Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add—but when there is nothing left to take away.
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add—but when there is nothing left to take away.
Never did a pony who had so much to lose have so much to gain by doing so. For Dim, loss leads to salvation, but is he a soul worth saving?
The prologue should be read at one's own risk. Trigger warnings? All of them. For more casual readers, it is advised that the story be started on the first chapter, and not the prologue. Story becomes progressively lighter with each chapter.
Alone in his room, there was nothing left to add for Dim. Yet, this was not perfection. This place had become a prison of sorts, a terrible thing to be said about one’s own home, but being terrible didn’t make it any less true. At some point, he had reached a near-perfect state of boredom, ennui, as it was called. He had reached a point where he could no longer be made to care about anything.
It seemed a contradiction, of sorts.
Dim Dark had been born into the House of Dark, one of Equestria’s oldest noble houses. He was wealthy, privileged, home-schooled, he had grown up in the perfect, if somewhat insular world of the Dark Spire, his family home. It was an old place, a thin obelisk of a tower whose insides appeared larger than the city of Canterlot itself, or so it was said. Those who disagreed would find themselves shut out, or perhaps thrown into the labyrinth that was said to be deep within the bowels of the tower. Either way, those with differing opinions were not welcome.
Eccentric, and perhaps just a little bit insane, the House of Dark had a bit of reputation, one that they cultivated like a beloved rose garden. More ‘bad’ wizards had come from the House of Dark than any other Canterlot family—or so said the slanderous tongues of jealous families made up of impure imbeciles, the degenerate, disgusting primitives. The Darks had reached perfection and they had the purest bloodlines of any family in all of Equestria.
Perhaps, because they only intermingled with one another.
This was Dim’s world. He had grown up in what his family called ‘The Ideal Dark.’ They had their own rules, their own way of life, a way of life preserved from Ye Olden Days. Yet, despite all of his family’s nurturing, (which some might call indoctrination) despite having his every whim satisfied, his every need attended to, Dim felt no joy, no fulfillment about anything.
In every way, Dim was the ideal family member, he was everything that the House of Dark prized, everything that was sought after, everything that was hoped for. He had all of the traits of being a perfect specimen of his own family’s breeding program. He had powerful magic, exceptional by any standard of measurement. There was his heterochromia, a trait that had saved him from being shipped off to the orphanarium to be raised by small-minded, disgusting primitives.
His hemophilia was seen as a crowning achievement—it protected him from physical drudgery, manual labour, anything that might damage his perfect, flawless skin. With hemophilia, there was little else they could do but rule, and so rule they did. The Darks used their hemophilia like a shield, it kept them from having to give away precious sons and daughters to the guard, or the militia, or any outside agency that might require bloodshed. Indeed, the Crown left them alone and asked for nothing from them, leaving them to live as they pleased in their own little world.
And what a dark little world it was…
Filled with annoyance, Dim looked over at his mother, Dark Desire, who stood near the gleaming silver candelabra. The flickering flames reflected in her mismatched eyes, eyes that mirrored his own, and her thin, delicate body twitched and spasmed. His mother seemed upset, put out, and no doubt, he would hear about it.
He wished that she would go away. This was a large space. There was no need for them to ever meet one another ever again. They could live out their lives in separate spaces and Dim would be fine with that. A part of him hated his mother, though he could not say why. He just found her repulsive and something about her filled him with revulsion.
Sometimes, just looking at her made him feel queasy.
“They’ve arrested your uncle,” Desire said in a nasal, wheezing whine. “I cannot believe they did it, he’s done nothing wrong. All he did was provide a service as a wizard for hire.” With a turn of her head, she looked at her son through heavy, half-closed eyelids. “Dimmy, why must they persecute us for our perfection?”
Filled with disgust and tasting sour bile, Dim humoured his mother. What else could he do? “What happened?”
“It has to do with that dreadful Mister Mariner business… all Dire did was provide a few magical services to that clever entrepreneur. You know, just a typical business transaction. The Crown is charging Dire with treason for just being a pony of business. It’s not right, Dimmy, it’s not right. Why, it is positively dreadful. A wizard has a right to make a living.”
In silence, Dim found that he could not disagree with his mother.
“They don’t charge prostitutes with high crimes and misdemeanours for the diseases they inflict on their clientele,” his mother blurted out, and then she let out an obscene titter that was like claws being dragged down a chalkboard. “Disgusting primitives. A pony should be free to offer up services to those who will pay with coin, free of consequences. Nothing good ever comes from the Crown interfering with business transactions.”
“No.” Dim’s reedy, somewhat wavering voice made his mother’s pointed ears stand erect.
“Darling will be distraught about her daddy. Do offer her some comfort, will you?”
Dim said nothing.
“You’re of that age, Dimmy,” Desire said to her son, and her eyes did not blink in time with one another, a condition she shared with her son. "You and Darling grew up together. You are ideal for one another. Perfect. When will you marry? With all of the unfair and unwarranted arrests we’ve suffered as of late, our numbers dwindle. I worry, Dimmy. These disgusting primitives have it out for us.”
His stomach roiling, Dim thought of Darling Dark, his cousin, his mother’s brother’s daughter. Dire Dark’s beloved little sweetheart. Just thinking of her filled him with conflicting feelings of lust, revulsion, and arousal. He loved her, but he also hated her. She was everything that was wrong with this place.
The scent of mare musk filled the room and Dim’s disgust intensified while he focused on his mother, who did nothing to hide her own arousal. His room filled with a dank, musky aroma, an unwanted perfume that crawled up his nostrils, slithered down his throat, and left a foul taste on the back of his tongue.
“Why, just thinking of you nailing her tight, taut, perky little backside so I can have some grandfoals to adore just leaves me moist.” Desire drew in a shuddering, heaving breath and her tail swished around her hind legs. “Dimmy, Mommy needs some alone time. You’ll have to excuse me while I go and… take care of myself.” Fanning herself with her hoof, Desire vanished in a flash of dark blue glittery magic that caused several candles on the candelabra to blow out.
The bile rising in Dim’s throat burned his sinuses.
Dim entertained the most terrible of all ideas. Perhaps it was time to leave this place. He was not content to stay here, to carve out his own dimensional bubble like most of his family members had done. The Dark Spire was old and the Dark family had been stretching out the inside of this place for centuries. It was a place of secrets, of dark spaces, some of which were dangerous. Dark family members vanished all the time when exploring the tower. Sometimes, they returned years later, or even decades later, and they had such stories to tell.
Such terrible stories.
Staring into his fine, silver mirror, he studied himself, distracted, his thoughts all over the place. The pony looking back at him was Dark perfection. One eye was pale pink, the other a muted tone of amber. His mane was black, so black that it almost appeared to have blue highlights. As for his pelt, he was a smoky grullo, just like his uncle, a colour that couldn’t decide if it was grey, brown, or a faded black. His muzzle was fine, thin, well-chiseled, and almost feminine. Like his mother, he had distinctive pointy ears. He was absolutely stunning perfection.
Filled with self-loathing, he hated his own reflection.
Distracted, his mind meandered and he found himself thinking of Darling. She was little more than a distraction now, and whatever spark there had been was fast fading. Two years younger than he, they had grown up together, they had shared the same nursery, played with the same toys, had the same tutors, almost every waking hour of their foalhood had been spent together.
They had adventures together, tea parties, and they both delighted in tormenting their lesser cousins, those who had not been gifted with excessive magic, but instead only had paltry, almost common levels of magic. She had made this place bearable, this dreadful, dreary place. They had grown up together, as nursery mates, as playmates, as best friends…
And then the day had come when, while playing, Dim had mounted her. He had a vivid recollection of his own curious excitement, that glorious feeling he had experienced. It was a perfect moment, and every moment that followed was spent chasing after that heady rush, trying to recreate that perfect, wonderful moment.
The mounting had produced strange new feelings in Dim. Parts of him had awoken. He became protective, possessive, his mind had blazed with strange new ideals, that Darling was his lady fair, his maiden, his damsel, and beyond that moment, all of their games seemed to center on him being a prince, for he was a prince, and he had to rescue his princess from whatever danger de jour had appeared that day.
Once rescued, he would mount his princess, and together, on wobbly legs, they would confess their undying love to one another. An act done with such innocence held so much meaning that now, in hindsight, left Dim feeling disgusted. Of course, this innocence did not last. While on Darling’s back, while biting on her neck to make her submit while he tickled her ribs, he had slipped out of his sheath one day. He had grown hard, very much so, and he had panicked about his condition.
Of course, he had ran off to his mother.
Not long after that, his nanny began masturbating him before bed, granting him release so that he might sleep an innocent, innocuous sleep and not be high strung. As he would find out later, it was an old practice, an ancient practice to wear little colts out so they would go to bed. It had also caused him quite an awakening, and while his nanny rubbed his shaft with a well oiled, mediciny smelling fetlock, he would think of Darling without knowing or understanding why.
Perhaps the second most important day in his foalhood was when he discovered that Darling had a delightful, warm wet hole in her backside. Being the curious little colt that he was, he had poked at it while mounted on his princess, and that had been the day that instinct had reared its ugly head.
It had been a wonderful, horrible day.
With a single violent thrust, his own hips having betrayed him, he had found himself inside of her and he had torn her open. She screamed bloody murder, she howled, and she bawled for him to stop. Still mounted, still inside of her, he had done everything he could to comfort her, to quiet her, making all manner of tender promises about tea parties and doing all of the things she liked to do.
While she sobbed, his hips bucked back and forth, he slipped in and out of her, mimicking the sensations and motions of his nanny servicing him before bed. Huffing sweet promises into her ear, Dim had exploded with shivers while thrust deep inside of her. Afterwards, he held her while she sniffled, and once she had recovered a bit, once the bleeding finally ended after so much worry and angst, he kept his promises to her. All of them.
Of course, his mother had found out, and so had Dire. The entire family soon knew, which led to much happiness, revelling, and rejoicing. Both he and Darling had been lavished with presents, showered with gifts, and encouraged to keep doing what they had done. So much change took place from one simple act, with Darling being the most changed of all.
She adored the attention, the affection, and the rewards. Once she had recovered from the initial encounter and had a bit of a pep talk with the mares of the family, she became an eager, amusing source of fun for Dim. Now, rescuing the princess became an exercise, an act of conquest. Once saved from the dragon, or the ogre, or whatever it was—some days it didn’t matter and the menace was never named—the princess was mounted, then given a good and proper fucking, as his aunt Dark Chocolate was fond of saying. Word had it Dark Chocolate liked slumming about in Canterlot, now that she was barren.
It was his favourite scandal and it offered no end of amusement, or it had, before his funk had set in.
His reflection seemed disgusted by what it saw. Perhaps it saw a disgusting primitive. It seemed possible. Dim’s mood and attitude had certainly fallen to new lows and he no longer took any joy in living. Food no longer satisfied, neither did sex, or the study of magic, nothing seemed to offer solace. Even shocking or upsetting his mother did nothing for him.
Dim’s mirror gazing was interrupted by his door opening, and without even turning to see who it was, he knew it was Darling. The scent of her musk intermingled with that of his mother’s, which still lurked in his room, leaving him with a nauseous feeling. She made no sound as she approached, her hooves were silent and she moved with a perfect, fluid grace. She appeared in the mirror beside his own reflection.
“They say that Daddy is never coming back,” she whined as she drew nearer. The filly let out a huff and when she blinked, she too, had mismatched timing, one eye blinked and then the other. The corners of her mouth were white, crusted over with laced salts, and her pupils couldn’t decide which size they wanted to be. “I had to take a powder after the news and I’m feeling much better.”
By the smell of things, she most certainly was.
Lowering her head, she began to nose around his stomach, then rubbed her cheek against the inside of his thigh. Her ear grazed his flesh, near his cutie mark, a candle with a black flame. In the mirror, she looked like a curious foal that was hopeful to suckle, and Dim could feel her hot, heaving breath against his sheath.
Once, she had stabbed him in the stomach with her horn, and that had almost killed him.
Perhaps it would have been better had he died, had he bled out. He came close that day, his own ejaculation had almost been the end of him. When he blew his load, it startled her something awful, almost choking her, and she had gored him with her horn. For a time, it had been something they had laughed about, but now, now there was no laughter. There hadn’t been for a long time.
“You’re so moody, Dim.”
The words tickled his thin, delicate flesh and he squirmed. Much to his own revulsion, his hips trembled with need, betraying him, and he felt the first awakenings as the beast in the cave began to stir. The pony in the mirror scowled at him, his thin, almost paper-thin lips peeled back in a snarl more common to disgusting, degenerate primitives.
There was something about Darling that was alluring, something dangerous, and Dim, well versed in all manner of alchemy and magic, he began to suspect that something was up with the filly. Perhaps her alchemical laced salts did more than just calm her down, leaving her pliant, making her dull-witted and stupid.
“I’m ready, Dim,” Darling said, almost mumbling and her words were slurred. “My womb awaits your seed.” The filly began to giggle and her tail flagged high. “I’m ready to do my part, Dim. I’m ready!” More reckless laughter spilled from her open mouth and her hot breath caused Dim to slide out of his sheath.
“I wonder how many foals I might have before the cauterisation to make the bleeding stop leaves me barren.” If Darling was worried about this, she didn’t sound like it. Given how high she was, it was unlikely she was concerned about much of anything. “Come out and play, Little Dim!”
Had his mother slipped something in Darling’s salts? Dim contemplated this as an unreasonable desire began to overtake him. Something about her scent, her musk, the cloying fragrance lingered in his nostrils, overriding his inhibitions, not that he had much of those in the first place.
The smell did something to his mind, and Dim suspected that magic was at work. Vivid memories overtook his mind, it was almost as though he was hallucinating. He was two again, he was the little Emperor once more, and presents were being offered to him. So many gifts. But one gift had been special, one gift had pleased him more than any other.
Darling. She had a ribbon of royal purple around her neck that had been tied into a magnificent, elaborate bow. She had been given to him, offered to him, the ultimate toy to keep him company, to keep him occupied. Wrapped in such a pretty ribbon, she was his plaything. His two-year-old self adored her. He had been a good colt and he was kind to his toys, all of them.
Until the day he had torn her open and made her bleed.
He’d been rough with his toy ever since. If he kept this up, this rough play, she might be broken completely, perhaps dying while foaling, like her mother. Birth was a dangerous, desperate act for the Dark family, and many did not survive it. There was so much pressure to continue the family name, to keep the blood flowing in perpetuity.
It had all been planned from the start, all of this, and he had been manipulated every step of the way.
The sensation of Darling’s tongue lapping at his wide, flared tip caused all of his memories to collapse in a confusing jumble. With his boredom, his ennui, he had experienced a bit of difficulty in getting hard as of late, and right now was no exception. Oh, he was hard enough to do the deed, but it would take a while, it would be a slow, sluggish act where he would have to fantasise about all manner of things before he blew his load.
As a dull, throbbing ache settled into his balls, he wondered, had his mother slipped Darling some love potion in her salts?
The dirty little minx was now probing the opening on his flared head with the pointy tip of her tongue. She was a good toy, even now, after the new had worn off. After he had torn her ribbon asunder. This little fourteen-year-old filly was his future, she was the Dark in which he would plunge himself, bury himself, the means by which this whole depraved farce would continue.
Snarling, he was on her in seconds, a practiced move, and while he clamped his perfect, flat teeth on the nape of her neck, he speared her backside with a single violent thrust that left him balls deep in one go. He could feel her go tight around him, the contracting, constricting muscles trying to push him back out. So, pull out he did, leaving only the tip inside.
Darling’s muscles tightened, clenching, she tensed up and let out a serpentine hiss of pain. Dim knew how this game was played, and during her strongest spasm, when she was clenched up the tightest, he pressed his forelegs against her sides, secured his grip, bit down even harder on her neck, which caused her to squeal through her own clenched teeth. Then, he sank himself in balls-deep once more with a single, savage thrust. Biting, chewing on her neck, he pulled back on her tender skin, stopping short of drawing blood, and this made her nethers squeeze him so hard that it made him ache.
He was going to be bruised, once this was over, but so would she.
Liquid dripped down to the floor, some of it spilling from Darling’s cheeks and some of it from between her legs. The inside of her thin, graceful thighs was soaked from her desire. Since he knew that they were going to be here for a while, Dim swept her front legs out from beneath her, drove her front half down, and pressed her face onto the floor. Now, ass end up, he had a better angle for even deeper penetration.
“No,” Darling whined, “not like this… be loving… like when we were younger! Stop! You’re stretching me and it hurts! I’m still little!”
For whatever reason, the words infuriated him. Something about the smell left him feeling savage, violent, and unreasonable. Her whines and whimpers were satisfying—it felt like a part of him was waking up that had been slumbering for a while—and he saw no reason to give her what she wanted. No doubt, she was complicit in whatever conspiracy his mother was planning.
His thrusts now had a rhythmic regularity to them and he was in it for the long haul. This might take a while, and he intended to make each minute as torturous for her as it was pleasurable. Darling was already panting, her tongue lay upon the stone floor, and with each time his remedial ring slid over her exposed, winking clitoris, she let out a fillyish squeak.
After going through the motions for a while, he didn’t feel as though he was getting anywhere. He felt drugged, as though he had drank too much wine, and the sounds of angry, hostile copulation echoed in his ears. His cock burned with a strange fire, a compulsion, and then, somehow, he knew. Darling’s wet, grippy snatch was filled with some manner of poison. Dim could feel the magic on the edge of his senses.
His balls had a painful, terrible ache, a need to be emptied, but his own apathy was making it difficult, if not impossible to finish the deed. His brain suggested that Darling was fertile, that with each thrust, he was coating his cock in even more delirium-inducing poison. She was a trap, he had stuck his dick in a trap designed to drain him of his seed. If he blew his load, he might be trapped in this place forever, one more Dark in a whole long line of Darks. Fatherhood might engage him, draw him out of his funk, give him purpose, and maybe even end his ennui.
Fatherhood or rage.
Rage and rebellion bubbled from within, and with it came hatred. Darling’s mewling moans infuriated him and he felt a keen, intense dislike for her even as the compulsion to keep fucking her stupid grew stronger. Smacking against her, bruising her plush, adorable little mound no doubt, his balls now had their own heartbeat.
Dim experienced his first raging hate-boner, and it left him diamond hard.
His ennui washed away in a flood of sexual angst, contempt, and loathing. He pulled out of Darling’s tight, winking snatch with a wet slurp, re-angled his hips, pressed his wide, flared tip against her clenching, heaving asshole, and rammed himself in ring deep without so much as a warning.
Darling’s sudden scream was music to his ears and it somehow made his dick even harder. This hole was tighter, a bit drier, but no less wonderful. He was still slick with her juices, her poisoned, aphrodisiac infused juices, and he reveled in the sensation of his first time probing. Bucking his hips, he pulled out a bit, then rammed himself right back in, causing Darling to screech again.
A phlegmy utterance bubbled out from between her lips while she sobbed and Dim kept going, going deeper with each thrust, determined to go balls deep. After a particularly violent thrust, his balls slapped up against her scalding hot snatch, and he felt a gush of liquid come geysering out of her winking, clenching folds, soaking his scrotum in the sticky, clingy evidence of her pleasure.
He resented her for cumming, for getting something out of this. Even now, she continued to orgasm, and could feel it as he slid in and out of her stretched, inflamed asshole. She was sobbing, shivering, moaning, all while still making pleading, begging whimpers, the unmistakable sound that she wanted more.
This burning hatred pushed him over the edge, and after sinking himself entirely into her tight little ass, he blew what might have been the single largest load in his entire life. His hind legs cramped from the effort, making it difficult to stand, and it felt as though he was bucked right in the balls when the worst of the convulsions hit him. Never in his life had he experienced, no, endured a more explosive orgasm.
There was one final squirt from Darling against his balls, which ruined the moment. Incensed, he didn’t want her enjoying this, he did not want this to be a gratifying, satisfying experience for her. With a jerk of his hips, he pulled out of her and she screeched when his ring passed through her abused, battered anus.
Growling, he kicked her out from beneath him, then, using his magic, he shoved her to the door, her backside spilling cum across the floor while she was being pushed away. His dick still burned with strange poison, it stung in the worst way one could imagine, it was unpleasant and the pain kept him hard.
“Get out!” he bellowed as he threw her out his door, which he then slammed shut behind her. Now exposed to air, it felt as though his cock was about to suffer a spontaneous combustion. Gritting his teeth, he hurried away to his own private laboratory, hoping he could find an antidote to this dreadful poison.
Dim’s senses remained tampered with and he was almost certain that he was hallucinating to some degree. His skin was fevered, both hot and clammy, and he had a partial erection that wouldn’t go away. The altered state might have been enjoyable, had he not been so agitated. This was a bad trip, and something about it gave him the fear.
At the moment, he was sweating and stressing about his location, his chambers. All of it was dimensional space, pocket planes, and Dim had the disturbing notion that his rooms had not changed size at all, but that he had grown smaller to offer the illusion of larger space. The whole of the Dark Spire was in on the conspiracy too, and in reality, it really was just a tall, skinny obelisk, and the ponies on the inside, they were just very, very tiny.
All around him, he heard the sounds of dripping water, but could not find the source.
How long could stone be shaped, stretched, pulled like taffy to accommodate new interiour space? Size, like truth, was relative. Was he little more than a raindrop? A grain of sugar? Might he be nothing more than a speck of salt? By shrinking down enough, one could gain the grandiose delusion of immense size. What if he was just a teeny, tiny pony living in a disturbing, depraved dollhouse?
Dim wasn’t ready to face these truths and he had himself a bad case of the fear.
Days? Hours? Some measurement of time later, his mother appeared in his room, and he had trouble discerning if she was real. He had gone into his bathroom to check the shower for dripping water yet again, and when he had come out, there she was, standing there, looking bored, and waiting for him.
