It is about time you woke up.

Those were the last words I recalled before some outside force summoned me to the waking world.

“Hello? Hello!” With the calls of that oh so wonderful voice disturbing my restful slumber, along with the light prods to accompany it, I began to stir.

Oh, my head… what happened last night?

“It is time to wake up, Ladarion.” As the familiar voice sounded through my ears, I yawned.

“Gimme five more minutes, dammit.” The response to this was a forceful kick to the ribs, shattering both my bones and my strange sense of deja vu. A pained yelp escaped me as my eyes snapped open. I found myself staring into the blue orbs of none other than Marzia, who then sported satisfied smirk after I took to glaring at her. Wrong pony, anyways. “What the hell was that for, Cocoa?” I questioned, rubbing my now aching side.

“It is nearly time to get moving, Ladarion.” Marzia, smirk now replaced by her normal stoic expression, motioned to the rest of the encampment, everyone else packing their possessions as they readied themselves for yet another day of walking. “Our journey is far from over. It will take some time, but we must keep moving if we are to hold any hope of reaching the Stone of the Twisted Drake before our competition.”

I pulled myself up off of the dirty ground into a sitting position, rubbing the exhaustion out of my eyes to no avail. “Yeah, you’re-” A yawn interrupted me. “You’re right, Cocoa. Anyway, I’m up. You can go on your merry way now.” When I noticed that she hadn’t moved after my suggestion, I growled, looking back at her impatiently. “Well?”

Marzia continued staring at me for a moment before replying. “Something seems to be eating away at you, Ladarion. For the past few weeks, you have been jumping at shadows that were not there, and you seem to be in a perpetual state of agitation.” I remained silent, my eyes hardening. “You’ve been pushing everyone away. The source of your paranoia, we all know. We all understood the risks of jumping on board this train of uncertainty the moment we agreed to aid you. But your recent change of behavior has been counterproductive to our mission. I will tell you this once and only once, Ladarion: Clean up your act. I will see this done with or without your assistance. Am I understood?”

I looked her straight in the eyes, trying to find within me the strength to defy her. She once again held her icy stare, and with it, I felt my feeble resistance shatter, the echoes of my loss sounding through the hollow landscape. I turned my head away, breaking eye contact. “Yes.” I answered. I had so much more I wanted to say to her apart from that. I don’t mean to be an asshole or to drive you guys, the few people I could ever truly call friends, away. But I can’t. It’s for the best. Trust me. Or I want so badly to tell you guys about what I know is going to happen. I want to convince you all to just turn around so we can pretend to lead normal lives again. But I can’t. It’s for the best. Trust me. Or If there were any other option aside from this, I’d take it in a heartbeat. But I can’t. It’s for the best. Trust me.

As I sat there, mouth agape in an attempt to word any of these unspeakable thoughts, I found a stray tear gathering in the corner of my eye as I continued to lie to myself. It wasn’t for the best. I deserved nobody’s trust. There were plenty of other options, but I, in my stubborn and single-minded journey, had doomed everyone I cared about by digging them too far deep into my hopeless adventure. Quickly wiping away the tear with a dirty hand, I cleared my throat, finally finding something to say.

“Marzia,” I nearly choked on the name. “I-I’m… I’m sorry.” But as I glanced up, I found she was no longer there. I nodded to myself. ‘Sorry’. Yeah, right. If I was so sorry, I wouldn’t have even considered going through this little escapade.

A sigh escaped me as I picked myself up off of the grass, the dew of the still-rising morning settled upon my clothes. I took off my shirt, giving it a few hard shakes to rid it of the gathering moisture, before putting it back on. I picked up the rolled up sleeping back I had rested my head on as I passed, setting it into a small rucksack before I scanned the surroundings of our campsite. There was an all-encompassing fog that suffocated the landscape, seeming to drain this empty place of any life, and there were hundreds, possibly even thousands, of great trees - each likely as old as the world itself - in the distance. White mist blanketed a winding stream in the middle of the swampy land, the same stream we had drifted down in order to find the clearing we had found ourselves in, as evidenced by the canoe we pulled over the land. Gnarled branches of dead bushes and nude greenery, twisted and contorted their arthritic vines this way and that around the clearing, each giving an overall sinister appearance to this otherwise peaceful and timeless place.

I approached the water, dipping my hands below the shallow surface to clean them off before throwing it into my face, the cold temperature waking me up just a bit more. I then cupped my hands, bringing the misty liquid to my lips to allow myself a hearty drink. After I felt hydrated enough, I took my water canteens out of my rucksack, placing them back inside after they had both been filled.

