Ahead was rising smoke and the potential for danger. Blackbird slowed a bit, her powerful wings moving with steady metronomic beats, and Dim peered ahead through the smoked glass of his goggles. The town ahead looked ruined, and the destruction seemed recent. Buildings still smouldered and what remained of the windmill was still on fire.

“Dim”—Blackbird had to almost shout to be heard over the sound of her own wings and the rush of wind—“do we dare investigate this?”

The headwind that poured into Dim’s nostrils reeked of death and Dim wasn’t certain that he wanted Blackbird seeing this. Had he not been so distracted, he might have marvelled at his own empathy, but alas, he was caught up in the moment. He held the map up in front his face, studied it for a moment while the edges flapped in the wind, and then he lowered the map a little to peer over the top edge at the ruination ahead.

“This is supposed to be Schwarze Wasserüberquerung,” Dim said to Blackbird, amplifying his voice with just a touch of magic so it could be heard better. “I can’t remember what that means, but the town is built around an important bridge. This is a major alchemy production center.” Folding up the map, Dim magicked it back into its hidden location inside the vardo.

“Do you think something went wrong?” Blackbird asked while her wings moved slower with every flap.

“Define wrong.” Dim’s voice was a loud, clear deadpan that seemed to communicate the very state of his own being.

“Exploded?”

“Doubtful.” Dim leaned forward from where he sat atop the vardo. “An explosion would knock buildings over and have a noticeable center… this is wanton destruction for the sake of ruination.”

“I suppose you could do worse!” Blackbird shouted.

“Oh yes,” Dim began while he fought back the urge to cough, “I could level this town and leave nothing standing. If I wrecked this place, you would only find ashes and puddles of slag. I take pride in my work.”

Blackbird came to a complete halt, unhitched herself from her harness, and then just hovered near the wagon, her powerful wings creating eddies of ash in the air. Dim noticed that the town walls had crumbled near the gate and that the large, heavy stones were scattered everywhere. Buildings near the breech in the wall had toppled or were now crooked. All of it had a peculiar look about it, but Dim wasn’t sure what it was.

Unicorns probably wouldn’t have destroyed the walls, at least not like that. The walls might have been transmuted into a liquid. Most dragons could and would fly over the walls, or leap over the walls. So something big, powerful, and ground bound had smashed in the walls. Perhaps an army of somethings. Whatever happened next ended with the town left demolished.

“Let’s go have ourselves a look, Blackbird.”

“Alright.” With swift, sure movements, Blackbird swooped in, snatched up Dim and made ready to carry him to the ground. “Don’t burn your hooves, Dim… I’m worried, you can’t fly like I can.”

Caught up in Blackbird’s clutches, Dim allowed himself to enjoy this moment but did everything he could to hide the fact that he was. Scowling, he squirmed, pretending to wiggle away from Blackbird, while also managing to rub his body against her, and he could feel her delightful pelt sliding against his. “You worry about yourself, I’ll be fine.”

Alchemists were not helpless types and Dim knew this because he was an alchemist himself. Chemical bombs, alchemical explosives, dangerous dusts, alchemists were the very epitome of dangerous foes. One simply did not mess around with most alchemists… and yet… this town had been destroyed. Dim stood near the ruined gate, watching for any signs of danger, and Blackbird hovered overhead.

How had this happened?

What could have possibly overpowered the alchemists of this town? This was unsettling to say the very least, as it went against everything that Dim knew, that he understood, his concepts of how the world worked. Off to the side of the stone road, he saw something that chilled his blood.

Footprints, but not just any footprints. Perfect round circles that were larger than a supper plate that sunk entire inches into the well packed ground. Dim could only think of one thing that could do something like this that would have feet like that and so much destructive potential: a golem.

Cold fear made his balls prickle and he wasn’t sure if he could defeat a golem. Nothing in the town seemed to be moving, and golems were far too valuable to just leave behind. With a critical eye, he surveyed the destruction. The golem had gone crashing through the wall or the gate, it was difficult to tell, and then had no doubt absorbed the brunt of the town’s considerable offensive capabilities.

But what else had attacked the town? Who and why? Not common bandits. Common bandits would be blown to smithereens and they would not have a golem or golems to aid them. No, you needed resources, skill, and reason to attack a town full of alchemists. Yes, a reason, and perhaps a powerful need, as places like this one no doubt had vaults full of rare, obscure ingredients that were prized, treasured beyond measure.