“You poisoned me.” These words were not a question, but a statement.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic, Dimmy.” His mother laughed, that obscene, screechy, shrill laugh. One eye blinked, and then, a moment later, so did the other. “Darling told me about your troubles. About how you had some difficulty getting hard and staying that way. It happens from time to time. I slipped her a little something that I knew would help you.”
Then, with another mismatched blink of her eyes, she advanced on Dim, moving with slow, seductive steps. “Dimmy, I’m very disappointed with you. You were rough with her, Dimmy, and while I don’t mind that so much, there is the matter that you spilled your seed into the wrong receptacle. You left her a bit torn up, Dimmy. Tsk, tsk, tsk!”
“Is she okay?” Dim found himself worried about Darling, perhaps even against his will. Whatever his mother had slipped him through Darling was messing with his mind.
“Dimmy, she was fertile… the potion worked… how could you savage her perfect little pink asshole like that?” Desire’s lips pursed into a protruding pout and she gazed at her son with one raised eyebrow. “You made her suffer a very confusing orgasm and who knows what you’ve done to her sexuality. Why, the damage might be permanent!”
His mother’s obscene cackling filled his ears and left him feeling infuriated. The emptiness inside, his ennui, it was receding, giving way to other things, like hatred. This mare and her grotesque, horrid laugh? Dim hated them both. Even worse, he too had suffered a confusing orgasm, was still aroused, and in the back of his mind, he had the most dreadful idea.
It was the worst of ideas, and if he acted upon the whims of his half-hard cock, he would forever be branded a motherfucker. You could fuck all kinds of things and nopony would ever bat an eye—nopony ever called you a dollfucker, for example—but you fucked just one mother… and ponies had profanity specific to this act. The idea that lingered in the back of his mind would not go away. Would that grating, obscene titter of hers be heard when he went balls deep in her asshole, just like he had done to Darling?
“Dimmy, sweetie, you look strange. Are you feeling faint?” Desire gave her son a curious look, and perhaps already knowing what was wrong with him, never once did her mismatched eyes travel downward.
The truth would be both terrifying and revealing.
Diamond hard once more, Dim, in his current addled state of mind, made a decision. “I’m leaving this place. I have had enough. Of everything. I hate everything about this place.”
This made his mother laugh even harder, and he hated her for it. His hatred now intermingled with his arousal, leaving him with an aching erection. Both of his fine, pointed ears twitched when he thought of one way he might silence his mother, but if he did that, he risked getting impaled on her horn, as had happened with Darling.
“Laugh all you want, but I’m done with this place.”
Even more screechy laughter followed, and then Desire’s laughter came to an abrupt, scary halt. Her eyes were red, bloodshot, filled with tiny crimson spiderwebs. “You demented, deluded fool. You don’t even realise who or what you are. You are a Dark! Do you think the world would accept you? Do you even know what would happen if you stepped outside?”
Curiousity was a dangerous, damnable thing. “Why wouldn’t they accept me?”
“Dimmy, my beloved, dim-witted son, Dire, my brother, he’s your father!”
The words struck him like a slap, they stung, but he wasn’t too surprised by this revelation. He stared at his mother, wondering if this was the worst she could do to shock him, and if it was, he wasn’t impressed. His mother was fighting back another laugh, he could see it welling up inside of her and threatening escape.
“And Darling… little Darling Dark, she’s your half-sister. That’s right, you just tore your sister’s asshole open. You’ve been fucking her for years now. That’s your ticket to stay in this place, this asylum!” Desire began to giggle, she couldn’t help it, and her lips quivered with perverse merriment.
“The outsiders, those filthy, moronic, disgusting primitives, they frown on sister fucking. There are laws, Dimmy. Even worse, you’ve been fucking her for alicorns know how long now, stretching out her sweet little snatch until it was an ideal fit for your perfect, unblemished cock. Do you know what they’ll do to you, Dimmy?”
Gritting his teeth together, Dim could sense the truth in his mother’s words.
“This is your prison, Dimmy. Get used to it. Make peace with it. Get with the program, Dim. Go and apologise to your sister and take advantage of that potion while it lasts. Go and fuck her, gently this time, and make whatever bullshit promises you need to to calm her down enough so she’s fit to fuck. Don’t make me resort to other… methods. My patience is wearing real fucking thin, beautiful son of mine.”
“Other methods?” Dim felt his mouth go dry.
“Oh, sweet baby Dimmy,” his mother said in a screechy, haughty voice. “Haven’t you been paying attention? We Darks go wandering off all the time in this alicorn-forsaken tower. Some of us never return… and those that do… they come back as very different ponies. Why do you suppose that is, you asshole wrecking little imbecile?” Desire’s mouth fell open and she brayed with laughter, a raucous cackle that sounded like the perfect example for insanity.
He was trapped. There was no two ways about it. His mother’s words, while full of madness, had a ring of truth to them. There was nowhere to go, no means of escape, there was only his choice of prisons, it seemed. Unable to bear even a second more of his mother’s sanity draining cackle, Dim chose Tartarus as his prison.
Using his talent, his own unique, special spell, he made all of the candles in the room radiate darkness. Desire let out a shriek of alarm and then a blood curdling yell. Dim, submerged in total darkness, felt a pang of happiness. The darkness was comforting for him, he was a part of it, his magic connected him to it in ways he did not understand, and now, when dealing with his mother, the velvet blackness gave him strength to keep going.
Reaching out with his telekinesis, he touched his mother, and she let out another blood curdling scream. Flexing his will, he got a good grip on her, a cruel, unrelenting hold with his telekinesis, and he could feel bones popping as he pressed in. How she screamed, how she yelled, and her cries of pain caused his throbbing erection to slap against his belly.
With as much force as he could muster, he flung her against the wall, and his ears heard a wet splat. Now, his heart pounded in his ears, and he could hear nothing else but the steady beat, the sound of the drums of war. It was like hearing kettledrums being pounded in the dark. It was a frantic sound and it prompted him to go, to run, for his hooves to pound the floor in time to the striking drumbeats.
At least she had stopped laughing.
The kettledrums grew even louder, signaling the need to escape. The sound reverberated through his skull, hammering his brain, and rattled his spine. Had he just committed matricide? Perhaps. He found that he didn’t want an answer to that question. In a frantic, manic panic, he began ransacking his own room in the dark, feeling his way about, knowing that he had no choices left.
How the light still burned and what great misfortune he suffered when exposed to Princess Celestia’s searing, punishing orb. The light burned the wicked, it did, and his mother had told him that the sun seared those who were unwelcomed, unwanted. The unfit. The unclean. His mother had been right, of course, just as she had been right about so many other things.
While the train pulled into the station, Dim remembered stepping into the sunlight, those first few perilous steps he had taken outside of his home on that fateful day when he fled from his wrongdoing. Emerging into the sunlight had been blinding as much as it was traumatising. At that point in his life, he had been indoors for years, with his last venturing out into the light happening when he was a small foal, when he was small, innocent, and the light had not burned him. Years spent indulging in evil, living amongst his family, it had left him vulnerable to Princess Celestia’s wrathful, vengeful, soul-searing rays. Blinded, panicked, he had been forced to ask for help to reach the shipyard.
That had been in the dead of winter and it was now spring. Now, he wore goggles with thick darkened glass to protect his eyes, which couldn’t bear more light than what a flickering candle offered. If exposed to the sun, he sunburned in what felt like mere moments. Just learning how to live in the unbearable light had been a trying experience in and of itself, with electric light being the worst, but trying to live in this crazy world full of degenerate, disgusting primitives…
Ugh.
It wasn’t all bad though, he had to admit. It was nice seeing the world, and he marvelled at just how large it was. After fleeing Equestria, he was free to do as he pleased. Following the example of the many books he had read as a foal, he changed his name, and then he did what the Darks did best, or so it was said. He hired himself out as a wizard.
Oh yes, it was true, ponies paid for magic. Earth ponies, pegasus ponies, even weaker, common unicorns would gladly pay exorbitant fees for enchantments, scryings, divinations, and magical solutions. These were all things that Dim could do, and do well. Sure, he didn’t have a talent for magic, not like some lucky ponies, but he had a thorough education and all of the raw ability offered to him by his noble, some might even say royal, blood. Birth records showed a direct tie to Pollux, the royal son of Princess Luna.
None of that mattered now, however, nor would it ever again.
Huffing, the train came to a rocking, swaying stop, and Dim looked out the window. He saw thatched roofs, stone buildings, and a quaint, quiet town, the sort of town he favoured. This town had a problem, or so he had been told when he was inquiring about work while he was staying in Liverypool.
Derbyshire had a wall around it, as did many of the small towns around here. This was a hostile land, full of roaming, pony-gobbling monsters. The Crowns of the Grittish Isles only offered protection in their major cities, with the small towns, hamlets, and villages left to fend for themselves. Adventuring bands were common and were said to be good for the economy.
This land had been good for him, and he had become quite wealthy in a short time.
Constable Knobby Russet Apple was one impressive specimen of an earth pony. Dim sized him up, studying him, peering at him through the thick, blackened glass lenses of his goggles. Of course, the law pony was studying him in return. The two of them stood in front of the train station eyeballing one another.
With the bare minimum of magical pizazz, Dim produced a business card for Constable Apple to have a look at. “I am Harsh Winter, wizard for hire. You sent for me, and I am here, as you have requested.” With a careless flick of magic, he tucked the business card into the band of Constable Apple’s hat.
“Oi, so I did, so I did.” The big stocky earth pony’s head moved up and down while he studied the unicorn before him. “I hope ye don’t mind me saying, but yer a strange one, ye are.”
“There is much about me that is strange,” Dim said, doing his best to be agreeable. “So, Constable, what sort of problem are you having?”
“Necromancy,” Constable Apple replied as he squinted. “Oi, I got me a problem with necromancy, so I do. So sent a telegram off to the bigwigs, so I did, and of course, they’re no help at all. Tell me I’m on me own, and if I can’t solve it, then it’s time for a new constable.”
“Fascinating.” Dim licked his lips, thirsty, and cursed how much he was sweating beneath his cloak. It was too warm for his tastes, but he had to stay covered, lest he sizzle in the sun. “Tell me more about this… necromancer.”
Constable Knobby Russet Apple took a step back and then gestured off to the north. “Off in the woods, to the north of here, there is a zebra. He’s some kind of evil enchanter. He’s been reviving dead livestock, and on occasion, he’ll take control of the townsfolk through some sort of weird magic. The other day he took control of a mare and made her do a lewd dance. It lasted for hours, until she dropped from exhaustion. I just know it’s him.”
“I see.” Dim’s voice was a reedy hiss, and he determined that he was dealing with superstitious, disgusting primitives, but he would do the job anyway, because it paid well. Disgusting primitives of the superstitious variety threw money at any problem that their thick heads could not understand, and catering to their whims was profitable work, if one could stomach it. “I can help you, Constable, but I’ll need half up front to pay for living expenses and the rest when I finish the job.”
“Well, that seems reasonable enough, Mister Winter.”
“Very good, you have engaged my services. My word is my bond. Now, I need to know where the apothecary is, or the alchemist's shop, and I shall need a place to stay. I need to get out of the sun as soon as possible, and I shall conduct my business at night.” Dim’s paper thin lips drew back in a charming, aristocratic smile.
“Oi, I can show ye around, I can. There’s a boarding house, near the center of town, away from the wall where it’s safe.” The constable seemed relieved and he had relaxed a bit “If ye don’t mind me asking, why are ye so covered?”
“The sunlight and I do not agree,” Dim replied, being honest. He had lied once already, with his name, and lying more than once was a gamble he had no interest in. For now, the truth was to his advantage, he wanted the constable to trust him. Trust was a big part of being paid well. It wasn’t like he needed the money, but it was the principle of the matter. Coin was to be collected.
“What a right shame that is, I say.” Constable Apple’s face split into a wide, hearty grin. “Oi, I can’t imagine life without the sun. When the sun goes down, folks in these parts head inside. The tavern empties out and ponies head home. There’s things in the dark, ye see. Like evil zebras and worse.”
“Yes… you are wise to fear the dark. All manner of misdeeds are hidden in the darkness. A multitude of terrible, irredeemable sins, each worse than the last. Sins compounded by sins.” Dim drew in a deep breath, held it for several long seconds, and then let it out as he said in a reedy, wavering voice, “Yet for some of us, the darkness is our birthright. Are we to be judged by what we inherit? Is not the punishment of being kept from the sun enough?”
“I don’t follow,” Constable Apple said, shaking his head.
“No, I suppose you don’t.” Dim found he liked Constable Apple, and he wasn’t so bad for being a disgusting primitive. The earth pony seemed honest, forthright, and didn’t appear to be afraid of what he saw. Some ponies might have pretended to follow along, to understand, but the constable had confessed his ignorance. “You are a good and honest pony, Constable Apple. Remain in the light, lest the darkness devour your mind, body, and spirit. There are awful things in the darkness… most… unpleasant… things.” Dim’s final word was a sibilant, shivering hiss that startled the earth pony constable.
“Well, I’m an Apple…” The constable appeared shaken, bothered by the words that had been spoken. “H-h-honest Apple,” he stammered while blinking his eyes. After taking a moment to recover, the constable gave himself a shake, and then shuddered while looking at the cloaked unicorn. “Right then, I’ll show ye around and leave ye to your business, Mister Winter.”
“Marvellous.”
The alchemist’s shop had a powerful medicinal stink that made Dim’s mouth and eyes water. It was a small shop, but appeared to be well stocked with everything required by country bumpkins. There were potions, poultices, and powders for everything. Sore backs, achy frogs, constipation, loose bowels, and saggy, uncooperative, flaccid penises. The proprietor of the shop was quite a surprise, and wasn’t the earth pony that Dim had expected.
A griffoness sat behind the counter and her claws were stained green from her work. She appeared aged before her time—hardship had not been kind to her—and one wing was withered, useless against her side. Around her withered wing, her fur was patchy, the skin wavy, rippled, and lumpy. Based on what he saw, knowing what he knew, Dim suspected that she had been burned by acid. An alchemist’s work was hazardous, and he knew from his own experiences that things could go wrong.
“Hallo, mine name is Grunhilda,” she said in a thick, gutteral accent. “You need something, ja?” She rested her left talons on the counter and began drumming her claws against the wood.
Dim’s narrow body moved between the racks and shelves without effort, with no danger of bumping up against anything. His cloak snagged nothing, and his hooves made very little sound against the well-swept wooden floorboards. When he reached the counter, he studied the griffoness, who sat in a well cushioned, high backed chair.
“My name is Harsh Winters, and I am in need of medicine.” He could smell the griffon, she was bitter as well as sweet, she smelled like her work, her livelihood, and there was a hint of feminine excitement. Dim knew why, he had that effect on females. He theorised it was because he was covered, and therefore fit the archetype of a tall, dark, mysterious stranger.
The griffoness’ beak opened and her whole body shook with laughter. “Well, you came to the right place, ja?” Reaching up with her right talons, she smoothed out the rumpled feathers of her neck and looked up at the tall, looming figure looking down at her. “What can I get for you?”
Dim felt a little nervous, his list of needs was complicated and there were many times these backwater shops lacked what he needed. Behind the thick glass of his goggles, his mismatched eyes narrowed. “I need two pounds of hashish, a week’s supply of dried peyote buttons, some vials of lysergic acid diethylamide, two bricks of coca-laced salts, and two bricks of opium laced salts.”
“Oh my…” The griffoness drew out the words and her eyes glittered. “You must suffer from chronic pain, inflammation, fever, disturbed sleep, lethargy, malaise, and the occasional bouts of insomnia.”
“Headaches too,” Dim added.
“Poor dear.” The griffoness’ words were sincere and her concern was genuine. “Everything you need, I have. No tabs. No credit. I take payment up front and mine prices are reasonable even though I am the only shop in town.”
Saying nothing, Dim produced a sterling bar and plunked it down on the counter, which made the griffoness’ eyes go wide. Like any griffon, she was distracted by shinies, and Dim knew that he was dealing with a fellow addict. He needed his medicines, and she needed hard currency. Her addiction was every bit as consuming as his own and he could see her claws shaking, twitching, she was consumed with the need to snatch up the sterling bar and maybe bite it with her beak to see if it was real.
But she didn’t, no. She played it cool, just as he was playing it cool, and in that moment, they understood one another. Dim peered into her vivid green eyes and wondered how a lone griffoness satisfied herself in a town full of ponies. She was, of course, a disgusting primitive, but she was a merchant-class disgusting primitive and he found her intriguing. His curiousity had been piqued by her unique form.
“If you keep no record of our sale, the remainder of the sterling bar payment is yours,” Dim said to her in his low, reedy, wavering voice. “Should anypony come around asking for one such as me, sniffing after my habits—”
“You were never here, ja?” Grunhilda’s eyes glittered with avian intelligence.
“Ja.” Dim breathed the word, allowing it to spill from his lips as a soft-spoken utterance.
“I do not betray the habits of mine clients,” the griffoness said, almost whispering. “That goes against mine practices. Mine customers pay me and I offer privacy. After all, the knowledge of whose schnitzengruben is over-boiled and limp would be quite embarrassing should it leak to the community. If that happened, nopony would come and buy from me again.”
“Then we understand one another, Fräulein.”
This made the griffoness titter. “Oh, I have not been such for years. You are kind and rather charming, mysterious one.” She rose from her chair, her feathers fluffed, and her long, tufted tail swayed from side to side. “Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and collect the things you need.” Her talons moved with blinding speed, she snatched up the sterling bar, and then she tucked it into a pocket on her stained apron.
“Thank you,” Dim said, bringing his best, his most charming, his most aristocratic manner to bear. “Perhaps, before I leave this place, I shall resupply…”
The dark, sacred night brought relief from the harsh, unforgiving light of day. Dim had slept a little, his dreams troubled, he had dreamed of Darling. His rented room was adequate for paupers and maybe unlikeable scullery maids. Somehow, he made do in these deplorable conditions. His pale brown clay hash pipe hung from his lips, and curls of smoke rose from his nostrils while he gazed out of his narrow window.
Soon, he would go into the night and begin sorting out the mysterious zebra problem.
His tongue was still bitter from the peyote button, but that was a small price to pay for the relief it brought him and his achy joints, not to mention what it did for his magic. His heightened senses began to awaken, colours seemed far more vivid now in the faint light offered by the candle on the table, and he could feel his connection to magic growing stronger, weaving, intermingling. With the peyote he could tap into the mystic, primal energies of these backwater isles, with their strange, curious magic held down deep in the chalk and the salt. This wasn’t like Equestrian magic, no, this had a different feel to it, it was harder to channel.
Oh, there was regular magic here as well, the common magic found everywhere, but Dim was far more intrigued by the wellsprings of magic that could be found down in the chalk and the salt. His blood warmed as he inhaled, filling his lungs with hashish smoke. The shaking was gone now, his body had calmed and was still once more.
There were henges here in places where the ley lines intersected, focal points for magic. Dim had visited several and had tried many different altered states to connect to them. Once he was attuned, once he had found the right frequency, he began the dangerous work of drawing from these ancient wells of magic, a hazardous, but necessary practice.
This was a harsh, unforgiving land, every bit as brutal as the Equestrian wilderness that he had read stories about. Survival here was difficult, the land was dangerous, and stepping outside of civilisation was taking your life into your own hooves. But, this was a good land, an ideal land, it was a land where he could put all of his years of study, all of his years of theory, he would put all of what he had learned into practice and refine his art.
Harsh Winter, wizard for hire, he had already gained quite a reputation as a powerful, dangerous wizard. Dangerous, destructive magics were his speciality, but also common, more mundane tasks. Swimmy headed, his mind now down in the chalk, he could feel the blood pumping through every vessel that spiderwebbed through his muscles, he could feel sweat beading on every pore that existed on his body, and he was aware of every single hair follicle sprouting from his skin.
It was getting easier and his body was no longer outright rejecting the strange magic.
Closing his eyes, he reached out, lifted the paper from the nearby table, and began to read, a curious trick indeed. His fine, sensitive telekinesis allowed him to ‘feel’ the ink in contrast to the paper, which meant that he could read in total, complete, consuming darkness. His foalhood had been spent consuming books in this manner; he had become so good at it that he didn’t need to feel out one letter at a time, but with a touch of his telekinesis, he could read entire pages by touch alone, allowing him to digest a tremendous amount of knowledge in mere moments.
After a bit of relaxing reading, it would be time to begin his work.
Naked save for some saddlebags, Dim slipped through the night, a pale shadow beneath the moon and stars. A low, creeping mist blanketed the ground, it seemed to blow in from the moorlands to the east, and it clung to the roots of the trees in the forest north of Derbyshire. The moors were dangerous, there were wolves there, dangerous ones, and all manner of other, more horrible creatures, some of them supernatural. Dim could hear the howling in the distance, but he didn’t feel threatened by it in the slightest.
The wolves would learn to keep their distance or the wolves would die.
Danger was here, but not from predators. These woods posed a mild danger to Dim. Here, he could be scratched, cut, here he could receive injury. Bleeding was a real problem, even a tiny scratch might bleed for hours. He had to be mindful of pokey sticks, protruding branches, brambles, thorns, and anything that might snag his perfect, beautiful, flawless skin. He wanted no corn marks on his velvet hide and so he had to be oh so careful as he explored the region.
As he passed into an area where the trees thinned out a bit, Dim heard the flapping of wings and became somewhat alarmed. This was expected, he was prepared, but even after so many encounters, the sound, the rustle of feathers still caused him some worry. He had attracted the attention of a flock of strix, vampire birds that drank blood and sucked magic from the unwary.
It was one of the many reasons why the disgusting primitives of these isles did not go out into the dark. Strix, very much like himself, had a severe reaction to sunlight and as a species, they had allergy to garlic. A well constructed home could keep them out, and ropes of garlic hung from the rafters could keep them from burrowing through the thatch.
Soon, they would begin swooping, beaks open, and would begin leaching his magic away. Once weakened, he would be brought down and they would begin feeding on him, piercing him with their beaks, and drinking his warm, living, magic-infused blood. Strix did not drink from common animals, like cows, chickens, or sheep, no, they needed magical blood to continue to survive.
