//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - Embers // Story: Dark Equestrians // by zxcvsaw //------------------------------// In a forgotten prison, a lone stallion huddled to himself in his cell as the cries of the imprisoned rang out in an infinite cacophony of misery and despair. Sometimes, he wanted to join them in their lament. Sometimes, he did. In those rare moments where he did, a soothing calm overtook him as he felt himself disintegrate into the sea of lost souls, to become nothing more than a forgotten note in a hurricane of screams. But those words of lore always seeped its way into his conscious and jolted him back into the real world. The real world... The stallion shifted his gaze upward. Nothing but rough hewed stone... The stallion shifted his gaze through the barred door to this cell. Nothing to see there as well. The torches had gone out a long time ago, and all he could see was a dark corridor that seemed to him like a gaping hole that swallowed all that entered. In fact, the prison guards seemed to have disappeared as well as the stallion could not remember the last time he ever saw them. The only thing that ever came out was the constant shrieking of his fellow prisoners and it seemed to him that they would never tire of it. The stallion shifted his gaze behind him, and tried to peer through the only window in his cell. Try as he might, the window was too small and too high up to see anything useful out there, but when Celestia raised the sun, a slim beam of sunlight shined down into his cell. Sometimes, he would stare at that spot where the sun shone for countless hours until the sun set and the moon rose. And then another day would have passed on by... Day after day after day after day... Sitting in the same exact spot, looking at the same exact spot, sleeping in the same damned spot time after time after time... Sometimes, to break the boredom, he would try to imagine what he used to look like. He had a faint image of what he was like, but he was never quite sure if those visions he had were real or merely illusions. So much time had passed by... He would examine every inch of his shriveled, decaying body, trying to decipher what secrets of his past life they held from him. The secrets eluded him every time. He would place a hoof on his forehead and feel a horn from it. A small victory for him: he was a unicorn. A small, but hollow victory. In each of his examinations, his eyes would always trace to the place where his Cutie mark used to be. Instead of his beloved Cutie Mark, a black, shifting hole sat in its place. He tried to remember what his Cutie Mark was but in the end, he never did. All he remembered was that the day that dark mark appeared on him, he was cast into this prison. He felt a certain coldness seep into his heart. At first, it was a tolerable cold, but there came a day when he touched himself only to find that he was cold throughout. And then the decay began to set in... His name, his name... What was his name? It always seemed at the tip of his tongue, ready to take flight, but always slipping out and slithering its way back into the depths of amnesia. He tried recalling his mother, father or anyone that he used to know, but like his name, they slithered their way into the recesses of his memory. The words of lore, however, kept working its way into his memory and sometimes he could swear that the voice that spoke them was his mother. But the words would disappear like into the wind and once again, he was left with nothing. This was usually the point where he started to feel hopeless and that damned chorus of the damned would pick up and he would feel chiming in and once again the words of lore would intrude again and once again the cycle would begin and it would never end... Another day has passed. And another has passed. On one particular day however, something special happened. The stallion was staring into the spot where the sun shone as usual, when he felt a great tremor shudder through the walls of his prison. The ceiling caved in unexpectedly on the spot where the sun shone, and a decaying pony fell through with the stones of the ceiling. The pony seemed lifeless. The stallion looked up to the hole in his ceiling, and was astonished to see the pale blue sky for the first time in what seemed like forever. An armored unicorn glanced down at him from the ceiling and with a short curt glance, rode off. The stallion turned to the body illuminated by the sunlight pouring in from the hole. There was a key on the body. For the first time, the stallion thought he could feel the cold blood in his heart begin to move. He held his breathe. With his magic, he lifted the key from the corpse and inserted it into the keyhole of his prison door. The door clicked and swung open. The stallion took a step forward through the prison door, and looked into the dark corridor. He looked back at the spot where the sun shone. He turned his back and stepped into the darkness. Because for the first time, he was free.