//------------------------------// // First Question // Story: The Eighteen Victims of Reinshore // by JackleTheKitsune //------------------------------// Eat not my wings, so that I may still fly. Eat first my soul, so I’ll be ready to die. Spare not my heart, it aches for a rest. Spare but my words, for surely I jest. “In the back of one’s mind, a strange feeling can often be found. A shrill silence that creeps upon the basest tendrils of thought. It is a constant lack of something, some quality poorly defined with words. Never vanishing, only suppressed, it hides from the happiest of thoughts, but diligently plods along until it can again return to the center of attention. Dread it is called, or unnerving, or strange. But oh, how none of those can give it justice.” a sickly voice rasped from behind the bars. A small unicorn, layered in a dour grey coat huddled tighter against herself. Her attempts to shiver the cold out of herself ended in but a small chattering in the dark hallway she listened from. With a slight lessening of her shivering she attempted to speak only to be cut off. “Without much warning, this feeling can vanish, but again it returns ever faithful. This feeling knows it is unwelcome, and relishes in that knowledge. Ravenous towards the idea of being unwanted, it surges forth for that final bit it needs to grab one fully in its grasp. One could almost take comfort in knowing about its constant companionship, if not for the desire to make them unnerved.” The sound of scraping followed the words, as if some sorry mess was lumbering closer. “Are you going to ask that question now? That one that's making your teeth rattle more than the cold? Or are you experiencing that feeling right now? The same as I?” a scarred chitinous face pressed against the bars, cracks gleaming with a sickening shine under the pale torchlight. “I… wanted... “ Her speech stumbled as her shaking intensified. “I wanted to know why.” she finally managed. “Why what? Why did i do it? Why did she do it? Why Reinshore? Why is there the sound of three ponies breathing in room with two ponies?” the questions came quickly sounding as if they tore out of the prisoner’s throat with malice. “What? I uh, no, wait three ponies breathing?” the hurried looks around the room brought nothing but frustration to their owner. “Exactly, can’t you hear that, the sound of breathing, light and raspy from myself, quick and worried from yourself, and lastly the one that sounds like it’s behind you, slow, and steady, driven yet patient.” a small fit of coughs from his speech gave her all the time she needed to glance behind herself in panic. “There isn’t anything there, you know there isn’t anything there!” she replied more to herself than anypony else. “But now you keep listening for it, and what’s worse, now that you know it’s not there, you can hear it can’t you?” The perverse grin that slipped past the cracked chitin made her fur stick up on end. Terror would serve as all the fuel she needed. No other emotion could cull her other senses, her vision swimming, the stone beneath her feeling like mud, the dryness of her mouth replaced with the sour bite of iron, or the scent of decay, so stifling it made her eyes water. But that paled in comparison to her ears, their screaming of heavy breathing behind her, breath that only became louder the more she turned her ears away from it. Panic clear on her face the prisoner settled down against the bars. “We haven’t long now, and you had a question to ask before you noticed, what was it miss?” the harsh voice twisted into a perverse sweetness that only served to make her more terrified. “I want to know how this all happened, the deaths, all of them. And, why.” Her soft quivering voice caught the attention of her audience. His form shuffled for a bit, the long soiled bandages not hiding the great sores that lay beneath. Finally his movements settled and in the silence she swore she heard the breathing behind her growing closer. “Tell me miss, what is your name, tell me your name and I will answer you, but I need your name for when she gets here.” He seemed to be perking up, but could he be toying with her? “D-Dust Cover. I’m here because of my brother, he-” “Don’t care Miss Cover, I don’t need to know why you are here, you want your questions answered, and I don’t have many for you.” She bristled at the interruption and looked about ready to lash out in anger. “Don’t be surprised Miss Cover, we did what we did because we wanted to, we didn’t care about them like that. But I can guess we claimed him, or are you holding onto hope we missed him, and he’s just somewhere out there, among the waves waiting to come back home?” the changeling in the cell sneered for a moment before his vision softened. “I’m so sorry, that wasn’t meant for you, now, I imagine you’re very upset by the loss, did you want me to answer your question still?” Biting back tears, from her emotional distress or perhaps they still watered from the dull stench that permeated the air, Dust Cover slowly nodded before setting out a small journal and lifting a quill to write in it. “I… I need to know.” “Even if it destroys you, leaves you unable to feel anything after knowing how ruthless somepony could be?” He took a sitting position shakily. With steel behind her tear filled eyes she nodded again “Yes, how did my brother and the other fifteen die, what led to this?” “Alright miss… This won’t be easy to hear. If it helps at all, I am a monster, and I helped kill sixteen ponies because I could, and we wanted to, and because she was beautiful. So very beautiful to me, she loved me like no other, and I hated her as much as I loved her.”