The city-state of Schwarze Wasserüberquerung was supposed to have five to ten thousand residents, employed its own guard, fielded its own army, (albeit, a small one) and was marked as a safe haven on the map. All Dim could do as he surveyed the destruction was wonder how. Shaking his head from disbelief, Dim pushed ahead in a slow, cautious, methodical manner, while every nerve in his body screamed in alarm.

Now standing atop the wall, Dim had a good look around. No bodies so far, which seemed weird. The narrow little alley below was caked with ash and trash. Doors hung broken on their hinges like ruined teeth left in a mangled maw. Broken windows glittered with thousands of jagged points ready to slash the unwary.

“Blackbird?”

“Right here!”

Turning his head, he saw her hovering near a somewhat melted, misshapen lightning rod. She didn’t have her hand cannon out, and that suited him fine. He wasn’t in the mood to get shot right now, and probably wouldn’t be in the mood to get shot later, either. With a jolt of magic, Dim winked in and out of the aether, reappearing on top of the remains of a roof, ready to teleport away if it buckled beneath him.

The structure held, but some of the slate shingles slid free. Stretching out his neck, Dim had himself a peek at the street below. Lots of ash, debris, some slate shingles, and many stone blocks with crumbled corners, but no bodies. This was odd, and it began to disturb Dim just a little bit. One would think in a town with five to ten thousand citizens, there would be a few corpses somewhere, some burned bones, a skull, something, but so far, nothing.

“I swear on my father’s name, if some zombie or some ghoul comes crawling out, I’m gonna scream and wet myself like a filly—”

“No bravado from you, eh Blackbird?”

“Not when it comes to the undead, no. My mother told stories, Dim.”

Too focused on his environment, Dim did not press the issue. There were many stories, very few of them were true, and he had seen the undead with his own two eyes. For but a moment, he thought of the zebra that he had hunted down for Constable Knobby Russet Apple. The chicken was still a great mystery to him: how did one ejaculate their semen into a chicken?

After a good look about, Dim drew one conclusion that left him chilled to the bone. If there were corpses here, there would be birds here, feasting on the remains. Not one bird to be seen, save for Blackbird. The skies were silent and there were no signs of roosting birds anywhere on the high and secure places of the town.

Dreadful tremours began in Dim’s knees and the longing for a coca-laced salt cube manifested in his mind. That was the whole reason why he and Blackbird had come here, so that he could find medicine to help with his addictions and to get a potion that would repair the enamel of his teeth. It was supposed be just a little stop on the way, but then, this had happened. Now he was standing upon a ruined roof, trying to solve the mystery of where the ‘all you can eat’ bird buffet had gone.

Not one fly. Nothing. None of the usual signs of corpses or the process of decay.

With a need for a fix now a pressing concern in Dim’s mind, he winked…

In the center of the town there was a horror nigh-impossible to take in. Dim had a dull, almost vacant stare as he gazed into the blown open vault that lay in the town’s center on the other side of the river. Whatever riches had once been here, whatever fabled and storied ingredients had once been stored in this lockaway, they were now gone. In their place was a… soup of dead bodies that was more like a bubbling, boiling pit full of tar.

Birds had flown in, but they hadn’t flown out. Nothing that went in came out and Dim watched the bubbling bodies in mute horror. Blackbird had landed on the roof a short distance away and had been sick several times already. Dim reasoned that more birds had kept coming for a free meal, until the whole area had ran out of birds. Even now, he watched a few survivors that struggled while they dissolved away into goop.

Written in the wall in garish red paint was a message for those who came upon this gristly scene: “This is the fate for all of those who refuse my reasonable demands. Submit to me, or else. Catrina, devoted servant of Grogar.” A red paw print punctuated the grim words and Dim had stared at it for a while upon first seeing it. Now, he couldn’t look at it at all.

“Dim, please… come away with me from this place… I’m too scared to be alone and I can’t leave without you.”

Blackbird’s voice was pleading and there was something… foalish about it. It shook him from his near-insensibility, breaking the spell and freeing him from his dreadful fascination. There was nothing else to do here, nothing else that could be done but leave. With a slow, almost pained motion, he turned to face his companion.

“Blackbird, can you carry me back to the vardo?” Offering her a hug to make her feel better was out of the question—Dim would never succumb to such weakness, even though it might make him feel better—but he could ask to be carried. That was different. It was practical and pragmatic, with no admission of weakness.

“Sure, I can do that, Dim.”

Even though it was warm, Blackbird clung to her blanket, and Dim knew why. He understood the compulsion, having learned about it as a foal. It wasn’t for comfort, as some might think, but an attempt at practical protection using the weakest of passive magics. She didn’t have it wrapped around her, but squeezed it in her talons while she rubbed a somewhat tattered corner of it against her cheek.

