It’s dark, so very dark. I walk through the dim corridors of a cold, unforgiving cave. My feelings for this darkness are conflicted. It is comforting. It brings security and protection. In the dark, I go unnoticed. Yet, it is a somber veil of loneliness. These damp and ancient tunnels have rarely seen another soul.
These walls and ground before me are as familiar to me as my own limbs. I recognize the musty scent of water dripping from the ceiling. It falls from above, but even what is above me I cannot clearly picture, for everything sits still in the pitch black. This is the way it has always been since I can remember.
I cannot use my eyes in the darkness, but I can hear, I can smell, and I can feel my way through it. They are my sight. The echoes of water drops. The walls that guide me when I’ve lost my path. The cool breeze of wind that waft through the hollow corridors... They are my everything. They are my friends, my home, and they protect me from the dark.
I fear the dark as much as I love it, in truth. It holds me close when Fate comes to reap, and yet it leaves me distant and empty.
Fate? What of Fate? Fate is faceless, senseless, and uncaring. In this darkness, I hide from it. For I've seen what Fate is capable of. I've seen its victims... destitute creatures with small fires in their souls.
I see what Fate has done to them. I see how their fires are reduced to nothing but ashes time and again. Fate is ruthless, and it has proved it many times. This darkness, solemn and lonely as it may be, is my only protection from it. I must love it more than fear it, or it cannot protect me.
But the dark does not love anyone, as I've come to know. It does not pick a side on whom it chooses to hide. In the murky darkness, something begins to stir. Something sinister.
Something I wish to escape. I fear it. I feel only pain when it draws near. Cowardice from seeing those small fires to ashes and sadness from not being able to change them, plague me. In this, it has always remained the same.
I do my best to lie still in the dark. Not a word, not a peep, not even a breath. I do as I have done so often before and wish with all my might to avoid the oncoming storm, hopeful that it will end soon. Yet a cold chill crawls down my spine when a deafening voice fills these halls. It is a maddening rallying cry full of everything awful.
I move towards the voice unwillingly, Fate guiding me onto a path once more at the beckoning command. Despite my fears, I fear more what Fate's Mistress is capable of.
In walking towards it, my conflicted feelings on this darkness grow. It's quick to pull away when Fate swallows me whole. The earliest memories I own are alongside it. I have only fragmented memories of things besides its all-encompassing nature and of the things that exist within its grasp.
After all, what is darkness if not the absence of light? The dark is not all that I know, truthfully. In my life, there is light, if it could be called that. It is a serpent-green glow that guides the weary flames to them. A light so vile that, in ways, is darker than the darkness. It is a light born from large crystals. Massive pillars of luminescence that adorn what could best be described as the gates of hell. The sickening din and glow of their power fill a long winding corridor, and a new one decorates its walls every time the Mistress calls. Their hue intensify at her presence, growing brighter and more sinister as I approach. They match the color of the fire in her soul.
I've no choice but to walk before them in continuing on. The unnerving, twisted reflections on their glass-like surface haunt my dreams so I try to avert my gaze. They show no end to Fate's vile, spiteful, hateful nature. They picture so many different faces that contort into hatred and malice.
But they also show a single face… weary and distressed, full of sadness and yearning. This face is unfamiliar. Distant. I hate it. I wish I could scream and it would go away. I wish I could cry and it would vanish. But when I do, it only grows worse…
As I look upon that face, grief overpowers me. It shapes me into something different. At that moment, something pulls me out from my sadness. The Mistress's voice. It stings the air and pierces the darkness. The voice is cold, sharp, and unforgiving. It calls out a name. This name is unfamiliar. I don’t know who this name belongs to.
The voice calls out again and again, more and more impatient, and yet I still don’t know who she calls out to. But I follow. To see who it might be. I follow through artificial paths carved out of the ground. I follow... and blindly, I am led to my despair.
The deeper down I delve, the stronger an unnerving din and buzz in the air like a sickening ambiance become. The chanting of many different voices begins to grow louder. They are all different, but they do not speak words. Their chant sounds like nothing more than hissing. Their voices are filled with hateful frustration and unquelled anger. Their droning becomes too much to bear when I arrive at the room they vacate and a prickle of fear runs through my body.
It's them, the minions of hell. Mistress's followers, the Formless. None of them turn to look at me as I approach. In this dim light, they cannot see my form. They do not have much of a mind so they cannot see in the darkness the way I do. Yet even with the glow of the crystals, their eyes cannot pick up much for they do not have irises. They are dulled, dead. Too poor to know what is in front of them, or behind them.
In the center, sitting on a throne of green glowing crystals rests... Fate's Mistress. She is the only soul to turn her gaze toward me. The irises in her eyes are snake-like. Pure green, greener than the crystals could ever be. They are dark and scary, filled with more anger than all the other Formless creatures in that room combined. I freeze up in fear. It was a mistake to have come here, but there was no hiding from those piercing eyes regardless. She slowly rises from her crystal throne and the formless begin their chant of mindless praise. She silences them with one loud, echoing boom from a strong stomp of her foreleg.
I dared not look away. Looking into them is like seeing an evil untold, and looking away felt akin to turning your back to a predator. They showed something so fierce that they could cause pain onto the beholder simply from a stare. Strangely, more than the fear that gripped me, those eyes also captivated my attention. Her eyes hold a glint of beauty. Their deep vibrant emerald greens shimmer in the dark. Yet they only spit back venom when trying to look into them for too long. Like an abyss, their end felt infinite, as though they were always looking at more than what was in front of them.
