Prologue: The Shard in the Forest
The filly knew to avoid the edge of the deep forest to the west of her family’s mill. Victor’s Cliff was a decent sized village, far from the border between the Western Barrier Lands and the ursan territories, but for all of Autumn Chill’s thirteen years of life she’d been told time and again by both parents and her other elders that the west forest was to be skirted. Stories and old tales abounded of the thick wall of tall, thick pines that stood like a dark fort atop a sharp ridge on the western edge of the valley Victor’s Cliff rested within. The town’s namesake was the even steeper cliff on the valley’s opposite side, where the town’s legends claimed a great battle against the ursans was once fought, countless generations ago.
As for the forest, the tales were always vague and somewhat silly sounding to Autumn’s ears. Ghosts and shadows that’s snatch unwary foals or anypony else foolish enough to wander too deep within the foreboding cluster of pines. The young unicorn filly was just getting old enough to think such old stories weren’t frightening and instead just a way adults liked to make themselves feel bigger than the foals still willing to believe the stories.
So today, with her chores done and the afternoon still young, Autumn had gone for a bracing trot to clear her mind, and had found herself wandering closer and closer to the wall of pines to the west. Grunting slightly, her mahogany fur getting a tad beaded with sweat, the unicorn had climbed the hill towards the forest edge. Her long black and braided mane and tail shifted in a stiff wind as she finally reached the top and she paused to enjoy the cooling off the breeze gave her. However her relief gave way to unease as her jewel blue eyes gazed at the deep depths of the forest before her. Each pine tree had its trunk so thick and close to its brethren it was like an impenetrable phalanx, yet Autumn Chill knew this was just an illusion, and there was plenty of space for a pony to walk between the trees... yet her sight couldn’t seem to penetrate deep into the forest, as if the trees were swallowed by a murky shadow that blotted out the afternoon sunlight.
Autumn shuddered. She knew it was silly. Utterly silly and foalish. Yet she felt as if she was being watched, a icy drip along the length of her spine that told her to turn around and trot away... gallop, even.
“There’s nothing in there,” she told herself, her wispy voice not much comfort to her own ears, “It’s just a forest.”
Youthful courage quashed down instinctual fear and Autumn took a few hesitant steps past the threshold of trees. Pausing, she waited, and when the trees remained merely trees and the shadows seemed a tad less dark, she took a deep breath and continued forward, deeper into the forest. She’d just explore for a little bit, and turn back. Just to be safe she used a soft glow of blue magic to levitate her belt knife, because nopony, filly or colt, went anywhere without at least a belt knife in the Western Barrier Lands,and she marked her path upon the trunks she passed.
The small, slightly curved iron blade had been a gift from a blacksmith’s son who’d started to give her eyes a few months ago, and Autumn couldn’t deny that Metal Cast wasn’t shaping into a decent seeming stallion, though he was still kind of silly as most colts tended to be. The knife was good and sharp, and made deep marks in the trunks as she went, and she felt her confidence growing with each step, her fear shrinking until it was just a tiny voice in the back of her mind that still told her she shouldn’t be here. She hadn’t even told any of her friends where she’d be going, the walk had just been a spontaneous thing.
After ten or so minutes all was dark around her as if in the final grasp of twilight. The thick boughs of the pine trees blotted out all by the smallest shreds of daylight’s rays, a few of which speared the gloom, but otherwise was all gray shadows. Autumn’s mind began to play tricks on her, or at least she hoped it was as she seemed to keep seeing patches of shadow move like the wafting swirls of thick fog. Sounds that didn’t seem like normal forest noises also made her ears twitch and flick, small shuffles of leaves or the breaking of a twig that had the unicorn filly snapping her head this way and that.
She was about to call her curiosity satisfied and turn back when one more step brought her to a unusual sight. Something was strung up across the trunks and pine branches like bed sheets, white as a ghost's visage. Autumn blinked, not sure what she was seeing at first, and with a burst of courage decided to channel some magical light into her horn, casting the area around her in a faded cobalt glow. Her eyes grew wider as she looked around her.
Webs. She’d wandered into a area of the forest that was choked thick with webs. The webbing didn’t look normal, like the canvas of webbing she’d seen from the common spiders that often nested within the attics and basements back in the village. The strands that made up these webs looked larger, more solid, and glimmered with a faint gossamer tint.
She nearly turned and bolted then and there, if not for something that caught Autumn’s attention. A glimmer in the deeper gloom, a glint of something the color of snow. Hesitantly she stepped deeper among the webs, ducking her head and shimmying to the side to avoid hanging webs. Now that she was looking more closely at everything she noticed many of the webs were tattered, torn, and hanging languid as if untouched for many years. To her left she saw a dome of webs, as if some kind of hut, which was half collapsed from a broken branch that had landed on it.
