The mossbegrown gravel crunches under my tired hooves in a steady rhythm, only interrupted by the loud twang of metal when one of my worn horseshoes hits the rails. Unfortunately, it is not a heavy burden of laden saddlebags that makes my limbs weary; rather quite the opposite – save for a few things of little use, my possessions are scant and my supplies long gone.
Though running on fumes and dragging my emaciated body across the desolated railroad in an utmost despondent way, I keep my senses as sharp as they can be. My ears swivel, listening to the sombre warble of the withered forest pressing on me from the sides. The pupils of my bloodshot eyes are wide and scanning the preternatural crepuscule for any signs of uncast shadows.
To my left, above a dry and dead thicket, I spot dark forms circling in the leaden sky, their angry cawing cutting above the piping of whippoorwills. No matter how intently I peer into the rotting weald, it refuses to reveal to me the secret of the scavenger’ desire. But if the murder is still in the sky, impatiently waiting, then there is something preventing its descent.
With my gaze transfixed on the unyielding wall of leprous twisted trunks, I step across the rusty tracks on an almost nonexistent elevation, putting their flaking rust between me and the contested carrion.
My muzzle turns in the opposite direction and is met with the same scenery, grim and undescriptive. Trying to filter out the sonorous caws, I focus on the unceasing canto of the whippoorwills, searching for irregularities in their mournful song.
My vision starts to spin and I realize that I am out of breath – I have been holding it for the last half a minute. Though my flicking ears seek false notes in the eerie chorus, I pray to not hear any. For I remember what it looked like – a nest woven of wooden rot and twilight, full of a dozen desiccated bird corpses, all with beaks open too wide and gaping with the blackest void at me, silent as the grave. But the broken jagged piping kept coming and coming.
The debilitating memory makes me stop, squeeze shut my eyes and press my ears to my skull. The moment doesn’t last long – I can’t afford it, not in the middle of nowhere. Yet I hesitate to press onward, further into the decaying hollowness of Equestrian wilderness.
With the world frozen in this broken state of things, I fail to say how long I’ve been trotting across what’s left of it. The only question that matters is how much longer I can keep at it; if there were days left, then I have spent too many of them without food.
My weak, cracked hooves reach for a battered flask hanging from my neck and I take the tiniest of swigs; it’s more symbolic than quenching. In that brisk motion, my eyes catch an irregularity in the humdrumness of the dead world.
Very far in the distance, something blocks the tracks, a blot of washed-out darkness amidst the dull grey of the empty firmament. I would bet my squalid belongings on it being just a train, but the cloud of insomnia makes it hard to be sure of anything.
My heavy eyelids feel like sandpaper as my eyes rotate under them, shifting to the charcoal shadows skirting under the pregnant skies and I pray for nopony to see my gaunt snout scowling in avaricious envy for their prey.
The last remaining scraps of my decency manage to outperform the growling of my empty stomach, to unlatch pangs of hunger stripping me of my equinity. Or, mayhaps, it is just the fear to meet the thing that deters obsidian beaks from pecking at bared bones. For those crows must be no less hungry than me and they never had any respect for the dead.
With only the bulbous pale clouds lazily traversing the dark skies, time seems to have stopped, making my trudging along the brown-red lines of steel feel like an eternity. At least the landscape began to change, elsewise it would appear as if I wasn’t moving.
My travel across the ravaged country must have taken a while if the quarries of Rumbling Rock Ridge had begun to meet my sore eyes. Though saying that mounds of unearthed strata livened up the view would be a great exaggeration. Nor does the fact that I am no longer far away from the Divide bring any joy to my heart.
At least my guess happened to be true – mere steps away from me the bulk of an incapacitated train patiently waits for my approach. However, I can already see that it has very little to offer, being laden with the same rocks that surround me. Still, it’s worth checking if it has any other cargo, edible and not too expired. A fat chance, of course, but my rumbling stomach refuses to write it off.
My jaws clamp around a fumed oak and I yank the broken spear from under the straps of my saddleback, my gaze falling on the elegant smithery of its tarnished tip. Though I‘ve had that weapon amongst my scanty possessions for plenty a moon, I never was its rightful owner. I recall stumbling upon it at one of the deserted stations, inside which I discovered a noose soaked in black tar and an old dark trail across the floor.