Like the wolves of the moors, some of which were quite magical.
“Disgusting, filthy, horrible little blood suckers,” Dim whispered, hissing his words through his parchment-thin lips. Tilting his head, he took aim, squinting a bit to focus in the available light from the moon and stars, then fired. His aim was true and the swooping strix exploded into meaty bits, chunks of innards, and greasy, diseased-looking feathers. “Unclean, despicable vermin! How dare you sully my breathable air with your foul, feculent miasmas!”
Turning his head about, he fired several more times, using his telekinesis to apply hundreds of pounds of force to a focused area no larger than a pea. It was like killing flies with a sledgehammer, but, killing flies with a sledgehammer was satisfying. Overkill was a perfectly acceptable practice on these alicorn-forsaken isles.
Feathers floated down like snowflakes, drifting about in lazy spirals, while it rained chunks of meat and viscera. There was quite a light show as Dim did his dirty business. His heterochromia, his mismatched eyes, had matching streams of magic to match. Two distinct, differing streams of magic could be seen shooting from his horn, one pale pink, the other a muted shade of amber. It was a peculiar effect unique to the Dark family, and one of the many things that made them special.
Dim was dazzled a bit by his own light show, but that was okay. The threat had been neutralised, dealt with, and was a threat no longer. The battle left him a little bit shaky, jittery, and left a hollow ache in his stomach. Having no desire to deal with fatigue, Dim reached into his saddlebags, opened an ornate container, pulled out a small, white cube, closed the container, and lifted the cube out of his saddlebags.
With a flick of magic, he popped it in his mouth, and when the coca-laced salts hit his tongue, the effect was electric. The insides of his cheeks tingled, as did his gums, and his teeth were filled with a pleasant warmth that lasted until his mouth, his muzzle, went numb. All traces of fatigue vanished and his muscles spasmed with newfound energy. Heart racing, Dim’s pupils began doing a crazy dance, expanding and contracting with wild, unpredictable fluctuations while the salt cube melted beneath his tongue.
The trees slid in and out of focus and everything seemed to take on an ominous, dire aspect. Dim could feel the bottom of his frogs vibrating, like stretched taut drum skins being struck, and the flesh of his sheath contracted tight around his tucked-away cock. Force of will came into play, control, presence of mind. Dim made the trees around him come back into focus while his horn spurted out showers of sparks. The ability to bend reality was a wonderful thing.
“Fuck me, I think I have the fear,” Dim muttered when he encountered the zombie chicken. The undead poultry had one milky, ruined eye focused upon him and Dim was curious about what sort of eggs a chicken like this might lay. “Who in their right mind raises a chicken from the dead? Sick, depraved, degenerate, disgusting primitives, that’s who!”
“Buc-buc-blegargh,” the undead chicken groaned.
One eye blinked, then the other a fraction of a second later, and Dim stared down at the half-rotten hen. “You seem real enough. How about you tell me where your master is hiding, you barnyard abomination?”
Dim didn’t expect an answer and even if the chicken somehow replied, only a fool would trust whatever the zombie fowl had to say. The colt had prepared for this, he had come ready, on the odd chance that something truly awful was going on out here. The constable was right, somepony was up to no good out this way.
With his magic, he reached into his saddlebags and pulled a small glass vial, a vial that just so happened to be the lysergic acid diethylamide he had purchased earlier this day. Its rotten comb bobbed atop its head as the zombie chicken strutted about, darting back and forth, to and fro. The vial was stoppered with an eyedropper, which Dim pulled out, and squeezing the bulb, he filled said eyedropper with the clear liquid inside of the vial.
“Look what you made me do!” he shouted at the chicken in an accusing tone, and then he allowed several drops of liquid lysergic acid diethylamide to drip into one eye, then the other. “Argh, it burns and now I have the crazy-eyes! Damn you, this is your fault! Look what you made me do!” Muttering in an incoherent manner, he stoppered up the vial, then put it away in his saddlebags.
The world around him changed, shifted, his perceptions now further altered. His eyes had been forced open, to see the unseen. A silver cord extended from the chicken, a glowing, ghostly, almost-but-not-quite incorporeal string that vanished into the trees ahead, and a little to his left. The chicken was soulless, empty, and the animation came from elsewhere. At the end of the astral tether would be the chicken’s master.
“The burning lets you know it’s working!” Dim howled while his vision struggled to filter all of the available realities coming into focus.
Pausing, he marvelled at the trees, some of which had a silvery astral sheen to them. These were old trees that extended part-way into the astral plane, just like some of the henges did around here. These were places where his magic would be strongest, the raw, primal magic of these alicorn-accursed isles. Stumbling about, he began to follow the silver cord, determined to find whomever was responsible for this act.
This was the most dangerous kind of magic there was, the voluntary embrace of madness for power. Dim’s own astral flames were black, he gave off no light, there was no silver hue to him, which he took as evidence of his own evil. Dim was of the belief that one’s own astral projection was a reflection of one’s soul, a mirroring, so what else could it mean if his body was wreathed in black, flickering, writhing flames in this state?
All around him, the shadows of the night danced with the silver astral fires, dazzling his eyes and delighting his senses. The world was beautiful at times like these, beautiful and perfect. Moonbeams became awe-inspiring silvery beams of brilliance that felt cool and comforting on Dim’s skin. At least the moon still loved him, still welcomed him, and why wouldn’t it?
The moon understood. Princess Luna understood. Princess Luna would have to understand. Blinking his odd, mis-timed blink, Dim peered ahead, his mind on Princess Luna. She was the progenitor of this family, of the dark, and of the Darks. She was… his mother…. yes, she was his mother. The mother of all darkness. The mother of the Darks. She protected, she understood, and maybe, just maybe, there was still hope for him.
After all, it stood to reason, Princess Luna had to be the place where all of the dark retreated when the light came. The dark had to go somewhere, and by technicality, Princess Luna was a somewhere. Yes, the Princess of the Night was a location. That made sense to Dim and his reasoning was sound, his logic unassailable. Princess Luna was the place where the darkness retreated when the light became unbearable. All of the dark, ugly ducklings would find solace in the dark, shadowy places beneath her downy, perfect wings.
Darling Dark was singing again and Dim Dark could hear her siren song as he made his way through the trees. His family had distinctive voices, a nasal sound due to fine, chiseled muzzles, and while Darling was no opera singer, he had always taken comfort in her crooning. But now was not the time for singing, because he was trying to sneak up on a zebra that was using bad hoodoo to make marionettes of dead livestock.
And chickens.
Around him, the trees writhed, wiggled, and danced to the sound of Darling’s voice, swaying back and forth, causing the low-hanging mist to swirl around their roots. From the mist rose pookas, spectral ponies that coalesced in and out of existence around Dim. Almost all of them looked like Darling, but a few looked like Desire.
Had he killed her?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know and that was bad.
Not knowing was the worst.
With the force of his will, he had crushed his mother’s body, he had popped and snapped her fragile, bird-like bones, and then he had left her. He was almost certain that she was dead, but his mother had powerful magic. She had many contingencies, no doubt, to protect herself from an untimely death. At least, he wanted to believe that. It was easier to believe that, it was easier to believe in his mother’s supposed invulnerability than it was to think that she might have died.
No, his mother was no fool, she was power equinified. Desire knew how to stretch the natural boundaries, how to push the body from the natural to the supernatural, and she had done it with him. It wasn’t enough to merely birth a foal in this family, no… creation continued to happen outside of the womb. For the first four years of his life, he had suckled at his mother’s teats while she consumed all manner of elixirs, potions, alchemical concoctions, focusing agents, and magic enhancing reagents, all of which filtered through her body, through her teats, and was carried by mother’s milk into his own fragile flesh, altering him forever.
With his mother’s tutelage, Darling would have done the same thing, once she had foaled, and the cycle would have continued. The Darks were just as much a product of alchemy as they were of incest and magic. Yes, Dim had learned so much about incest since leaving the Dark Spire, and with each discovery, each understanding, his horror bloomed anew, a garden of dark and terrible delights.
The pookas mocked him, taunted him, many of them now wearing his mother’s face. They started young, beautiful, a desireable Dark Desire, but before his eyes they withered, growing old, wrinkled, becoming crones, wretched, abominable hags that shriveled into magnificent states of hideousness. Shrill mocking laughter could be heard with Darling’s singing now, and the pookas danced around his legs, along his belly, teasing and tickling his groin.
His mother had shaped his penis, as was the practice in the Dark family. Now, as the many ghosts of his mother swirled around him, he had a hazy recollection of how he had been shaped. Special bindings that he slept in had stretched him, and during his waking hours, tight, constricting ribbons had been bound around his member, binding him, shaping him, moulding him, until such a time he conformed to the family ideal. Now, he had a magnificent long, thin cock, with a wide flared head. His intimidating organ was now shaped like a martini glass, or perhaps a coupe cocktail glass, with a thin, delicate stem and broad, graceful, almost bowl-shaped flared head.
Dark perfection was a ridiculous standard.
Surrounded by ghosts, listening to the ghosts of his half-sister sing, harmonising with one another, Dim’s pulsating erection slapped against his belly while he followed the silver cord to its source. The primal magic from down in the chalk, down in the salt, it sang inside of his brain, making his thaumaturgically infused neurons thrum with the same frequency of the earth.
The trees parted, giving way to a somewhat marshy clearing, some low land found near a ridge that could be seen in the distance. In the middle of the marshy clearing, standing in the muddy, swampy earth was a herd of zombie cows. Dim stared at them for a time, his pupils fluctuating, and he could see the silvery astral cords extending in the direction of the ridge.
Bad juju existed here, bad vibes. Some of the trees here had weird, flickering auras, and there were wisps of diseased, sickly yellow light protruding from the astral spectrum. The magic in this area had gone sour, like milk left in the sun. Drinking of it, partaking of it was folly, but sup he did, Dim drank deep of the ruint, befouled magic, and he drew strength from it.
“Grains,” one of the zombie cows groaned as it shuffled about in the muck.
“Are you fucking real?” Dim asked as he approached, his hooves squelching in the mud.
The cows looked at him with rotten, milky eyes. Slimy snot dribbled down from their cavernous nostrils, and Dim couldn’t help but think of yawning, excited, expectant, dripping vulvas that opened themselves up like beautiful roses, hoping to be graced by the sun. At least, that is what he assumed roses did, he couldn’t imagine anything actually wanting to be kissed by the sun.
His heart was beating in his dock and he could feel an army of spiders crawling just beneath his skin. Unknowable creepy-crawlies were slithering in and out of his cockhole, causing his groin muscles to quiver and spasm while he half-remembered-half-experienced the sensation of Darling’s tongue trying to coax him into a state of aroused excitement.
“Grains,” a cow murmured while a long, flat ribbon-like worm slithered out of one ear, down its face, and then up into one contorting nostril to vanish from view.
“Unsettling,” Dim remarked in a reedy whisper and then he thought about undead cow tipping. Why, the bloated, gas-filled nightmarish livestock might explode, shooting out worms and maggots like so much confetti. These were party bombs, and Dim wasn’t ready to party, not at all.
“Motherfucker,” one of the cows said in an accusing voice.
Something in Dim’s system took offense to these undead ungulates and his senses began to betray him. He began to feel what he saw, and what he saw were rotten zombie cows. This made his vision glaze over, everything blurred, it was as though he was looking at the world through the thin sheen of a slime bubble. Even worse, he began tasting what he smelled, and his mouth was filled with an putrescent, metallic taste of evil-infused beef that caused electric tingles beneath his tongue. As his salivary glands squirted a befouled liquid into his mouth, his hearing smeared over into his magic sense, further confusing him. All six of his senses had betrayed him, and he was filled with self-loathing.
A lesser pony might have gone mad in this state, or perhaps even killed themselves, but not Dim. He held on, enduring the bad trip in a way that only he could, all while the spectral forms of his half-sister continued to sing in harmony and an army of apparitional shades in the form of his mother fawned over his perfect, flawless, Dark-endowed penis.
“I am a great many things,” Dim said, his voice reedy, wavering, his legs unsteady. “I am a great many things, but I am no motherfucker. Heh-hah-heh-hah… hoo hoo hoo hee.” Everything around him was surrounded by dark, ominous rainbows that glimmered, shimmered, and glammered, revealing a dark spectrum that few could see.
All of the strings converged into a vaginal cleft in the ridge ahead. Dim could see it, how it quivered in the moonlight, winking at him, inviting him inside. Yes, the crack invited him in, it was time to return from whence he came, from a dark and terrible womb. The crickets and frogs in the marsh sounded like dire violins, a whole parlous string section sent to accompany him, orchestrating his descent into madness.
“I have become the rhinoceros of modest inconvenience,” Dim said, spitting out the words through numb lips. He began casting spells, preparing, and with each act of magical effort, some of the pollutants in his blood were burned away, clearing his mind and offering a marginal increase in clarity. “I shall fuck the darkness with my horn, yes indeedy.”
With an exaggerated stiff-legged gait, he traipsed off to the dark cleft of rock, ready to do battle with evil.
The cave had the yellow glow of firelight ahead, and that would not do. No, the light would be unwelcome for what came next. Reaching far ahead with his senses while keeping his frail, fragile body far, far away from danger, Dim had a look around and sized up his prey. His clueless, hopeless, weak-minded prey.
In the back of the cave, in a raised section, up out of the muck, the zebra had made his lair. In the middle was a crude wooden table and on the table was a half-completed book. The book was bound in leather, and its pages parchment made from the skins of animals. The ink was made from lampblack and blood, mixed with various alchemical reagents. The wooden table glistened with strange moisture, possibly semen, or maybe something else just as unpleasant.
Somepony sought to broker a deal with the dark, and Dim pitied them.
The zebra was a deluded, half-witted fool, and nothing more. Waxen effigies stood on twisted wooden stands in the cavern, and from these well-detailed waxen effigies, silver strings stretched out, extending to the juju zombies outside. Not true zombies, but juju zombies, bodies animated through will and perverse magic. It barely counted as necromancy. It was a futile, puerile effort to be dark and edgy.
So, the zebra wanted an edge-ucation? Dim was feeling charitable this night. It was time to call school into session, and it began by turning off the lights. With his mind, Dim touched the torches and candles within the cave; the warm, yellow light they offered was extinguished, and they emitted darkness instead. Of course, the zebra began screaming, and Dim teleported, focusing on the sound.
He poofed into existence right beside the zebra and went to work paralysing his prey, like some spider schoolmarm holding class in her web. The teleportation had cleared his mind and blood of some of the substances he had ingested, leaving him with clearer, more focused thoughts. The darkness was omnipresent all around him, but in his eye there was a faint suggestion of colour—a grey—that made him happy.
“Good evening, zebra,” Dim said in his reedy, aristocratic voice. “You might have noticed that everything has gone dark, and you can’t move.” He blinked and felt his eyelashes brush against one another for a moment. There was a delightful, teasing sensation as they pulled apart, sliding against one another, and his eyes opened.
“Now, some ponies might be lying to you right now, talking about the powerful paralysis spell that they have cast. I am no such liar… I have done more with less… what you are experiencing in a simple trick of biology. Yes… I have shorted out various nerve centers in your body, leaving you rigid and unable to move. Magical minimalism is something my mother and I disagreed upon, you see. While I am capable of powerful magic, it is tiring. The paralysis you are experiencing requires minimal effort on my part, just a bit of focused electrical application and a knowledge of biology.”
The zebra whimpered, his mouth too paralysed to speak.
“Silence, zebra, your instructor is talking.” Dim cleared his throat, and indeed, his head was clearing up a bit. But for the zebra, things were going to get interesting. Reaching into his saddlebag, he pulled out the small glass vial full of lysergic acid diethylamide, drew out the dropper, and dribbled a tiny bit into the zebra’s ear. “You might feel a slight sensation of madness,” Dim warned as he re-stoppered the vial and put it away in his saddlebags. “You strike me as being weak-willed. This will not go well for you, my student.”
Breathing in and out, Dim prepared for the lesson. This silly, foolish zebra needed to be scared back into the light so that he might never stray again. The zebra’s breathing quickened, and Dim’s senses told him that the curious liquid poured down the ear was starting to take hold.
“You seek to draw power from the darkness…” Dim’s words were slow, drawn out, and in his own ears, it sounded as though a record was playing at half speed. “You tamper with forces you do not understand, and even worse, you do so with the lights burning. In true darkness, you lack the means to even read the book you are crafting. I know what madness you scribble, I can sense every inane word, even now. I saw them in the darkness that you experienced.”
There was a fearful gurgle from the zebra.
“You have made the foolish assumption that in the dark, power awaits those who seek it,” Dim continued, his voice stretched out like taffy as he spoke. “It is a lure, a trap, the darkness devours and consumes those not welcome in it.” As the lysergic acid diethylamide began to work on the zebra’s mind, breaking down his will, Dim pushed his way in, forcing himself inside of the zebra’s headspace.
“You have tried to bargain with the darkness while keeping the lights on to protect yourself from it. Me… I was born in darkness. It is my birthright, my inheritance, my namesake. I grew up in darkness and was shaped to conform to an ideal standard of those who dwell in the dark. Now, my student, I shall show you a great many terrible things. Are you prepared? Does it matter?”
Dim laughed, a terrible sound that echoed in the inky blackness, and he began to project himself into the mind of the now hallucinating zebra. He stood beside the striped fellow, both pitying him and loathing him. Leaning his head down a bit, breathing into the zebra’s ear, he set his magic into motion.
“I was born in utter darkness, as is the custom of my family. Ponies are afraid of the dark, and for good reason. We bear instincts that drive us into the light. When pushed from one darkness to another, going from my mother’s womb to the darkened room, I cried, as all newborns do. I was born, I cried, and I was not comforted. You see, I was left in that dark room.
“Left in a pitch black nursery, I cried and cried and cried. No comfort was offered, no affection, no nothing. I was allowed to suckle for sustenance, but only in a careful, controlled way, through a means that offered no comfort, no warmth from my mother. I existed this way for weeks, the first few weeks of my life in fact. This continued until instinct was extinguished, crushed from me, removed from me, allowing me to be rid of this glaring, offensive weakness.
“It was only then, after I ceased my pathetic, wretched mewling that my mother began to lavish her affection on me. It was only after I accepted my inheritance, my birthright, that my mother called me her son, and then, from that point on, I was with her constantly. When at last a single candle was lit, I bawled, begging a return to darkness. After finding comfort in the dark, the light was a source of discomfort.”
In a dream-like state, connected to the zebra’s mind, Dim pushed the vivid mental imagery of a foal left in a pitch black nursery, left to screech, to scream, to bawl into a state of exhaustion and collapse. The zebra pushed back, of course he did, but Dim made the imagery settle in. Leaning closer, his lips brushed up against the soft velvet of the zebra’s ear.
“This is what you seek to make deals with,” Dim whispered, pouring his words directly into the zebra’s mind. The stench of urine filled the air, followed by the feculent aroma of dropped feces. He could feel the zebra’s heart beating through their shared connection, a funky, syncopated, staccato rhythm.
“It was years before I saw the sunshine for the first time—I pissed myself when I ventured out and was exposed to it. I was ridiculed and shamed for my reaction, the taunts and jeers were merciless, my family showed no kindness and their words cut me to the bone. I saw the sun a few more times, but like everypony else in my family, I retreated back into the darkness, and for years, I remained where I was welcomed.
“I did not see the sun again until over a decade later, when I fled my home, but by then, then, it was too late. The sun knew that I was a wicked, blasphemous creature, it blinded me, it burned me, it punished me for my very existence. Is this what you want, little zebra?” Dim now projected the pain, panic, and torment of his first few steps out into the light on that fateful day. He pushed it in with a brutal, careless thrust, very much in the same way he had violated his half-sister’s dainty, delightful little asshole.
Somehow, the zebra pushed past his paralysis enough to scream, a gibbering wail of terror. Dim felt bad for the zebra, he did, a tiny flickering flame of pity burned within his heart. Stepping out into the light had been agonising, and no creature should ever have to endure such an awful fate. Closing his eyes, Dim continued to pour his pain, his torment, directly into the zebra’s mind, wiring new connections and in mere moments, he created the associations that it might take years of conditioning to manufacture through natural methods.
Never again would the zebra be able to bear the darkness and he would remain in the light, for fear of what the dark might do. Opening his eyes, Dim saw the beloved faint shade of grey that existed in total darkness, his happy place, the place where he had been conditioned to be happy, to experience joy, to find solace and comfort. Conditioning was a powerful, dreadful thing, and Dim was only now beginning to understand what had been done with him, to him.
“We each have our place in the world, little zebra,” Dim said, whispering soothing words into the spooked zebra’s ear. “I belong in the darkness and you… you belong in the light. This is the natural order of things. You should not go where you cannot see, you should not go where one is blind. So as the light blinds me, the darkness blinds you. These are the defined boundaries of the natural order.”
Relaxing his magic, a tiny hint of light appeared in the cave and Dim let go of the zebra, who collapsed to the floor, landing in his own filth. The zebra bawled and sobbed while covering his face, trying to shield himself from Dim, who stood over him. With a turn of his head, Dim focused on the book, which had its own flaming astral presence.
Much wickedness had been poured into the book, it was a vessel of evil. The words, the writings, they held ideas, and ideas were dangerous things indeed. With ideas, certain things gained conception, and with foul magic, these could contaminate the mind. The letters, inked in blood, were a poison that was poured through the eyes and into the mind. The book bore traces of the zebra’s necromentia and had the will to inflict it upon others.
The book was aware enough to try and tempt Dim, appealing to him to flip through its pages, to read with his physical eyes what was available, the mad, somewhat incoherent scrawlings of the necrophile zebra. It would need to be burned, and Dim would provide the service free of charge to the constable.