“Do you know why foals cling to blankets, Blackbird?” Dim asked, hoping that he could somehow comfort her with some random, obscure bit of knowledge.

“It just makes you feel better?” she replied while sniffling away some tears.

“Salt.” Dim spoke the word in a cool, but not quite collected monotone. It was clearly the voice of somepony working hard to hold everything in. “It has to do with salt. It needs to be a little dirty, which is why foals beg and plead with their mothers to not launder their favourite blanket.”

“I don’t understand.” Blackbird’s green eyes glittered with keen intelligence and curiousity—curiousity which was a driving force for felinoid creatures everywhere. Inquisitiveness might be fatal to the feline species, but smug satisfaction would revive them from the dead, or so it was said.

“Salt is a pure element and it protects us from evil.” Dim looked into Blackbird’s eyes while she stared at him, listening to what he had to say, and no doubt wondering if he was about to tell her the truth. “When a foal dives into bed and covers themselves with their blanket, when they pull it over their heads and then shiver in the dark beneath, what they are really doing is protecting themselves in a crude, almost ineffectual covering of salt.”

“What?” Blackbird, gripping her blanket, twisting it in her talons, seemed incredulous.

“It’s true.” Dim held up his hoof and gestured at the blanket. “The salt collected in the fabric can help keep away the weakest of evils, things like bed lurkers and the like—”

“You mean monsters under the bed are real?!” Blackbird’s voice grew in both pitch and volume with each spoken word while she wrapped her own wings around her in a terrified self-hug. Her eyes grew wide and her face sagged with terror while she pondered Dim’s soul-shrivelling words. “Are you telling me that monsters under the bed are real and the very things I spent my foalhood being afraid of weren’t my overactive imagination?”

This had gone wrong somehow, in the worst way possible. Blackbird seemed even more terrified, more unhinged. Dim sighed, resolving to continue to blunder ahead, hoping to salvage this somehow. “Yes, bed lurkers are real, and they are part of a collection of nocturnal emovorous parasites. Creatures who are part shadow and dwell in dark places, like beneath the bed—”

“In the closet!” Blackbird hid half of her face behind her blanket while keeping one eye focused upon Dim.

“Yes, in the closet, anywhere with sufficient darkness and shadow, really. They lie in wait and then feed upon a foal’s fears. They make you afraid. They are the reason you shiver in the dark. When you feel that icy touch upon your spine that makes you tingle, that is them trying to feed. When I was a foal, I tried to catch one to keep it as a pet. I kept killing them, they’re actually quite weak and very fragile—”

“You really are the stuff of nightmares, Dim. You are the Lord of Nightmares! You tried to make pets of these things? What’s wrong with you? You’re horrifying! If some foal was scared of the dark, you’d be telling them tales of terror before bed to make them feel safe!”

“I… I was trying to make you feel better after what we saw—”

“I don’t feel better! I don’t feel better at all!” Blackbird shivered while clinging to her blanket for a moment longer, then hurled it away from herself and back into her bunk with wide, terrified, almost unblinking eyes. “I just got confirmation of all of my worst fears as a foal! They’re real! I’ll never sleep again!”

“But… but…” Dim stammered, “but I was birthed into the darkness and left to survive in it… these are the things I learned, being a dark-dweller. I was taught to recognise that fear, as an indicator that something was there, so I could either try to capture it or perhaps broker a deal with it of some kind, should it be capable of advanced intellectual communication, because it might be a worthwhile minion or familiar—”

“Listen to you! You are the literal Lord of Nightmares! Ugh! Listen to the words coming out of your own mouth, Dim!”

“I was trying to be kind…” Dim struggled to get the words out and the realisation that everything had gone wrong was almost too much to bear after what he had witnessed in the town. It had never occurred to him how ‘normal’ folk might react to his education. “I was trying to be comforting. I was trying to empower you with knowledge—”

“You creepy little shit!” Blackbird’s voice was shrill with terror. “You were taught to make friends with the monster under the bed! This is just one of the many things that is wrong with you!” Shuddering, her teeth clattering against one another in fright, Blackbird fled the confines of the vardo and launched herself out of the back door. “Your mother is a real bitch, Dim!” she shouted from outside.

A moment later, the jingle of her tack and harness could be heard, and the vardo shuddered as it took off. Stymied, Dim sat in silence while trying to comprehend what had just happened, unable to tell if Blackbird was angry with him or just scared shitless of him. It seemed they were off again and the medicine he needed would have to be found elsewhere.

Try as he might, Dim just couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

Author's Notes:

He tried, didn’t he?