Carried as a weapon, it only ended up serving me as a tool in my scavenging endeavours, for the sick are almost gone and there is no known weapon that can harm a shadow. It never stopped me from stubbornly clenching my teeth around it each time I was about to face the unknown, however. Mayhaps, that little solace in the hollow promise of protection is the only thing that prevents my mind from fully embracing insanity.
Flakes of chipped paint scatter from under my clumsy hooves, following my awkward and slow ascent to the top of the last car.
The sight of broken limestone reflects on my face with utter disappointment; the expression deepening as my gaze slides further, meeting the same contents in every other car of the long train. Yet, a spark of hope intermixed with dread ignites inside my aching chest.
I see a building previously hidden from view by the train’s rusted corpse.
Despite my overwhelming desire, I do not hurry to get off the car to rummage through the abandoned service station. Instead, the spear becomes nested between mossy stones and soon, with a soft clutter, my saddlebags land near it. Rubbing my skin where the belts chafe, I stare at the map in an attempt to assess my location. The bitter irony of the situation strikes me – I have been repairing trains for my entire life, but I manage to get lost following a single pair of tracks.
The mess of marks, none made in ink, refuses to answer my sleep-deprived stare and tell me if I’ve already been to that station or if it’s infested. Without thinking I reach for the flask with one hoof and try to unscrew the lid with my teeth. Luckily, I didn’t succeed, as it falls from my grasp.
A low and loud moan violates my hearing, deep enough to shake the very ground.
The map and flask are instantly forgotten, replaced by the spear in my jaws. My panicked gaze finds no aim, however, as I circle in place, sending little stones flying with my chaotic steps.
Finally, I realize that the only sounds I can hear are my ragged breaths and erratic heartbeats. They appear so loud, I fear even the dead in Fillydelphia can hear them. With the whippoorwills’ rueful incantations ceasing to disturb the chilly air, I am submerged in sudden, unnerving silence. It is so absolute that sunlight and moonlight appear to be wheezed from behind the leaden curtains concealing the firmament and I can imagine the rustle of crinkled untamed clouds as they roll onto each other.
The rotting woods are rigid; blighted and bleached twiggy tops of naked trees stretch upwards, twisted from the agony of starvation, almost imperceptibly twitching in convulsions whenever the mercilessly cold breeze plays with them. The same cruel winds frolic under the skeletal crowns, turning wilting grass into writhing maggots wherever their macabre dance brings humid gusts full of bog’s breath.
The deep shadows between the bony caudices seem to shift as my eyes begin to water with tears, so long I’ve been staring into them.
There is nothing, only mute darkness gazing at me from the wilted weald.
The only explanation coming to my mind as a source of the mysterious sound being rock subsidence; or perhaps it was the final wail of the train as it succumbed to the elements. Of course, the timing couldn’t be worse; it keeps conjuring the most asinine reasons from the exhaustion-induced fog of my thoughts, but I dismiss them instantly. There is no advisor worse than fear. Although the value of hunger’s suggestions differs little, I can’t help but fall for my weakening body’s desperate calls to move, to explore the desolate structure.
When the celestial bodies froze, hanging low in the horizon, I was at a place very much like this – a stop in the middle of nowhere, not intended to be passed by passenger trains. Unlike my colleagues, I was quick to realize the futility of returning home – it was gone to never be found again.
They left into the perpetual sunset, heading to Fillydelphia despite its complete radio silence. After a short hesitation, I looted my former working place, starting with taking two items of utmost value: a map of the railroads and a master key.
With that key dangling from my mouth, I approach the skewed wooden door. Each of my steps takes more time than one preceding it as the sensation of deep discomfort settles in. There is something eerie about this place, though nothing yet was to serve as strong enough evidence to back my suspicions. Still, for a reason I can’t explain, I keep as quiet as possible.
The whippoorwills returned to driving me mad with their incessant piping with even more vigour than they had before. Yet, the closer I come to the dilapidated concrete structure, the less deafening their cacophony becomes, making me wonder if it is the remaining spirit of civilization that repels their defiance of the land succumbing to its sordid fate.
The passing of time had little mercy on the abandoned station, the swampy soil marching up its walls, chipping off the plaster and burrowing into the crumbling stone with its mossy fingers. The bog’s onslaught coming from below, combined with overly humid air and a few feral rains, have eaten away any sharp corners and made the roof cave in, giving the entire building a saggy look, as if it is about to implode in vain attempt to escape nature's soft and deathly embrace.
