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.

Author's Notes:

For the record, Dim is not evil, as some people are asserting.

Neither is he good.

He's just confused, like most mentally abused shut-ins who suddenly find themselves cast out into the world with no support of any sort. Do not be so quick to cast judgment.

Thank you.

This will continue to go to strange places.