Fate's Mistress was truly a sight to behold standing above the Formless. Her mane is a darkened mixture of mystical royal blue with a blooming green. Her wings are like that of a dragonfly carved from bright green crystals, delicate and almost ethereal in appearance. She could be mistaken for a fairy of legends were it not for the vile air that surrounds her.
I am different from them. I am different from her. Yet I do not remember what I truly look like. I've become the shadows themselves and I've lost sight of my own appearance, but I know I'm different.
Still... standing before her... I realize that being different does not change Fate's design. Being different does not let me escape her grasp.
I stopped breathing almost entirely, somehow believing I could still hide in the dim light of the darkest corner of the room.
(Illustration by SkyeyPony on Deviant Art.)
In the silence of her commanding presence, my breath finally returned and I felt my throat tighten, a small noise escaping me, one of fear. My voice… I'd forgotten what it sounds like. I've become mute over so long. It almost feels like I've forgotten to speak. I've gotten so used to lying in the shadows, the silence, that I've become part of them. It is why I hide as a shadow. A shadow amongst shadows and no one but her is able to see me. It is as if she feels my presence and sees through my form, my art.
Finally, the silence is broken when she begins to speak. “My dear, do you know what day it is? The time is near for us to take our chance and reclaim what was once ours. I, no we, will take our rightful rule once and for all!” Shouting this, the chanting of hissing noises began again, louder than before and more excited. Her words are like heated daggers; they cut through the soft flesh and leave behind pain and suffering. Her voice is sharp, regal, and frightening. The cacophony of the reverberation in her tone is horrifyingly unnerving. Just like her appearance, that duality makes her seem more unnatural, with one voice sounding loving and calm while the other plainly showing the vitriol of her hate. Her influence is unmistakable, as her words instill both loyalty and anger in her minions without effort. She is a terrifying force. One that I dare not speak back to. "You will have a good view of our new kingdom, sitting next to my throne on one of your own." Her words are almost sickening.
In her words are remnants of what I still have yet to lose. What is there to lose? Nothing really. All I have is shadows. Grim solemn shadows that have been my treasure since I was small. They keep me safe under their coat. I've known nothing more than darkness, and truthfully... that is all I've learned to wish for. She speaks of her wishes as though they were mine. She talks of reclaiming earthly things I have never seen before. I cannot wish for something that I do not know of, so I remain silent in the dark. Of the things she says, however, what catches my ear is her claims of dominion over the stars.
The sun and moon... All I own are vague memories so far and forgotten that I cannot hope to remember, for memories like that dull in time. My memories can only paint a sloppy picture of their image. In my heart, hearing those words gives me an intense longing. I try to stop myself. I fear to hope... strange as that may sound. I fear hoping to one day see the night and day again, for I wish strongly in my heart that it is as perfect as my mind sets it to be, unclear and foggy as those memories are. In truth, I fear disappointment.
This paradoxical turmoil consumes me, but it keeps me busy, it keeps me sane, if it is sanity at all. It helps me to look forward. It is a sense of hope strong enough to pierce through my fears. If I am conflicted to this extent, it becomes easier to understand that what I truly want is to be able to hope. My hope is to see the stars again.
Reaching the end of things she wanted to say, the Mistress finally broke her unyielding gaze, freeing up mine as a result. There was a horrible sense of foreboding in my stomach after listening to all of it. It had been so long since I'd been spoken to, I'd forgotten what most of it even meant. In truth, I could piece very little of it at all.
My attention finally my own, I notice the eyes of every formless in the room now on me. Their stares are many and their cold, unfeeling eyes are heavy. The Mistress sat back onto her throne and turned to look at me once more. Now all eyes truly were on me.
"Equestria will be ours." A dark smile formed on her face having said this. A glowing green mist began to pour out of her horn to fill the room and bleed into the tunnels outside.
Every part of me was now screaming at me to run away and hide. Together with the feeling that her command and conversation with me had finally come to its conclusion, I sprinted as fast as I could out of that room and back into the sinking darkness.
My panic grew fever-pitch in feeling that the darkness was shifting all around me. The walls, the ground, and the entire cave were beginning to change. My breathing became more erratic, stumbling onto every obstacle before me. I know I'd felt this panic before, from the time when I first awoke in the darkness. The hands of lady Fate herself were now forging the path before me. In their absolute power and their ability to rewrite my life, they were destroying everything I had finally become familiar with, comfortable with. They were deconstructing my life as I knew it. And in that uncertainty, there is only one emotion.
Fear.
As if proven right, my running finally met its end. The cave lead me into a new area I had never been to before. A vast, vast room with seemingly no end. An area with a bright light so powerful, darkness all but vanishes. I desperately closed my eyes since the light was too much for me to bear. A strange warm feeling enveloped my whole body, one that intensified as time passed. Where was I? I could not see a thing.
My eyes still firmly shut, just as suddenly as I had arrived at that place I heard the hissing of the Formless all around me frantically flying past me in a fervor. My panic immediately turned into absolute terror and I held onto the ground with dear life.
Then I heard her voice once more. In a shout, happy and gloating, "Soon they will all know the name Queen Chrysalis."