It is strange, however, – not that many years must have passed since the last time a pony hoof graced this place, the train behind me serving as proof. But the stains marring the cracking facades are what bothers me the most; there is no reason for them to be so dark unless I give the constant dusk too little credit.
Another peculiarity catches my attention; in fact, it was the first thing I noticed. The rare windows on the decaying walls do not yawn at me with dirty and broken glass panes but are instead barred with rotten wood weeping blood where the rusty nails force them to the frames. The meaning of that is quite transparent – the station either kept its inhabitants for a while after the horrid events or housed new tenants sometime after. However, it answers not why it is silent as a tomb now.
The spasmodic shadows of towering dead trees completely engulf me when I finally reach the door. There is no need for the master key – the lock has rotten away. The sheet of mouldering wood falls at my touch, almost without a sound, crumbling into foul-smelling slivers on the dusty floor of the dark room opening before me. Stale air rushes to meet my face, trying to make me break the silence with my cough; I muffle it by shoving my muzzle into my ragged saddlebags in search of a tiny oil lamp.
The room is just an ordinary workshop with its walls hidden behind the racks bursting with instruments, oil cans and spare parts. A pang of nostalgia pricks my heart – it’s little different from the one where I used to work, starkly reminding of the days when I wasn’t afraid of the dark. Speaking of which, grabbing the oil from the shelves I refill my lamp. A few strikes of flint against the nearest wrench and I have a source of light, which seconds later is fashioned to hang from the tip of the spear.
Quickly, though still cautiously, I make it across the dirty floor to the door opposite the entrance. It takes me into a short hall with a few more doors. The closest pair of them are instantly dismissed as there is nothing of value to be found in the restrooms unless I want to chew on some soap.
The weak light of my lantern catches a polished handle and I silently creep towards it, wincing when it answers to my push with a long and mournful cry of rusty hinges.
I find myself in a spacious room and with no need for a source of light to explore. The caving of the roof also took the top storey with it, resulting in a wide jagged hole instead of the ceiling, filtering down the pale light upon a mound of debris overgrown with sickly vegetation. The ruins of the upper floors are surrounded by desks with soggy and yellow paperwork mounting on them in formless piles. One of the desks sports a massive radio set, a bigger version of my map hanging above it, all showing irreparable damage caused by the moisture, so abundant that it is gathered in small black pools on the uneven floor.
Weirdly, the foul drafts coming from the outside carry no sound at all, the only things I can hear is the water dripping in the dark corners and the sporadic soft creaking of the premises as they slowly cede to the elements. I flick my ears a few times as some strange scraping sounds come from the depths of the building, but they are gone the moment I strain my hearing. At the very worst, they must be rodents, the last squatters that station will know.
For an average looter, the dispatch control may appear to be devoid of anything deserving attention. But from my sheer experience of spending hours hanging out in such offices, I know the variety of things the clerks have a habit of stashing inside their desks.
The first working place has nothing to write home about. After a few tentative tries, the drawer gave up and revealed to me a couple of books, a notepad with faded ink… but no food or beverages. the small box of band-aids would prove useful, were it not overtaken with mould.
It is the next desk which makes my chapped lips form into a smile – a tin full of stuck together sweets waits for me there. Although it has little to offer in terms of sustenance, it is a source of sugar nonetheless, and tasty at that. Before moving to the next desk, I snap off a piece of apple caramel and put it in my mouth.
It crunches between my clenched teeth as my eyes fall on a pile of bones hidden behind the third desk.
As I stare at them, I notice a peculiar and disturbing lack of their numbers, despite the skeleton appearing to be carefully laid out on the floor in an almost perverted display of pony anatomy. The upper part of the skull along with its front hooves is definitely amiss, from that I can tell. The almost shining whiteness of those remains, signifying that they were meticulously clean is just as alarming.
“Caw!”
A sudden crow’s call cutting the tension with an almost deafening volume nearly makes me jump out of my skin when it yanks me out of my examination of the unlucky pony laid out at my hooves.
Somehow the obsidian carrion eater snuck in through the torn roof and now sits at its carcass, mockingly observing me; the charcoal head with beady eyes twitching as it sharply rotates to get a better view of me.
My frowning muzzle returns to the morbid sight of pony remains and though it is hard to see in the dim light, I can easily imagine marks left by sharp beaks on the bleached bones. In my anger I snap at the winged rat:
“Shoo!” I cry. “Fly away, you wretched thing! Leave that poor soul alone!”
