From a distance, the hamlet was so picturesque that it belonged on a postcard, but up close? It was whitewashed, like everything else was, so it offered the suggestion of safety; however, whitewashed hovels were still hovels. A few of the buildings were made from heavy timber and stones, but not many. A windmill stood like a tall, creaking guardian that watched over the settlement that had grown where two major roads had crossed.

Dim saw soldiers and he puffed away on his cigarette while some of them came over, no doubt to ask about their business here in whatever this place was. They were fusiliers by the looks of them, common soldiers. Disposable infantry. They appeared to be fighting the great enemy of boredom, the dreaded bane of soldiers everywhere, though it could be said that no soldier wanted their life to become suddenly exciting.

Gratin met with the two griffons and the pegasus that had flown over; now, the four of them were chattering away at one another. Bombay joined them, woozy on her paws, and Dim saw a concerned look from the pegasus pony. For some reason, this moved him, this brief display of kindness. Soldiers didn’t have to be kind—they had to be soldiers—but for them to chose to be kind left Dim feeling some unknown emotion that made his throat tight.

Correction: the pegasus pony was clearly a grenadier, as evidenced by the bombs strapped to his bandolier. Dim’s sharp eyes searched for more details, more clues, and he began to wonder what was going on out this way that required advanced soldiery. Well, other than pseudo-alicorns roaming about that could level a village or maybe even a city.

Motte and Bailey were exhausted and in need of rest. Somehow, they had pulled for over thirty miles this day since leaving the cultist compound. Night was coming and the shadows had grown long. A brave gang of foals ventured close to the wagon, but not too close. They stared at Blackbird, fearful but curious, and Dim watched her wave. Munro, perhaps hoping to compete with Blackbird for attention, began to juggle apples, but apples were not a hippopotamic behemoth that was the hippogriff.

Braying laughter could be heard from the pegasus pony and Dim took this as a good sign.

“Dim, we have a situation.” Gratin’s eyes glittered gold in the firelight and the big griffon’s talons flexed with nervous energy. “The soldiers tell me that Duc Truffe has levied an emergency tax without saying what it is for. Farmers that cannot pay with coin are bound to have their land taken. Panic is already spreading across the countryside. One of the griffons I spoke to thinks that Duc Truffe is trying to raise a militia, but his companions disagree. They feel that something far more sinister is at work here. Raising a militia feels too obvious.”

Slicing potatoes into a pot, Munro let out a muffled moo of concern.

“It is no mere coincidence that this tax happened just a few days ago.” Bombay rubbed the side of her head, her paw-fingers gingerly making little circles. “Right about the time when we were attacked. Not long after our arrival. It sounds to me that Duc Truffe has been made desperate by our arrival and now consolidates his power.”

“It could be coincidence,” Bailey said to the irritated Abyssinian.

“And Dim could be called a fine example of altruism,” Bombay replied, wincing in pain.

“Bombay?” Bailey, worried for her companion, ignored the sarcasm. “You okay?”

“The skin feels too tight and everything itches. It aches something awful.”

Dim, sitting atop a pile of grain sacks, looked around at the interior of the windmill. It was cold in here and the space was far too open for the small cooking fire burning in the hearth to warm it. A clay oven that looked like a big beehive was still somewhat warm from baking loaves of bread, but it did nothing to overcome the chill in the air.

“The Conseil des Ducs have the right to impose an emergency tax at any time. Most of them don’t do it, because it is a mighty unpopular thing to do, as you might imagine. If Duc Truffe did this, he had to have support… or he did it without the approval of the other lords of the city. I can’t imagine this going well for him if he acted alone though.”

Still silent, Dim turned to regard Gratin and gave him a faint nod of acknowledgement.

“I’ve never seen a nation unravel right before my eyes before,” Blackbird said, her eyebrow jittering up and down like a coffee-starved squirrel. “It’s really happening, isn’t it? This Duc fella, he’s just going to say fuck the rules and do what he wants. He’ll take these farmers’ lands and their houses and probably do something awful to them like charge them rent or something, unless somebody does something.”

“And what would that something be?” Bombay asked, still rubbing her scarred head.

“Pay his tax in lead,” Blackbird replied with no trace of joviality in her words. “Just kill the everloving fuck right outa him. Keep shooting until the body looks like that weird cheese with holes in it. I mean, I feel bad about killing, I do… but a whole lot of creatures is about to be hurt. But if we kill this gutter-sniffer, we can spare a lot of suffering.”

Bailey, wearing a grim, enduring smirk, nodded. “Killing him is an option, but we need good reason to kill him. Evidence. Proof of wrongdoing. This Duc guy sounds important. Just killing him outright might make everything worse. Public outrage can go a long way towards smoothing over the cold-blooded murder of the guy in charge.”

“What about the soldiers outside?” Dim asked, breaking his silence. “What are their intentions?”

“I do believe they are about to break their sacred oath,” Gratin replied, his talons still twitching. “That is why they are here… they hope to shelter from the current political weather. These soldiers are locals, Dim. Farmers, most of them. They’re loyal to soil, not to the Ducs.”

