“This just keeps happening.” Blackbird dabbed at the thin, runny blood that soaked the corner of Dim’s mouth and hissed when all she managed to do was smear it around, which made everything worse. “It’s like he’s not safe in his sleep. He keeps having these dreams. I don’t know what to do. Dim goes to sleep and then he’s suddenly in danger, or going off into weird places.”

“If it is any consolation”—Chromium paused, perhaps to pick his next words carefully—“I do believe he will be much safer from here on out. Things did not go as the Great Enemy intended. A great power awoke within Dim. The Great Enemy is many things, but stupid they are not. They will not make the same mistake twice. Dim is the undisputed master of that particular battlefield.”

“What happened?” Blackbird tossed the bloody cloth aside and turned around to face Chromium, who was wearing his unicorn guise.

“A battle—”

“Don’t fuck with me!”

Blackbird moved impossibly fast for a creature her size, and it was almost as if she had vanished from one spot, only to reappear in another. Somehow, she had turned darker, blacker, as if her impossibly black pelt had found new realms of darkness to explore. The very light itself seemed to dim around her body, and she was cloaked in a dark haze that blurred her silhouette. She was on Chromium in seconds, and her left talons circled around his throat. In the span of a fluttering eyelid, she had lifted him up from the floor and began squeezing him so hard that his eyeballs threatened to pop right from his sockets.

“Say ‘A battle’ once again, you cocksucker, and I don’t care what you are! I’ll twist your head right off!” She shook him—violently, she flung his tiny unicorn body around like an unwanted doll—all while her talons tightened around his throat. A curious darkness engulfed her body, as light shimmered and warped around her. “Stop fucking around with me and tell me what I want to know!”

Chromium was flung to the floor, where, after the intense impact, he lay still for a moment. After a second or so, he began scraping at his throat with his hooves while trying to suck air through his crushed windpipe. Blackbird loomed over him, menacing, black shadows visibly dancing along the ebon expanses of her pelt. She raised her talons again, and weird tendrils of concentrated darkness swirled around her black claws.

“You and Dim both are changing.” Chromium’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. He still clutched at his throat, trying to breathe, a victim of his chosen body’s weakness. “Give me a moment to recover, and I will tell you more of what is going on, I give you my word.”

“Fail to tell me what I want to know,” said Blackbird to the prone unicorn beneath her, “and I’ll use this body of yours as a scratching post!”

The wet, raspy sound of Dim’s laboured breathing worried Blackbird, but other than the coughing and the blood, he seemed a bit more at peace in his sleep than usual. Everything that Chromium had just told her left her unsettled, alarmed, and anxious. But there was also the dragon’s reassurances that from here on out, Dim’s slumber should be mostly untroubled. Reaching out, she wiped more blood away from Dim’s lips, so the pillowcase wouldn’t end up stained.

“Dim has changed,” said Chromium in a quiet, strained voice, “and you with him.”

Blackbird focused her intense, predatory gaze on Chromium, who was still rubbing his throat with one hoof while keeping a wary eye on her. She couldn’t blame him for being so guarded. But what did he know, anyhow? She was in love, and love made you reckless. Impetuous. Plus, Chromium was arrogant. Smarmy. A bit of a prick. Then again, Dim was also all of those things. But the difference was, she liked Dim. Chromium? Not so much.

“From what we’ve been able to gather, Belladonna was supposed to probe Dim’s defenses.” Chromium paused and with a slight turn of his head, he looked at Dim. He wore a unicorn’s face, but his expressions were utterly alien. Whatever expressions he made beneath the unicorn mask didn’t translate well to a mammalian face and the overall effect was unsettling.

“Of course, Dim caught on—”

“That’s what Dim does,” Blackbird said, not caring that she was interrupting.

“Not only did Dim figure out what was going on, Dim figured out how to exploit the rules of their nightmare realm. When he wrested absolute control away and took over, it gave us the opening we needed to invade their dream realm and take the battle to them. It was a tremendous failure on their part, because now Princess Luna can enter to go raiding at any time. Contagion was severely weakened in the attack, though we know he will recover. And as for Grogar…”

Blackbird’s ears went rigid.