However, the accursed crow refuses to react to my outburst, save for the incessant swivelling of its curious brainless head. I purse my lips in frustration – I know it is taunting me to try and catch it, but I won’t oblige the vermin.
As capriciously as it announced itself, the scavenger flies away in a flurry of flapping wings and loose black feathers. I let out a sigh of relief at the departure of the unnerving creature and once again direct my attention to the less mysterious remains, contemplating if I should bury them, while still wondering why the skeleton was missing its skull of all the bones.
With my thoughts resembling a pot of slumgullion, it is hard to come to any definitive conclusion. Suddenly, from the depths of that incomprehensible gruel, a grim and horrifying revelation arises like the bloated corpse of a plague rat, making my blood freeze in my veins.
When I was observing the withered wield from the top of the train, I didn’t see the crows in the sky, nor have I heard them since then, despite how loud they were. My mind is running a mile a minute, trying to connect the dots and failing; not out of inability, but the sheer dread of the truth.
There is that strange scraping sound again, louder this time, and now I can hear a horrid voice from somewhere behind me:
"Who's out there? Show yourself."
I instantly recognize that voice for what it is and all thoughts leave my mind, it becomes blank and my body acts out of mere instinct, rushing to the debris in the middle of the room.
Upon reaching it, I whip my head up and momentarily stumble back as I am met with dozens of malicious hungry eyes of the countless crows perched upon the ruins of the falling apart station. When I return to that shaft of constantly dying light of neither dusk nor dawn, a chorus of jeering caws greets me as the murder rises in the air in exuberance. Trying to ignore it as best as I can, I look for any purchase for my hooves and thankfully find ruins inclined and sturdy enough to aid me in my ascent.
The scraping noise grows louder still, gaining a very disturbing quality of familiarity, though I am hearing it for the first time. I make out words cutting above the clamour of crows, "I'm coming to help.”
Hollow and unnatural, they come not from a throat. I know it, I can hear it, but I refuse to imagine.
“Where are you?” A panicked question answers, its tone shrill.
Clutching shards of twisted metal, letting them eagerly cut into my skin, I crawl to the second storey, broken concrete painfully tearing at my belly.
“I can't see you,” the darkness below croaks, the voice, though still wrong, different now, as it’s another pony speaking, but I know that none does.
All I can see is a nest woven of wooden rot and twilight, full of a dozen desiccated bird corpses, all with beaks open too wide and gaping with the blackest void at me, silent as the grave.
But the broken jagged words keep coming and coming:
“I hear crows!"
At last, I drag my body across the precipice and allow myself to lie there for a few seconds, clutching with my bleeding limbs my just as viciously violated underside. With an almost inaudible hiss, I hobble into the insidiously welcoming shadows of a dark hall.
With my lantern left behind in wild panic, I have to rely only on my eyes. It takes a few moments for them to get used to the darkness, which to my immense relief is not as absolute as it appeared at first. Though barely, I can see the outlines of doorways, yawning with the palest of lights filtered through the wooden barricades on the windows.
A wail, horrible and bloodcurdling, echoes through the emptiness:
"Don't leave me!"
As if struck, I rush forward without a goal. Yet, after a few steps, a moment of clarity graces my brain: if there are a few floors, there must be stairs somewhere. If I am fortunate, which appears not to be the case, I will find them at the end of that corridor, where the shadows are the thickest.
The pale light behind me lights up motes of dust I disturb in my blind wading through the debris littering the menacingly creaking floor. My adrenaline-fueled mind latches on them, following their twinkling like a guiding light. Then, one by one they go out and I make a horrible mistake – I turn to look back.
That horrendous sight becomes burned in my brain like a brand, replacing the searing memory of the abominable nest and revealing to me secrets that I wish would remain hidden.
Surrounded by the disfigured silhouettes of mutilated pony heads, a mouth missing its lower jaw, letting a desiccated blackened tongue hang out and drip ebony tar gapes at me; though it can’t produce any sound, a deafening screech full of desperation and unbearable horror rips my sanity with its false, artificial syllables:
"Save me!"
With those words, the hall falls dark and all I can hear is the sound I recognize now – hooves lifelessly dragging on the floor, no less than a dozen of them. All I can see is the two voids in the skull, where eyes should be, dark tears rolling from them.
