This looked like the place I had heard about. It was away from any of the hustle and bustle that remained of our broken city, away from the violence and despair. Ponies rarely came out here, uncaring of the foliage that seems to have been taking over the area and casting an inky dark shadow over anything underneath. There was a single house, up on a darkened hillside, watching over the dead lands before it. The pouring rain didn’t help much, either.

Everypony was afraid to go near this place. The stallion who lived here wasn’t known for his hospitality. He wasn’t known at all, actually. But everyone was afraid of him anyway.

There were all kinds of rumors going around about him. He liked seclusion because it meant not having to deal with anypony. He was forced into seclusion for unspeakable crimes. They said that he killed dozens of ponies, but that the law was too afraid to go after him in his house. Ponies even said that he ate pony flesh. Whether or not any of it was true, I needed to get in there. I’d done my research on him, I’d looked him up.

I heard about him a few weeks prior, and I was actually pretty close by when it happened. I had been on the run from a group of stallions wearing masks and carrying knives, screaming incoherently at me to let them “play” with me. Suffice it to say, I did no such thing.

I ran out of the city limits and into this area, albeit not so close to this place as I am now. As I ran, I heard their hoofstomps slowing down behind me. I wasn’t too intent on letting them get me, so I sped up just to be safe.

When I ran out of energy, I dove into a bush and hid. panting to catch my breath. As I lay there, almost crying in the mud and dirt of the bushes next to the river, I listened. Sure enough, the stallions came for me. I tried to listen as best as I could.

“Where did he go?!” one of them yelled, hurting my ears. I’ve always had acute hearing.

“I don’t know, bro, but we better bail.” another replied. My interest was piqued. “Who knows if that psycho is out here somewhere?”

They would call someone a psycho? They, who were chasing me down to do untold horrors to me?

“Come on, you know he’s just sitting in that house on the hill, waiting to die. I doubt he’ll be out here any time soon.”

The one he was talking to wasn’t so sure. “Colt, you can do what you want, but I’m batting the heck outta here.” And the one ran off.

I remained totally still for the time being, hoping that the others would follow suit. A couple of them left, leaving what I counted to be three remaining. Without a word, they started combing the area for me, much to my chagrin. They started moving thing around, pushing bushes, even checking up in the trees. The only reason I wasn’t up there was that my wings were injured from an encounter with another gang in the city.

They were getting dangerously close to me, and I could hear their little whispers through the cold air.

“Come out, come out, little guy... we have a present for you!”

The one who had been referred to as Colt was right next to me, pushing aside the brush. “Sweet Celestia, please, let him pass by me, please!”

“Aha!”

Alas, my prayers were for nothing.

Colt bit down on my mane, which was long and dark gray, and dragged me out of the bush. I could hear his friends cheering him on as I was thrown to the ground before them, chanting murder and evil. Colt stood proudly over me, as a lion stands over its kill.

“So you thought you could get away from us, huh?” he asked. I whimpered, hoping that my silent pleas would receive a favorable answer. “Well, I think I know just what you need to convince you that you can’t get away from us.”

I shut my eyes and prayed that they would end it quickly. Unfortunately, I couldn’t close my ears; I could hear the distinct sound of clippers from somewhere off to the side. The pony carrying them was opening and shutting them with deliberate power, making sure I knew what was to come.

Colt took them and touched them to my wing. “I hope you’re ready to get the ultimate preening!” he shouted with sick joy. I could feel my warm tears, the only source of warmth in the area, streaming down my face.

But my fate never came. Instead, I heard the ponies around me step away, saying things I couldn’t quite make out over the sound of my sobs. I did catch a few things, though.

“Holy crap, let’s get out of here!” one shouted.

The others agreed and they all sprinted away, like I was an armed explosive or something. When I finally gathered enough courage to open my eyes, I took in my surroundings with the greatest sense of relief I have so far experienced in my life. The stallions were all gone, running off in the distance. I had no idea why they were running, but I didn’t care. They were gone.

Still, my curiosity got the better of me. When my knees started working again, I managed to stand up and take in my surroundings. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing scary or threatening. No police, as if they would have stepped in anyway. I was totally clueless.

Then, something caught my eye. Up in the sky, before the gray overcast that eternally covered the city, there was something flying. I tried to get a better look at it, but I couldn’t make it out. It had unusual wings, like a bat, so it couldn’t be a pony. But bats don’t get that large... do they?

It took off west in the sky, no longer interested in allowing me the time to see what it was. The way it flew, though, the way it seemed to stick around, convinced me that it was a pony. Maybe the bat wings were just for scare value... either way, I needed to know more. So I followed it.

It was hard, but I did manage to follow on foot. When I saw it land, it landed on some strange hill, covered in inky shadows, obscuring any view I might have had of my savior. But I was able to make out a house, and a door that opened and shut before I returned home.

From there, I decided to ask around. I didn’t know who it was, or even really what it was. That was when I started hearing the rumors; but those rumors did confirm the presence of a pony in that place. Those rumors were also the reason why I found myself going back there. I heard that he was the only one that no one was willing to fight. I needed to learn more.

Ultimately, I learned at least part of the truth. The stallion had been in the Guard at some point, but no one knew what branch. He had taken part in dozens of battles, and felled many foes. But eventually, it sort of got to him. No one is sure why it happened, but he was given a discharge from the guard. Honestly, I think he was just too old. Most ponies only serve twenty years; he had been in for almost thirty. But the most important thing I learned was that he was a seasoned warrior, and that he scared everyone away just by being here.