“Grogar has lost much of his power. Power that took him years to amass. The Great Enemy made a move for power, failed, and it cost them dearly. Dim has come away stronger… though, so has Contagion if Princess Luna is to be believed. This is not my area of expertise. Time will tell, I suppose, and we shall see when Contagion has fully recovered. For now, he has gone into hiding.”

The whole bed creaked and shuddered as Dim coughed, and more fresh blood glistened on Dim’s lips. Right away, Blackbird moved to clean it up, and she chewed on her lip while thinking about everything that Chromium had said. A battle had been won, it seemed, but at a cost. Dim stirred a bit as she wiped his lips, his eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake. He murmured something that she could not make out, and then drifted back into a deep slumber.

She couldn’t recall a time when he had ever slept this soundly.

Why, he almost looked peaceful right now, and that… that was disturbing.

“Dim has earned my respect.”

Blackbird could scarcely believe her ears.

“He did something that I can’t understand. A part of me wants to be angry with him, but another part of me respects what he did. Though for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why he did it.” Chromium drew in a deep, rattling breath and his bloodshot eyes became unfocused. “It is absolutely confounding.”

Several responses formed on Blackbird’s tongue, but none of them seemed adequate.

“He negotiated with Grogar for Princess Cadance’s release. It’s infuriating… Grogar could have been drained… weakened… set back. Princess Cadance foolishly went where she shouldn’t have gone. She disobeyed direct orders from Princess Celestia. That filly is foolish… headstrong. She has all of the painful stupidity of youth… and I want to be angry with her as well.”

Chromium sighed.

“But Princess Cadance followed Dim down into a nightmare from which there would be no waking. Grogar had anchored a tiny part of himself there, a portion of his soul. Animancy. Grogar created a Tether of Torment and was prepared to hold Dim’s soul until such a time that his will could be crushed and his essence harvested.” Chromium’s brows furrowed, and for a second, he almost managed to appear as a unicorn when he made an expression of concern and confusion.

“That same spell would have held Cadance also, and eventually, Grogar would have drained her as well. But Dim did the unexpected”—Chromium’s eyes darted towards Dim’s direction—“and something within him woke up. Something terrible. Something that Princess Celestia fears a great deal. It woke up and all of a sudden, Dim wasn’t trapped in a nightmare abyss with Grogar… no… Grogar was trapped in a nightmare abyss with Dim. Princess Luna said she could sense the old goat’s terror, his fear, and it chilled her very soul.”

Unable to stop herself, Blackbird giggled. It escaped before she could do anything about it, and she saw Chromium cast his stern gaze upon her. She tried to stifle her giggles, but that only made things worse. She saw the silver unicorn shake his head and as more giggles escaped, he clucked his tongue.

“This isn’t funny.” Chromium now spoke in a raspy deadpan. “Dim could have prevented the suffering of so many. An uncountable number of innocents might have been spared had Dim held on to Grogar’s soul. But Dim bargained with that monster, and let him go so Cadance could be saved. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why.”

Blackbird thought of when Dim came back for her. He could have left her to a terrible fate, but he hadn’t. She understood, and she knew why he bargained with Grogar. Dim didn’t give a damn about the greater good—no, all things considered, he was rather selfish. She wondered if there was some way that she could explain this to Chromium, but a part of her wasn’t sure if the dragon would ever understand. Chromium was a creature of harmony and goodness—of harmonious goodness—and Dim was not. Neither was she. As a hippogriff, she was naturally chaotic, as her various parts strove against themselves. She was half predator and half prey.

As for Dim… he was whatever he was, and he was pony-shaped.

“Princess Cadance would have been an acceptable loss,” said Chromium while rubbing his throat. “Things change with time… a few centuries from now, she might have freed herself, or been freed. Some little pony might have been born and their destiny might have been to free her, or to even replace her. Harmony and existence are a river. The flow cannot be stopped, but sometimes, the river takes a new course. Losing Princess Cadance would have only been a minor, temporary setback. The river flows regardless.”