I then sat there staring at myself in the wading bourn where I had parted the cloudy substance atop the frigid surface. Staring back at me was a melancholy man with tired eyes. Water cascaded from my semi-tamed beard (and by semi-tamed, I mean I kept it trimmed with my knife) as I ran a hand through my large head of hair.

I look a bit like Ben Wallace. At least if he’d been to Hell and back. This thought caused me to let out a small chuckle, more so out of amusement than actual joy. As I observed myself in the creek, my gaze shifted to my wrist, where the red stone had embedded itself. The skin around the stone appeared to be cracked, but didn’t peel away or get infected at any point after the stone attached itself to my body. Flowing within was my lifeblood, the substance sloshing about freely in the confined space as the gem emitted a dull glow. The points where it had connected to my body had engrained themselves into the very fibers of my being, it seemed, wire-like filaments spiderwebbing this way and that beneath my skin with the same scarlet highlights of the red stone. My breaths became shaky as I gazed upon the unnatural ‘upgrade’ that was now wired into me.

Stepping away from the creek, I took inventory. “Backpack? Check. Canteens? Check. Knife?” I tapped my waist, finding the object in its hilt. I smiled. “Check.” I then looked around for one more thing, exhaling a breath of anxiety when I couldn’t find one of the most important instruments of my survival. With narrowed eyes, I turned back to the rest of the happy campers at our campsite, all huddled around a map.

“Where the hell is my phone!?” I asked, not at all angry as I approached the group.

Hawkeye snapped her head in my direction in surprise as Marzia and Daring Do continued looking over the map, fright painted upon the canvas of her visage as she noticed my expression. “H-hey, Ladarion! Glad to see you’re awake!” she said cautiously, her good wing slightly twitching involuntarily. The gryphon always seemed to be on her guard with me around. Good.

I crossed my arms, ignoring the greeting. “Where’d y’all put my phone?” I asked, Daring and Marzia finally tuning in on the conversation. “It was right next to me when I fell asleep for like two hours. Now it’s gone. That means one of you…” my gaze shifted across the three of them “should know where it is. So cough it up.”

“Pfft. What would any of us do with that stupid flattened brick you insist on carrying around, Ladarion? Maybe, in a usual fit of stupidity, you just happened to lose it,” responded Daring Do.

A tendril of lighting traveled up my arm, dancing along my fingertips. “You’re daring, indeed. You care to repeat that last part, sweetheart?”

Daring rose from her seated position, walking up to me in order to stare me down, ignoring Marzia’s plea to just stay sitting. “I said, tough guy, that you probably lost it in the river in a fit of your usual stupidity.”

As I opened my mouth to say something, another voice cut through the fog. “It is I, Trixie, who has taken it upon herself to take your beloved ‘phone’, Ladarion.”

I turned to regard the blue pony, sighing in relief before glaring back at Daring Do. “Don’t you believe for a singular second that this is over, Daring.” I said before walking in the blue unicorn’s direction.

“Ugh! Since when did you become such a prick, Ladarion!” She called after me. Those words stung far more than I thought they would, in all honesty, but I did need to live, after all; no matter how much I was beginning to think it best if I simply allowed myself to be relaxed and nonconfrontational, a surefire catalyst to my premature demise. Despite these thoughts, there were still a few embers keeping alive what once was a blazing flame of passion and determination. I wasn’t quite ready to die.

When I reached Trixie as she sat underneath a withered grey tree, I asked a simple question as I observed her tinkering with my breastplate - she was as much of the group's 'blacksmith', if you can call it that, as our mage. “Why?”

Trixie had been expecting to hear that question. “Trixie has been expecting to hear that question, Ladarion,” she said. “And your answer is as follows: I was curious.”

“Well, you’ve had a while to sate that curiosity of yours. Now give it back,” I said, holding out a hand.

“Not so fast. That is not the only reason Trixie has seized your item for the moment. It is meant for long distance communication, as you have told me, along with accessing large databases of information, yet it doesn’t appear to be capable of functioning in either of these capacities. Why is that?” asked Trixie, looking at me with a quizzical expression.

“It don’t matter, now does it?” I asked, growing agitated. “Just hand it over, already!”

“Regardless,” began the blue pony, brushing off my signs of anger. “This equipment is nigh useless. I would throw it into the tributary…”

“I’ll make you regret it if you do, Trixie.” I said coldly.

“...But your smoldering disinclination as of late, combined with the fact that this particular object is so dear to you, keeps Trixie from doing so.” She looked at me as she levitated my phone to my outstretched hand. “And though you would consider such a decision purely due to cruelty on Trixie’s part, she thinks it best that you let this phone go. No good will come out of putting so much of yourself into an object. Not when you have friends and acquaintances who are willing to toil through the same trials and tribulations as you, as a team, to help you accomplish your goals.”