What was this place? Curiosity began to burn past fear and she continued to chase the faint white glow. When she found the source of it she halted in her tracks and just about turned to flee. There was a horrible creature laying on its back in a small clearing, and the only reason Autumn Chill didn’t flee was because she quickly realized the thing was dead. It looked like nothing more in the world than a giant spider; its bulbous body laying flat on its back as its eight spindly legs curled in on itself.
The white gleam was coming from an object in the center of the clearing, jutting up from the ground as if it had been impaled into the earth. There was a dip in the ground, almost like a small crater, though it was long overgrown with tall grass, suggesting that this object had been here for a very long time. It was a shard, or at least that was the closest Autumn Chill could come to describing it. Metallic white, and shining like silver, the shard was shaped like it’d been torn from something, its edge jagged. It was as tall as two full grown ponies standing atop each other, and Autumn got the impression it had more length wedged into the earth. The white glow was the result of a few beams of sunlight filtering in from above reflecting off the shard’s smooth surface.
Braving a few steps closer she first examined the dead spider. It was more than three times her size, and at first she couldn’t fathom how it had died. Its body was dusty and hollow, almost the skeleton of a carapace, suggesting it had been dead for a long time. It wasn’t until Autumn saw the wounds on the back of the thing’s head that she realized it’d been killed by a single strike by something large and piercing, perhaps a giant spear?
It was all too much, and she was about to go back the way she’d come, but something about the shard caught her eye. Glancing back at it, she peered at the metallic surface of the shard. She saw her reflection as clearly as if she were looking into the most polished of mirrors. Then, the shard almost seemed to ripple, and before she could question the thought that appeared in her head and whether or not it was really her own, she raised her hoof and touched the surface.
Her hoof sank into the metal as if it were water, and light filled Autumn Chill’s vision, brighter than the sun, yet edged with the dark of the deepest void.
----------
Metal Cast, tired from a long day working master Redhot’s forge, wiped a generous amount of sweat from his brow and cracked his neck. The young colt was just fourteen summers old but already had the broad shoulders and thick muscles of his father, with the endurance to swing a hammer through the day without slowing. Granted all he could make were simple tools, but the ponies of Victor’s Cliff were simple folk, and Metal Cast was happy with his lot.
If he could find himself a good mare he might manage to marry in a few years and either take over his father’s forge, or, in his more ambitious dreams, he ventured to think of moving to one of the bigger cities to start up a forge for making fancy weapons or armor for the Legion or the nobility.
He even had his eye on a mare. Autumn Chill was one of the fillies he’d played with most of his young life, and she often gave as good as she got in those foalish wrestling matches or hoof races that the foals used to pass the time. He was just getting old enough to recognize the... charms of the opposite sex, and Autumn was pleasant to be around and she had a lovely mane dark as coal.
With his work for the day done he asked his father permission to have the evening to himself and Redhot waved him off, still busy forging some new pins for repairing the wagon of a local peddler. Metal Cast wasted no time in heading out into the quiet streets of Victor’s Cliff, intending to find his friends for a late afternoon trip to the river to swim. Perhaps Autumn would be there. He imagined what she’d look like, freshly drenched from a dunk in the river. The image pleased him and he picked up his steps, but paused when he saw a familiar figure wandering down a side road, leading to the path out west towards the forest.
“Autumn?” he asked, curious as usually Autumn Chill was an energetic filly, whose steps always had a bounce to them, but the Autumn he was looking at was walking as if drained of energy, a slow, languid step.
“Hey, Autumn!” he called, cantering towards her. He steps faltered as he saw her more closely, “Autumn? Are you...?”
He trailed off, unable to finish asking his question. Autumn Chill’s coat was waxen and slick with sweat, her mane and tail disheveled and caught with broken twigs. Her face was placid, devoid of the quick and lively smile Metal Cast had come to associate with Autumn. Worse than that were her eyes. They were staring, unblinking and glassy. There was barely a spark to indicate Autumn Chill was even alive in those dull eyes.
“What happened!? Autumn!?” Metal Cast put a hoof on her shoulder, to which she didn’t respond other than to just stop in her jerking sleep walk. Those dull, lifeless eyes of hers turned towards him, and Metal Cast suddenly felt a chill run down to his bones as he took an involuntary, fearful step backwards.
“...Autumn?”
The fillies eyes remained unblinking as she opened her mouth, wider than seemed natural, and she tore the air with a shriek that could be heard in every corner of Victor’s Cliff.