Very much against Dim’s will, Blackbird had used him as a cutting torch to chop off much of the rear hull plating of the Black Hand Finger ship so that she and the minotaurs could gain access to the vessel’s mechanical heart. His magic had cut through the light armor plating with relative ease and she had flown with him from point to point, so the job could be done in safety.

Now, he sat on the deck of the minotaur freighter eating delicious scrambled eggs off of a tin plate while watching the others perform open-heart surgery. It was a fascinating sight to behold, really, but Dim still had reasons to complain, even with a delicious plate of scrambled eggs and a can of sour cherry pie filling. For one; he was eating like a hobo, which was worse than eating like a disgusting primitive, and two; Blackbird had pinched his cheek while serving him his eggs and had said something about his Dim-ples, with an emphasis being placed upon his name.

The only suitable revenge that he could think of was eleven or so months of pregnancy followed by a voracious parasite exploding out of her nethers in a shower of scarlet blood. Of course, said parasite would inevitably consume and destroy both of them, but Dim wasn’t one for half-measures and was willing to go out in a ginormous fiery explosion visible from the next planet over if necessary. Of course, this was only one of the dangerous things he could do with his dick.

Then again, dicking an apex predator that could eat him was already suitably crazy.

Armed with a spork, Dim devoured his eggs, while watching the Finger ship getting dismantled and trying not to think about how gauche it was to be eating scrambled eggs with an implement that was neither a fork nor a spoon. It was, however, something that Dim desperately wanted to kill something with, because he wanted to be able to say that one of his foes had been dispatched with a spork.

A pony had to have aspirations, and Dim, being an ambitious sort, had many.

Never was there a more maladroit eating utensil than a spork; the spoon part was useless, because it leaked—it dribbled—and left a mess on one’s chin, and the tines were too short to stab anything with and hold it securely. Yet, for some reason, sporks existed and Dim was almost certain that it was part of some vast conspiracy to drive him mad. Those whom the alicorns wish to destroy, they first arm with sporks… and give them aspirations of defeating a worthy nemesis.

Blackbird had immense strength and Dim watched with curious interest as she laboured. She was just as strong as the minotaurs, by his own estimation, and by the looks of it, she wasn’t afraid of hard work. The big hippogriff-lion-eagle-horse-creature was a disgusting primitive through and through, but that was okay, because she had redeeming features that he found worthwhile, like being sweaty, and glistening with sweat, and heavy breathing while sweating.

When his eggs were gone, Dim opened the can of sour cherry pie filling with a bit of magic and then dug in with his spork. The cherries were every bit as sour as advertised on the can, and the thick, congealed syrup the cherries were packed in was as sweet as his feelings for Blackbird, whom, at the moment, was lifting up a massive mass of metal without the assistance of a crane. He could hear the sounds of metallic screeching from where he was sitting and beneath his floppy brimmed hat, his ears waggled at the dreadful sound.

With the help of several minotaurs, the big hunk of metal was moved into position and secured on the crane hook. He watched, waiting, alert, ready to use his magic if need be should something go wrong. The spork, a fundamental flaw given shape and form, failed him and cherry goo ran down his chin, leaving it sticky.

Full of figgy liquor, scrambled eggs, and an attraction to dangerous, sweaty, predatory females, Dim approached some sort of catharsis…

It couldn’t even be noon yet and all that was left was a rather valuable hulk. Blackbird and the minotaurs had stripped the small vessel of pretty much everything and now, without electricity, it would soon begin to sink. Of course, Dim had no plans to allow it to sink, no, he had been tasked with obliterating what was left.

Off to his right, Captain Melvin stood smoking his pipe with both hands folded behind his back. Dim was puffing on a clove and cannabis cigarette, his cigarette holder drooping from the corner of his mouth. On the deck behind him, minotaurs were trying to cram things into the hold, which was quite full at this point.

“What is Aurora?” Dim asked now that his mind felt a little more settled.

“It’s the worst thing in the world, for a unicorn,” Captain Melvin replied.

Dim thought of the captain’s reaction upon seeing the body in the cell, the quiet sigh of disgust followed by a snort of anger. Yes, looking back on that poor soul, Aurora certainly seemed like the worst thing in the world. Puffing away, Dim watched as the hulk gained a little distance, now free of its tethers.

“It is addictive and terrible,” Captain Melvin continued. “One use will have you hooked. The Black Hand use it to turn unicorns into slaves. They… they make them breathe in the dust and that’s when the addiction starts. The withdrawals are always fatal and there doesn’t seem to be a cure just yet. You’ll find out more about all of this soon enough… when you get to Istanbull.”

Of course, Dim found this unsettling and as the remains of the Finger ship gained more distance, he began to think of what sort of fireball spell to use for this rare opportunity to study. Now was probably the perfect time for the delayed blast vortex fireball, a draining spell that would no doubt leave him depleted and weak, but he would recover. The chance to learn, to experiment, to try and to do, this was a fortuitous circumstance. Grinning, Dim removed his hat and his horn started to build a charge as he concentrated upon the foundational underpinnings of the spell framework.

Even as the spell began to coalesce into its embryonic form, waves of weakness washed over Dim and he felt his knees wobble. This was an unwelcomed, unwanted reminder that he was not as powerful as he would have liked to be, and that truly exceptional magics would be forever beyond him. Still, he persisted, striving for the pinnacle of his art. A little touch of gravity manipulation, a smattering of hydrogen collection, a matrix to create Solestium plasma to maximise the burn, and a basic candle-lighting spell as the source of ignition.

