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.

Perhaps not all hope was lost.

Author's Notes:

He forgot to deal with the chicken, didn't he?