspects, and thus was not repelled by the barriers. The former is more likely, but if it is the latter, then I could be about to rush into a fight with a new, unknown horror that I cannot possibly be prepared for.

I back away from the door.

It is frustrating, but since I have no way of checking the barrier's integrity without opening the curtains and looking outside, exposing myself to attack, I have no choice but to slink back over to the fireplace and to attempt to ignore the tapping.

I curl up into a ball in front of the fire and stare into the flames. Before the tapping began, I was preparing to reread one of my books. Now my heart is no longer in it.

The tapping on the window resumes.

---

Investigations this morning revealed that the barriers had, indeed, failed not long after I got inside the previous night. As I chop down my eleventh tree of the day, I contemplate what could've caused their early failure. Blood magic is powerful. There is a reason that putting up the barrier nearly killed me; I quite literally poured most of my soul into those spells. They burned me up from inside out because I used almost all of my power on them. Such a ward should have lasted a month more, at least.

For those creatures to have broken through the barriers after a mere two weeks, they must have been laying siege to them constantly throughout the nights. The thought that most frightens me is the idea that they have always been able to muster that much strength. If they could bring to bear enough force to shatter the barrier in two weeks, then surely they must be able to break through the wards on my curtains as well. In fact, they should be able to destroy my curtains faster than I am able to replace them.

I think back to the curtain in my bedroom, and how degraded it was when I had to replace it recently. I recall that I had, at the time, assumed that my own foolishness had allowed it to fall into such a state. But thinking back... was it truly me who was at fault there? Or had the creatures merely thrown more force at them that night?

Are...

I shake my head. It does not bear thinking about.

But I cannot stop the thought from crossing my mind.

...Are they getting stronger?

I miss a swing of my axe and lose balance. I have to lean on the tree. I take a deep breath.

No. They cannot be getting stronger. I'm not sure how they even could get stronger; I am their only food source out here, and they have not had any opportunity to feed from me.

Have they?

---

It's tempting to go back to how I was during my two weeks of recovery. I want nothing more than to barricade myself inside my home, set up as many wards as possible, and see if I can survive until the end of the winter on only the contents of my larder and my own body heat. However, I know that such an endeavour is doomed to failure unless I resort to self-cannibalism, and that is not a line I am willing to cross.

My third day out of the cabin is spent just as the last two were – gathering an excessive amount of firewood. I throw myself into the work today, determined to cut down the entire forest by myself. Already I have created a substantial clearing in the area I set aside for today's logging. This particular location is quite close to the edge of Skydark Forest. From this clearing, I can see out onto the Oldfield Moors.

When I am done cutting my logs for the day, I take a walk towards the forest's edge. Immediately the wind worsens as the wall of trees no longer protects me. My scarf billows behind me, but I push forward and out into the open. I did not lie when I said that I hate the moors for how windy they are, but as of late, the forest has felt even more oppressive than usual. I relish the brief escape.

Darkness is already setting on the land, and I cannot see far across the moors in the low light. Still, I survery the landscape as best I can. My eyesight is not what it was, but I try to pick out a few familiar items. I see the rock I once climbed upon to proclaim myself king of the hill. I see the small ditch where I once hid a tin of cigars to keep them from those who wanted me to quit. I see the pathway that I once walked as a young stallion on my way to see the cabin for the first time.

My gaze is drawn to the west, in the direction of Grimrise Hills. I feel eyes on me. Something's watching in the hills. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the weather, and I slowly walk backwards towards the treeline again, never taking my eyes off those hills. Whatever horror might lurk behind me now, I know that what's ahead is worse.

---

I dream of the moors that night. I dream that it is not winter any more, and that in the light of a springtime sun, I gallop across them and enjoy the freedom. I dream that I run as my earth pony ancestors did, in a wild herd that knows nothing of magic or tools. I gallop across the moors against the bracing wind, I meet the challenges of the day with the herd, and when the predators come, there is nothing that can save us. We fight, we die, we are eaten. And I awaken again reminded that ponies are a prey species, and that I am a decrepit old stallion who would be the first to be abandoned in a wild herd.

Sometimes I wonder why I cannot even let myself be happy in my dreams. Perhaps it is indicative of some deeper issue. Survivor's guilt, maybe? I do not feel like I hate myself. But then again, I'm not exactly proud of who I am, either.

I grumble and climb out of bed. Another day of chopping wood lies ahead of me. No use putting it off. I'll do what I did yesterday and work as hard and as long as I can today. Maybe if I keep doing that for long enough, I might not even need to spend the whole week chopping. I could take the seventh day off and have a rest, unless some new catastrophe strikes between now and then.

I throw back the curtains and look at the reverse side. My eyes widen, my blood goes cold, and my mouth hangs open at the sight of their condition.

They are getting stronger.

Comments

[DannyJ]

5615859

Thanks for catching that. Fixed now.

[Exemter]

Whoa.

The pacing in this story is almost spot-on. In the beginning you reveal just enough to keep interested without giving away anything important. And the vague little that is know about anything keeps the attention on the story well. This is really well written in all aspects, and it's a shame I didn't know about it until now. I really hope this gets updated sometime. You've got a thumb and a favorite from me.