The biggest and most powerful spells were really just a collection, a series of smaller spells chained together. Dim pushed harder and didn’t stop to think about trivial concerns, such as his nose bleeding or having a fatal brain aneurysm from strain. These were occupational hazards, like being shot in the hat, or griffons having a poor reaction to your sudden appearance. It grew difficult to even hold his head up and his mouth went dry. The tip of his horn glowed like the sun now and he could feel considerable heat upon his face. Raw aether blazed around him and danced along the length of the rail, causing Captain Melvin to take a few steps back.

“Tartarus alive, I ain’t seen nothing like this,” the captain said as he retreated, taking another step backwards.

With a gasp, Dim let go and the spell drifted away with exquisite slowness. This was unexpected, and when it was just a few yards away, he could feel the gentle tug of the gravity it exerted. Curious. He hadn’t expected for it to give off gravity at this point, it should have done that at its target destination. Something had gone wrong, of this, Dim was certain.

“Captain, we should go now. Go now. Go fast now. Fast.”

“FULL STEAM!” the captain bellowed, and a second later, the ship lurched.

The malfunctioning spell crept forward and Dim could sense the hydrogen being sucked in. The floating orb was gaining mass now—though not much yet—which meant that parts of the spell were working as intended. Dim could feel his blood freezing in his veins as panic gripped him with its icy, clawed fingers.

“No, I don’t think you understand, Captain Melvin, we must go faster.”

“GIVE IT A JAR OF LIGHTNING AND A GOOD KICK IN THE PANTS!”

Nothing seemed to happen and Dim watched as his spell rolled across the sky like some horrifying marble escaped from the fiery pits of Tartarus. It was now making ominous crackling sounds and bands of light that pierced through the clouds seemed to bend around it, creating beautiful, brilliant streams of impossible curvature. Dim couldn’t recall if beams of light should bend like that, and he suffered a dreadful moment of worry when he thought about what the sun’s owner might do to him for wrecking her perfect sunbeams.

She already tortured his very existence with her sun and there would be no living with her now, not after this.

The whole ship thrummed, the deck vibrated, and the airscrew motors now screamed with effort. Dim watched in fixated horror as his spell continued its serial killer pace towards the drifting hulk. Panicked shouts could be heard as all those on deck scrambled to keep their balance. This promised to be interesting, to say the very least, and Dim was going to make himself watch so that he could gather every possible observation.

A few things could already be discerned. The gravity portion of the spell needed a lot of work, though Dim was uncertain what he had done wrong. He would have to try again at some point in the future, if he lived through this that is, and make adjustments. Creating the perfect fireball spell was a process, an exercise in learning, and for learning to happen, mistakes had to be made. Mistakes like this one.

There was more shouting, mooing, and bellowing as the ship picked up speed while the minotaurs were clearing the deck. Some ran for the door, others dove into the cargo hold. Almost all of them were uttering vulgarities spawned from polluted streams of conscious thought, and Dim regretted that he could not give it more attention. Only one minotaur stood resolute, and that was Captain Melvin.

“Are we going to die?” Captain Melvin asked in a rumbling, masculine baritone.

“Oh, from the looks of things, we won’t feel anything… maybe a slight burning sensation, but that’s it,” Dim replied in a reedy, aristocratic manner that was in no way filled with panic. Nope, not at all. Nobles were expected to remain composed.

“Before I die…”

“Yes?”

“Dim, you are a creepy bastard, and you give me the willies.”

“Thank you, that is very kind of you to say.” As Dim spoke, the orb, now with some distance, seemed to be shrinking, which was peculiar, and the curvature of the light around it was now more pronounced. “I wonder what Blackbird is doing during our final moments?”

Goggles secure, Dim made ready to spend what was sure to be his last moments in aggressive observation. Something was wrong with the plasma creation matrix as there were weird, squiggly lights that went zigzagging away from the path of the orb as it rolled through the sky at a snail’s pace. No doubt, electrons were running about willy-nilly and this was about to become what Dark Chocolate—one of his many magic tutors as a colt—called a ‘catastrophuck.’

With his knees knocking together from advanced magical fatigue, Dim was almost in no condition to watch the end when it came. As the orb drew near the hulk that had been set adrift, pieces of wood and metal were ripped free and sucked into the voracious mass. The debris crumpled, folded up like paper, and compressed within the tiny, adorable little singularity that Dim had created through the sheer force of his own will.

Did it perhaps have Dim-ples, just as its creator?

There was a horrendous screech as more metal was torn free and Dim struggled to remain upright. His exhaustion was overpowering him, he needed his rest, his time to recover. One spell was almost his undoing. The ship beneath his hooves lurched and was still undergoing massive acceleration, though not being a sleek vessel, it had to punch air right in the face while telling it to fuck right off and get out of its way, because damn, it was in such a hurry.

Now, the lift nacelle was being devoured, sucked in, and compressed. The air around the orb had a most distressing wibble to it—it looked like heat rising up from a sun-soaked rock—and Dim was pleased to discover that the vortex portion of his delayed blast vortex fireball appeared to be working just fine. Suck everything in, blow everything up.

Then, with explosive suddenness, there was a second sun the size of a pinprick in the sky for a span the length of an eyeblink. An indescribable sound swallowed Dim; he was surrounded by tumultuous, turbulent fury, which threatened to do what his many enemies had not, and he felt strong hands grab him. For a time, all was chaos, an unimaginable explosive catastrophuck.

When the catastrophuck began to clear a little, a cute little mushroom cloud rose in the distance, billowing with the very fires of Tartarus. Purple-blue bolts of lightning crackled in all directions from the epicenter of the blast and there was nothing left of the Finger ship. Dim, limp as a ragdoll in the captain’s beefy arms, wept unabashed tears of joy that pooled within his goggles. It was not a success, but it was not a total failure, either. It gave him direction, it filled him with purpose, and he knew that he would continue to try and perfect the fireball spell.

He would live to try again and upon having this realisation, Dim began to laugh…

Author's Notes:

Wordsmithing is hard...