For all of my crossness at Trixie for taking something that belonged to me, her explanation for having taken it, along with the wisdom in her words, calmed me down just a tad. I didn’t respond to her, however, giving just a small nod as I about-faced, walking back to the circle sitting around the map.

“...So, according to the map, we should be in this general area. We continue heading northwest from here, and we should come across what resembles a trail. We keep following that trail, and there should be two large stone pillars, after which, we grab this tome here and-” as Daring pulled out a large book from her horsey pack, she noticed me, her expression and tone going from professional to miffed. “What do you want?” she asked.

“I’m making sure everything’s in order. Y’all ready to go?”

“I don’t know who you think you are, Ladarion, but I’m the one who’s calling the shots. I’m the one with the experience, the know-how, and the map, so don’t go around saying you’re ‘making sure everything’s in order' as though you’ve been contributing so heartily. Secondly, we’ll be ready to go when I’m through screening the plan and explaining it. My compass has been outta whack ever since we got down here, so we’ve gotta do things the old-fashioned way.”

“And what might this 'old-fashioned way' be?” I asked, frowning.

“Looking for landmarks and hoping they lead us somewhere that isn’t our assured doom,” she replied. “Now, shoo. I’m not in the mood for talking right now, and I’ve got to commit everything here to memory.”

I spat on the ground before walking about the campground, Hawkeye excusing herself from Marzia and Daring as she made to follow me, the two shrugging and continuing where they left off. “Hey, L, wait up!”

I glanced at her as she fell in pace next to me before looking forward yet again. “Don’t call me ‘L’, a’ight? I don’t like that nickname.”

Hawkeye’s eyes widened before she made to correct herself. “S-sure thing, L- uh, I mean, Ladarion.”

Silence reigned between us for a moment.

“So, uh, whatcha doin’?” she asked.

“Walking.” I responded.

“No, I mean, what are you actually doing?” she pressed.

“Thinking.” I responded, still looking forward.

The gryphon let out a nervous chuckle. “You sure have a great sense of humor, Ladarion. I mean, seriously. ‘Thinking’,” she mocked in a bad imitation of my voice. “Priceless!” A far more genuine chuckle escaped her before she found that I had stopped, Hawkeye turning to face me, her titters dissolving into nothing. “Ladarion? I didn’t strike a nerve, did I? It was just a joke, y’know? Nothing meant to offend, or-” I cut her off as she began rambling faster and faster.

“I’m sorry, Hawkeye.” I said quietly.

The gryphon’s ears perked as she heard that, her eyes yet again widening in surprise as she processed my words before returning to their normal, but still large, size. “Sorry?” she repeated under her breath. “What do you have to apologize for, Ladarion? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

I shook my head, not taking my eyes off her once fiery orbs. “I’ve committed many sins, Hawkeye.” I sighed, finding a nearby stump to sit down at. “It’s just that now I ain’t able to ignore them in the same way I used to. And I’m telling you, I feel like only bad can come of this expedition,” I said, hinting at what would happen, hoping she would pick up on it in some way.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “Ladarion, we’re literally going to save the world! C’mon, how can you be feeling bad about that?” I stared at her. “And honestly, who cares about the mistakes we’ve made in the past? With what we’re going to be doing, we’re going to atone for not only our sins, but for the sins of every being on the planet!" A spark of guilt lighted inside of me. "Isn’t that great!? We’re going to be remembered as legends when we’re through here, and I can’t thank you enough for finding it in yourself to bring someone like me along to help with a task so important.” Hawkeye’s eyes once again had that glow that was once so familiar what felt like such a long time ago.

I let out a shaky breath. “Hawkeye, let me see your wing.”

The huge, beaming, naive smile that had made its way onto Hawkeye’s face disappeared in an instant, the fire in her eyes once again going dark as barely-contained terror etched its way onto her face. “M-my wing?” she asked. “Why do you want to see my wing?”

I stood, and with each step forward, she took an involuntary step back. I sighed. “I knew it,” I said. “You’re still terrified of me.”

Although that would only help in the long run, I could no longer bear how afraid she seemed to be every time I was around. I used to enjoy it, revel in it even, but after a while, after I got to actually know her, the taste has grown more bitter than sweet. I may have acted like a monster, but some part of me truly wished to forgive her for her transgressions against me, while a much larger part was seeking some kind of forgiveness or redemption for my even greater act of evil against her, one that I deemed necessary at the time.