“Loyal to the soil.” Dim repeated the words, savouring them, and he nodded his head. “For now, we continue as we had planned. We go and check out those bandits. Perhaps we’ll find something. Of course, if we don’t, dead bandits. Everypony wins. If everything goes to shit, the bandits will be one less thing to worry about.”

Having finished slicing up potatoes, Munro began slicing up carrots into the pot.

Roosting birds cooed in the overhead spaces, disturbed by the noises from down below. The sounds of spoons scraping thin tin bowls, slurping, belching, and grunts of satisfaction could be heard. Dim was wrapped up in the greatcoat that Blackbird had made for him and he was almost warm enough to be comfortable. He ate, but was distracted, his thoughts distant and far away from the camaraderie offered by his companions.

Loyal to the soil.

Not to a lord, or some noble, or member of royalty, but soil. The very idea, the very concept kept Dim enthralled, fascinated by such simple, satisfying words. Had the Bard been loyal to his soil? Yes. Perhaps. Pâté au Poulet was a pony that loved his country, but held no blind obedience to its rulers. Soil. The Darks had betrayed their soil—their traitorous actions had harmed Equestria in some great, unfathomable way. Being loyal to the soil seemed to be a good start for being a hero, something that Dim now gave careful consideration to. All of the tales of his youth now had renewed vigour in his mind, new meaning.

What was a pale carrot called again?

Oh yes, a parsnip, which Dim ate and then spared no further thought about.

“So… that other world,” Blackbird said when her tin bowl was empty, “what made it end? I mean, what happened? I’m only asking because it feels like this world is starting to come undone.”

Bailey allowed her spoon to rest in her half-eaten bowl of stew and she eyeballed Blackbird, thoughtful. After a few moments of consideration, she replied, “There was a unicorn named Starlight Glimmer and she meddled with things best not messed with. She had a vendetta against a pony named Moondancer. Moondancer became an alicorn for some such reason, I don’t know the specifics. That was before my time. But Starlight went back in time and messed with things. Moondancer never became an alicorn. The present broke in two and both realities that existed tried to play themselves out on the same stage. The whole of the world unraveled. All of the monsters that Moondancer had stomped on as an alicorn were never stomped on. Eventually, it all came apart.”

“How tragic.” Blackbird said this while looking down into her empty bowl and when she looked up once more, she sighed.

“Moondancer was Princess Luna’s student. I don’t know much.” Bailey frowned and shook her head. “About all we had left was storytelling. Everything was gone. Nothing but ruins and bones as far as the eye could see. Princess Luna’s sister came back after being banished for one thousand years in the sun. But Starlight changed the outcome. Moondancer never became Princess Luna’s student. When Supernova came back, she and Princess Luna fought. Monsters ravaged everything. The War of the Sisters scorched the world. Those sisters were supposed to save the world, not end it. But end it they did.”

“How did everypony know that things had changed?” Blackbird asked.

“Because there were many that remembered both realities. Drove them mad. We called it the Great Fracturing. The adults all went crazy when they remembered two different realities at once. A whole generation of foals grew up with no parents. Society broke down. Thousands of years of progress were lost overnight and we all became savages.”

“I… I… I can’t even—” Blackbird’s voice faltered and trailed off.

“I can.” Dim’s words caused Blackbird to level her bewildered gaze at him. “An extensive part of my schooling was the theoretical consequences of temporal tampering. Looking back, I can only imagine that my mother was trying to prepare me for something. Temporal excursions create tangent universes. The temporal flow splits. It is divided. However, very powerful magics can restore the two streams and cause them to overlap. A mere unicorn could not do this.”

Bailey shook her head. “Then how did Starlight do—”

“She didn’t.” Dim lowered his stew bowl and studied Baileys bewildered, hurt expression. “Your Starlight didn’t cause the two streams to overlap one another. She might have caused the stream to fracture, to split in two, but something else, something immensely powerful exploited the chaos that she caused and took advantage of it from the background. There are powerful creatures that can do this, given the right circumstances. Reality is governed by unseen forces, but these forces can be fought… meddled with… or even killed outright. If this happens somehow, no corrections can be made.”

“I don’t understand.” Bailey, still shaking her head, cast her gaze down to the floor. “If these forces exist, why would Starlight even be needed at all? Why can’t they just destroy everything directly?”

“Certain primordial spirits and demons hold the potential for unlimited power, but need the right conditions,” Dim replied. “If, say, a primordial demon was responsible for this, he or she or it might have been mostly powerless. Dorment. Slumbering. But, splitting a timeline in two causes immense chaos. A disruption in the flow of harmony causes dissonance. This energy can be fed upon and given the right circumstances, a near powerless entity can suddenly find themselves overflowing with power. Enough to cause your Great Fracturing. The sheer chaos caused by such an event such as the Great Fracturing would further elevate these beings, transforming them into incomprehensible things that defy all reasoning. Eldritch entities that hide in the dark spaces beyond the stars, beings that lie in waiting, lurking, hoping for another chaotic event to come along so they can feed.”