“One thing I do not understand, little zebra,” Dim said while the collapsed zebra wailed and gibbered. “The creation of the juju zombies… the cows I can understand, but how is your cock small enough to fuck a chicken?” The confused, disgusted unicorn shook his head. “You must fill them with semen to give them life, yes? I do not understand and you are in no condition to explain it to me. Such a pity.”
Reaching out with his mind, he began to destroy the astral connections one by one, severing the silver cords that went from waxen effigy to reanimated tissue. This was base necromancy, the most vile, visceral, disgusting kind, the sexual necromantic arts. The act of divination by communing with dead bodies, filling them with life, with essence, with seed, and then inviting unclean spirits to take up residence in the defiled body with the hopes that said unclean spirits might share their secrets.
It was time for darkness once more. Dim extinguished the torches, lanterns, and candles, plunging the cavern into the darkness, and the zebra howled in abstract terror. Once he was certain that all fires were extinguished, he began to conjure hydrogen, pulling it from all around him, filling the room with a high concentration if it. The book would burn, and so would the waxen effigies, now that the connections had been severed. All wickedness would be purged, burned away once he ignited the ever-increasing concentration of hydrogen gas.
“Come little zebra, let me take you back to light and civilisation, the lesson is done.” Having said his final words, Dim winked away, vanishing from one spot only to reappear in another, in this case a spot far outside of the cave, a safe space. Reaching out with his mind, he touched the cloud of hydrogen and set it ablaze, engulfing the cave in intense flames and consuming the dreadful book, killing an infant evil not yet grown to achieve its iniquitous, diabolic final form.
He could not help but think that, perhaps, somepony should have done the same for him.
The long hike back to Derbyshire had been uneventful, but exhausting. Dim was the aristocratic sort and his body was ill-suited for long distance hikes—or just physical activity in general. Passing through the gates, the two guards posted gave him curious looks. Were they even guards? They didn’t have armor and there was nothing threatening about them. Watchponies? Gatekeepers?
It would be dawn soon, and more than anything else, he wanted to retreat to his shabby rented room in the boarding house. He was in dire need of hashish and rest, not to mention he was in considerable pain. The walk had not been kind to his joints and he knew that he would need some of the opium laced salts before bed.
He carried the nameless zebra with him, held aloft in a multi-hued bubble of magic of pale pink and muted amber. Dim had dimmed the light of his magic, but had not darkened it completely for fear of how ponies might react if they saw what they believed to be dark magic. It was a lesson he had already learned once, a lesson that required a name change and some time spent in hiding. The disgusting primitives were a dull-witted and superstitious lot for certain.
In the distance, Dim heard a train, no doubt finishing up some late night run. The lights were on at the train station, which was built into the wall that surrounded the town, with the train stopping outside the town. In the town itself, lights were starting to come on, as no doubt the bakers and the service ponies of the morning were starting to prepare for their day.
Soon, the lights would be on in the constable’s residence.
Constable Knobby Russet Apple looked quite surprised to see the zebra that Dim had thrown down upon the floor. The earth pony wasn’t quite all the way awake yet, but soon would be. After blinking a few times, he looked up at the unicorn standing in his doorway and shook his head, appearing confused and bewildered.
“He’s alive,” Constable Apple said in astonishment.
“You didn’t pay me to kill him,” Dim replied, and this brought nervous laughter from both ponies. Dim might certainly have killed the zebra… if the price offered was right. Conscience could be soothed with currency and Dim was no stranger to immoral acts. At least he wasn’t a motherfucker.
“Mister Winters, what do I do with him?” the constable asked in a scratchy voice still thick from sleep.
“Brick him up in a wall, throw him down into a well, or hang him in the town square for all I care. I have done the job I was contracted for.” Dim’s lips pressed into a thin, flat line for a moment, and then he drew in a deep breath. “If I may make a suggestion, I would have him placed in an asylum. After what I have done to him, he will not be well.” Nodding, he continued, “His sanity was fragile, like a teacup, and I was careless in my dealings with him. The poor soul was just too high strung.”
The constable’s face sagged and fear glimmered in his eyes. “Wizards.” He breathed this word, as if it was a curse, and from the way it sounded, it could have just as easily been replaced with ‘unicorns.’ He took a step backwards, away from the zebra and the crazed wizard for hire. “Let me get the rest of your payment, Mister Winter, and then our business will be concluded.”
“That would be wonderful, Constable Apple.” Dim smiled, a shiver-inducing sight. “It has been a long night and I am fatigued. Good luck in dealing with your zebra. Will there be anything else you are needing?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Constable Apple replied. “Feel free to stay awhile and help the townsfolk. I am sure there is profit to be made. Just don’t cause trouble, please.”
Dim nodded, but said nothing. Free to go, he decided to leave.
Even though Dim was exhausted, he did not return to his room. Taking advantage of the remaining dark of the night, he picked up a few things relevant to his interests. A fresh copy of the Telegraph, just delivered off of the train. A dozen sweet rolls, still warm, and their glaze runny. In the pale grey that signaled that the dawn would arrive soon, Dim found himself sitting on the patio of some bistro, enjoying a cup of bhang.
Bhang, a drink from Windia, a wonderful, relaxing concoction. Hashish was ground into a fine paste, some milk was added, along with some ghee, a curious collection of spices typically found in chai, and crushed mangoes. Dim found that he could drink mug after mug with no ill-effect upon himself.
A trip to Windia was in order at some point. Dim had discovered that the ponies of Windia—the kathiawari as they called themselves—they had the same curious pointed ears that he did, and he could not help but wonder if his bloodline had origins in that country somehow.
Lifting the paper, Dim had a look at the front page headlines. There had been quite a number of attacks in Equestria, terrible events that had killed many and injured many more. For a time, the headlines had been bleak, but something curious was happening. Equestria was unifying, the government was coming together, and almost every day some headline in the paper said that Equestria was now in a golden age, a new era, even as they regressed backwards, depending more and more upon the monarchy and less upon their democratic institutions.
Which was, as it should be, Dim felt.
More power was being restored to the nobles, more authority, and Equestria was flourishing because of it. Dim could not help but wonder how much of this might be spin, propaganda as it were, and how much of it was truth. Beset by enemies on all sides, Equestria needed to present a unified front, which it seemed to be doing now. The disgusting primitives were voluntarily relinquishing power and control, returning it and restoring it to those most qualified to rule.
And Equestria was prospering.
This Grogar fellow was the best thing that could have happened to Equestria, scaring the disgusting primitives back into their proper place and making them submit to their rightful authority. His mother had droned on and on about how Equestria had hit a dreadful slump once the disgusting primitives, the dirty, degenerate peasants had been given a modicum of free agency in their lives. The monarchy and the ruling class existed for a reason—the cutie marks they manifested were the ultimate truth of this—and free agency was bucking against the natural order of things. A harmonious, self-evident truth if ever there was one.
Or so Dim believed, convinced of this truth, although his beliefs had been shaken…
With a shudder, he realised that the dawn was coming. Scowling, he gathered up his stuff, folded up his paper, and hurried away after leaving a tip on the table. While fleeing the coming light, Dim wondered what sort of work he might pick up in this place, as these disgusting primitives always had some problem that needed fixing with magic.
It was good to be a wizard for hire.
Stomach cramps had pulled Dim from sleep and the sound of ponies living in the daylight was a teeth-grinding distraction that drove him to the brink of madness. It was almost noon, and Dim was starving. He had eaten his sweet rolls already, all of them, and his room was devoid of food. There was no helping it, he was going to have to venture out into the burning sun.
It was Princess Celestia punishing him somehow, reaching across the world to smite him.
Shaking, trembling, almost if he was afflicted with a palsy, Dim struggled to figure out what his body needed. Of course it needed food, but he had other desires, other needs. The stomach cramps were crippling and he wondered if he was constipated or was about to have the squirts. It was impossible to tell these days. He felt clammy, hot-cold, and there was a now a painful buzzing developing just behind his eyes, which made his sinuses feel as though they were full of bees.
When his stomach squelched and gurgled, Dim realised—almost too late—that it was the squirts that he was beset with. Grunting, sweating, clenching his nethers while tucking his tail between his legs, he vanished from his room with a explosive pop, winking away to visit the water closet, as it was known in the local parlance.
The eatery had a cool, dark place far away from the windows that Dim found agreeable. There were ponies here, quite a few, taking a break during the hottest part of the day. The disgusting primitives stank, of course they did, and there was nothing that Dim could do but suffer their stench. It was the scent of manual labour, a foul miasma common to earth ponies and pegasus ponies. The foul funk of physicality burned Dim’s nose and left him feeling a little nauseous.
Yet, even with his resentment of their stench, Dim felt the need to protect them. It was the natural order of things. The weak existed to serve the strong, and the strong had the noble and glorious purpose of protecting the weak. His own family, the Darks, they had forgotten that. In the glorious days of the past, the nobles of Canterlot fielded knights—offering up their own flesh and blood, their own sons and daughters—and these knights protected the peasantry. Dim was enamoured with these tales, with how things used to be, back when he felt that his kind remained true to their harmonious ideal.
What did a farmer know of warfare? What good was a farrier when fighting the things that slithered in the darkness? How could a baker be of any possible use when dealing with a pack of wink-wolves? Fighting was a distraction that kept them from their jobs, their purpose, the very task that was defined by their cutie mark. The nobles, those of higher learning, those of greater purpose, the nobles were supposed to protect the peasants. That was their job, their purpose, it was their way of fulfilling the demands made by their own marks of destiny.
Yet, the nobles had been slacking, and the Darks perhaps most of all.
Not having to toil in some alicorn-forsaken field all day left a lot of time for one to study, to learn, to delve into the magic arts, the intimate and satisfying knowledge of how to make shit explode. Dim himself had lived and breathed magic growing up, getting the best possible instruction that bits could buy. Alas, the magical potential had been wasted for far too long, his family’s great ability languished in the dark, and he felt they did very little to keep their end of the great social bargain they were a part of.
So as the peasants lived to serve the nobles, the nobles existed to serve the peasants, offering them protection, safety, and stability. After all, it was the hard work of the peasants that allowed the nobles the free time required to learn so much magic, to gain so much learning, so Dim felt it was a worthwhile trade.
But the Darks had not kept up with their end of the deal.
The young aristocrat watched the peasantry in the eatery, feeling possessive and protective. Perhaps he should establish himself somewhere. Build a keep around a tower. Collect his own peasants. Provide for them, protect them, and restore the ancient harmonious order that had served equinekind so well for so long. Utopia was possible, but it required everypony to do an equal share. Peasants worked. Soldiers protected. Nobles bore the burden of rule and fighting the sort of threats that outclassed the soldiers, of which there was many.
Dim longed for a time that he wasn’t sure existed, an ideal that he doubted was kept in a fair way. His soul ached to live up to this ideal though, and when his head was clear enough, he gave a great deal of thought to it. Sometimes, he spent entire days reminiscing on a past that may or may not have existed, longing to be a knight, a just symbol of fairness and virtue.
He was not a virtuous pony, but he longed to be. This taint of evil, this stain upon his soul, it troubled him, some days more than others. It ached more than anything else, not just his own sins, but the sins of his family. Great wrong had been done, and Dim did not shirk what he felt was his duty to atone for them. But how? Doing what? By living up to some noble ideal? He tried, oh how he tried, even making offerings to orphans and widows. For some jobs he accepted no payment, because jobs like the one given to him by Constable Apple had paid so well.
Was the noble ideal even true? Or was it too, a lie? All Dim had to go by were the many books he had read as a foal, books about nobles with such magnificent chivalrous ideals… books that painted such a vivid, wonderful picture of the enlightened aristocracy. Those books had shaped his views, his perceptions, they had given him dreams, hopes, and aspirations. But, like anything else given to him by his mother, they were suspect. Dim suspected that everything was manipulation on some level.
Because of those books, he had loved his practice princess and strove towards what he was raised to believe was a harmonious ideal. But there was some evidence that suggested that what he had been taught was a well-constructed fantasy that only existed in the Dark Spire, and the actual reality… all around him were sweaty, foul smelling peasants, with rough, guttural accents, none of whom seemed to love their monarchs or their nobles very much.
The reality was, the monarchs and the nobles had failed them, this was the conclusion that Dim reached as he blinked a few times and studied the ponies around him. It wasn’t just his own family, but others. Perhaps they had gone soft, perhaps they forgot their own end of the deal, perhaps apathy had prevented them from holding true to the bargain.
Perhaps they needed a knight to remind them—both the peasants and the nobles—that there was an ancient bargain that must be kept… or else. This was a profound realisation for Dim—an epiphany perhaps—and as he leaned back in his chair, he began to consider how he might work towards this end. Perhaps this might be suitable penance, and with effort, with labour, redemption might yet be found.
The midnight hour was fast approaching and Dim was anxious. He had a client to meet at midnight, outside of town, away from prying ears and watchful eyes. This sort of secrecy was nothing new; the disgusting primitives were always so fearful of being caught.
Today had been a profitable day, so little effort for so much return. Repair spells on old family heirlooms had taken up most of his day. A princely sum had been paid to him to enchant a cloak and make it waterproof, which Dim had been able to do with ease. The cloak was a wedding gift, and he had wished the soon-to-be married couple good luck.
This was a simpler land, and (Dim felt) a better one. Ponies here married early and became productive citizens. There was no lollygagging about, wasting time on education or frivolous activities. For ponies ready to settle down, there was a matchmaking service that paired up compatible ponies with one another. Mares here tended to foal when they were young and resilient, and then spend their prime adult years working.
Disgusting primitives they might be, but these earth ponies had their charm.
Extinguishing his pipe, Dim smiled, a thin aristocratic sneer. He had places to go and ponies to see. There was coin to be made doing something nefarious… perhaps. Or maybe his client was just shy. It didn’t matter. His client was paying extra to meet at midnight, and that was all that mattered to Dim. He had a lifestyle to maintain—his body demanded certain creature comforts—and the things he needed had a cost that was quite dear.
Already, he was entertaining the idea of his own keep, his own fiefdom. Such a thing would have quite a cost indeed, but it was an investment. A well-run keep would generate income—which he would distribute in a fair way, of course, he was no monster—and would restore him back to the level of opulent comfort he was used to.
Knowing it was time to go, Dim vanished.
Waiting, Dim rolled a cigarette for himself. A little hashish, a few calming herbs, a hint of cloves, and some cured blue lotus leaves. When the cigarette was done, he stuck it into the end of a long, slender, silver cigarette holder. He didn’t much care for the smoke to blow back into his eyes, because it stung something awful. With a flick of fire magic, he lit his cigarette and began puffing.
There was a delightful little picnic area a short distance away from the train station, a place for travellers to stretch their legs and for the townsfolk to have a pleasant lunch in the sun. Being midnight it was deserted, but that was no surprise as most of the town had gone dark. The firepit had not seen use in quite some time and was empty, devoid of even ashes.
Much to his surprise, another unicorn approached, a mare. Dim began to size her up, taking note of everything he could. She appeared to be the studious type, because she was thin and slight. Hers was not a body accustomed to hard labour. Eyeglasses glinted in the faint available light, thin, fragile wire frames ill-suited for adventuring. She had a long mane and tail, which meant that she either had sufficient magic for instant grooming, or the available time for long grooming sessions. Either seemed as likely as the other. She was graceful and almost right away, Dim noticed that she wasn’t very watchful. The mare only looked ahead, at him, and she never took her eyes off of him to check her surroundings.
A sign of foalish inexperience.
“You have a job for me?” Dim asked when she was close enough for his soft voice to be heard.
“Indeed I do, Lord Dark.”
Eyes narrowing, Dim considered killing her right here and now. His senses detected that she had some weak, paltry, rudimentary defenses going, but nothing he couldn’t smash through in an instant. Killing her might be a hasty mistake though, and he decided to learn what he could from her.
“Lord Dark, I am Lady Blue Rhyme, and I too, am an Equestrian noble.” The mare drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much, and she did her best to look imposing. “I have come with a job offer, a unique one, and to offer you a position suited to one of your talents.”
“I am listening,” Dim said as his silver cigarette holder hung from the corner of his mouth. With each word, there was a puff of smoke.
“My Master wishes to employ you,” Lady Rhyme began, and she looked up at Dim, her eyes watering from the smoke wafting into her face. “This is no mere position of underling, but he acknowledges your rightful position of rulership and your princely blood. He wishes to restore you to your rightful position so that you might rule over others, and all he asks for in return is your allegiance to his cause.”
“I suspect I know who your so-called master is.” Dim’s voice was now a dull, disinterested monotone. “I have no interest in kneeling before a smelly goat to fellate his ego as you must do—”
“I suggest you reconsider, Lord Dark.” Lady Rhyme’s demeanour shifted and she did her best to look commanding, imperious. “You will either join us willingly, or agents will be sent out to collect you. You are simply too valuable to be allowed to remain as a neutral player. Your ability to corrupt light is something my Master desires a great deal.”
Dim did not find her the least bit intimidating: he had hallucinated things more dangerous than this mare. His silver cigarette holder rose like an excited erection, then sagged a bit as his lips tensed and relaxed. “Your Master is an idiot and he is mistaken. I do not corrupt light, I merely turn it into darkness for a time.”
“It appears that my Master knows more about your magic than you do. If I were you, I would take this as evidence that there is much you could learn. There is much power you could have—”
“There is no power in slavery, you degenerate, disgusting primitive. Your so-called master will not share power, but consolidate it into himself. You will only be useful to him for as long as he needs you, and then he will consume you, you foul, feckless, whorish little bint. Slatterns are only useful for as long as they remain fuckable, and you… you will not last long. You are weak-willed, spineless, and gullible. You should run back home, little filly. Go home and return to the light.”
Baring her teeth, Blue Rhyme snorted.
“You bore me,” Dim announced. “I am leaving.”
“I can’t let you leave.” Blue Rhyme’s horn ignited.
“Funny you should say that,” Dim retorted, “now I can’t let you leave.”
Dim winked, vanishing, and reappeared some distance away. In an eyeblink, he raised a shield and let go a flurry of protective spells, some cast with a pale pink light, and others with a muted amber. His cigarette holder doubled as a wand, should he need it, but he kept his secret weapon in reserve for the time being.
A trio of homing magical darts flew from Blue Rhyme’s horn, which Dim flicked away as they drew close. She had some skill, which concerned him, but he was confident in his own abilities. He winked again, vanishing and reappearing right behind her. He cast a Stutter-Startle spell on her, which punched right through her weak, pathetic defenses.
It was a simple spell, a common spell, but when used right it was a powerful spell. Unicorns tended to neglect it, thinking it was a foalhood prank spell, but when cast with the full weight of adult magic behind it, it left a unicorn stuttering, causing verbal spells to falter; and spooked, which hobbled their concentration. Magic was all about concentration, and hers was already impaired right as the fight started.
“D-d-d-d-damn y-y-y-y-you!” Blue Rhyme stammered as she tried to bring up more defensive spells.
Dim winked away, putting considerable distance between himself and his foe. With a woosh, a fireball was lobbed in his general direction. Not in the mood for rampant destruction, not wanting the world around him set on fire—because that would draw far too much attention to himself—Dim inverted a dragonfire spell, another spell from foalhood being used in new, creative ways.
Opening his mouth, holding his cigarette holder in his telekinesis, Dim sucked in the blob of incoming fire while it was still small; before it had blossomed into a fireball of massive, rampant destruction. With a gulp, he swallowed, felt the warmth travelling through his body, and gave a draconic belch. Smirking, and with little curls of smoke rising from the sides of his mouth, Dim replaced his cigarette holder between his lips, and was delighted to see that Blue Rhyme appeared to be shitting herself.
“Dirty pool,” Dim said as smoke curled out from between his teeth and the inside of his mouth glowed like the fiery pits of Tartarus.
“I w-w-w-w-went t-t-t-o”—She cast a spell on herself and the stuttering ceased—“Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns! How are you more powerful? You’re just some homeschooled freak!”
“I did not go to school to be a goody-four-shoes,” Dim replied, and then he vanished. It was a simple trick of the light really, he had cast a light spell from his horn, projected it as darkness, and now stood in a patch of darkness beneath some trees, almost invisible. She had removed the stuttering, but she was still spooked, and Dim suspected that she had no knowledge of how to remove phantasmal charms.
Now was as good of a time as any to cut her down.
Stepping out of the darkness, Dim fired off a Clover’s Confoundment spell, knowing it would strip away all of her protections, and then made ready to cast Lightning Drain, a devious spell that would drain all of her magic energy if it didn’t kill her outright. No doubt, it was a spell that was probably frowned upon in the Equestrian school system.
Blue Rhyme surprised him though, and with no protections left—no means to defend herself—she had launched a beam attack at him, a powerful, destructive seeking beam. She was throwing everything she had at him, and he wasn’t certain his own protections would save him. Gritting his teeth, he locked beams with her and prepared for a contest of wills.
Locking beams was one of the most dangerous things a unicorn could do. It immobilised most unicorns, leaving them unable to move or flee. Concentration had to be maintained and one had to push back against the incoming beam. Failure to do so meant getting your head popped like a pimple, or maybe worse.
Dim’s foe was stronger than he expected, and there was some grudging admiration for Princess Celestia and her school. A powerful magical nexus formed between them, a fatal magical nexus that could be pushed back and forth. The only defense was a stronger beam… or treachery. Treachery worked just as well, as Dim knew from experience.
In a battle of the beams, Blue Rhyme was stronger than he was. The nexus crept closer to him with each passing second, and he could feel the swirling mass of destructive energy, some of which was his own. But Dim wasn’t worried, as this worked to his advantage. He wanted her to think she was winning. She clearly put too much confidence into herself, thinking herself high and mighty for being a graduate from Princess Celestia’s School for Goody-Four-Shoes Unicorns. His cheeks drew tight against his teeth while he inhaled fragrant, soothing smoke from his cigarette, which would soon burn away into nothingness.
