Chapter 2 - The Library
Equestria.
It's a beautiful place-
Light Flow kept a quick pace past the familiar store, trying desperately to block out the invading words from the charismatic radiopony. The new book on sale may have been extra-super-fabulous, but he just didn't have any interest in that kind of story.
A lame book about an adventurer? Who in their right mind would read the exact same thing they'd already read a million times before when it'd just been... prettied up and made shiny?
Light continued on his mental pace of bashing rehashes on his straight course to the library, intent on borrowing the newest book in his favorite series. He would just steal it, of course—he was a thoroughbred scoundrel, after all—but he was feeling a bit magnanimous on account of the occasion.
Dark Heart 79 was sure to be the best in the series since DH 45! He'd heard from some wickedly irreputable sources that the main character, Umbral Dross, was going to try on a new shade of black this time—and he was going to get a new piercing!
That's so cool!
He could only wonder about where the new piercing would even fit, considering he already had seven. Was it going to be his long-awaited third ear piercing, the foretold sign of Dreck's coming doom? His second tongue stud? Oh, he hoped it was the tongue stud. That was so cool. Tongue piercings were the absolute coolest kind because they made you talk all funny—but in a cool way!
The coolest way!
Light Flow, continuing to internally gush over piercings and shades of black and their varying levels of coolness, happened to stop paying attention to where he was going, inadvertently leading him face-first into something. Something a bit harder than a kind old mare.
His head made brutally swift contact with the hard surface with a dull thunk, leaving the colt to fall back onto his rear with a surprised yelp. A sudden sharp pang averted his attention from glaring at the offending pole, leading his exploratory hoof to ruffle about his stinging mane.
He felt something hot and wet. A pain. He pulled his hoof back with a wince.
There was a messy little splotch of red painted on his frog.
Something inexplicably like a whimper eked out from his bit lip, while a blurry sensation of warmth built at the corners of his eyes. He swept his hoof through his mane again, and when he turned it around to peer at the once-pink patch of soft flesh, the splotch looked bigger.
He sniffled, first wiping the blood off onto his coat, then the tears from his eyes, forcing his face to contort into a solid, steely gaze. Hard as he tried, though, he couldn't fight the odd mewl.
No. Villains don't cry.
He kicked himself up off the ground, proudly continuing to trudge his way towards the nearing library. His head hurt, but not that much—and crying was for kids and do-gooders, anyway! He'd just go to the stupid tree, pick up his stupid book from the stupid librarian, and go back to his stupid, ugly house.
Why did... why was everything so freakin' stupid?!
No matter how he stomped, no matter his clear anger and his loudening snivels—and no matter how pouty of a face he made, nopony turned as he passed the streets. Nopony cared. Nopony blinked.
But he knew better. Everypony was staring at him—jeering and laughing at him, hiding cruel smirks behind their smiling masks. They could see how weak he was—knew how scared he was.
Their voices rang in his ears incessantly, no matter how hard he pressed them back against his head. Over and over, ringing and clamoring like bells as his breathing began to pick up. His heart was racing. His pace was speeding.
He wanted them to stop.
Look at the fearsome villain! Look at him cry! What a foal! He's so scary, right? What a joke! I bet I could beat him! A newborn could do it! Look at how weak he is! He's a failure! He'll never be anything more than a loser!
Look at his dumb, tiny horn!
Stop it. Stop it.
The front door of the library came up before him as something trailed down his cheek, and he threw the sneering edifice open as hard as he could. The door went bang against the wall, and a pony looked his way—not that he cared. He wished they would drop dead.
Standing alone in the doorway, drawing his breaths as deeply as he could, somepony began to approach him. Probably to laugh. Laugh at the little colt making a fuss, everypony.
He forced his gaze to the ground as two orangeish hooves came to a stop in front of him. No. He refused to look up at whoever it was. Nopony on Equus had the right to see him cry. He'd just stand right where he was until the stupid hooves went away so he could buy his stupid book.
"You okay there, sugarcube?"
He shut his eyes at the unfamiliar tone of the twangy accent, shaking his head up and down jerkily and jostling his mane in a way that wasn't the least bit mysterious.
Just... dumb.
One of the orange hooves raised, and he felt something shuffle around in his mane. The urge to push the weird, country-sounding hoof away rose in his veins, but against his better judgement, he let the limb explore his head, even suppressing a flinch when it brushed up against the burning spot he'd bonked against the pole.
Eventually, the hoof came away, and a moment passed before he heard the voice from the hooves again. "Y'don't look okay, sugarcube. Heck, looks t'me like you're bleedin'."