Hearing Chromium speak in such a way made Blackbird both angry and sad, though she could not say why. Try as she might, she could not understand his position, no more so than he could understand hers. What he found acceptable, she found monstrous. But then again, she was mortal, and perhaps short-sighted. She found herself biting her tongue to hold back hasty, heated, angry words, and she thought of her earlier outburst when she had seized the silver unicorn by the throat.

“What possesses you short-lived mortals to make the impetuous, short-term decisions that you make? Do you not understand long-term gain? Is your thinking limited to the mere seconds, minutes, and hours that you live? Please, don’t strangle me again. I just want to understand.”

“Those seconds, minutes, and hours are all we have,” Blackbird said while flexing her talons. The questions, his questioning, infuriated her for reasons she could not understand, but she sensed that he wasn’t trying to goad a response out of her. He just sincerely did not understand, and some of her rage turned to pity. “This is why Dim is a far more likeable creature than you are. For us, suffering even a second feels like years sometimes. I know how it was for me. Dim came back for me, and he saved me. He didn’t have to do that. Dim didn’t need me. But those minutes of torture felt like entire years of my life… you… you just have no idea. Dim… he tried to spare this Princess Cadance pony that fate… but you… you would let her suffer. In my eyes, that does not make you good, it makes you callous and cold, you cold-blooded fucking reptile.”

“I suppose I deserve that.”

“You’re damn right you do. Everything about you is insulting. Your contempt for us—”

“I don’t hold you in contempt!”

“Shut up, or I’ll rip your head off.” Again, Blackbird felt her talons flex. “Your every word drips with contempt for us and our miserable, short lives… yet you allow us lesser creatures to worship you and your glorious self. I just lost a friend last night because those seconds, minutes, and hours became too long to bear for her. And you… you… you fail to understand just how precious those seconds, minutes, and hours are. They’re all we have. We only get a finite number of them. One of my best friends threw all of the seconds, minutes, and hours she had left away, because she couldn’t face spending them alone. Or maybe it was for some other reasons, I don’t know. A part of me wants to believe she did it for love. Tell me, Chromium, do you love?”

The dragon wearing a unicorn costume did not reply. Blackbird studied his eyes, hoping to read something of his nature, a glimpse into his soul, perhaps, but peering into those depths she saw nothing familiar, only alien, unknown intelligence. The only thing she could make out was that he was thinking, and he continued to make weird, uncanny expressions, draconic expressions that did not translate well to a mammalian face.

“I allow others to worship me for their benefit, not my own. It makes them happy. It gives them purpose and meaning in their lives.”

This was not what Blackbird expected Chromium to say, and it most certainly was not what she wanted to hear. Everything about these words was infuriating, and as her blood began to boil her jaw clenched tight. Was he just trying to change the subject because he was uncomfortable with it, or did he perhaps deem that she was unworthy of an answer?

Tendrils of black shadow danced along the lengths of Blackbird’s talon-fingers.

“This Princess Cadance pony,” began Blackbird. “From what I understand, she’s the Princess of Love. It stands to reason that her interest in Dim is specific to love. If Dim did not love, then I don’t believe that Princess Cadance would do whatever it is that she is doing. You said she disobeyed orders… well, I’ll tell you why she did it. Love, you idiot. We do stupid, incredible things for love. I almost ripped your head off for that very reason. No doubt this Princess Cadance pony loves Dim. And as for Dim himself, Dim is learning how to love. He’s trying, which is a damn sight better than what you’re doing. When others worship you, they love you, but you, you do nothing to return that. Princess Cadance showed that she loved Dim by following him wherever it was he went, and Dim, for all of his faults, and he has many, he showed a little love in return. That’s why he did what he did, you lizard-brained ignoramus.”

“No offense”—Chromium made a dismissive wave with his hoof—“but that almost seems detrimental to your own survival. You said it yourself, you do stupid things. How do you survive such foolishness and rashness? How have you… all of you… not wiped yourselves out by now? I’ve seen your nations rise and fall. Whole empires have been built, brick by brick, only to crumble back into nothingness. I’ve watched this world end several times now… and for all of my intelligence and wisdom, I cannot explain your tenacious survival.”

