Angry Vizard · 6:07pm May 2nd, 2017
Dim wasn’t walking so much as he was floating—or maybe he was walking and he just couldn’t tell. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his hooves as he approached the large group of bandits that had landed in the town square. Motes of darkness swirled around him; it was impossible to determine if they were real or a hallucination. This town was built upon a foundation of chalk and the magic here was strong… strong and easy to reach. It required no effort on Dim’s part to begin siphoning it to fuel his magic.
There were pegasus ponies still overhead, circling over the town, and earth ponies cowered in their doorways. Dim could smell the fear around him and mothers stood protective over their foals. None moved to resist the bandits, and that was understood. Peasants were supposed to work, to farm, to do manual labour… as for himself… he existed to destroy bandits. Just like the wizards did in his foalhood storybooks. These bandits were aggressive, fearless, they had forgotten the old ways, the old order, when the peasantry had their guardian wizard.
Dim was coming to remind them, to give an object lesson on why one should not mess with a wizard’s peasant charges. Dim could only recall one single, solitary law of Equestrian Feudalism and the Covenant of the Three Tribes: To harass a wizard’s charges was to invite disaster. There were other laws, quite a number, but Dim’s memory of those were murky, muddied, and didn’t seem important at the moment.
Some inconsiderate, oafish, boorish noble had left these poor peasant’s wizardless. In the back of Dim’s mind, he was already thinking of all manner of terrible punishments, should he find the cretinous ignoramus responsible for this vulgar ineptitude. Dim trembled as the coca-laced salts did a number on his body and his rage brought everything into perfect focus.
A wizard did not just punish, but made examples. Bandits were not just killed, no, that was a wizard being lax in his duties. No, examples had to be made, to discourage future bandits. The peasantry was owed a measure of safety for all of their labour. While Dim approached the gathered bandits, his scowl intensified.
“You there, stop!” one of the armored pegasus ponies commanded.
In response, Dim cast a spell into their midst. One single, terrible spell, and he did it in the hopes that from this moment forwards, all bandits would rethink their wicked ways. With a furious snarl, Dim made an example out of the gathered crowd, and he did so by targeting their armor, their symbols and vestments of false-authority, their illusion of martial might projected upon the peasantry.
The spell took hold, a transmutation spell that was far more suited for use in a foundry or a smithy. It sank into the metal like liquid into a sponge, and then, obeying Dim’s will, the metal transmogrified into a liquid state. The pegasus ponies wearing the armor hardly even had time to scream, plead for mercy, or even screech. The liquified steel cooked them, liquefying their remains as well, and about two dozen bandits became a puddle of liquified steel simmering in the town’s center.
“Sterben, alle von euch, sterben!” Dim’s voice, magically amplified, echoed through the town, bouncing from wall to wall, stone to stone, travelling up every street and alleyway. “I am Dim Dark of House Dark, distant son of the War Maiden, and you bandits… you disgusting primitives… you have brought this reckoning down upon your own heads!”
A dreadful smell wafted up from the puddle of bubbling steel in the center of town.
There's a reason that Equestria rose to prominence and knew peace.
Buffalo wings?
4517423
Decadent amounts of baking sugar.