//------------------------------//
// The Carver-Man 
// Story: Equestrian Nightmares 
// by leeroy_gIBZ 
//------------------------------//

Three arrows, jagged and knife-carved, cut into the skull of anything unlucky enough to cross his path. That was his symbol. It was becoming far too frequent about the Crystal Empire for anybody’s liking. Bronze Cog’s party was sent out into the heath – those misty barren moors of thorny salt that clustered around the city state like wild dogs at a kill – with orders not to return until they had found the killer, the one the townsfolk dubbed, hateful and wary, the Carver-Man. 

So, there journeyed six guardsponies – terrified conscripts from the slums – through the clawing rock and twisted shrubland. They trotted in a line, straight and single-file. Cog found himself at the back because he had drawn the short straw; he was the last one in their troop. So too, was talking forbidden. Any voice breaking the chill silence could set their quarry off; Cog prayed that the icy crunch of his boots had done that already. The night was beginning to rise, and the oil in their lanterns – more than his family’s weekly ration – seemed suddenly so little, and its flames so gray against the muddy dirt. He adjusted his clumsy grip on his spear, and he hoped desperately that dull edge of iron the quartermaster had given him would suffice. He hoped that he wouldn’t need it at all. 

It was a cloudy night so far from home’s great walls, and those grey clouds strangled the starlight like tobacco smoke in a man’s lung. The lanterns jangled in the young stallion’s shivering grasps, to the tune of their frozen march and clattering teeth. Hours past, each one in aching suspense of plodding about frosted death, praying to all who would listen that the Carver-Man’s wicked blade would pass them by.

Then, Cog realized something. Judging by a flash of Luna’s white amidst the charcoal heavens, the moon was only halfway high. And worse yet, his lantern’s fuel was now far more than halfway gone. He levitated his spear from its rest atop his worn woolen coat and checked that it was still sharp. It wasn’t, but he wasn’t so sure anymore that mere iron, dagger-keen or otherwise, could down something with teeth for fingernails and a knife for a tongue. Two hours later, two hours that followed much like the linemen did – paranoid and gloomy – the fuel all but ran out. Nobody dared protest, and nobody else would notice that a lighter evening meant a blacker mourning. 

By starlight and tailheld trust alone, Cog and his comrades continued their white knuckled, red faced, black hoped trek around the Empire’s walls. Then, something slipped. It was a tail, and the rump that was attached to it had gone missing. Jack stood there, shivering, holding the last soaking remnant of his friend – at least, until the sun staggered up again, and his mutilated remains would be found. He screamed, and nobody heard him. 

Eventually, he stopped screaming once no hooves ran his way and no voices called his name. Collapsing to the ground, pressing himself flat as possible against the towering crystal walls, he waited. Hours passed, at least, he hoped they did. There he lay, teeth chattering with fright and spear brandished, air fogging in the one foot he could see. There, against uncaring frost, and despite every urge he knew telling him to flee desperate into the cold black heath beyond, he waited.

Lightning twisted far in the distance, silent skeletal wrath. It briefly lit up Cog’s world, and all he could see was the blood soaking into tundra beside him – black-red under the white horror of the dry storm, it shocked him to his core. Again, he screamed; again, he received no response. 

Seconds fled, each a jaw-slamming heartbeat, as the fiery light of the heavens bit the earth again, setting aflame a distant tree. The thing conflagrated in a furious orange hatred, illuminated the carnage that proper surrounded the conscript. His friends, all of them, lay dead. Their blood pooled, and steamed, and froze into the rock. One missed a tail. Another, his left side. All, though, possessed the Carver-Man’s mark – three arrows, hacked right into the skin of their pain-froze skulls for all who still lived to see. 

Cog didn’t stop screaming until the winter took his voice away, leaving him reduced to harsh rasps and wracking whispers. 

He didn’t stop crying until the night took his tears away and left him reduced to tear-frozen lines and quietened sobs. 

He didn’t stop living, until empty midnight shadows bled away from the rest. The Carver-Man approached with carving knife in hand, and left him reduced to lightning-struck ash and hazy memory.