Blackbird, frustrated, wasn’t sure that she was smart enough to argue her point.

“All of you are such marvellous creatures. Your songs. Your music. The culture and art that you make. All those frivolous things that you do for the sake of beauty… I do admire that. Whole lifetimes spent in pursuit of beauty. You and your archeologists, you even study the aesthetics and the beauty of those who’ve came and went before you. I admire these things about you, but I cannot comprehend you.”

For reasons she could not explain, Blackbird felt mollified by the dragon’s words. The shadows dancing along the length of her talon-fingers poofed into wisps of nothingness and she felt her volcanic anger subside just enough that some of her reason returned to her. She realised that Chromium was trying, which might explain why he was here, tolerating her insults. Blackbird wondered if she could be a better representative of her kind.

“I watched your kind and even shepherded your kind when you were but primitive beasts that barely had a language of your own. You were fascinating, you truly were. While others of my kind were content to eat you, I rather enjoyed watching you. I made it my business to teach you things, and for this, I faced endless ridicule from my own kind. When I went into one of my long slumbers, I genuinely worried if you and your kind would be there when I woke up. I had trouble imagining a world without you. All of you were such delightful creatures.

“I woke up from one of my long slumbers, and found evil in the world. Real evil. Terrible evil. And rather than banding together to fight this evil, all of you were busy fighting each other. Griffons were eating ponies. Proto-unicorns were busy exploring the depth of their magic and unleashing unimaginable horrors into the world. The world became one of nightmares, so much so that it even became dangerous to me and my kind.

“After another long nap, I was quite delighted to find that you and your kind hadn’t quite destroyed yourself just yet, but you were well on your way. Even though my kind told me I was insane for doing so, I tried a claws-on approach. I made what you would call slaves of you and your kind. It was for your own good. I made you stop fighting and I did everything I could to force some civilisation into your tiny, furry, fuzzy heads. I brought harmony and order. Things improved.

“A few naps later, and there were centaurs. Beings not at all native to this world. But they came here and did what I could not. They uplifted you and your kind. The centaurs spread out in search of answers. They didn’t start as centaurs, but as something else entirely. A species that quarreled, bickered, and battled themselves almost to extinction.

“But they changed themselves. Changed their nature. They grafted bits and pieces of other species hoping that would alter their state of being. These centaurs, not yet centaurs, roamed the universe looking for other life that had evolved, and they tried to understand. They attempted to forge life, and refine it, as one does with steel. Equine natures were chosen, selected… because equines were sociable herd animals. And the centaurs, whatever they were before becoming centaurs, were not. They were murderous brutes.

“Whatever they were, they found it so repulsive, so horrific, that they erased their own memories of it, because they could not bear to live with their own past. And here, on this planet, in this place, the centaurs rediscovered themselves. Refined themselves. And you… all of you… you were uplifted. Your potential was recognised. Perhaps because they feared their own past, the centaurs attempted to usher you past what was sure to be the worst parts of your future.

“You ask me if I love. I do. I love a great deal. I feel a tremendous amount of love for all of you as a whole, though I will confess that I have trouble with the individual. But yes, I do love. I’ve watched you because I love you. I’m here, in this place, trying to make things right because I love you. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m trying. Celestia is very dear to me, and her thoughts, her opinions, her feelings, they matter to me. I envy her, you know. She has this marvellous connection to life that I wish I had. So not only do I love, but I also feel jealousy.”

All of Chromium’s words—and there were many—landed like a suckerpunch to Blackbird’s guts. She had no wind, no words, no reply, she could not even muster up any sort of response. It had never occurred to her that a dragon might feel jealous. She felt tiny now, little, insignificant and insecure. How little she knew. All of her anger, all of her bluster left her, and she found herself in an odd position.

She wanted to help Chromium, and she found it tragic that she had no idea how.

Author's Notes:

This space for rent.