So that was how I found myself at the base of his hill. There was a little rusted fence at the bottom, its dull orange-brown a strange splotch of color in an otherwise bleak zone of the area. I pushed on the door of the fence, but instead, found the entire fence fall away at my touch. It hadn’t been managed at all in years. What might that say?

I moved up the hill, keeping my pace slow and placing my hooves on the ground with great care to avoid slipping and falling to a rusty death by impalement on the fence below. If I slipped now, the whole reason I came here would be lost. Because I would be dead.

At the top of the hill, I found myself in the inky blackness of the shadows that I had been seeing all the time, but the rain still managed to hit me. Before me was the house: An ominous shade of gray, nearly black, the paint peeling on the majority of its walls. The windows were all broken, the shutters hanging limply by their sides. Inside, there was no light to be had.

I swallowed hard as I approached the door. Seemingly of its own accord, my hoof came up to knock on it, but couldn’t seem to make itself do so.

“Maybe I should go back.” I had thought. I thought that it would be safer to try my luck and fly out of the city, even though the pegasus gangs would simply shoot me down. It would be safer than trying to see this guy.

I did manage to throw my hoof forward, though. I knocked three times, with the final knock echoing throughout the almost-forest surrounding me. At first, I was greeted with an eerie silence. Nothing moved, only the rain made sound, pounding against the wood and ground around me. As I began to lose hope, I let out a sigh and started to turn around.

Then, the door started to creak open, as if telling me to wait. It only opened a little bit, just enough to have let me seen inside, if there had been any light. Taking that as my cue to enter, I turned right back around and pushed through the door.

As I walked in, my vision went completely black for a moment, the minimal light in the room having been expected. When my eyes finally managed to adjust a little, I took in my surroundings. The room was furnished, at least to an extent. I could make out a couch toward the center of the room, in front of what appeared to be a fireplace. There was one chair, tattered and ruined, not too far from that. On the floor, there was a simple rug, a dark tan color, that must have been a hundred years old.

I went further into the room, taking tentative steps so as to avoid falling through the rotted floor. I had no idea if there was a basement.

“H-hello?” I asked into the empty home. I was greeted by the sound of nothing.

There was no noise in the house, nor any sign of movement, recent or immediate. I figured it was probably a good time to leave; odds were, the stallion wasn’t home, and I wouldn’t want to get caught trespassing by the potentially most dangerous pony around. So I turned around and started walking.

“What do you want?”

I felt my black fur stand on end and my mane shoot up as I leapt straight up into the air. I nearly hit my head on the ceiling. The airy voice had sounded extremely close, possibly right next to me, and it didn’t sound all that happy. I frantically spun around, trying to find it, but I couldn’t see anything in the dark. There was not a sound any more, and I felt like I was as exposed as a newborn babe.

I thought fast. “Uh... uh... I, came to, talk? To you?”

A moment of silence. “Why?”

I started to back up faster than I think he liked, but that didn’t stop me. Before I knew it, I was bumping up against the wall on the other side of the room, cornered like a rat.

“I-I need your help.” I was cowering at this point, trembling like a child, wishing I had never come here.

More silence. “Why?”

It was really disconcerting. As I said earlier, I’ve always had good hearing. But I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Heck, I could barely hear him. It was like it was the house that was speaking to me, not him.

I tried to stand, but my legs failed me. “I need to know how to protect myself.” I told him, sounding pathetic. To this day, I feel conflicted about that. “I want to learn how to keep myself safe.”

This time, I received no response at all. I waited for a moment, but when I got nothing, I looked around. I still couldn’t see, but I was hoping to at least catch some movement. There was nothing at all, as there had been so far. Thinking he might have left, I stood up and started to creep forward. The wooden boards creaked loudly under my not-so-considerable weight. I could feel something looking at me, but at the very least, I could try to convince myself that it was nothing.

‘Twas for naught, however. “Why should I teach you?”

I froze in my place and sucked in air through my clamped teeth, going completely stiff. His voice sounded out right next to me, like he was close enough to touch my left flank. Slowly, I turned my head to look in that direction. I still couldn’t see.

I swallowed hard. “Uhh...” I didn’t really have an answer for that. I had just sort of come by, hoping that he would do it out of the “kindness in his heart”. After all those rumors though, I should have expected something else.

I could hear him take in a deep breath and release it slower than a unicorn runs. “Why?” he asked.

I just went for it. “Because you’re the only hope I have.” I have no idea if that was true. At the time, I certainly believed it. He waited to answer.

With a deep breath, he told me something that I will remember for the rest of my life. “I will remain in my home for the time being.” he said. “If you can find me, I will teach you to fight.”

He had moved away, and his voice was taking on that airy quality again. I would have trouble with this at best. “But I can’t find see!” I almost shouted, voicing my displeasure as best as I could.

“Seeing isn't finding.” He said it with such finality that I knew it meant that this wasn’t happening right now. I tried to get him to elaborate, but he never answered me again.

Taking that as a sign, I searched the dark house for him. Mostly, I just bumped into whatever corners and edges there were, trying to navigate through the darkness. I cursed constantly at my ineptitude at seeing in the dark, or even feeling my way around with my hooves without bumping them into something. I swear, the stallion must not have given a damn about his home, because I must have broken at least two pieces of furniture.

After a little while, though, I gave up and made my way back to the door. It was still pouring outside, I could hear it. Maybe that was why the stallion didn’t react to me breaking his things; he couldn’t hear any of it.

It was no matter. I hadn’t found him this day, but I knew that I had to get him to teach me. As I walked out that front door and back into the pouring rain, I took one last look back at the house of the stallion.

“I will find you eventually. I have to.”

And so I walked off into the storm, trying to figure out how to find that which does not wish to be seen.