He screwed his eyes shut as more useless tears leaked from them. He hated feeling like this—like... like he was weak, and like he'd lost all control. Like everything around him was spiraling and spiraling and spiraling and he just wanted it to stop.
He forced the incoming sob to die as one of the hooves in his peripheral scratched against its twin. One of them raised to push him in the side, so he let himself take an instinctual step back out onto the street.
"C'mon, I'll getcha all fixed up. Follow me, y'hear?"
The promise of help rang clearly in his muddled headspace, and in his current state of mind, he really didn't care if it made him look weak. He just wanted to get away from the ponies in the streets.
He nodded as little as he could, blindly following behind the orange hooves as he watched them trot by. He kept his head down, making sure to keep at least one of those hooves in his vision at all times. He didn't want to lose them.
They continued at a steady pace as Light focused on listening to the noise of the hooves on packed dirt, just trying to keep breathing. Eventually, the ground beneath them bled away from the dirt paths of Ponyville to unfamiliar grass. The green shade was different from the comforting brown. It stung his eyes.
The hooves in front of him were saying something. In fact, they had been talking for a while now, but he wasn't listening. He wasn't really doing anything except walking forward and struggling not to break down.
Why was it always so hard?
Eventually, after a long while of walking, the hooves stopped, and he slowed to a gradual halt behind them. He wondered why they didn't just keep walking. He wanted to walk forever until Ponyville was long gone. Just a speck on the distant horizon. Something to forget about.
"You jes' wait here, sugarcube, an' I'll be right back."
The hooves exited his vision, and there was a sound of a door opening and closing. He set his rear down with a heavy thump and kept staring down at the grass. It was green and wavy. Not a lot to say, really, but he kept staring at it anyway.
To Light, it was the only thing in the world. He didn't want to stare at anything except that grass.
No matter how much he hated it.
So he sat, and he stared.
It felt like hours before he heard the door open again, but it was probably just a few minutes. He didn't really care how long he was sitting, he just wanted to get out of this stupid place with the stupid grass.
He listened intently to the soft sound of a pony stepping on deserving grass, and saw the hooves trot into his vision once more. A little white box emblazoned with an even smaller red cross fell down next to them, and the hooves spoke again.
"Alrighty sugarcube, you jes' stay still, alright? This might hurt a bit."
He screwed his eyes shut as a latch unlatched, and a hoof shuffled into his mane again. He felt more than heard the spray of the antiseptic, drawing a disgusting whimper of pain from him as yet more useless tears trailed down his cheeks.
The pain soon abated as he something wrapped all the way around his head, wrapping tighter and tighter until he felt like his head would just burst from the pressure. He always knew he would die like this—at least, ever since about a minute ago.
He heard what sounded like the snip of scissors, leading him to cautiously peek an eye open. Two orange hooves attached to a freakishly orange body placed a loose roll of gauze and a can of antiseptic spray back into the white box, while the little shears went in after them. The box shut, and the hooves let out a satisfied sigh.
"Well, reckon' that's it, sugarcube. All fixed up. Y'all should probably head on home an' take a rest, though. Wrappin' up that bump on yer' noggin' can't do much more'n a good night's rest."
He saw the hooves shuffle around on the grass again, and he silently wished that they would just leave him alone.
"You're... awful quiet, huh? Y'all got a name?"
He kept quiet. He felt marginally better now, and he didn't feel like crying so much, but he refused to allow the hooves the satisfaction of knowing his name. He kept his head down, silently watching the hooves at the top of his vision as one of them raised up to rub at the other.
"Er... well, s'alright if y'don't feel much like sharin'. My name's Applejack, by the by, if'n you were curious..?"
A head tried to duck down into his field of view, but he quickly turned away from it. He caught a flash of a blonde mane, but that was all he could stand to see. He didn't want to see anything of the hooves' owner.
He heard a sigh. "Well, I can't rightly force you to speak. 'Sides, y'all should be gettin' on home. It's gettin' dark, an' I'm sure yer' folks are mighty worried right about now."
A few moments of silence went by, and out came another sigh. It sounded exasperated.
His eyes narrowed as he frowned. Good. Served the hooves right for being such a goody-four-shoes.
"So... I guess I'll be seein' y'all around."
He watched as the orange hooves finally walked away, though he waited to raise his head until he heard the noise of the door being opened and he was sure he was alone. A disgustingly homely cottage sat immediately in front of him, though he hardly cared. To his sides and all around him for as far as the eye could see were apple trees, and what looked to be a barn nestled into them a bit away.