With a flick of will, Dim touched Blue Rhyme with darkness, causing all of the bright illumination of her magic to become radiant black pools devoid of light. Her horn now radiated a sphere of impenetrable blackness, from which she could not see. It was a dirty trick, one he had used dozens of times already to great success. The mare went blind, and already startled, she panicked, which caused her concentration to falter. Like all good little ponies, she was afraid of the dark.
The nexus of magic slammed into her head a fraction of a second later. Blinded, she never saw it coming. The night went dark once more as Dim ceased the flow of his own magic. Puffing on the remains of his cigarette, he went over to where the smoking body of his enemy was sprawled out in the grass.
Most of the top of her head was gone, her ears, her horn, and the seared flesh of her brain were visible where the top of her skull had been peeled away. Even worse, she was still alive. Her legs kicked and twitched, and her mouth made odd movements as she tried to speak.
Looking down, Dim pitied her. She had been used, no doubt. It occurred to him that Grogar had sent a weak minion as a means to gauge strength. If said weak minion did not return, Dim reasoned that it could be assumed that the intended target—in this case, himself—was worthwhile of pursuit.
Blue Rhyme gurgled and burbled, her body thrashing near his hooves. There was no sign of her horn, her ears, or the top part of her skull. Dim assumed that those things were just gone, perhaps evapourated. His simple trick had saved him yet again. Looking down at her, his feeling of unease increased, and he felt awful for her, but he still had a lesson to teach.
“You gave yourself to darkness without ever knowing the nature of darkness you sought to serve. When touched by a simple trick of darkness, you panicked like a filly. It is all very tragic. Your instincts begged of you to remain in the light when my darkness engulfed you. How did you hope to serve your pathetic master if you could not share his lightless existence?”
Plucking the remains of his cigarette out from his slender, silver holder, he tamped out the cherry on the end of her snoot, a final act of terrible cruelty. A phlegmy scream escaped her lips, an awful, keening wail, and her whole body flopped about, trying to get away from the searing pain blistering her tender snoot.
“I have my own theory about darkness,” Dim continued in his soft, reedy, aristocratic voice. “It is a consumptive force, it devours, it consumes and swallows. It must exist without the light.” He lowered his head down, and took a perverse delight in the fact that Blue Rhyme’s were somehow looking up at him. “The soul is made of light, or so it is said, and I am filled with darkness. I have seen it. What does that say about me, Lady Rhyme? I am filled with darkness, it exudes from me. I can only conclude that I do not have a soul. Whatever light I had within me has been devoured.”
Dim shook his head and let out a sad whinny.
“I am a damned creature… and you… you are a stupid creature. Good riddance.” Reaching out with his magic, he grabbed Blue Rhyme by the neck and gave it a violent twist with his telekinesis. There was a crunch, a gurgle, a coughing sound, and then the mare went still. “I suppose this was an act of mercy, for Grogar would have done much worse to a light-dweller such as yourself.”
Sighing, he backed away from the now limp corpse and wondered what to do next. He had a body to deal with, and alas, it was not his first body, nor would it be his last. It was just one more body in a long line of bodies. Sooner or later, the weight of retribution would come crashing down upon his withers.
He could teleport the corpse into a solid chunk of rock—he had done that in the past—but doing so left behind a tremendous magical signature. A skilled wizard—or worse, a Warden—could follow him, hunt him, track him by the bodies he left behind. There was also incineration, a grave, perhaps out in the marsh, and a number of other options that required significant effort on his part.
“Please don’t kill me.”
The voice chilled Dim’s blood.
“Please, for the love of all things good, don’t kill me.” The pleading voice belonged to Constable Apple. “The disturbance was noticed and somepony woke me up. I saw everything from the train station. Near as I can tell, you had to defend yourself.”
“Yes.” Dim hissed the word.
“I’ll have the body buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave and if anypony comes around, asking, I won’t know anything.”
Sighing, Dim blinked a few times. Poor Constable Apple just didn’t understand about Equestrian Wardens. They knew. At some point, they would come. In a moment of cold calculation, Dim considered killing Constable Apple. No doubt, there were more witnesses watching right now. Killing the entire town was a possibility.
A grim possibility.
“I don’t want no trouble, I just want to keep the peace,” Constable Apple said, begging, his voice now high-pitched and fearful.
“I will leave on the train that comes before dawn.” Dim turned to look at the terrified pony, and the constable shied away from his gaze. “The Wardens will come, Constable Apple, mark my words. They will sniff out my magic like hounds. You tell them that Dim Dark did this. They will look into your mind and they will know the truth of the matter. You should not be punished for my misdeeds.”
The constable was so relieved that he pissed himself. The sound was like a rushing torrent, a raging river, and the stench of musky stallion urine filled the night. It pooled and collected around his hind hooves, leaving the ground saturated and foul smelling. From where she lay, Blue Rhyme’s lifeless eyes took the whole scene in, unblinking.
“If you will excuse me, I need to pack,” Dim said, and then he vanished, winking away.
This city was crowded and modern, but didn’t quite have the distinction of being a city-state like Liverypool or Trottingham. Abbeyford-upon-Avon was built upon the bend of a river and located near a natural clay deposit, a valuable resource. The largest building in town was the Brickworks Orphanarium, which was both a brickworks and an orphanarium all in one colossal super-structure.
Every single building in the city seemed to be made of brick and the streets had brick pavers. Each one of the houses was the same as the next, all of them narrow rowhouses, all connected, with each block of rowhouses forming a perfect grid. Near as Dim could tell, the town was ten streets wide and ten streets long, with each city block appearing to be a perfect square. The brickworks existed outside of the city proper, sitting on the riverbend, because a brickworks needed copious amounts of water.
The streets were narrow, cramped, and one might even say claustrophobic. Everything—buildings, streets, ponies—was covered in a patina that consisted of coal and brick dust. Sewage ran through open gutters found in the streets. For Dim, this city was a time capsule; it had industrialised, and then had progressed no further beyond that point.
He had been the only pony getting off of the train, and no wonder. Abbeyford-upon-Avon was the sort of place you got on a train to get away from. Ponies did not come here, they fled this place. A perpetual cloud of miserable smog hung over the city—something a band of pegasus ponies could remove, if one had enough of them—and very little sunlight reached the streets.
Dim found it charming.
“Oi, fancy a shag, Guvna?”
Blinking behind his goggles, Dim turned to look at the source of the voice. A filly, maybe around her decade mark, was giving him a hopeful look. She had far too much makeup caked upon her face, not to mention her pelt was stained with coal and brick dust. Each one of her ribs stood out in sharp relief and the very sight of the scabs on her lips made Dim’s penis shrivel up in fright. No doubt, she was a fine collection of plagues, maladies, and diseases, and she probably had them in equal proportion to the years of her life.
“Sod off, trollop,” Dim replied.
“Oi! Suit yerself, ya poof!” the filly screeched in an unpleasant voice made gritty by pollution. “Ye bleedin’ fairy, ye think yer too good for this, well you can have a right and proper feck off, ye great, smelly twat!”
Black flakes rained down like snowflakes touched by evil and Dim knew that he needed to find a boarding house of some sort. Curious ponies looked at him, stared at him, and his sensitive ears could hear them talking about him. A mysterious figure beneath his hat and cloak, Dim shuffled through the streets, a stranger come to town.
That was how stories started; a stranger came to town.
The Kingspony was said to be the fanciest place in town and Dim tried to ignore his revulsion. It was a tavern with rooms for rent. In the common room, two types of ponies seemed the most prevalent, and both wore pith helmets. Custodial officers, or bobbies as they were known, were gathered together in one corner to have a pint. They wore black uniforms and had black custodial helmets.
The other group present appeared to be war veterans. Dim knew their type well enough. They too, wore pith helmets, their old army helmets, and their khaki jackets, which were stained like everything else in this alicorn forsaken city. Many of the old soldiers appeared armed, having pistols affixed to braces worn around the foreleg. One of the many privileges to Grittish service and somehow surviving one of their many wars; the right to bear arms.
Guns were common here on the isles, and necessary too, to deal with the horrendous wildlife that existed between the patches of civilisation. Equestria relied more on magic, or so Dim believed. Guns were insignificant compared to the power of just one moderately capable unicorn.
There were many eyes upon him, studying him, measuring him up, both the soldiers and the bobbies. He ignored them, not concerned by them in the slightest, and made his way over to the bar with the hopes of inquiring about a room. Behind the bar was a wrinkled, wizened old unicorn who wore an eyepatch and a monocle, a strange combination if ever there was one.
Going by his senses, Dim knew that the old unicorn was almost a magical dud. A weak spark of magic existed, just enough to make his no doubt dreary, humdrum life a little more bearable. The disgusting primitives all around him had gone back to drinking, and Dim could feel far fewer eyes upon him. It always made things better when you were about to spend money.
“Greetings.” The one-eyed unicorn had a strange accent, and was not from these isles. “I rent rooms by the night or by the week, but never by the hour. I run a respectable establishment here, and don’t want no whores within my walls.”
“That will not be a problem,” Dim replied, and he thought about the filly that had propositioned him earlier. The memory made him shiver and he felt an icy prickle in his balls.
“The rented room comes with one free meal a day, the kitchen special. No substitutions.” The unicorn removed his monocle, leaned over the counter, and squinted at his customer. “The going rate is one sterling pegasus crown. No haggling.”
“Oh dear.” Dim kept his smile to himself, but looked the squinty unicorn in the eye. “That is pretty pricy. A week’s wages in these parts, right? I fear all I have on me at the moment are sterling unicorn crowns and some sterling bars. Can you make change?” Much to his satisfaction, he saw the old unicorn’s surviving eye go wide.
“I can do that, your Lordship,” the unicorn behind the bar replied, his whole demeanour changing.
The coin and currency on these isles had been confusing at first, but Dim had caught on. There were shoes, crowns, and bars. Shoes were the lowest value, with earth pony, pegasus pony, and unicorn pony shoes, with unicorn shoes being the most valuable. The same principle worked for crowns, It took one-hundred earth pony crown coins to equal a single pegasus crown, and ten pegasus crown coins had the value of a single unicorn crown. A sterling bar was something that most of these disgusting primitives never even saw during their pathetic lives, and was worth twenty unicorn crowns.
“Name, if you please?” The unicorn behind the counter looked nervous now, and eager to please.
“Harsh Winter,” Dim replied, wondering if perhaps he should change his name again. It would mean printing up new business cards. He had a troubling conundrum in the fact that he needed a name, a name had weight, reputation, but a name could also be traced, tracked, and followed. There seemed to be no easy solution.
“I’ve heard of you,” the one-eyed unicorn said.
“You have?” Dim felt a prickle of worry.
“Aye, I have.” The one-eyed unicorn slipped his monocle back into place. “You hunted down the Southbury Slasher, that real nasty bit of work that was raping and murdering young mares and school fillies. Is it… is it… is it true that you hung him from a bridge and set him on fire, like the papers say?”
Dim smiled, a chilling sight. “What else does one do with mad dogs and killers when they are apprehended? I had an inspector from Shetland Yard with me and he had a writ to dispense justice on apprehension.” He felt eyes on him once more, and Dim knew that the bobbies were staring at him now. Somehow, by sheer luck, Dim had cultivated the illusion of respectability. His aristocratic charm, his charisma, his sweet, honeyed words—for some reason, ponies believed him to be good.
Reaching into his saddlebags with his magic, he pulled out a sterling unicorn crown, flipped it with a telekinetic flick, caught it, and then put it down upon the counter. He pushed it towards the one-eyed unicorn while offering up his best aristocratic smile. There was this almost worshipful adoration in the remaining eye of the tavern-keeper and this amused Dim a great deal.
To be celebrated for monstrous acts while maintaining a thin veneer of legitimacy…
“Aye, I’ll get your key and show you to your room. I have a nice one up on the top floor and something tells me you won’t mind the stairs, much.”
Dim nodded. Stairs were for disgusting primitives. He would climb them, once, to become familiar with the location, and then wink to get to and fro. After all, he had to keep his magical muscles in peak condition, and that meant constant casting. In an unfortunate quirk of life, Dim was not given a talent for magic, which meant that he had to work to be good at it, a fact that he oft lamented when he was deep in his cups.
The streets were slick with half-frozen sewage and a creeping mist glazed the bricks with rime. The day had been quite warm—unbearably so—but the nighttime temperature had dropped down far below freezing. This was a different city at night. The street lamps, what few there were, offered up a minimum of flickering light. Most were broken, rusted over, while others had shattered glass. Evidence of neglect could be found everywhere in this city.
Smoke belched from the brickworks, and production never ceased. Nightsoil ponies were already out and doing their rounds, pulling wagons full of disgusting filth. Coal was being hauled from the train station to the brickworks at night, when there was little traffic in the streets. Most of the shops had closed, but a few still had lights in their windows.
Dim had come here seeking a local henge, which was about twenty miles or so out of town. It was a big one, well preserved, and all manner of strange things were said to happen around it. Some of the local superstitions stated that it was a half-open portal to Tartarus, which was nonsense of course. What could disgusting primitives possibly know about portals to Tartarus?
With his own eyes, Dim had seen a visual portal to Tartarus, cast by his mother, and he had looked upon the many forbidden wonders of that terrible place. He had experienced it with a bird’s eye view and it had left quite an impact upon him as a foal. It was a warm, pleasant memory, a time when he had been happy with his mother… and Darling. Looking into Tartarus had frightened Darling so, and for her fear, she had been savagely spanked, rebuked, and sent to bed without supper.
To be afraid was the unforgivable sin of the Dark family.
Snapped from his distraction, Dim noticed two ponies shuffling towards him. Robbers? Cretins? Smelly beggars? One was an earth pony, young, with a powerful build, the other a stout, somewhat chubby pegasus of middle age. The earth pony wore a curious hat and had bright, inquisitive eyes. It was odd to see bright, inquisitive eyes round these parts.
“You there,” the earth pony said. “Are you a wizard?”
Clearing his throat, Dim replied, “I am.”
“Fantastic!” The earth pony seemed jittery, excited, and quite overjoyed by that answer. “My name is Fetlock Combs, and this is my companion, Doctor Washboard. And you are?”
“A wizard,” Dim replied in deadpan.
“Right!” Fetlock Combs exclaimed with a wide grin. “Would that be ‘wizard,’ or ‘vizard?’ There is a distinction.”
In spite of his own serious mien, Dim chuckled, getting the joke and finding it amusing. “I am vizard, and you vould be vise to fear me.”
“That’s what I thought!” Fetlock now appeared quite animated, while his companion was subdued. “I had you pegged as a vizard, a more explody, fling-spells-like-confetti type who specialises in rampant destruction.”
As much as it pained Dim to admit it, the earth pony was quite amusing—and well versed in wizards, for an earth pony. His senses told him that he was being buttered up, and he began to wonder why. Was he being hunted? Looked for? Sought out? Dim kept his suspicions under check, reining them in, but he was ready to obliterate the funny earth pony in an eyeblink.
“My companion, Doctor Washboard and I, we came here to investigate some curious goings on out on the local moors and the disappearances happening here in town. There is said to be quite an evil hound roaming about, and the disappearances are thought to be connected somehow.”
Doctor Washboard sighed, causing his bulk to heave and strain against his threadbare tweed jacket. Dim, eyeballing the pegasus, sized him up. Well muscled legs covered with calluses could only mean one thing—Doctor Washboard had served in the military, and had worn armor for a considerable time. This made the chubby, almost sleepy looking doctor quite dangerous.
“Perhaps you could help us,” Fetlock suggested.
“Perhaps you could pay me,” Dim replied.
“What?” Fetlock looked startled. “Pay you? What about the common good? Your love for your fellow ponies? Have you no concern for their welfare? I was mistaken about you, I did not sniff-test you out as a mercenary.”
Disgusting primitives, so many disgusting primitives in need of incineration. Dim—slouching because he couldn’t be bothered to draw himself up to his full height for these insufferable cretins—glared at the earth pony who had said such vile, vile words. Vile words, offensive to vizard. If there was some way that he could get paid to get out of bed in the morning, Dim would exploit it with ruthless efficacy.
“Come, Doctor Washboard. Our work takes us elsewhere, perhaps with more charitable ponies.” Fetlock Combs began to walk away, looking disappointed, and his stout companion followed.
Dim found a rare sight in the dark of the night; an open kebab shop. He didn’t expect to find one in a place such as this, the last one he had enjoyed had been in Liverypool. Abbeyford-upon-Avon hadn’t struck him as a place that might have an all night kebab shop, but then again, there were the veterans of the engagement in Windia. No doubt their pensions went farther here in this coal dust ridden shithole than it would have in one of the bigger city-states. Here, one might be able to live like a very destitute prince—given the number of veterans to be found in The Kingspony.
Before starting his long walk, a kebab sounded ideal. A little wheat-meat, some veggies, and some kind of exotic curry-like sauce. The lithe figure paused near the doorway to the shop, sniffing, and eddies of freezing mist whorled around his fetlocks. For a brief second, Dim’s tongue was visible, a glimpse of bright orange that appeared ribbon-thin.
“I would murder somepony for a kebab,” Dim whispered to himself. “Then again, in the past, I have murdered somepony and used the payment to buy kebabs… so maybe… I have murdered somepony for a kebab?” Noxious, drug-fueled laughter spilled into the night and Dim turned to face the door of the shop.
A kebab would be ideal.
For Dim, it was looking into a mirror. The ponies behind the counter were the Kathiawari ponies of Windia. Their fine, pointed ears all perked when he entered, and their well chiseled, well defined features weren’t too different from Dim’s own. Said to be natural mystics with curious connections to magic that was quite different than the magic of Equestrian ponies, Dim could not help but wonder how this might have influenced his own blood.
His own features were just more exaggerated, due to inbreeding. With each encounter, with each meeting, it was becoming harder and harder to deny; his bloodline had roots in these ponies, and his own awakening mysticism might be nothing more than the strange Kathiawari magic he was only just starting to learn about.
The mare staring at him might have been a member of his own family, minus the heterocromia that Dim possessed. Her hide was a rich, smoky grey, her mane black, and her ears had the fine points that he possessed. It took him several moments to even realise that she was an earth pony.
“Hoi, halloo!”
Cringing, Dim stood there in shock. She talks like a disgusting primitive.
“Care for a kebab, Spooky?” the mare asked, and she gave Dim her most radiant smile.
It was a tragedy almost worth weeping over. She was a perfect, exquisite creature—even for an earth pony—but her voice, her voice had been ruined. It took Dim several moments to try and recover his battered senses. He removed his hat, still in shock, and then gained a keen awareness that the ponies beyond the counter were all staring at him. So caught up and distracted was Dim that he failed to notice the other beauty around him; the orange tile floor, the tile mosaics on the walls, the painted ceiling… he stood in an extraordinarily beautiful space, which he was blind to.
“Hoi, yer a pointy-headed pointy head!” the mare shouted.
“Er, what?” Confused, Dim struggled to deal with reality, which didn’t like him at this current point in time.
“Oh, a foreigner pointy-headed pointy head.” The mare laughed, a vibrant sound full of life. “The Grittish, they call us ‘pointy heads,’ ‘cause the ears. Only yer pointy headier, because you’ve got yerself a horn too, hoi!” The mare paused, and then her smile turned coy. “Hoi, yer handsome, ye are, care to sample my wares? I have an all-ye-care-to-eat platter of delights I keep betwixt my thighs, just waiting for the right customer! Promise to marry me and I’ll strap my feedbag to yer face, so I will!”
The stallion behind the counter rolled his eyes and let out a snort.
For a moment, Dim was tempted—a strange feeling indeed. He hadn’t even touched a mare since… fleeing his home. Even stranger, he was not repulsed by her being an earth pony. She seemed jubilant, full of light and life. Vivacious? Darling Dark could never be described as vivacious, only drug-addled. For the very first time, Dim began to consider that he might yet still find love, or if not love, perhaps romance? But who would accept one such as he?
This mare, this innocent, vivacious creature, she would flee from his very shadow if she actually knew who and what he was. His brief moment of hope was now utterly crushed, and he felt some of his old ennui creeping back into his life. Hanging his head a bit, his ears drooping, he found that he could no longer look the beautiful, distracting mare in the eye.
“A dozen kebabs, please. With that spicy green peanut sauce if you have it.”
“Hoi, I know exactly what yer after!” Behind the counter, the mare bounced and clicked her hooves together. “Aloo! A dozen kebabs dragged through the green death and make it snappy, chappy!”
Ears sagging, Dim marveled at the mare and her exquisite beauty that could be his at the cost of a promise. There was no way he could give her the life she deserved. Sure, he had fantasies about having a keep, about establishing himself, but those were just fantasies. Just like all of his fond dreams of knighthood, of noble deeds, and having Darling as his beloved princess. It was all just fantasy, worthless, meaningless fantasy, and he had been a fool to dream.
No, if he took her, she would wither and die from his toxic touch. She was better off here, in this industrial wasteland, where she would no doubt marry some disgusting primitive that was unworthy of her beauty, her grace. Such rare beauty that would be squandered, lost, buried beneath an avalanche of huffing and puffing atop her back, followed by foaling more times than was wise. She would no doubt age before her time, such a pity for so perfect of a flower, a flower doomed, cursed to destruction by the fruit it would bear.
The most beautiful and graceful of apple blossoms were destined to become fat and rounded. Such was the tragedy of life, in that beautiful perfection did not last. It was a tender blossom that held so much promise, such perfection, only to be slain through metamorphosis, cursed to continue life. A blossom was such a fragile, fleeting thing.
“Hoi, you okay, Spooky?”
Lifting his head, Dim looked the mare right in the eye. “No, but I’ll get over it.”
The moors seemed vast, empty. No dangers presented themselves to Dim, though he was well prepared for danger. The wolves howled in the distance, but they were too far away to be concerned about. There were no woods here, no trees, as it had all been clear cut a long, long time ago.
Surrounding the town was farmland, but the land was ill, made sick by the pollution, and the crops were a bit withered. Farmers had a long walk to reach their fields, and there appeared to be no farmhouses dotting the countryside. Everypony lived inside the city walls, where it was safer, with safety being relative.