Like a madpony, I scream to deafen any other sounds, and I dash forward, ignoring the bricks making my hooves crack, splitting my fetlocks open. I fall, rusty nails and shards of glass digging into my coat. I ignore the warm wetness trickling down my thighs, I pay no regard to the pain, as long as I am getting away from the skins stretched on the stained skulls, resembling faces of endless forsakenness and abhorrence.
My hooves catch another obstacle, but my body doesn’t hit the floor. With my ragged breaths catching in my throat, I feel weightlessness claim me for the blink of an eye and then my body begins to tumble down the steps, hitting them painfully. Even being mercilessly beaten by stone and gravity, I still can hear the words, as if they are drilled into my mind:
"Please, no!"
I can’t help but wail in answer, for despite how artificial it sounds, the distorted impersonation still carries the despair in those last words of the skull’s former owner, the pain and terror of somepony who looked into the abyss of oblivion mere moments before it claims them.
Finally, I land on the floor in a tangle of limbs, though aching terribly, still structurally intact. Wasting not a single moment, slipping on my blood I bolt into the darkness ahead, followed by spine-chilling piercing screams:
“No! Nooooooo!”
Past the opened door to the dispatch control I ran, past the entrance into the mechanic's workshop, towards the slivers of brilliant silver light forming an eclipse-like halo around the door leading out of that accursed station. Not bothering to open it, I slam into the wood with all my weight, but only bounce back with a wet thud as it refuses to budge, rattling mockingly.
In a panic I clamp my jaws around the handle, twisting, pulling and tugging it until I hear my teeth crack. With a feral howl, I ram the door with my shoulder again, yelling from the pain as a nail stabs my side – it is barricaded, like the rest of the station.
The advent of darkness following my flight and trail of blood is heralded by another forlorn plea:
“Open the door!”
Even though the hall is no less a refuge for shadows than most of the haunted station, I still squeeze shut my eyes so I won’t witness it once more and pray that thing isn’t fast enough to reach the doorway to the mechanic's workshop before I do. With my hoof painting the dusty and damp wall crimson, I hobble on three legs as fast as I can until I hit a handle. Pulling on it so hard, I fear that I may tear it from the door, I swing open the door and fall in, shutting it behind me with a slam.
I open my eyes… and scream.
The wail goes on until my lungs are empty and my throat is raw, for I see not the shelves neatly packed with tools and spare parts, but a small cramped dinery barely lit by a stray ray sneaking through a gap between wooden planks. It is them at whom I direct my desperation and fury of missing one more door between me and my escape. They tantalizingly creak from my fervent strikes and mad bucking, promising to give up with the next hit, but each of my movements is weaker and weaker; with the ebb of adrenaline, exhaustion and pain demand attention.
Behind the door I can hear the scraping of hooves, it grows louder and then suddenly ceases. A moment later something hits the door, but it stands for now.
“Let me out!” the thing calls from beyond it, repeating the terrified words without understanding their meaning.
The door bulges and starts to creak as something massive presses into it from the other side. A screw shoots out from the hinges, landing somewhere in the darkness, promising that I don’t have long to wait for my demise.
Slumping on the floor and curling into a ball I begin to cry. With my tear-filled eyes I spy a crate under a table, canned vegetables rest in it, the filly on the labels beaming widely as if laughing at my peril. As I turn away, something digs into my side, pressing my ravaged thin skin to my ribs. Wishing to have at least some comfort before meeting my grim fate I try to remove the offending object from under my chest, only to realize that my hoof is touching a ring attached to a metal rectangle.
My body shoots up like a sprung trap and my gaze rests on a cellar door almost indistinguishable from the floor in the dim lighting. Without much thinking, I yank at the ring and fall on my back as the door opens on the first try.
The entrance into the earthen depths yawns at me with the almost suffocating fetor of mould and overwhelming cold dampness, making it difficult to breathe. The horrid smell of rot almost makes me retch, I barely notice that it's not as dark as expected; the slick stairs of the underground passage reflect some eerie glow from further into it.
The door behind me continues to give up under the immense pressure relentlessly applied to it and before I can make up my mind, the sound of wood splintering reaches my torn ears, forcing me to take the plunge into the abyss.
Like deformed claws, dried roots emerge from the black to greet me and scrape at my coat as I pass them. The tips of my ears touch the low ceiling, making thick moisture rain on my back. Mud slushes under my hooves, clinging to them, refusing to let go. My coat is smeared with a foul-smelling dirt, making my injuries burn agonizingly. The glow I saw before appears to come from strange swelled fluorescent mushrooms pockmarking the crudely chiselled walls.