“No, it’s not that, Ladarion,” she denied. “I-it’s just…” she allowed her words to drift into this vast land surrounding us as she fought to find the right words to say. This time, she let out a sigh of her own. “You’re right,” she said, so quietly that I had to strain to hear it, but when I did, it hit me like a freight train. I sat back down, feeling heavier by the second.

As I interlocked my fingers, placing my forehead against the back of my hands, she continued. “I am terrified of you, Ladarion. I mean, you crippled me, took away a large part of my life. Flying meant the world to me, and when I realized I would never be able to fly again because of a lame limb? It devastated me.” She sat down, scraping her talons across the ground. “I want to say that I hate you. I want to say that I want you dead for what you did. I want so greatly to blame you, to tell you that you ruined my life, but… I can’t.” I looked back up at Hawkeye, the gryphon close to tears. “It was me who ruined my life. Not you. So you can’t blame yourself the way you’ve been, okay? I can tell that the thought’s been eating away at you for some time, that thought along with many others. If you keep letting the vultures of the past pick away at your insides, at your being, all that’ll be left is a hollow shell.” She finally looked back up to me, that fire reigniting itself. “The moment I chose to lead a life of crime, I sealed my own fate. Now I must suffer the consequences of my own mistakes after causing so much pain. I've got to do something to prove not only to everyone else, but to myself that I'm worthy of the second chance that's been granted to me. That is why I must do this.” A few tears escaped from her eyes, and I found that even I had maybe gotten a fly or something in my eye.

I never had wanted to hug someone so much in an attempt to comfort them, but deep down, I knew I was someone who harmed and maimed, not helped and healed. However, the fact that I’d likely only be hugging Hawkeye in that instant for my own comfort as opposed to hers (she did just confess the fact that she still harbored feelings of terror toward me, after all), kept me from doing so.

As the gryphoness cried silently to herself, I turned to look away, getting that pesky fly out of my eye. “It doesn’t mean I still can’t be sorry for what I did to you, Hawkeye.” I said quietly. “Sometimes, I want to turn back the clock. I just want to make it so I was never here so I could never hurt anyone or disrupt any preestablished balance. I can’t help but think it’d be better that way.”

Hawkeye looked up at me in righteous fury, her previously downtrodden expression being replaced with determination as she walked up to me and slapped me smack-dab across the face, nearly sending me off of the stump I had sat on. Under normal circumstances, I’d’ve been beyond infuriated, but the suddenness of the action, combined with my being caught completely off guard at who did it, kept me pacified as I stared apprehensively at Hawkeye while rubbing my aching face.

What happened next, though, surprised me infinitely more.

Hawkeye then pulled me into a hug, covering me protectively with one wing as her other jittered about behind her. As she let out an anxious breath, she gained greater control of her lame wing, limply draping it over me along with the other. “Don’t say that, Ladarion,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t say that. Without you, I’d've likely been dead or worse by now. Even if it was fear that guided me into your embrace, I can safely say that I’ve become a stronger gryphon because of it. I’m ready to face the future, uncertain as it is, with you and the other friends you’ve introduced me to. But I’m not doing anything without you there by my side.”

I eventually returned the embrace after getting over my initial shock, finally letting out more than a few tears. “I never wanted to hurt nobody,” I said. “It’s just my curse. All this hate is getting to me, twisting me. The choice was never mine.”

The gryphon just patted me on the back, letting me vent. But I had no more words to say as we both sat there and sniffled, holding on to one another in one of the most twisted forms of forgiveness I’d ever taken part of. It’s too bad this good moment had to end, though.

It is about time you woke up.

Once again, that voice cut through the fog, reverberating off of the inside of my head.

“Give me a moment,” I said to myself, though Hawkeye, with her OP sense of hearing, caught what I said, moving away with a small smile before turning and walking back the way we came to get back to the clearing, leaving me in a small forested area alone. Luckily, there was a larger stream slumbering nearby. I approached, pulling my phone out of a pocket. I spent a few moments gazing over the object before deciding that it was indeed holding me back as Trixie had said, not putting too much thought into it as I tossed it into the water. No drama, no climactic event, nothing. I was just without my phone, simple as that... Simple as that...

I released a breath that I didn’t realize I was holding before turning around, taking note of just how thick the fog had gotten.

“Well, looks like I can wake up now.” I began to lose myself within it as I stepped inside. “Not as though I really have a choice.”

It is, after all, for the best.

Author's Notes:

And like that, the title of the story finally comes into effect. Takes place after Ladarion's trip at the end of "When the Daylight Fades...".