Eerie moved with a fine, elegant grace, and Dim found himself slipping back into old habits. No longer was there a need to skulk about while trying not to draw attention to himself. He wore his imperious sneer like a crown and his self-esteem seemed to have scabbed over just enough to begin healing. Dim was tired of living as a hobo, a vagrant, a vagabond. But he would not throw away what he had learned, or the perspectives he had gained, no. They were valuable to him now, so very precious. Something within him had changed, though he could not say what it was. A fight was brewing and he had a chance to make a difference; he had an opportunity to be noble and prove his worth. He thirsted for actual prestige and did not wish to rest upon the laurels of his family history as others were content to do.

A multi-coloured horde of bushwoolies clustered around Blackbird, who followed along behind, regaling them with a story about a monster that lived in a lake. Again, somehow, Blackbird had made friends and Dim now wondered how she did it—what magic did she possess that allowed her to gain affection with so much ease?

“—and then, with a woosh, everything was on FIRE! Because that’s what Dim does, you see, he sets things on fire! WOOSH! The stench of tentacled burning lake monster is terribad!”

Overcome with pride, Dim’s sneer intensified.

Dim knew a study when he saw one, and this was a study, an opulent study fit for a king. Fine rugs covered the floor. Furniture of exquisite design filled the room. The bookcases were all shaped stone, with additional cubbies in the walls. The overall colour theme of the study matched the White Hand, and also the minotaur sitting in a high backed chair.

A curious looking creature, the minotaur almost seemed to be an albino, though perhaps not. His hide was a pale, pale white, and his eyes were a startling shade of almost luminescent blue. Slender of build, the bull minotaur had two fine prosthetic hands with the most curious array of crystals protruding from his mechanical forearms.

“Modesto, this is Dim and Blackbird.” Eerie turned to face Dim and reversed the introduction. “Dim, Blackbird, this is Modesto.” Again, Eerie turned and she focused her intense, piercing gaze upon the striking white bull minotaur. “Modesto… how did your dawn meeting with the emissary from the Fancy Foreign Legion go?”

“Well, I think?” Modesto possessed a quiet voice that radiated an intense calm. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, the both of you—”

“Enough with the formalities,” Eerie said, cutting in as she sat down in a chair beside Modesto. “Who did they send? What sort of pony?”

“An earth pony, Eerie, why does it matter?” Modesto, confused and perhaps a little bit overwhelmed, glanced in Dim’s direction before turning his full attention towards Eerie. “Why does tribe matter?”

“Dim, explain to Modesto why tribe matters in this instance,” Eerie commanded in a voice of supreme authority.

Once more, Dim was a colt getting tutored in the Dark Spire. Endless hours of learning, memorisation, with intense study of almost everything. Failure meant punishment, and punishment meant pain, some of it quite intense, depending upon the degree of negligence to one’s studiousness. Failure was just not tolerated well, and every Dark was expected to live up to the Dark Ideal.

“They sent an earth pony because they trust that your intentions are good,” Dim replied, droning out the words in a near monotone. “Had they sent a unicorn, they would have been suspicious of you potentially using mind altering spells or magical coercion, and the unicorn might have been able to defend himself against that. Sending an earth pony is a symbolic gesture, in comparison to a pegasus pony, because earth ponies are seen as peaceful while the pegasus tribe is seen as warlike. So their emissary reflects their peaceful, trusting intentions.”

“Wunderbar.” Eerie clapped her front hooves together once and a beaming smile spread almost ear to ear. “Modesto, pay attention. Do you see the difference? Dim and I are born to rule… just as you are. But this is what separates a proper king or a prince from a petty warlord. Education, my dearest Modesto… it isn’t enough to simply take a throne, sit on it, and give yourself some silly title. No, you must rule. And to effectively rule, you must be educated. Do you understand, Modesto?”

Bowing his head, the pale minotaur replied, “Yes, I understand you, Eerie. Thank you for your patient instruction.”

When Eerie reached out and placed her hoof upon Modesto’s upper arm, Dim saw the truth of the matter. The pride in her eyes, her gentle touch, her warmth, the affection that could be seen upon Modesto’s bovine face—this was a mother speaking to her son. An icicle rammed itself though Dim’s heart, causing him to jerk and shuffle on his hooves. The depths of his sinuses burned and there was a strange, awful pressure building around his eyes. Eerie was now stroking Modesto, congratulating him in some soft way, giving him praise and tenderness.

Just as something was about to happen, something truly dreadful like his face leaking once more, Dim allowed his rage towards his own mother to consume him, and in doing so, every conflicting emotion in his body died in the fiery, consuming conflagration held within the blast furnace that was his hatred. After a moment, nothing was left but emotional ash and emptiness, and Dim cleared his throat to get rid of the lingering tickle.

“We might yet make allies of the Fancy Foreign Legion…” Eerie heaved out the words as a contented sigh while making herself comfortable in her chair. “Darling Blackbird, Dim, do sit down. Make yourselves at home. Go on, do sit down.” She pulled away her hoof from Modesto and made a ‘do-as-I-say’ gesture with it.

Blackbird, who seemed comfortable with things, flopped over onto a chaise lounge and then began lifting her mob of bushwoolies off of the floor so they could sit with her. She picked them up by the hair—which they did not seem to mind at all—and plopped them down all around her. The bushwoolies—all of them—seemed bewildered by their good fortune.