Figured. Farmers were a nuisance, and far too earnest. He should burn the dumb orchard down.
He reached his hoof up to the spot where the cloth was covering his injury, and an unbidden sniffle escaped as his injury twinged under the bandage. He dropped his hoof back to the grass, glaring at the comfy home.
He hoped he never saw those dumb, orange hooves again.
He stood up and turned away from the house. He could clearly see the thatch rooves of Ponyville in the near distance, some ways away from a fence-linked, white wooden arch. He set off towards it, pointedly ignoring the beautiful countryside around him. His new opinion was that he hated trees, and the color green.
And apples. He definitely hated apples.
He passed through the gate, arriving some walking distance later in Ponyville proper. He ignored the looks he got from the ponies around him as he stomped through the roads leading to the library. He heard some whispers. He saw some concerned glances.
He kept a grimace. He vowed to one day put a similar bandage on each and every one of them.
The stupid orange hooves had told him to go home and rest, but what did they know? He'd show them! He was going to go get his book, and then he was going to stay up all night reading. That'd show that dumb... apple pony.
He once more found his way to the library, where he found himself glaring at the stupid door in the stupid tree. His snarl deepened; he turned around and shot his back legs out towards the door, careening the splintered portal into the opposite wall with a deafening bang.
The ponies inside went quiet, all stopping what they were doing to cringe back from the unwelcome intruder.
Light Flow stood as a menacing shadow in the in the cracked doorway, dwarfing everypony else in the room. Each of the feeble fools trembled in paralyzing fear at the mere sight of the intimidating, dangerous, handsome villain blocking their only escape route.
He stomped forward, shaking the tree with each heavy step, while the simpletons around him looked on in frightened awe at the towering monster suddenly amidst them. The counter peered up far below him, as did the miniscule old librarian huddled behind it. She stuttered out a fearful greeting, eyes brimming with tears, completely and utterly focused on his extremely intimidating visage.
Light Flow opened his mouth, showing his bloodied, razor sharp teeth, and-
"Excuse me, ma'am," he whispered out in a small voice.
The elderly librarian who he couldn't remember the name of turned her attention to him from the book she was reading, furrowing her brow with obvious concern at the sight of him.
"Light Flow! What happened to you, dear? Are you okay?" she spoke worriedly, quite obviously referring to the bandage wrapped around his head. It really didn't look that bad, but he supposed some ponies just didn't think it was as cool as he obviously did.
He was just imagining how he looked, obviously, but he knew it was cool. He was always cool.
Everything he did was cool.
"Oh, I... uh, walked into a pole..." he muttered out, keeping his eyes on the surface of the counter from where he'd reared his hooves onto it. He wasn't quite tall enough to just look over the counter, which made him feel like his hooves were actively shrinking. He shuffled one on the counter as the librarian continued to stare at him with her stupid green eyes. Tartarus below, how he wished he could make her just stop staring at him.
"Well... as long as you're okay..." came the mare's low tone. He hated that tone. He didn't want anypony to care about him—he was a villain!
And what a villain he was.
"Oh, dear, the book you were asking for just arrived. Would you like to check it out?" The librarian was speaking again, but he barely heard her. He felt... wrong. Like something was eating him up inside. Like something was tearing itself though him.
"Actually, ma'am..." he began in a quiet voice, "I think I'd like to check something else out today."
The librarian blinked at him in surprise, saying something he didn't hear as he turned his attention to the library as a whole. There were three ponies milling about inside, but he didn't care about them. He shuffled his way over to his preferred corner of the building, where all the dark fiction stories had been sorted.
He didn't know why, but he just... didn't care about shades of black and tongue piercings anymore.
They didn't sound very cool.
His eyes flicked over the numerous books that he had all read before, skipping over anything and everything without any titles really jumping out at him. The black covers and the black lettering were all... melding together, and his head was beginning to spin. He didn't think he liked the color black anymore. A deep, acrid taste was rising in his throat.
He felt like he was going to vomit.
He nearly gave up, until, on his fifth look through, he saw a book that he must have overlooked. It had a brown cover with black lettering, so not a huge departure, but it was different enough that his interest was slightly piqued, and the taste in his throat started to recede.
He leaned in close, carefully reading the title of the brown colored book aloud.
"The... Necromancer and the Night?"
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You seem to have misnamed the protagonist as 'Light Hoof' a few times this chapter.
10766731
Oh no!