“How do you know this stuff?” Motte asked, shivering, though perhaps not from the freezing air.

“Extensive schooling.” Dim could think of no way to be humble about this. “Pretty much the finest schooling available on subjects both mundane and fantastical. Given the nature of who and what I am, it seems obvious that my mother was preparing me for whatever grim future she had planned.”

Waving his hoof about in a dismissive gesture, Motte snorted. “You make it sound as though you were schooled in the fundamentals of becoming a god. Just saying it aloud causes one to hear and realise just how far fetched it is. Self-aggrandising. It’s hogwash.”

Dim’s lip curled back into a fine aristocratic sneer and the lights around him flickered, as if threatening to go dark. He chuckled, a disturbing, unpleasant sound that almost caused poor Munro to drop his bowl. Bombay’s surviving ear pricked and her eye narrowed with curious interest when she glanced at Dim and gave him a knowing nod.

“Allow me to give you a step by step tutorial,” Dim said as the lights went weak. “I promise, I’ll keep it simple. First thing you must do is plan for the long term. The mortal body is weak and will fail. For many, this means becoming a lich or a vampire… something that is a bit more enduring. There are many ways to accomplish this step. Once you no longer have to worry about mortality, you find some way to connect yourself to a primordial element. For most, this means siphoning chaos. It is the easiest thing to tap into.”

Here, Dim paused, took a deep breath, and licked his lips.

“At this point, it becomes a waiting game. You have all the time in the world. So now, you need to generate chaos, and lots of it. Make others fight and bicker around you somehow. Use magic to influence the lives of others and sow discord. It starts with a village and you slowly drink it in, gaining power. You start making artifacts to aid you, and maybe you recruit a few toadies to assist you in your great work.”

Again, he paused and this time he put his bowl down.

“At some point, waiting pays off and you move onwards to bigger and better things. Instead of tampering with a village, you send an entire nation into chaos and undo the lives of untold millions. Now your power grows in leaps and bounds. You gain and you grow. A hundred thousand unspeakable tragedies play out and you drink them in like mother’s milk. At this point, you begin to transform. You warp and you wend, becoming something else. It is at this point that you get noticed by others… those who have gone before you. They hunger, and make sweet, sweet promises. Feed them, give them sustenance, and they will share their secrets with you. Eventually, a nation is no longer enough, and you move on to consume the world… and from there, you begin to rove through the stars, seeking out the next conflict to feed upon.”

Trembling, Motte appeared as though he would say something, his mouth opened, his tongue lolled around his teeth like a thrashing serpent, his lips moved, but no words came. Beside him, Bailey looked disturbed, her eyes haunted, her hard face grim. Blackbird’s eyes held no mirth, no joy, they had gone dark and did not shine. Bombay rubbed at her scars, but she too, had nothing to say.

Munro alone had the courage to say something, and his voice trembled in the most awful of ways. “So… is someone undoing the nation of Fancy to gain the power they need?”

“Perhaps.” Dim shrugged, a stiff, careless gesture, and then his withers sagged with exhaustion. “My mother did just become a lich. She’s as well-versed in the plan as I am. She was one of my many teachers after all. Then there is Catrina, an Abyssinian who became a lich. No doubt, she aspires to something greater. Make no mistake though… something out there is benefiting from all that is happening around us.”

“Wait…” Motte raised his hoof as a perplexed, puzzled, quizzical expression crept over his face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I mention it only as a possibility.” Dim’s sneer spoke volumes and said far more than his words did.

Motte was about to say something in return, but there was a howl outside, a dreadful sound that chilled the blood and made each of the companions shudder in turn. This howl was accompanied by a second, a third, a heavy thud, a crash that could be felt through the ground and floor, followed then by screaming. It was just outside and Dim sat with his ears pricked, listening as more screams rent the night.

Bailey shook her head and in a frantic whisper she said, “Dim, don’t do it.”

“I don’t hear the soldiers.” Dim’s head tilted to one side so he could listen better.

“This is a fight they can’t win, Dim. They can’t do anything because they’d be throwing their lives away.” Gratin’s beak clicked together and his spine went rigid as his wings fidgeted during a particularly awful scream.

“Dim, no.” Bombay almost mewed the words and her eye was wide with terror.

Alas, all of the companions lacked the persuasive tongue of the Bard, and Gratin, perhaps fearing the worst, shook his head from side to side, a silent plea for Dim to listen to reason. A brutal scream, the kind that liked to haunt the memories of those who heard it, was cut off by a burbling, wet gurgle. Bailey squeezed her eyes shut and Motte did the same, his lips moving while something was muttered in near-silence.

“I can’t just sit here!” Dim cried, his voice a ragged, raspy sound that caused the birds overhead to let out panicked coos. “For the Bard!”

Blackbird almost said something, but Dim was already gone…

Author's Notes:

So... why'd he do it?