No sounds permeate my hearing, not even the scraping of rotting torn hooves or the last words of the pony to which they were once attached. Yet I am careful with celebration as the trap door remains open and the thing could decide to investigate a fresh passage opened on its hunting grounds.
Due to the narrow walls and sucking mud, which I take care to traverse as silently as my failing limbs allow, the passage seems to stretch on indefinitely. At some point, it becomes so cramped that I am not sure if my body, emaciated as it is, can squeeze through.
Eventually, I come to an opening if it can be called so – compared to the tunnel leading to it, the burrow is spacious, but elsewise it is smaller than a room. Suppressing a heavy sigh I note that it is also a dead-end – the hope of the opposite was bleak, anyway.
Most of the tiny underground lair is taken up by a moonshine still from the looks of it, crates with rotten ingredients neighbouring the illegal apparatus. Slumped against it is a skeleton, brown bones reeking of decay on a bed of broken glass, curled around a bottle, intact but empty. It belonged to a pegasus, judging by the wings’ bones; all of them in place, not only the wings, I note with grim satisfaction. Momentarily I wonder who it was. Did they know the pony whose dying words are now mocked by a shambling horror, the darkness that came from nowhere and made Equestria into the worst nightmare possible.
As if hearing my thoughts, it answers from the other end of the tunnel with the sound of countless hooves attached to withered masses of flesh scraping against the stone like the claws of a scurrying roach.
"I'm so scared..." the coiling black skein, neither fog nor liquid repeats like a voice record in the distance. Though its quality is low and the copy was flawed from the beginning, with some syllables twisted and others replaced by mechanical sounds.
Somehow I am calm, even though I am about to experience something worse than death, for all I know. Mayhaps that abominable mimic already won; if I survive I will never be the same, I can’t forget the pony skin and torn flesh made into a doll from bones, sticks and debris, hanging from living rolling darkness, leaking obsidian tar from every orifice. Something inside me is broken beyond repair.
I glance at the skeleton again and I become acutely aware of the scattered glass shards digging into my frogs.
My sombre gaze slides up and stops at a couple of bottles full of murky moonshine – I never was a heavy drinker, nor had I tasted anything stronger than the Apples’ cider. I take one out and open it, nearly gagging at the stench of poorly rectified grog. Steeling myself I take a shallow sip and force myself to swallow it. The moonshine burns my sore throat and my stomach violently protests, but I pay no heed to both. I take another swig at the bottle, more wholehearted this time, then smash it into the wall, letting the alcohol-reeking shards explode all over me.
There is a moment of hesitation before I jab the sharp fragment into my neck – it can’t go any other way. Tears roll down my cheek – there is no shame in that; nopony has to meet death with dry eyes. My yelp bounces back from the walls of the tiny cellar, followed by a hiss as the improvised blade leaves behind a profusely bleeding gash, adding to those I already have and vastly overshadowing them in its lethality.
Swaying on my hooves, I open another bottle, though taking time to savour its contents – they are horrible, but for some reason, I can’t help but welcome the burning sensation, for it replaces the grave cold I begin to feel.
Not being able to stand upright anymore, I slump against a wall, almost slipping on my blood. From the tunnel the sounds of mud squelching keep coming, slow and deliberate, produced by hooves welded with iron rods in a sick imitation of pony limbs, moving a lifeless parody by a malevolent shadow. By the darkness that is painful to look at, as it is not an absence of light, but things so horrid that reality refuses to show them – the mind knows, however; it sees the unspeakable truths through this tear in the very world itself and falls apart under the weight of those revelations.
The room grows darker and darker with my every heartbeat, but I am alright with it. Another darkness, the merciless one, is going to claim me first. As ponies say, my life begins to flash before my eyes and I realize how shallow it was, especially the last few years, since the tragedy took place. How pathetic and cowardly I acted, hogging food to myself, avoiding anypony even though more than once I passed settlement arisen amidst all the bleakness, stubbornly clinging to life.
The darkness isn't going to end me, but it will still have a warm corpse at its disposal, a new form to mindlessly mimic in its perverted inequine way. I kept defiantly silent, refusing it the pleasure of stealing any of my last words for its mockery, but ultimately doing the same thing I was doing all my life.
They say it is never too late to change.
I close my eyes so I can’t see the darkness and begin to chant:
“Run away! Run away! Run away. Run…”