That happens to me so much when I'm writing you have no idea. I've taken to using ctrl + f for the words "Light Hoof", but apparently I didn't do that back then.
I have no idea why it keeps happening. I just instinctively type that for some reason.
Thanks so much for pointing it out! You're a hero!
And so the book finds him.
You didn’t need to call me out in the author’s note.
10865151
I assume you also disregard any sort of planning whatsoever? Throwing yourself headlong into writing until everything just sort of works?
If you're going to become a villain, you'll see them again. And this time they'll be causing head injuries. Even if you end up the friendlier kind of necromancer, she has parents she never got to say goodbye to.
The amount of cringe I'm going through is really impressive.
Although it's not hard to achieve, you still did a very good job here.
10874770
You must be feeling cringe because this is striking to close too home with your username being "EdgeGod". Though I can see how it could be cringe to some, but this is the second chapter in and you calling this cringe is a bit much. Even more so if it was the self jokes that got to be annoying to you so fast as I'm guessing that's what you are calling cringe, not the kid acting like a stereotype. (kind of sounds like something and edgelord would do funnily enough) Nice show of Recursion(couldn't find the word I was thinking of and really wanted to use to sound smart, so here's another similar word).
I guarantee, if this bloke had access to Terran radio he'd be listening to Paint It Black 24/7.
When he looks back on this in a few years he's gonna want to crawl out of his own skin the second-hand cringe'll be so bad.
11406585
He's far from the only one- I can barely stand to even remember these chapters exist!
it's not easy being bad.
Siiiiiiiigh, I was quite excited for a second, out of all fics that attempt to correctly notate a southern accent this was looking to be the best. But then the y’alls came, like they always do. I really don’t understand why it’s so difficult but somehow no one understand how they work. If applejack is going to be an important character this is going to get grating very fast.
Y’all does not replace every you, it is meant to refer to multiple people, it is a contraction between you and all/guys. You do not say y’all when speaking to an individual you just say you. And if you still want to write it in a southern accent I would do “ya” as a replacement.
11807368
Huh. You know, of all the varied ways I've seen people quit reading this story over the years, doing so because of the way Applejack speaks is one I haven't seen vocalized before. Funny! If you go for much longer, I guarantee you'll find much better reasons to run and not look back!
Seriously, though, I don't write her like that for no reason. I write her the way I've heard real people in my life speak. I live in the middle of asscrack-nowhere, and out here, it is not at all uncommon for genuine stereotypes to walk around in broad daylight and tawlk lahk they'v gotta huge perra' dentures.
You're right, though, that it's incorrect. Much of the sentence structure used in day to day life is also incorrect, because people don't tend to adhere to strict grammar rules in informal speech. It's annoying if you look for it, but otherwise, you just hear them speaking in that way they do. It's a mass idiosyncrasy to speak informally, and there's a reason why the average person hasn't extensively studied linguistics and syntax structure.
It's clumsy to speak correctly. In real life, I would've just used the word 'talk' instead of 'speak,' there, for instance.
I'm sorry if this is truly too jarring for you to continue reading—it'll be a first, if it's any consolation—but it doesn't get any better, and I'm not going to write her and her family any other way, because it's got too much precedent to interrupt it at this point. Also, I just don't think I could, because I genuinely channel my inner southerner whenever I have to write her dialogue.
Sometimes, when I'm tired, it gets more offensive than it probably should be, and that's my fault. I'll own the fact that I'm not always at the top of my game. Sometimes, I just let my brain do whatever it wants. I'll accept that critique.
I cannot stress enough that I model her speech off people that I actually know. Last Thanksgiving, a close family friend I was sitting with asked me: 'How's y'all's writing been going?' This was not abnormal, nor did I wrinkle my nose, because I have heard her say much more semantically revolting things in the past.
I don't know if there's a branch of linguistics that deals with the idiosyncrasies of informal speech, but either way, this is informal speech. Applejack's a dumb country livin' kid who grew up speaking that way because the ponies around her spoke that way. Those ponies speak that way because they heard other ponies who spoke like that, and those ponies did as well, all the way back the generations to some weird stallion who thought it sounded cool. That's how language evolves.
I guess this whole comment boils down to the rather flimsy reason that life rarely follows the rules that have been imposed onto it, and a general apology that my writing rankles you. I genuinely hate seeing people go, and as I do for the people that have used much harsher words to describe me and my style, I want to thank you for giving the story a chance. I hope whatever else you manage to slog through fulfills you in some way, and that you have a great day once you move onto better things.
I do mean that. I hope you have a fantastic day, and I hold no ill will towards you.