As he walked down the path, heading for the standing stones, the henge, he thought of the mare in the kebab shop. What happiness could be found in her no doubt honeyed kisses? That extraordinary creature was a mare conditioned to subservience—as evidenced by her desire for marriage—but she still retained a certain fire, a certain vim, a vigour that could not be cast out. She was bold, brash, and straightforward about what she wanted. After she had served him, she had trotted away with her tail flagged, revealing everything she had to offer.
He had been tempted.
What that mare had to offer would make a dead pony cum and Dim could not help but feel that he was passing up the opportunity of a lifetime. He would mourn this fantasy when it died and he had the chemicals to hasten its departure. By the light of the dawn it would be burned from his mind, no doubt, replaced with knowledge and power.
The henge seemed like a serene place in the faint, scant light of the moon. Dim moved among the stones, rubbing his body up against them, and observing their curious tingle. What secrets they must hold… what great power. These stones were tall, mighty, and the henge was mostly intact. There were a few trees around the henge, trees that had not be cut down for firewood or building material.
With his magic, he reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a small glass vial. It bothered him that he couldn’t quite shift into an astral perspective on his own, that he needed help, but such was the cost of knowledge. He pulled out the stopper, which doubled as a dropper, and filled it full of liquid.
With careful, precise movement, he placed the first few drops directly upon his horn. Then, before he was overwhelmed, he put some in his left eye first, gritting his teeth at the burn, and then his right eye. This batch of lysergic acid diethylamide was strong, potent, and began to take hold almost right away.
While putting the glass vial away, the standing stones exploded with astral fire, which burned in a peculiar silvery-rainbow light. These stones were not like the others, and the stories that the locals told proved true. These stones held power. For Dim, it was like spiking pure coca extract directly into a vein on his leg. His body felt alive, full of life, and the pain of his twenty mile hike fled from him.
Many of the trees also had riotous auras of colour about them. Dim was standing in a special place, a sacred place, and he felt a curious sense of peace as his mind began to reach down, seeking out the chalk and the magic it contained. Something about the chalk and the salt… the magic far below seemed purer somehow, stronger, undiluted. The magic felt clean, though Dim could not say how or why. The magic above the chalk, above the salt, it was like breathing dirty air—you knew it when you breathed it and when one filled one’s lungs with clear air, the difference was noticeable.
The stones contorted, changing shape as he looked at them, growing taller, more imposing, or maybe Dim was growing smaller, it was impossible to tell. Overhead, the stars grew brighter, they pulsated and throbbed, each of them blazing with astral light. Dim could hear the light they produced, it sang to him a sweet, comforting song that almost made him feel sleepy.
Then, it began raining stars, and Dim felt a pang of panic. One by one, the stars came blazing down, streaking from the sky above, and the tiny twinkling motes joined him in the circle of standing stones. Hundreds of stars came down, all gathering, clustering together, swirling as they took shape.
“Princess Luna?” Dim gasped in astonishment.
But no, he was mistaken. This figure was taller, more terrible, and she had a horrendous glow. As more and more of her took shape, Dim had trouble looking at her, so bright she was with astral fire. She blazed like the sun, searing his retinas, but much to his own surprise, there was no pain, no discomfort, no harm was done to him.
“What are the stars, but tiny, distant suns?” The booming voice caused the stones to tremble and there was a peculiar rumbling in the earth. “I am the cosmic light and my power is near-infinite. You will exhaust yourself should you keep running from me. Should you flee into the stars, know that I will find you. I am an uncountable, unconquerable number of suns that span entire galaxies.”
“Princess Celestia…” Dim gibbered the words, then fell down to the ground in terror.
“My poor, wayward foal, come home to me—”
“No, no, NO! This is a trick!”
The wise, stern alicorn shook her head. “This is no trick. Come home to me. Let me heal what your mother has done to you. Please, I beg of you, let me restore you.” The warm voice was pleading, and almost seemed sincere…
“No!” Dim howled and he covered his face, hiding his eyes from the terrible, stark beauty of the alicorn before him. “If I come home, you’ll destroy me! As it is, your sun burns me so! I am cursed with wickedness.”
“No, my darling foal, your blood is still polluted with a poison most terrible, most vile—”
“It’s a trick!” Dim screeched. “Everything is a trick!” While he spoke, another alicorn drew shape beside Princess Celestia, and he beheld her while squinting out from between his forelegs in terror. This one was smaller, more pink, and Dim did not know her. She too, had a terrific radiance that was too terrible to behold.
“Come home to be restored.” The stones trembled from the terrible majesty of Princess Celestia’s voice. “There is still time, Dim. You can still be saved before the wasting poison claims you completely. Please, listen to me and trust me!”
“NEVER!” Dim wailed, fearing the light, but fearing Princess Celestia even more.
“Dim, my beloved foal, pull yourself together.” Princess Celestia’s voice was commanding and carried with it a strong compulsion to obey. “Danger approaches. Terrible danger. Do what you must to survive it, and know that I will forgive you. Your foes are terrible and there are many. I will do what I can to aid you.”
And with that, Dim felt his body flood with warmth, with strength. His head began clearing, and looking at Princess Celestia’s astral projection, he saw it flicker. He came to a hazy understanding that something was happening, changing within him. The smaller pink alicorn beside Princess Celestia stepped forwards, and before Dim could protest, she lept inside of him, a most curious sensation indeed.
“Come home to me, Dim, while you can still be saved. Much has happened. The Dark Spire is gone and House Dark is no more. I couldn’t save all of you, but I am determined to save one of you. Come be my champion, Dim… I have seen into your heart.”
“No,” Dim whimpered, shaking his head as tears poured down his cheeks.
“I can cure this poison and give you purpose. Trust me. I can restore you back into the light. I’m begging you, let me help you.”
Dim felt his voice crack. “I can’t trust anypony.”
“Be ready, Dim. The danger that approaches is of the worst kind. Remain steadfast, and do not give into the darkness. I don’t care if you believe me or not, but know that I love you, and that I believe in you.” Princess Celestia extended one wing, and touched Dim on the cheek while his body was lifted up off of the ground, held in bonds of starlight. “Luna and I will do what we can to aid you in the coming fight. Prepare yourself!”
“I… I want to believe,” Dim said, his voice cracking as his forelegs were pulled away from his face. The glory of Princess Celestia’s visage was too much to bear, and he could feel it searing his soul, burning away the darkness within him. “Can I be saved?”
“Do you wish to be?” Princess Celestia’s face became that of a stern schoolmarm.
Shaking his head, Dim responded, “I don’t know.”
“For now, survive.” The princess’ commandment rang out like a bell. “There is no sin in doing what one must to survive. I will forgive you anything this night, but only if you return home to me.”
Ears drooping, Dim nodded. “I will do what I must.”
Six ponies approached in the darkness, and Dim knew one of them. Seeing her, recognising her, knowing it was her, his heart lept up into his throat, almost choking him. The group approached with no protections, no defenses, nothing that Dim could detect anyway. His blood sang with strange energy and his horn burned with even stranger magic, as he was still connected to the vast pools of magic way down in the salt and the chalk.
Five of the ponies had astral auras of vivid, beautiful light, but the sixth, her aura was dimmed. It wasn’t black auroral flames like his own, but there could be no doubt that Darling Dark was deep in the darkness now. Overhead, the stars twinkled, blinking, almost like lights flashing a telegraph signal.
“Hello, Dim—”
Her voice. That voice. It made his ears burn and his heart fluttered like a bird confined in too-small a cage. Waves of regret, grief, and arousal crashed into Dim as if he was a stone on the shore of a vast ocean of ennui, polluted with the industrial runoff of angst.
“—it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”
“Not long enough,” Dim replied in a wavering, reedy voice.
“Well, that’s rather rude.” Darling came to a halt about a dozen paces away and gave Dim a nod. “I suppose you know why I’m here. Can we please discuss this like reasonable ponies?” She raised her head, smiled, and it was obvious that she had grown a bit in the past few months. “You gave me the most confusing, most amazing orgasm I’ve ever had in my life, and then you went away. I’ve missed you, Dim.”
“The feeling is not mutual,” Dim said, lying through his teeth.
“Tsk tsk, what would your mother say?” Darling’s head tilted to one side and her silent companions spread out a little. “You caused us a lot of problems, Dim. Your little temper tantrum triggered Desire’s transmogrification into lichdom early, before she was ready to hide it. As you could imagine, that caused quite a disturbance of negative magical energy while she endured the transformation.”
“It pleases me to know that I caused my mother so much trouble,” Dim said, feeling a keen disappointment that his mother was not dead. Well, she was dead, as the case may be, but undead was a far more accurate term for her existence.
“Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, Princess Cadance, Princess Twilight, and a whole host of others came to the Dark Spire. They came in and they undid the magic that made the tower what it was. Entire sections collapsed, the dimensional pockets undone, and most of our family was killed by those treacherous, meddling alicorns. Fortunately, Desire and I have a new home.”
The crushing weight of despair almost broke Dim’s spine.
“Castle Midnight is a lovely place, Dim. It could be ours, if you want it. The place has so many secrets, Dim. The sun never shines there and the castle is covered in an eternal shroud of night. Impenetrable darkness. It’s everything and anything you could want in a home, Dim.”
“It sounds as though this Castle Midnight is infested with disgusting primitives.” Dim watched Darling’s eyes narrow and there was an immense sense of satisfaction in knowing that he had gotten under her skin. His heart was pounding now, and as if electricity and not blood was flowing through his veins. Every muscle twitched, his frogs were sweaty, and his dock had become damp with perspiration. Magic was pooling up inside of him, filling him, as if he was a vessel of flesh and blood made to hold the mysteries of the universe.
Joy and sorrow filled his being; joy for seeing his foalhood friend, and sorrow for seeing his foalhood love. Dim tried to think of more innocent times, but those were too far away now, too distant, lost in shadows, entombed in darkness. Resentment loomed like a shadow lurking in the dark recesses of his soul and he wondered, had he any choice at all? Had he ever loved Darling, or was it all just base manipulation? Never again could he be with her, not knowing, not being able to tell if he had any choice, any say in the matter.
“Come home with me, Dim, and all will be forgiven.” Darling’s voice was a pleading whisper that somehow carried loud and clear through the mist-shrouded night. Her heavy, half-closed eyelids gave her gaze a sultry, inviting appearance, and was a cue for unmistakable arousal. “My Master’s influence travels through these wretched isles. The weak-minded royals are already succumbing to His will. My Master says He will give these isles to you as a gift, should you want them, as He is aware that you consider this place home. It won’t be long now, before the disgusting primitives fall in line. The leadership on these wretched isles is ineffectual and they spend all of their time squabbling, giving my Master strength and influence.”
“This place is a sump hole,” Dim remarked.
“Perhaps,” Darling responded, nodding her head, “but think of what you could do with this place if it were yours, Dim.”
Revulsion crawled beneath his skin like parasites and Dim found himself tempted. These isles had promise, potential, these isles just needed a strong, commanding leader. The bickering city-states could all be brought together as one united kingdom. The Grittish Isles had the potential to rival Equestria as an industrial powerhouse. There was coal and steel here, raw resources, and a tremendous pool of mysterious magic buried way down with the salt and the chalk. What kept these isles from living up to their potential was discord, strife, the inability to agree on anything at all that might benefit the Isles as a whole.
“Where two ponies stand in disagreement, my Master stands between them,” Darling said as her eyes began to roam over the standing stones. “Government bickering, bureaucracy, and prideful intolerance has given my Master immense power. Even now, we work to give Him a body so that He might return, as was promised.”
“Then what point is there for us to work together?” Dim asked. Again, he felt satisfaction when he saw Darling’s discomfort. Her eyes widened and her ears pinned back against her head in obvious bewilderment. “Wouldn’t it be better for us to fight and bicker, so that your foolish eldritch goat might draw strength? Why should we weaken him with our accord?”
Inside of his head, Dim could hear laughter, three distinct laughs that boomed between his ears. Did Princess Celestia find this funny? Did alicorns even have a sense of humour? The stars overhead seemed to twinkle in time to the chuckling he heard, going bright and dim while the peals of laughter reverberated and echoed around inside of his skull.
“Dim, there are six of us and one of you. You can’t win. Please, come along with us and make it easier on yourself.” Darling focused on Dim once more, her eyes pleading and sad. “If you don’t cooperate, Belladonna will come for you and tear away the piece of your soul that my Master needs. I don’t want that to happen.”
“What is it that you want, Darling?” Dim demanded.
The filly’s eyes narrowed and she glanced around a few times before responding, “I kinda want you to fuck me in the ass again, without warning.”
So that was what she wanted. Dim sighed, resigned to his chosen course of action. Offering no warning, Dim lobbed off a spell at one of Darling’s companions. A grinning skull that howled with laughter went streaking from his horn, bobbing through the air, and struck the pony furthest to the left.
The stallion exploded into bits of meat, hair, and bone, the largest of which was maybe the size of an Equestrian bit. Dim then vanished, teleporting away, and he began to summon as many spell protections as possible. The flashy opener was costly, as far as magic went, and Dim could feel that it had drained some of his magical reserves.
“Now there are five of you,” Dim’s voice shouted, coming from everywhere and nowhere.
“Dim, what are you doing?” Darling asked in a pleading voice while she raised a shield. All around her, Desire’s companions were panicking, and one of them, a mare, was screaming her fool head off as terror overwhelmed her.
“Fucking you in your ass, without warning.”
Dim let go of another spell, Clover’s Conflagration. The screaming mare was engulfed in flames, lightning up the night, and the remaining ponies scattered, not wanting to be burned. The mare fell to the ground, her skin melting like wax and flowing from her body in rivulets as her body fat rendered into a runny liquid. Her screams quieted, becoming gasps, then she sounded like leaves blowing in the autumn wind as her lungs were scorched from the intense heat.
“Four!” Dim barked, his voice not revealing his location.
The remaining four now had shields up, and protections were being cast. Darling had retreated a bit, and was looking all around, trying to discern Dim’s location, never once looking up. He stood above them, on a wide tree branch, little more than a shadow resting in the dark. With a nudge of his will, the illumination of the present magical bubble shields went dark, surrounding the four in globes of blinding, impenetrable darkness. Screams could be heard.
“Your magic betrays you!” Dim shouted. “This is the darkness that awaits you!”
All four of the ponies were foolish enough to lower their shield spells, and the globes of darkness vanished one by one. Dim launched a fireball into their midst, hoping to catch a few by surprise. Each of them teleported away, with two of them taking refuge behind the same standing stone, while Darling took off running through the sparse trees, and the fourth began running in circles while the world burst into flames, trying not to be consumed by them.
Dim’s fireball was touched by his magic, and the flames were black, lightless, and seemed to swallow what little light there was from the moon and stars. The night grew darker and with a careless strike of his telekinesis, Dim struck one of the standing stones. It broke with a thunderclap, fell over, crushing the two ponies cowering behind it. They popped like pimples, spurting and spraying all over the rest of the nearby standing stones, leaving behind a visceral, blood-spattered graffiti, the written language of violence.
“And now, two.” Dim revelled in the destruction he had wrought and the presences inside of his head were no longer laughing, but silent. Unable to afford being distracted, Dim focused on his prey.
In a flash of darkness, his magic still robbing light-sources of their illumination, Dim winked from his tree branch and reappeared next to the lone, remaining unicorn that needed to be dealt with before he took on Darling. Opening his mouth, Dim sucked in wind, and then he cast a spell unique to these isles, a terrible, horrible spell crafted in the very bowels of darkness and birthed from the tainted loins of nightmares.
A banshee’s wail spilled from his mouth, rending the night with an indescribable, horrific howl that sounded as though it had reverberated up out of the Black Void at the bottom of the Abyss. The unicorn began to age, growing older, growing greyer. It withered, it shriveled up as its lifeforce bled away, its ears hearing a sound that no mortal was ever meant to hear. The eldritch scream had a small, almost insignificant area of effect for it’s lethality, but the sound carried terror in a broad radius.
Gasping, Darling’s last companion died and fell over, a dessicated husk devoid of moisture, of life.
“Darling… come out Darling… this is no time for a game of hide and seek!” Casting a spell, Dim homed in on Darling’s location. Well protected and having what he hoped was enough magic to finish the fight, he winked away to where Darling was to finish what he had started.
She was crying, whimpering, and her mascara ran down her face in dark streaks that could only be seen by the sharpest eyes in the faint light. Dim stared her down, dominating her just as he had always done, and revelling that, even now, she still submitted to him, just as she had been conditioned to do. He found her whimpers erotic, arousing, and the dark beast in the cave stirred.
“Please, don’t do this,” Darling begged. “If you won’t come away with me, let me come away with you… we can be together again… please!”
“You are spineless and weak,” Dim whispered, his aristocratic voice like two sheets of silk sliding against one another in the night. “You are a snivelling coward, Darling Dark. What would Desire say? How might she punish you for your weakness?”
Darling said nothing, but stood frozen in place, her lower lip trembling. Her eyes glimmered, reflecting tiny glittering beads of starlight in them. In this moment, she was more foal than anything, and was no longer a filly on the precipice of marehood. The words left wounds, ripping open old scabs, exposing her to memories most unpleasant.
“How should I punish you?” Dim asked.
In response, Darling’s tail flagged and lifted off to one side. Dim snorted in disgust and shook his head. His parchment paper thin lip curled back in a disgusted sneer of revulsion, and tears began to slide down Darling’s cheeks when she saw no traces of affection—no surviving love—visible in Dim’s eyes.
“I still love you,” Darling whined, her voice wavering in a pathetic pitch. “Every day I sleep and I dream of you. I wake up drenched from my memories of you and wishing you were in my bed. My nights are spent longing for you and there are times when I can feel you on my back, biting my neck… your hot breath in my mane… those were the only times anything ever made sense. Since you’ve been gone, I’ve been very confused. I feel like I have no purpose, no meaning. Give me meaning again, Dim, please… don’t make me beg.”
Dim thought of Darling’s cutie mark, a little baroque bassinet shrouded with dark curtains. This had to be terrible for her and he had no doubt that she was sincere in her suffering. So long as the proverbial crib remained empty, her life had no meaning, no purpose. She was born to serve one function—to do one thing—and she had reached the point in life where that voice of purpose was a constant, never-ending, annoying itch that could not be scratched by any other means.
“Dim, please… don’t you remember?” Darling continued, pleading. “We were young and things were still so simple. We were spooning in the nursery and you… and you… and you were so gentle with me when you took me from behind and slipped inside of me. It didn’t hurt that time, not at all, and I didn’t cry, and I got my cutie mark. Do you remember my cute-ceañera? Dark Chocolate baked a cake… she said it was too important to be left to some half-witted servant.”
Memories flooded Dim’s mind, some of which he remembered all too well. He had vivid memories of that day, when he had spooned with her, a new experience, a new type of play, a new angle of play. It was a wondrous day, when he discovered there were other methods than mounting. They had started off slow, careful, and he had probed her depths, being the curious little colt that he was. There had been no biting, no rough sex-play. It had been slow, cautious, more of an exploration than a frantic need to satisfy an itch that he did not yet understand.
Near the end, he had clung to her, sweating, soaked, the skin of his belly sticking, clinging to her back, and with each thrust she made sounds like a warbling bird, a joyful, happy sound, now that Dim reflected upon it. Her tail had slapped against his hind legs, and her dock had wiggled against his thigh while he slid back and forth between the velvety curves of her graceful backside, with one hoof cupped against her budding teats, feeling their exquisite hardness against his frog. Beneath his hoof, he had felt himself slipping in and out of her, he could feel the bulge stretching her taut tummy, and this was now a vivid memory.
If only it was somehow possible to return to those happier times.
“Darling, I am sorry, but I must send you back to the darkness from which you were born.”
“Dim, no… don’t do this! It doesn’t need to end this way!”
“Whatever Darks are left must die. When I have slain the last, I too, shall return myself back to the dark, to the source, back to the well of wickedness from whence we Darks were drawn. Be brave, beloved sister, and let me make this journey easy for you… easy for both of us. Let me send you off to sleep so that you might know peace. Let our last moments be innocent, a loving, adoring brother tucking his little sister into bed. Goodnight, Darling.”
“NO!” Darling winked away, vanishing from one place and reappearing in another. Her eyes were wide with fear and her body trembled with terror. “No! Desire promised that you wouldn’t kill me! That you couldn’t! She said the geas on your mind would protect me!”
Geas? As Dim’s horn began to charge up, he wondered what else his mother might have done to him. “Gute Nacht, geliebte Schwester—”
“Nein, Bruder, bitte nicht!”
“Schlaf, liebe Schwester—”
“NO!” Darling shrieked, and she fired a powerful beam at Dim.
Almost sighing, Dim understood what was about to happen all too well when his own beam locked with Darling’s. A powerful swirling nexus formed, and two-toned magics mirrored one another as they both had the same eyes, the same magic. Each second was agony and his heart ripped in two with new pain, a terrible raw anguish that he had never experienced before.
For a second, he pondered letting Darling kill him. She would suffer for the rest of her life, it would hurt her like nothing else, and his own struggles would be over. Darling was strong, far stronger than he had anticipated, and it took much of his focus to hold her beam at bay. Gritting his teeth, his lip curled back as his eyes were dazzled by the brilliant light of the nexus, a light that would soon end.
It was almost over now. Inside of his head, he could hear weeping, a dangerous, terrible distraction, one that might prove fatal if he did not keep his concentration. The weeping became something more than just mere weeping, but images, confusing jumbled images that played out in his mind, obscuring his vision. Two mighty alicorn sisters, one white, one blue, locked in mortal combat, their beams colliding with terrible, horrendous majesty, the white one’s face bore an expression of grief and sorrow so profound that Dim could not comprehend it. The blue one’s face was a hideous, contorted mask of hatred and revulsion.
Reality shifted around him, and when Dim saw his sister, she wasn’t Darling, but Nightmare Moon. His drug addled brain began to play a memory, the battle of the two sisters, and it flickered in and out of focus like a film playing on a run down projector.
