Death Unbound

'Week 2:

I finally found the one known as Aeternalis. She has agreed to assist me in looking for the others. Seeing as she looks nothing like she did in the vision, the only way I know it is her is because...well my gut seems to think it's her and my gut still hasn't let me down. The two of us have been traveling through the desert for some time now. She seems to agree that the pulling feeling we are getting is like a homing beacon, alerting us to where the last two are. If that is so, then why is the buffalo moving away from us, and why is the pony not moving whatsoever? I wonder what the other two will look like, seeing as the impressions we got from the vision was wrong for both me and Aeternalis. For our sakes, I hope that pony doesn't look like he did in the vision, to us he looked like-'

“What are you doing Mourn? I thought you said you were going to watch for them.” Came a voice from behind me, making me jump for my sword.

I turned, sheathing my sword upon seeing that it was only Aeternalis waking from her slumber.

“I am just taking note of the happenings of the past couple days.” I said, trying to get back to my task.

“Well then, maybe I should take watch.” She hinted.

“They haven’t moved in three days, I hardly think they will realize that we are waiting for them. I think we should go find them, I’m starting to get restless.” I replied, not looking up from my journal.

“Aww, thats cute. What is that a diary?” She asked gesturing to the book I was writing in.

“It's a journal, NOT a diary. I use it to record my travels in hopes they will be noticed sometime in the future.” I said slowly and evenly, failing at hiding both my embarrassment and my anger.

“You are afraid you will not be noticed? That no one will remember you?” She asked.

She might not be able to rhyme like the other zebras, but she is just as cryptic and just as mystical. When I asked her about her past, she told her story without a breath of pause and without emotion. This surprised me, I thought that her reason for being shunned from her homeland would be deep and toll taking, not to mention mysterious. It turns out, she refused to rhyme like the rest of her species so she was ‘politely excused from the country’ as she puts it. If I were in her shoes, I would have been much more angry at the fact that I was not allowed to be unique, that all of society would force me to be like the rest of them.

My banishment was a lot more...complicated. I didn’t like talking about it, I normally just hint that it involves my family and a certain rainbow maned pegasus, then I leave the rest to their imagination. Aeternalis has tried to break my shell but stronger than her have tried and failed, so she will just have to keep on guessing.

“Do you feel that?” Asked Aeternalis, giving pause to my train of thought.

“What?”

“The blip is moving, fast!” She said, her eyes wide in either fear or surprise, I couldn’t quite tell.

I realized she was right, the pulling in my head that pointed me in the direction of the buffalo was moving, incredibly fast, straight up. I looked off in the distance, trying to see something.

“What could you possibly see? He is miles away, there is no way we could see him in the dead of night with him being that far away.” Said Aeternalis from behind me.

“If an object that big is moving that fast, it will create a ton of friction with the air molecules, eventually making the object burst into flames, which creates a lot of light, hence shooting stars.” I said, spewing the scientific knowledge I learned before I was banished.

I had planned on being an astronomer, but then those stupid ponies decided to ruin my life! Taking away my family and friends all for the sake of some bits, a pathetic name for currency. I prefer the griffon septim personally, but that hardly matters at this point what with a 200 pound buffalo flying at us so fast he was glowing blue.

Wait, what? I thought, shaking my head as I looked back into the sky.

I just barely had time to grab Aeternalis and run to cover as the living meteor impacted the ground ten feet from where I was standing. The resulting shockwave made me second guess my assumption about weight, he was definitely heavier than 200 pounds. We were sent tumbling back several yards, debris from our camp flying past us to become embedded in the sand.

As we finally stopped our skipping across the sand, we ran towards the epicenter of the blast. The dust still hadn't settled, but we could still see the buffalo as he glowed blue, though the glow had dimmed slightly. We continued our sprint until we reached the center of the giant crater he had created. He seemed to be unphased by the fact that he was just on fire and plummeting by his almost certain doom.

He shook his body, sand and burnt hair flying about his large frame. He turned to us and smiled pleasantly. I felt Aeternalis tense, prepared for a fight, while I drew my sword. The two of us shared a look, just because he was a buffalo didn’t mean he was the one we were looking for. He stepped forward, causing us to snap our heads back to look at his position. He hadn’t moved much, just a few steps to the side, the same warm smile still on his face.

“Have I done you any wrong?” He asked.

“I am a desire. Needed to live, yet am not needed to those of good health, who am I?” Asked Aeternalis.

“Famine.” He answered flawlessly.

“I am the ultimate killing machine, born of anger and hatred, I have a beginning and an end, yet I am the end to most beginnings, what am I?” I asked, grinning on the inside.

I had to come up with that one on the fly when I met Aeternalis, and I thought it was a particularly good one.

“War.” He answered, smiling when he saw my face fall.

“Damn, I thought it was good.” I mumbled.

“It was, I just know who you are Mourn. Now lets get down to business, where is Crash? Shouldn’t he be here already? I thought with him being a pegasus he would have-” He began.

“Wait, so you expect us to just forget about the fact that you just fell out of the sky, burning blue, and nearly killed us?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Well...yes,” He answered,”plus, it wouldn’t have killed you. We’re practically immortal remember? As for falling out of the sky, I just used a buffalo guru to teleport me here, though his aim was a bit off. It was definitely better than appearing in the ground though.”

“I suppose so.” Replied Aeternalis, butting into the conversation.

“Anyways, lets get go-” He was cut off as he fell through a hole in the ground.

Me and Aeternalis quickly looked to the hole, realizing that we were no longer standing on sand, but on stone. There were strange designs carved on it, a peculiar combination of lines and circles with dots peppering the surface in great abundance.

“What in the world is this?” I wondered out loud.

“It's some kind of temple or something, at least it seems like one from in here. I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.” Said Dirge from the hole.

“No, this engraving, it seems familiar, but I can’t quite put my claw on it.” I said, reaching up to scratch my chin.

“It's a star chart.” Said Aeternalis simply.

I looked to the sky, and back down to the stone surface. I needed to get a better angle to be sure. In a mighty flap of my wings, I ascended, watching the stars as I did so. After a couple seconds I turned and looked back to the supposed chart only to have Aeternalis’ suspicions to be proven correct, it was a perfect mirror image of the starry sky, but only a small part of it. I landed, contemplating what it could’ve been used for when suddenly I realized something. I looked back up, we were only about twenty feet below the surface of the sand and the image upon this circle of stone, about thirty feet in diameter, only covered a small grouping of stars in the sky. If this star chart was to be useful, it would need to have all of the stars in view on it.

So either this is just for decoration, or this place is a lot bigger than we originally thought.

No sooner had I thought it than a low rumble began to reverberate throughout the environment. I shot a look over to Aeternalis who just shrugged, or at least tried to, due to the severity of the quaking, I couldn’t entirely tell. I took flight to escape the trembling stone, as well as to seek its origin. To my surprise there didn’t seem to be a reasonable explanation or epicenter for the tremors. Suddenly, from the hole Dirge had fallen through earlier, a light shone, a bright blue like the shallows of the ocean dotted with white specks and curved lines. As soon as it appeared, the light disappeared without a trace and with it, the tremors. I landed back on the ground, walking up to Aeternalis to make sure she was alright.

Before I could get a word out, a huge explosion blasted us back and I lost consciousness. When I awoke, both Aeternalis and Dirge were in strange cages made up of the same strange light I had seen through the hole. Aeternalis was out cold, her cage to my right, while Dirge just hung his head low to my left. The three of us were suspended in endless darkness, the only other thing in sight was a throne. On the throne however, was something I would never think to see in my entire life.

A very smug looking human.