Watching Blackbird as she was so friendly with the help, Dim shivered a bit and then moved to take a seat. As he sat down, Blackbird had picked up one of the bushwoolies and was now combing out some tangles with her claws, which seemed as though it was a nigh impossible task. After a few seconds, Dim’s demeanour softened a bit, and with a maudlin expression that he was utterly unaware of, he watched as Blackbird tried to play hairdresser with a bushwoolie.

“I have spent a lot of time with Eerie watching you,” Modesto said to Dim in a voice whose softness belied his size. “It is my sincere hope that you will help the White Hand. I would be most grateful.”

Hoping that he had not misjudged the light levels of the study, Dim pulled off his goggles, blinked a few times to get the stinging to stop, and then focused on the pale minotaur. The mechanical hands were perhaps his most interesting feature, but there was also his slight build. Well, slight being a relative term for a minotaur, anyhow. With his goggles removed, Dim saw that Modesto’s horns were almost translucent and they were not quite as thick or heavy looking as other horns might be on other minotaurs.

“We are all dark dwellers here,” Modesto said while chuckling, a genteel and subdued sound to Dim’s ears. “Mars insists that Eerie favours me because of his preference for the day. He is a bull of the sun, but I am forced to be careful when I venture out. The daylight does not suit me.”

Eerie’s chair was close to Modesto’s and Dim guessed that the two of them must have spent a great deal of time in those chairs, together, spending many hours in study. This room had no windows, not even illusory windows, and even Dim found the light level to be quite tolerable after some time spent adjusting. Eerie was smiling, which Dim found unsettling, because it was a sincere, happy smile, and the Darks typically had sardonic smiles if they ever smiled at all.

“It is my intention to help, but purely for my own reasons,” Dim said, making a terse reply with but a few sparse words.

A shrill laugh came from Eerie and she made a circular flourish with her hoof. “Dim is offended—”

“Of course I’m offended!” The words came out as a nasal aristocratic whine.

His nostrils wide and flaring, Modesto asked, “So, am I to understand that somebody must burn for that?”

“I doubt it will make me feel better, but it is a start.” Dim tilted his head to one side, narrowed his eyes, and focused his burning stare upon Modesto’s ice blue eyes. “Recently, some griffon shot me in the hat. In my hat. I was offended.”

There was a loud gulp from Modesto, who said nothing but squirmed in his seat while shooting a few furtive glances over at Eerie. Blackbird, surrounded by bushwoolies, began to laugh, and each of her hairy little friends all had worried looks, no doubt worried that Dim might start to laugh again.

“Ah, Modesto… here is something you still need to work on; presence. See how Dim creates a delightful sense of dangerous charm? You need to project more and develop your presence. How others perceive you as a ruler will do more to determine the fate of your subjects than you realise. Though… I would go for something a bit more welcoming than what Dim projects—”

“I project nothing!” Dim snapped and with a shower of magical sparks, he conjured his hat from his room. Holding it out for Eerie to see, he shook it at her, trying to get her to see the hole. “My head was in this hat!” Now, he was almost screeching with aggravated annoyance. “Things keep shooting me! I was shot in the throat! It still pains me greatly and getting shot in the hat hurt my pride… those griffons signed their own death warrants in their own blood. I came to collect my due.”

Eerie’s lips pressed into what could only be described as an aristocratic duck lipped moue and she stared at the hole in the hat while making dyssynchronous eye blinks that mirrored Dim’s own. “Oh!” she whined, fuming, and for a brief moment she gritted her teeth together, seething. Hot with fury, she fanned herself with her hoof while protesting the cruelty of the universe in which an innocent hat had been made to suffer. “Uncouth! Put it away! I can’t bear to look!”

“Hey, Modesto, you ever get the feeling that the Darks just aren’t like the rest of us?”

“All the time, Blackbird.” Modesto cringed and shied away from the scathing glance that Eerie shot in his direction, but made no effort to apologise. “Eerie said that Majid had to die for his poor etiquette, it was the only way she could continue to exist in this universe.”

“He was positively dreadful!” Eerie whined while she shuddered with revulsion. “Why, when I politely asked him to remove his hairy, filth-encrusted backside from the throne, he refused me. Uncouth! Uncouth! Also, he was decidedly smelly.”

While Eerie gave voice to her reasons, Modesto kept rolling his eyes as he shook his head from side to side. Sneering, his dimples in full view, Dim decided that he liked Modesto and decided that he would need to get to know the minotaur prince just a little better. The sound of Blackbird’s laughter caused his ears to perk and Dim tossed his hat down upon a nearby table.

The first peals of barking, grating laughter escaped from Eerie’s mouth like a lunatic fleeing an asylum, and at the sound of it, Dim also started with his dry, hacking chortle. The bushwoolies, having experienced this once, fled the scene, vanishing beneath couches, chairs, and disappearing behind bookshelves, until at last, Blackbird was left all alone.

“Aw, all my friends left me because these two weirdos had to start laughing again.” Blackbird snorted to work up a pout and then glared daggers at the two Darks possessed with demented, obscene giggles.

Not a single bushwoolie could be seen anywhere.

Author's Notes:

Imagine a cutie mark for a bushwoolie hairdresser.