“LUNA! NO! STAND DOWN! DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS!”
Dɪᴇ!
“LUNA! PLEASE! STOP! IT DOESN’T HAVE TO END THIS WAY!”
Kɴᴇᴇʟ!
Dim’s head was filled with screaming, past echoes, all of them, each of them more terrible than the last. A terrible ragged pain bounced around inside of his soul as he experienced this psychic agony. His surroundings shifted, becoming a half-ruined castle. Smoke rose from hundreds of dead bodies, and flames flickered like curtains in the blowing wind.
Dim realised that the nexus was close, too close, and he was seconds away from dying. The heat of it washed over him as if he was standing too close to a furnace. The psychic echoes were slamming into the insides of his skull, and a painful shiver rattled down his spine. His balls ached from strain, and every muscle in his body seemed as though it would tear like so much tissue paper. The strain extracted a terrible price from his teeth, which were chipping as they ground together.
Consumed by pain, driven by fear, Dim sucked the light from the magic beams, plunging him and his sister into darkness. Blinded, she screamed, and his attuned senses told him that her concentration was faltering, evidenced by her beam weakening into near-nothingness. The magic nexus spiraled away from Dim, and a peculiar sensation flowed through his body when it struck his sister.
“Luna… no… no… no! What have I done to you? No… NO! WHY CAN’T I BE PUNISHED?”
Cautious, hearing screams and wailing inside of his own head, Dim approached the broken, twisted body of his sister, whom he loved. She was still alive, though she was not long for this world. A vast pool of blood had already formed, spreading over the scorched earth. One front leg had been torn off in the impact, and Darling, a hemophiliac, would soon bleed out.
Visions of a ruined keep flickered in and out of reality around Dim. Piles of bodies, little more than ghosts, lurked in the corners of his vision. Sobbing filled his head, along with the screams, the echoes of old, and he couldn’t tell which pain was his own or belonged to the sisters. He supposed that, in the end, it didn’t matter. In this place, fueled by the strange magic of the henge, the pain of the sisters had become his own.
“Why?” Darling gasped, her voice little more than a breathy whisper.
“Because.” It was Dim’s standard response from foalhood, and he regretted his answer right away, as it made the pain, all of it, somehow even more real.
“It hurts, Dim… stop… please, make it stop.”
For a moment, Dim couldn’t tell what was real, and her words echoed in his mind, she had said them many times when he had been rough with her, when he was biting on her neck, and forcing her to submit to him. Sometimes, he had soothed her, but other times, he just kept going, knowing that she was too spineless, to weak to hold a grudge.
“It hurts so much, Dim… I feel woozy.”
“It will be over soon.”
“Dim, save me… can’t you save me?”
“No.” Dim’s jaw muscles ached and his chipped teeth had terrible electric tingles. A copper taste lingered on his tongue and all around him was the phantom evidence of Nightmare Moon’s rampage… as well as Princess Celestia’s failure. Reality was ever shifting, ever changing, leaving everything uncertain.
“Make the hurting stop, Dim… why must you hurt me?”
“I’m not wanting to hurt you,” Dim whispered, and he stared into Darling’s fading eyes. “I’m trying to punish myself. Seeing you like this… I think it might finally give me the courage to end myself. I can only hope.” He watched as Darling’s three legs flailed around in the ever-growing pool of blood that surrounded her. Inside of his head, there was screaming, wailing, and wordless cries.
Perhaps nothing was real.
“It’s dark, Dim, and I’m scared. There’s a pale pony, and he’s surrounded by shadows.”
“You’re getting what you deserve,” Dim said to Darling, his cruelty cutting into whatever passed as his soul. “Don’t worry, I’ll be along shortly to join you.”
Sobbing, Darling tried to crawl away, but failed. Her head collapsed back down into the bloody mud with a wet splat, her horn ignited for a moment, but then the faint light went out. She screamed, a weak, pathetic scream, and not long after, the light went out in her eyes. Dim watched as the last spark of life was snuffed from Darling Dark.
There was nothing left to take away and Dim was empty.
The train trundled down the tracks on its way to Shepherd’s Shore and Dim stared out the window with a blank stare hidden behind his goggles. Grief bloomed within his breast like a ravenous cancer, devouring him, consuming him; a thousand malignant, conquering tentacles that meandered through his body, leaving disease in their wake. In his head was another unwelcomed visitor, an unwelcomed lone voice that plagued him, spoke to him, remained with him, speaking words he had no desire to hear.
The voice had a distressing pinkness to it, and Dim loathed it.
After enduring yet another sour belch, Dim cursed his unicorn physiology and lamented the fact that even after drinking gallons of red wine, he wasn’t more than somewhat drowsy, and not the least bit drunk. Oh, some unicorns could drink to the point of drunkenness, but he was not one of the lucky ones. No, life had cursed him with unwelcomed, unwanted, undesired sobriety. A shower of pink and amber sparks spurted from his horn, which was the alcohol converted to magic within his body. As the sparks arced out, Dim felt his drowsy-state subsiding.
Come home, Dim, let us help you.
“No,” Dim grumbled, all too aware that he was talking to himself in public, and not caring. “Now, do me a favour and shut up, before I have to dig out my grey matter with a spoon.”
Dim, please, let us help you. Your mother did something awful to you. Let us heal you.
His head resting against the glass window, Dim sighed and felt his innate curiousity get the better of him. So far, he had avoided the temptation, but the pink voice seemed to be wearing down his resolve. Even though he feared the answer, he wanted to know. Needed to know. How many ways had his mother poisoned him?
“What did my mother do to me?” Dim asked, mumbling out the words in a faint, somewhat slurred whisper. The opium coursing through his blood did much to numb the pain, though not enough. Not nearly enough. He felt the voice inside of his head perk, if it could be described as such, and the sensation of pink proliferating through his brain made him nauseous.
It’s complicated, Dim. We don’t know everything that was done to you. Princess Celestia is still trying to discern that. We’re fearful of the eventual outcome though.
Closing his eyes, he tried to broadcast as much of his disappointment as possible, not caring for this answer. It seemed vague, meaningless, a stream of bullshit being poured directly into his brain by some unknown, untrusted outside source. He didn’t know who was in his head, but he resented them and wished they would go. Sometimes, the voice vanished for a time, perhaps needing rest before tormenting him once more.
Dim, you had a great and glorious purpose… you did. Your talent wasn’t the corruption of light, but the creation of light. You were supposed to be able to shine a light in any darkness—there were prophecies yet unfulfilled and your coming was promised. You are one of Princess Luna’s heirs, and as such, you have a purpose, a destiny, there was much required of you.
Dim listened… and did not dismiss what he had been told.
Somehow, your mother knew you were coming. Like so many of Luna’s other heirs, you were supposed to be the redemption of your house—a light that shines in the darkness. Princess Celestia has been waiting for you for a very long time… for a time, it seemed that the promised Element of Magic might come from House Dark, but she was mistaken. Another of Luna’s distant heirs took up that mantle, as promised, as foretold.
Sighing, Dim couldn’t sense that he was being lied to, but that didn’t mean anything.
Like I said though, your mother knew you were coming. We don’t know how she knew, but we have found out that she’s been in contact with Catrina for a very long time. Who Catrina is isn’t important right now, but I promise I’ll tell you more later. For right now, what is important is, somehow, your mother corrupted your purpose, your destiny. Using magics that we don’t yet understand, she warped your very existence. She had enough knowledge of the future to know who you were and what you would be. What you would become. The great threat you would represent to your house and their plans.
That sounded an awful lot like the Dark Desire that he knew, and Dim continued to listen.
Using magics most foul and terrible, she corrupted you, corrupted your very core, and she somehow changed your purpose… your destiny. There are magics that we do not yet understand at work here. We know now that your mother trafficked with demons, trading knowledge with them—
“At what price?” Dim asked aloud, his numbed lips clinging to his teeth in an odd, uncomfortable way. This had piqued his interest far more than it should have, and now, he had to know, even though he feared whatever answers he might be offered.
You were not Desire’s first foal… we broke the geas on a servant. This maid, also a midwife, said that there was a misshapen monster born from your mother. Some kind of six-legged demon-spawn, the maid said. It was a hideous thing, twisted with evil, and it was given back to the demon lord that spawned it within seconds of its birth. Somehow, your mother gained the knowledge required to alter you into what you are now. Princess Celestia is hopeful that she can reverse this… that she can heal you.
“While there is some truth in what you say, I think it is far more likely that you will imprison me or throw me into an asylum. I have no good reason to trust you. For all I know, you could be manipulating me with half-truths, just like my mother did. My whole family did. I am done being manipulated.”
Dim, please… come home! We have no desire to harm you, we only want to make the hurting stop!
The train lurched and began to slow as it rounded the final corner before Shepherd’s Shore. Ahead was a quaint little town by the seaside, with beam and block construction, thatched roofs, and the serene pastoral splendour that could only exist in such pre-industrial places. The beauty left Dim feeling both hopeful and sickened.
“You know, if I cannot be rid of this annoying voice in my head, perhaps it is high time I throw myself into the sea…”
Shepherd’s Shore was a halcyon little patch of nowhere. It was the blissful, rural idyll picture on a postcard. Under most circumstances, most ponies would be joyful upon their arrival here. Ponies from all over the mainland of the Grittish Isles came here on holiday, the wealthy, privileged ones at least. There was a picture-perfect lighthouse that was made from chalk. Many of the buildings here were made from chalk. The earth ponies that populated this town were especially colourful and cheerful of disposition.
Stepping down from the train, Dim crunched a cube of opium-laced salts between his now chipped and imperfect teeth. He had trouble recalling just how much opium-laced salts he had ingested, and truth be told, he couldn’t be bothered to care. When it felt like too much, he consumed a cube of coca-laced salts and continued on with his life, unconcerned about the consequences.
Beneath his cloak, he was sweating, though it wasn’t just from the sun. He shook and trembled with each step as though he had a palsy, and ponies looked upon him with genuine, sincere concern as he made his way through the crowd. His slender, graceful legs trembled like those of an elderly stallion living out the final years of his life.
Stumbling over to a kiosk that sold newspapers, magazines, and snacks to hungry travellers, Dim asked, “Where might I find a room for rent?”
The rather portly and mustachioed stallion inside the kiosk eyeballed Dim with a look of grave worry. “Hoi, yer looking rather sickly. Are ye a lunger? Have ye consumption?”
Dim stood there, blinking behind the thick black glass of his goggles, feeling both touched and just a little bit annoyed by such well-meaning concern. “I’m fine. It’s nothing that a little sea air won’t fix. Do you know of a place?”
Mustache quivering, the stallion drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Two places. If yer cheap, there’s Scrubber’s hostel. When you step out of the train station, ye’ll see it. It has a common room and that’s about it. If you have coin, there’s the Queen’s Saggin’ Teat and it’s down by the pier. Look for a big chalk building that has a sign that looks like a mare’s backside.”
“Right, thank you.” Dim bowed his head, and then as an afterthought, he added, “I’ll take a newspaper…”
Darling Dark was gone. Sweating, trembling, unable to sleep, unable to escape, Dim was forced to confront this grim fact. Memories—good and bad—tumbled through his mind, fueled by the warring influences of opium and coca-extract he had ingested. Nursery-mate, playmate, schoolmate, sparring partner, lover… sister... she had been everything to him. There would be no replacing her, no forgetting her. There would be no living with himself after what he had done.
He had loved her and hated her in equal measure.
Right now, he loathed her as much as he loathed himself, holding her in contempt for being weak, and he himself, too. Twitching, grinding his teeth, he could hear her laughter, her giggling coming from the corners of his room. It was a joyful sound that filled him with revulsion, and in the corners of his vision, he kept seeing her faint outline, a suggestion of her shadow.
Sitting up in bed, his breathing was ragged, his thin stomach rising and falling with each desperate inhale. The years of inbreeding had left Dim and his family members with too-thin nostrils and nasal passages, which made laboured breathing difficult. At the moment, it almost felt impossible. His sheets had been stiff, a little starchy even, and had a pleasing floral scent. Now, they were soggy, damp, and smelly.
His insides cramped—no doubt too much opium had clogged up his bowels—and it was impossible to tell if he was hungry. When had he eaten last? He couldn’t remember. How many days had it been since he had left Darling’s body in the sparse woods around the standing stones? When he couldn’t remember, when he couldn’t figure it out, the sting of tears blinded him. He had left her for the wolves to eat, to devour. How pathetic he was, that he could not bear to be near her dead body, and he had fled from her.
Cowardice did not become him; were he a braver pony, he might lie in a warm bath for a time and open a vein. Throwing himself into the sea was an option; he was in a convenient location to do so, but there was the dreadful matter of a long and undignified fall. He couldn’t stop thinking of Darling’s end, how she had seen the pale pony and a host of shadows. What end might await him? What awful afterlife was he bound for? Perhaps the misery of living was a suitable alternative.
Sweating, shivering, both freezing and burning up, Dim decided that he needed food. He couldn’t be certain, but kebabs might have been his last meal. With his current mental state, it was impossible to tell. The Queen’s Saggin’ Teat had a kitchen and served food. Perhaps they had bhang.
Looking quite fragile, Dim sat beneath the heavy awning of a pleasant patio that had half-height shrubberies as short walls. It was well shaded, though still too well lit for Dim, and there was a delightful, salt-scented breeze blowing in off of the ocean. He was eating, but it was a slow process. His body, as it turned out, needed food, but each bite forced him to do battle with nausea.
Some of the other patrons were watching him, staring at him, they had frightened looks of concern. Or did they? Dim was having a hard time figuring out what was real. He was almost certain that when he looked away, those soft looks of concern became sneering expressions of ridicule. Drenched in sweat, wearing his goggles, and chugging down Grittish gin by the quart, Dim had no idea what sort of tragic figure he presented to others.
The sound of laughter still plagued him and he couldn’t tell if it was the ponies around him or Darling. She was being a poor sport, Darling. She was dead, as dead as dead could be, and it was dirty pool to be laughing at him, undoing his nerves. He hadn’t wanted this to happen and he hadn’t wanted it to end the way it had. The flapping of wings made his head jerk, and his blurry eyes tried to focus on the sound. Was it real?
Flapping wings and metal. Not a good sound. Had they come for him, after all this time? Wardens. Wardens would be the worst. Oh, he might be able to fight one, or maybe two or three if he was lucky, but fighting the Wardens was a tricky business. Draconic, magic-resistant, and possessing their own unique magic, Dim wasn’t sure how to even go about battling a Warden. They drank strange alchemical concoctions that made them even more magic-resistant. It was said they drank poisons from an early age, granting them immunity to most anything toxic.
Blinking, his ears straining, Dim heard the sound of feathers, or thought he did.
“Citizens of Shepherd’s Shore! Each of you are guilty for treason against the Crowns of the Grittish Empire! No taxes have been paid, and after repeated requests, your refusal can no longer be ignored! All of you are to gather in a calm and orderly manner near the train station! A prison train is coming so that you might be rounded up and processed for trial. Cooperation means living, but if you resist, it will mean your life!”
Dim shivered when he began to hear panicked screams from all around him. Overhead, he heard more feathers and metal. He took a swig of gin, kept going, and emptied the bottle. His stomach lurched, and for a brief second, he wasn’t sure if he was going to freeze to death or spontaneously combust.
Soldiers wouldn’t do this… no… it couldn’t be. These were good ponies, ponies who had been concerned for him. These ponies, disgusting primitives though they were, were kind, generous sorts. No soldier would ever do this… no soldier would ever obey an order this callous, this cruel, no soldier would ever commit this act of betrayal against the citizenry they were sworn to defend.
No…
No.
Nein.
These were bandits, come to raid the town. These were bandits disguised as soldiers. And somepony had to do something. Somepony had to defend these poor, defenseless ponies. This could not be allowed to happen. Bandits couldn’t just run roughshod over the populace. Reaching into his saddlebags, Dim pulled out not one, but two cubes of coca-laced salts and popped them into his mouth. Grimacing, he began to chew, and his saliva turned into white crusts in the corners of his thin mouth.
He was a wizard. No, he was a vizard, and as such, it was his sworn duty to make bandits pay. His vision snapped into hyper-focus and Dim rose up to his hooves. Yes, it was time to be vizard… Zauberer. Maybe… if he was lucky… he could find redemption in Princess Luna’s eyes if he saved the town from bandits. He was… Kind des Krieges, a distant foal of the War Maiden, the Night Lady, and he had fallen far, far from her glory.
Grief became murderous rage of equal measure, and Dim Dark prepared to do battle…
Dim wasn’t walking so much as he was floating—or maybe he was walking and he just couldn’t tell. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his hooves as he approached the large group of bandits that had landed in the town square. Motes of darkness swirled around him; it was impossible to determine if they were real or a hallucination. This town was built upon a foundation of chalk and the magic here was strong… strong and easy to reach. It required no effort on Dim’s part to begin siphoning it to fuel his magic.
There were pegasus ponies still overhead, circling over the town, and earth ponies cowered in their doorways. Dim could smell the fear around him as mothers stood protective over their foals. None moved to resist the bandits, and that was understandable. Peasants were supposed to work, to farm, to do manual labour… as for himself… he existed to destroy bandits. Just like the wizards of old did in his foalhood storybooks. These bandits were aggressive, fearless, they had forgotten the old ways, the old order, when the peasantry had their guardian wizard.
Dim was coming to remind them, to give an object lesson on why one should not mess with a wizard’s peasant charges. Dim could only recall one single, solitary law of Equestrian Feudalism and the Covenant of the Three Tribes: To harass a wizard’s charges was to invite disaster. There were other laws, quite a number, but Dim’s memory of those were murky, muddied, and didn’t seem important at the moment.
Some inconsiderate, oafish, boorish noble had left these poor peasants wizardless. In the back of Dim’s mind, he was already thinking of all manner of terrible punishments, should he find the cretinous ignoramus responsible for this vulgar act of ineptitude. Dim trembled while the coca-laced salts did a number on his body and his rage brought everything into perfect focus.
A wizard did not just punish, but made examples. Bandits were not just killed, no, that was a wizard being lax in his duties. No, examples had to be made, to discourage future bandits. The peasantry was owed a measure of safety for all of their labour. While Dim approached the gathered bandits, his scowl intensified.
“You there! Stop!” one of the armored pegasus ponies commanded.
In response, Dim cast a spell into their midst. One single, terrible spell, and he did it in the hopes that from this moment forwards, all bandits would rethink their wicked ways. With a furious snarl, Dim made an example out of the gathered crowd, and he did so by targeting their armor, their symbols and vestments of false-authority, their illusion of martial might projected upon the peasantry.
The spell took hold, a transmutation spell that was far more suited for use in a foundry or a smithy. It sank into the metal like liquid into a sponge, and then, obeying Dim’s will, the metal transmogrified into a liquid state. The pegasus ponies wearing the armor hardly even had time to scream, plead for mercy, or even screech. The liquified steel cooked them, liquefying their remains as well, and about two dozen bandits became a puddle that simmered in the town’s center.
“Sterbt, alle von euch, sterbt!” Dim’s voice, magically amplified, echoed through the town, bouncing from wall to wall, stone to stone, travelling up every street and alleyway. “I am Dim Dark of House Dark, distant son of the War Maiden, and you bandits… you disgusting primitives… you have brought this reckoning down upon your own heads!”
A dreadful smell wafted up from the puddle of bubbling steel in the center of town.
A long, long time ago, when Dim had been a foal, he had once read in a book: A single earth pony can stave off famine and starvation. A lone pegasus can end a drought. The steadfastness of but one unicorn can turn back an invasion, allowing the earth pony and the pegasus pony to labour in peace. This is the balance of harmony.
Now, in the remote town of Shepherd’s Shore, far, far away from Equestria and its almost unique inter-tribal ideals of harmony, two centuries of pegasus ponies faced off against but one unicorn, one lone, crazed, drug-addled, grief-stricken unicorn that remembered the noble virtues presented to him during his foalhood, and felt a spark of salvation ignite within his soul.
It was, for all intents and purposes, the clash of two noble ideals. That is to say, the ideologies of two very different groups of nobles met head to head. The two centuries of pegasus ponies came to do their jobs, to round up a town of ponies that had committed an act of secession against the ruling Crowns of the Grittish Isles. Their cause, if not just, was supported and given relevance by the law of the land. They were soldiers following orders, doing their jobs. Dim, addled though he might be, had a somewhat more romanticised view of feudalism and his duties. The windmills might be giants, and the pegasus ponies might be bandits. Neither bandits nor giants had a place in Dim’s own take on the ancient treatise known as Equestrian Feudalism and the Covenant of the Three Tribes.
Overhead, a phalanx of pegasus ponies circled—they flew in formation—and unleashed a swarm of missiles; javelins, pilums, and incendiary oil bombs, all of which rained down upon Dim. On the ground, looking up, and seeing the incoming swarm, Dim raised a shield just to be cautious, and then he began casting his response.
It was almost insulting to have spears thrown at him by disgusting primitives. Gravity assisted or not, they posed no real threat. Reaching out with his mind, he grabbed them all, and the incoming incendiary bombs as well. While holding the missiles, he launched a fireball into the midsts of the bandit’s aerial phalanx. The tiny orb of fire, small, insignificant looking, seemed like such a harmless thing—no real threat at all.
Until it reached the flock of flying pegasus ponies and blossomed into a fiery cloud of destruction. Feathers caught fire, armor superheated, ponies went blind, and hairy hides ignited. It began to rain bodies down onto the thatched roofs. Dim, mindful of his precious peasants, snuffed the flames before they could spread and the town was engulfed. The bandits that crashed down to the cobblestone streets began to roll around, trying to extinguish the flames.
Still others tried to rush Dim, a foolish endeavour. Turning about his many missiles, he faced the pointy ends at those who came for him, and gave a push. The streets filled with wailing and screams, and the cacophony of violence was almost deafening. Crushing open the oil bombs, he doused some of the pegasus ponies in oil and then with a flick of magic, he ignited them, setting them ablaze, and filling the air with the nauseating miasma of burning feathers.
