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.

Author's Notes:

It had to be written, it was driving me mad. And it is a very, very short drive, let me tell you.