Black smoke roiled up into the skies, curling as it was carried aloft by the ocean breeze.
Still more were coming, running down the streets, going from one place of cover to another, and Dim watched them with a wary eye. Reaching out with his mind, he gave a shop window a telekinetic thump, shattering the glass into many tiny shards, which he then gathered. A simple transmutation spell—a spell more suited to craftsponies who worked with various mediums—turned the glass into blobs of bubbling, boiling liquid, which he kept entrapped in a containment field of magic, a somewhat more complicated spell that required a great deal of concentration.
With but a gentle nudge of his mind and willpower, he positioned the containment field of liquified glass over the encroaching bandits, and let go—a terrible fate indeed. As the molten, superheated glass began to rain down, skin blistered, eyes popped, lolling tongues fried, sizzled, and shriveled. Some of them ignited, while others had dribbling liquefied glass burning holes through them.
Magic was a terrible thing, an awful thing, a miraculous thing. When coupled with imagination and sufficient schooling, a wizard became a terrific force to be reckoned with. All things considered, Dim wasn’t very powerful, but he was well schooled and had creative ways of using the most simple of spells in horrifying ways. He often dreamed of what he might do if he had an actual talent for magic, and near-limitless power at his disposal.
More of the disgusting primitives were coming, and Dim knew that he needed a breather.
Taking shelter inside of a souvenir shop, he could hear ponies upstairs in the living quarters. He had teleported away from the crowd of pegasus ponies, the bandits, the disgusting primitives that had dared to come to this town. His blood was singing and his heart was racing. Days with little or no sleep, a lack of food, and far too many substances was taking a toll on Dim.
A terrible toll indeed.
Inside of his head he could hear weeping and wailing, a sound that disturbed him. Was it Darling? The pink voice lodged inside of his head? Was it whatever remained of his own soul, mourning the loss of whatever might remain of his sanity? There was no way of telling, no way of knowing.
Sucking wind, Dim felt a terrible pain in his barrel, a constriction around his heart, and his head was thudding. Seeing the glint of steel outside the window, he grabbed the scouting pegasus pony and hauled him inside, silencing the screams of the captured bandit. Dim pulled him close, so much so that it was almost intimate, and he pressed his lips against the captured stallion’s ear.
“I need for you to go and kill your fellows,” Dim said, murmuring his words into the bandit’s quivering ear. After a moment, the pegasus’ eyes clouded over, lost their colour, went dull, and then he nodded, causing Dim to smile. “Good… do as I say… go and make a good accounting for yourself, you degenerate, disgusting primitive. I am repulsed and sickened by your very stench.”
When Dim let go, the pegasus ran off, his wings extended, and a murderous expression could be seen upon his face as he exited the shop. Standing behind the counter, Dim waited, listening, and was rewarded with the sounds of violence, of steel on steel, shouts and screams. His parchment thin upper lip curled back into a sardonic sneer, and he continued sucking in deep breaths, trying to ease the constriction in his barrel.
He was unaware of how close his heart was to bursting.
Dim took perverse delight in taking mundane utility spells and finding new, creative uses for them. He had done so since his foalhood, causing his mother no end of eye-rolling and consternation. A practitioner of unicorn-utilitarianism, Dim delighted in infuriating and annoying his mother with his practices of magical minimalism. In duels with his family members, Dim could do more with less. He had a knack for turning the simplest of spells into deadly combat ready incantations. While his other family members focused on big, showy, flashy displays of combat prowess, Dim focused on prolonged casting.
That said, he was capable of his own big, showy, flashy displays of combat prowess—which was the only reason why his mother tolerated his willful displays of disobedience, insolence, and individualism. By the age of twelve, he had cast his first spell of immense destruction: The War Maiden’s Seeking Skull. It was a spell that few adults in his family could cast, and Dim was able to do so—in silence—without the usual required verbal component, which he felt was a silly and nonsensical rhyme. Great Grandmother was said to be the Element of Laughter at one point, and she was a silly pony.
How droll, here comes yonder skull! Lookout, thou ungrateful shits, thine War Maiden hast come to render thee to bits!
Sometimes, magic was stupid.
The weeping inside of his head had grown grating, and was now accompanied by a voice that Dim could not bear to hear. The voice was pleading with him to stop, to put an end to the slaughter, but Dim dismissed it as a drug-induced hallucination as he once more returned to the streets to finish what he started.
What few bandits still survived, had changed their tactics. They did not fly in a tight formation, having seen the end of their fellows, nor did they come near the ground. After significant losses, they had learned that distance was their friend. Dim peered up at them from behind his goggles, watching, waiting for them to do something. Anything.
They were armed, some of them still had javelins and pilums, which they did not throw.
Preparing a spell, the very sort of spell that might be frowned upon by the princesses, Dim spat out a string of arcane words to prime his vile hex: “Vorticem nocte caecitas!” After speaking, he released what appeared to be a small black tornado, which went streaking off towards a pegasus.
The bandit fled, but to no avail, the seeking spell was faster and unerring. It caught up with the pegasus, who was watched by his fellows, and when the black twister touched him, he let out a cry of alarm. His flight became erratic, confused, and directionless. Listing, he swooped and swerved, trying to get his bearings, and then he smashed into the tall lighthouse, leaving behind a bloody smear.
The remaining pegasus ponies all exchanged a glance with one another, but said nothing. As one, they all retreated, fleeing, less than a dozen airborne survivors, all of which took off to the west. Dim let them go and he squinted as they become little more than birds in the distance. Scowling, Dim trotted away to search the city for any that might yet still live, with the intention of putting them out of their misery.
It was the least he could do.
Using a snapped-in-half javelin, Dim made a swift movement and opened up the throat of a burned pegasus pony. Smoke rose all around him, but no fires burned, he had been careful and thorough in his suffocation of the flames in the thatch. The dying pegasus let out a strangled bleat, his legs twitching and kicking, and the feeble flicker of life departed from him.
Well over a hundred bodies lie in ruin, some of which had very little in the way of remains. Dim moved from body to body, checking them for signs of life, and extinguishing those who still drew breath. There was no cruelty in his actions—the time for fighting was over—and he felt no malice towards those he dispatched. This was a job, a job like any other, and Dim was a consummate professional.
The stench of burning hair and feathers was thick in the air, unpleasant, foul, and Dim’s goggles kept his eyes from the worst of it. Many of the whitewashed walls were smeared with soot and blood. Entrails lay festooned in the streets, hung from lampposts, and dangled from signs like grim ribbons left behind from some cute-ceañera gone wrong in the worst ways. One of the pegasus ponies was skewered atop the wrought iron spike on top of a gas lamp.
He still lived and gave Dim an imploring look while he hung there, helpless.
“I have a family,” the pegasus gasped, his wings flapped against his sides, and blood trickled down from his quivering lips.
“I had a family too,” Dim responded as he approached. “If they could be called as such. I’ve killed them, I have. My actions have been their undoing.”
For a moment, the two locked eyes and stared at one another. The hanging pegasus had an upside down view of Dim, and he began to whimper. Leaning in, Dim let out a soft wicker, a gentle sound, and then he sighed with weariness.
“Go to sleep, Bandit.” With a swift motion, Dim sliced open the helpless pegasus’ throat and there was a gasp as blood came geysering out. He sidestepped, avoiding the gushing crimson stream, and then watched as the light in the bandit’s eyes faded into nothingness.
Hearing hooves behind him, Dim turned, his protections active, and he whirled about to face whomever was approaching. One terrified earth pony approached, with about a dozen ponies cowering behind him. He was fat—not chubby—fat, and he was sweating a great deal, which left streaks on his soot-stained hide.
“My name is Rainy Noon, and I’m the mayor of this town,” the pony managed to say, though he sounded as though he was going to choke at any moment. “We thank you for everything you’ve done… and we’re all very grateful—”
Dim heard a ‘but’ lurking and he stood there, waiting as the skewered bandit bled out.
“—but you can’t stay here.” The mayor blinked and was terrified. “The townsfolk are horrified by what you’ve done. But we are both grateful and thankful that you’ve saved us.”
“What will you do?” Dim asked in a low whisper, now feeling his exhaustion, and he wondered if perhaps he should ingest more coca-laced salts. “More bandits will come, and when you send me away, who will protect you?”
The mayor blinked, confused. He stood there, stammering for a moment, his lips flapping and his sagging jowls jiggled. When he recovered, he said, “There are ships in the harbour. A fair number. I think we’ll leave this place and set sail for Equestria.”
“Ask them for refuge. Ask to speak to one of the princesses. Tell them that Lord Dim Dark sent you, and you tell them that you are to be given asylum under my name. The law should protect you, if the law is worth anything anymore. Tell them that bandits came to sack your town.”
“Aye, yes Your Lordship.” The mayor’s ears splayed out while he took a step backwards, and he took on a supplicative, submissive posture. “Your Lordship is very kind, offering us asylum in your name. I’m really very sorry about asking you to leave, but the townsfolk are terrified of you… just… look… at… everything.” Turning his head, the fat mayor looked over at the cooling puddle of steel in the town’s square. “How do we even fix that?”
Not even bothering to look, Dim shrugged. “I will leave soon enough. Perhaps I can get passage on a boat.” Raising his voice a little, he continued, “All of you should leave as soon as possible. Retribution might be swift and terrible. I will not be here to protect you. Please, listen to me. Flee this place. Go to a place of safety.”
“We will,” the mayor responded as he returned his attention to Dim. “Your Lordship, if you don’t mind me asking… why’d you do it?”
Dim drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and it felt as though his heart would give out at any second. “I am a wizard, they are bandits. Bandits should fear wizards. This is the natural order of things. Peasants should feel safe and secure in their home.” For a brief moment, Dim felt the crushing weight of a new kind of sadness, one alien to him. “Even if it is the wizard that frightens them. I will go and no harm will come to you from me.”
“I… am sorry…” the mayor stammered, and his sorry state seemed sincere.
“I am too,” Dim replied, the sound of weeping echoing in his head, “for everything I’ve done…”
The nagging, persistent pink voice was the bane of Dim’s existence during his waking hours, but sleeping was even worse. Sleep was when Princess Luna came to torment him. Somehow, she was reaching halfway around the world to mess with his mind, promising him that he would endure the most terrible, most brutal acts of tough love the world had ever witnessed if he did not come home. As his distant grandmother, she was sick of his shit—something about this fact chilled his blood to the point of curdling.
Even worse, he kept having nightmares about a crinkled paper alicorn who poured ink down his throat, drowning him. The ink was bitter, vile, and poured from the paper alicorn’s eyes like a flood of tears. Dim was certain that this was some fantastical dream crafted and created by Princess Luna, designed to torment him until his spirit broke, or he went home.
At the moment, he was living in a rented room in what had once been a rum distillery on the fabled island of Tortoise-Tuga. The isle had once been a shared colony of the Grittish Isles and Fancy, but that was long ago. It had since fallen to anarchy, becoming a haven for pirates, privateers, and the buck-an-ear types. Since coming here, Dim had made a small fortune doing magical drudgery.
This was an awful place, a terrible place, and Dim knew that he needed to go. He had to leave before he burned the entire island down and drove the disgusting primitives into the sea so they could and would be drowned. Slavery existed here, the trafficking of sapients; and for Dim, it was just a matter of time before something inside of him snapped, leading to what was sure to be another killing spree. Much to his own horror, he had done it once, and now he lived with the soul-crushing knowledge of how easy it would be to do again.
Shepherd’s Shore haunted him. His memory of it was hazy, difficult to recollect, but the terrible pink voice reminded him of what he had done. She would not let him forget. When the guilt came, a guilt that Dim had been unaware that he could feel, the voice would seize upon it, lecturing him, scolding him, rebuking him for his soul-withering act of violence. Dim could not fault her, he had done wrong, there was no denying that.
The pink voice had convinced him that the very fact that he felt bad about it was evidence that he had a soul worth saving. He wanted to believe her—he did, he had a sincere, honest desire to do so—but there was a deeper, darker part of himself that didn’t want to be saved. He deserved to suffer and when death came, the pale pony and his shadows would come to claim him.
He had left the Grittish Isles just in time. It had collapsed into bickering, fighting city states at war with one another, due in no small part to the massacre in Shepherd’s Shore. An unknown pony now roamed the isles, killing, murdering, and burning—a pony that matched Dim’s description and called himself ‘Dim Dark, the Lord of Shades.’ Dim didn’t know what was going on, if the Lord of Shades was a real pony or if agitators had seized upon his own description after the slaughter at Shepherd’s Shore. A cunning enemy would take advantage of the terror that Dim had sown, and Dim wondered if his mother was involved somehow.
The only thing that Dim knew for certain was, Grogar had the Grittish Isles now, of this there could be no doubt. The entire world was now holding its breath as the civil war continued to intensify, throwing the global economy into chaos and sending a flood of refugees to friendly shores. Dim was the instigator, the perpetrator, the pony responsible for inciting the civil war among the Crowned Heads of the Grittish Isles, and his doppelganger was there, even now, sowing the seeds of discontent and discord.
The Sea Witch was giving him a strange look and Dim had trouble reading her face. He didn’t know the zebra’s name—nopony did, names had magic and power—but he knew her to be powerful. During his time here, he had come to know her, and with her help he had weaned himself off of the coca and the opium. She had said it was destroying his heart, sapping his vitality, and after the dreadful day of Shepherd’s Shore, he was inclined to agree.
Her hut, such as it was, was actually an overturned ship that had been dragged to the center of the island. It was an odd place that radiated bizarre magic. Inside and out, there were thousands of gourds, all filled with strange compounds, everything a sailor needed. A superstitious lot, sailors ran into all manner of evil on the open seas and skies.
“So,” Dim began, “think you can remove the voice in my head?”
The wrinkled old mare appeared as though she had bit into a lemon, and her wrinkled visage became downright prune-like. She waved a withered old hoof around, snarled, and squinted one eye at Dim. “The Sea Witch has been divining… what you have is an astral sliver stuck in your mind. To silence that voice, you must kill the speaker.”
Hearing this, Dim sighed, overflowing with disappointment.
“It is a tiny, insignificant mote of her mind that is now lodged in yours,” the Sea Witch explained. “Like a grain of sand in an oyster. You have been marked, Dark One. There is now a pink flame that burns within your darkness.” The wrinkled old zebra mare’s eyebrows made a titanic effort to lift themselves among the morass of wrinkles that was the old mare’s face. “You are a strange creature, Dark One. Most cast an astral light and you are the first being I have encountered that casts an astral shadow. I’ve heard stories of your kind… but never seen one.”
“That is not helpful.” Dim’s voice was soft but his eyes were hard.
“There is another. A damned, cursed healer that walks this world, and her name is Radiant Hope. I have heard stories of her also-damned, cursed companion. He too casts an astral shadow. He is Umbrum, a fate that I think you share. He was born one; you were made one. Finding them might get you answers, but beware… Radiant Hope might try to heal you of your sad sickness… if you resist her, if you try to harm her, her companion will unravel your very existence and lay your soul to waste. While you are no doubt powerful, you are an insignificant gnat compared to one such as he.”
“Umbrum?” Dim now gave all of his attention to the old mare and his ears pivoted forwards. No longer did his eyes dart around to take in glances of the various gourds, phials, and philters for sale.
“I know very little and it is only a guess.” The mare scowled, and her face sagged. “Only a fool would hang upon my words in such a way, looking for hope. It is an idea, a guess, a bit of postulation and nothing more, foolish colt.”
For a moment, Dim considered telling the superstitious, disgusting primitive off for speaking to him in such a manner, but he reconsidered. She had been kind to him—well, in a relative sense—and as far gone as he was, he knew the difference between kindness and cruelty. After a moment of thoughtful reflection, he reached the conclusion that she had been fair in her dealings with him. Reaching into his saddlebags, he pulled out a silver coin and plunked it down upon the witch’s table. His eyes remained locked with hers, and her face continued to be unreadable.
The Sea Witch’s dreadlocks reached out, snatched up the coin, and it vanished into the writhing tangles that crowned her head. The corners of her mouth struggled to lift, and all of her wrinkles tugged at her faint smile. “You are no more a unicorn than I am a giraffe. You were made, Dark One. Created. You were fashioned with a dark purpose in mind. While my kind might be able to help you, your strongest hope lies with your alicorns.”
Dim said nothing, but just sat there and stared at the old mare, and she stared back at him. Her dreadlocks writhed like impatient serpents and Dim could sense the powerful magic that she radiated. She was the zebra analogue of a unicorn and Dim could cast no doubts on her abilities. Nopony survived on the Isle of Tortoise-Tuga without being strong: this was the kind of place where the strong survived, and the weak became slaves. One of the many reasons he had to banish his addictions.
“I will take your words into consideration,” Dim said while he bowed his head. “Thank you…”
The evening was hot and sticky, a miserable combination. Dim much prefered the cooler temperatures of the Grittish Isles. The tropics did not agree with him, which was all the more reason to go. He was sweating, shaking, and having a hard time in general, which was bad, because he had a client to meet. A potential way off of this wretched island. Some ship needed a wizard and Dim considered taking the position.
The common room was packed with unsavoury types, dangerous types, and far too many guns to mention. This was a wild, dangerous place, filled with wild, dangerous sapients. Clutching a bottle of rum, Dim moved through the crowd and tried not to breathe. The stench here was indescribable, and being a hot, sweaty pony, he was also a contributor.
All of the usuals were present and accounted for. The gamblers; the washed up sailors living off of their savings; the old, retired sea captains that somehow clung to life and survived this place. Dim knew them by face, if not by name, and he had become one of them. This place had a gravity of its own and he knew that if he did not leave soon, he would become a fixture here.
Look at her! She’s beautiful! And she’s a Pie, too! She’s immutably good!
The voice in his head made Dim pause to have a look around. Standing just inside the door, there was a frantic looking… what was she? He had himself a second look and tried to figure out what he was seeing. She was a hippogriff, but not quite. Maybe a quarter hippogriff. No beak, no feathers, but she had the talons and she was big. She was black, black as pitch, black as liquid midnight, and her jade green eyes were slitted like a cat’s.
Dim, go to her! Ask her for her help! Offer to help her! With her, you might one day be sane again! Please, Dim, if you won’t come home to us, go to her! Let her help you! Let her do what Pies do! She can make you better, or at least slow down your progression into darkness!
The strange creature looked frantic, worried, and scared. Dim knew she wouldn’t last long here. She was no cutthroat, no cold-blooded killer, though he noted that she did have a gun strapped to her barrel. Did hippogriffs have barrels? Dim didn’t know. She was the blackest, black creature that Dim had ever seen, and he was stricken by her physical appearance.
“I need a hireling,” she said in a voice far too timid for this place.
Dim had never made it to his table to wait for his client. Confused, he decided to listen to the voice inside of his head. Cautious, slow, he approached the hippogriff, who was as big as a lion, as griffons tended to be. When she looked at him, he felt his heart stop for a moment, and he could almost hear the pink voice breathing in his head.
“Will you help me?” the strange hippogriff asked.
Put on the spot, it was all Dim could do to stand there and stare at her. She was an exotic creature, rare, and breathtaking. “Who are you, what do you need, and what are you paying?”
“My name is Blackbird Coffyn, I’m looking for my mother, and the best that I could offer is passage off of this island,” she replied as her talons twitched against the floor. “Pretty as I am, I’m off limits and no means no. This has been very difficult on my own so far… I just picked up a fresh lead and I’d like to be going.”
“A voice inside of my head told me to help you,” Dim blurted out.
“Oh!” Blackbird’s eyes widened. “Oh… is that so? Well… I—”
“The voice inside my head said that with your help I might be sane again.” Dim was disturbed by his sudden verbal diarrhea and he didn’t understand what was going on, not in the slightest. “I am a pathetic, tortured soul. Help me.” He was scared now, because his mouth had betrayed him.
“Can you fight?” Blackbird asked.
In response, Dim began laughing, a mad cackle, and no words found their way to his lips. All around him, the patrons of the common room were bobbing their heads, and some looked relieved—no doubt because he might be leaving. Could he fight… that was a silly question to ask. He was nervous, flustered, and tongue tied, even though he kept saying stuff.
“I could give you a demonstration,” Dim offered, once he found his tongue after the cat-creature had stolen it, and no sooner had the words left his lips than the patrons of the common room found they had business elsewhere. They poured out of doors, pushing and shoving one another, and those who could not reach a door lept out of whatever nearby window was available.
Blinking, Blackbird looked around, a bit startled by the sudden stampede, and her talons tapped upon the floor. Her tail, tufted with feathers on the tip, swished around from side to side. Her expressions were feline, for the most part, and when her mouth opened, pointed canines could be seen.
“I am vizard,” Dim explained, and he felt a giddiness stronger than any coca-laced salts could ever hope to offer. Realising he was still holding his rum bottle, he took a swig, then offered it to Blackbird. Much to his relief, she accepted, taking it in her talons, and he watched as she too, took a swallow.
The faces she made made him want to laugh, but he didn’t.
“You’re a weirdo and I think you might be nuts, but I need the help.” Blackbird held on to the rum bottle and she squinted at Dim. “Please, I’m just a girl looking for her mother, please, please don’t make me regret this. Ever since I’ve started on this quest, I’ve met the worst sorts of creatures you could imagine.”
“I am the worst sort of creature you could imagine,” Dim said, his mouth betraying him yet again. “But I want to be better! Honest, I do! For once, I agree with the pink voice in my head.”
“Oh my… oh… oh my… you aren’t well, are you?” Blackbird looked concerned and her vivid green eyes shimmered with worry.
“I am a depraved degenerate, but I am no motherfucker,” Dim whispered in reply.
“Oh… well… I suppose you’ll have to do. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“When do we leave?” Dim asked.
“Right now,” Blackbird replied. “I don’t trust the harbourmaster to keep my ship safe.”
