Behemoth Chaos

Chapter 4 Forgotten Power

It was night. A starry night. The tremendous Mt. Ziz obscured not just the sun at day, but the moon at night as well from the wasteland of Ödland. You could see, if anything at all, the stars first-class. There were no clouds in the sky as well, it rained at rare intervals and so the dust stayed where it was on the ground.

This night Gladiox and Syronyx climbed up the mountain higher and higher. They had already covered scores of kilometers throughout the day and the path went uphill the entire time. In between a feral rabbit had crossed their path as well. A succeeded hunt did strengthen the two ponytaurs a little bit. They had forcibly cloven the animal into two big pieces and swallowed with one bite so they wouldn’t loose any time.

Syronyx wondered why this rabbit did appear in a country full of predators. Perhaps it had gotten into Ödland by accident by crossing the border at some point, but how?

Gladiox on the other hoof kept something different in mind. He thought of what was on the other side of the mountain, a notion which gave him much more power than the meager rabbit meat. But also he thought of the challenge waiting for them after he and Syronyx would have reached the peak. To fool the leviathans, creatures of order, wouldn’t be too easy.

“Great. Did this appear by any chance in your so called vision, too?” asked Syronyx exhausted and peeved.

For hours the two ponytaurs had climbed up the cliffy mountain, over and over they had slid down off slack boulders and the same distance had to be taken again and over and over they had scraped their knees, chins, bellies and other body parts to get a few meters forward. But now an absolute vertical aloft going rock wall obstructed the passage. It was all but impossible to climb that one with bare hooves, the barrier was as smooth as glass. One thing even more disconcerting was that the wall continued to the left and right with the same inclination.

“No wonder that no damn ponytaur has ever succeeded with such an idea!” groaned Syronyx extremely angry. “Why should the damn leviathans defend a damn weak spot in their damn defense when no damn pony can even reach this damn gap!!!?”

With this action the ponytaur shouted out his frustration but it definitely wasn’t a solution for the problem. Gladiox touched the rock wall with his hoof and analyzed it. It afforded no hold and it was cold like ice. Perhaps it had been formed artificially with magic to prevent plans just like this.

He thought out loud, “Maybe we can… maybe we can hit some nicks into the wall to scr-“

He didn´t get further for a shrieking noise tore the silence of the night. Syronyx and Gladiox span around and looked down the mountain they had just climbed up. They froze when they spotted a young ponytaur further down who had just started this shriek.

“Tell me, this was not a scout,” mumbled Syronyx.

“Sure it was one.” stuttered Gladiox. “Shit...”

A few seconds later the consequences of the scout´s call became noticeable. First the tromping sound of tonnes of flesh was dashing over the rocks, then the first members of the scout pack came in sight. More and more appeared and they headed for the higher place where Gladiox and Syronyx stood. They had already transformed into their behemoth forms because the hardened claws gave them a better road grip than the usual hooves.

The sight of these monsters broke the rigor of Gladiox and Syronyx. They turned around and ran along the rock face. It didn´t matter where just away from the attackers who climbed the mountain in frantic speed. But Syronyx and Gladiox understood straight away they couldn´t escape their chasers. Even though the pack had to climb uphill and was slowed down, in their transformed variations the ponytaurs were always faster.

“They´re gonna get us, Doxi!!!” screamed Syronyx while galloping in full speed. “They´re gonna gut us!”

Gladiox took a fast look behind and spotted ten behemoths who were close on their hooves. The sure doom breathed down his neck so he ran alongside his companion in the only direction which seemed halfway worthwhile. He smelled already the flows of magic on the other side of the mountain and followed the flavor.

But not much later the obstacle came finally in sight which seemed to lead the escape into a blind alley. A river, torrential and thunderous, outpoured in front of the ponytaurs down the mountain. It was the border. Actually this was the thing they wanted to avoid at all costs, but where else were they supposed to go?

Underwater something moved. It opened its eyes when it heard the rumbling of the attacking behemoth pack. Much time passed since something moved here the last time beside the constant and ordered water stream. And now this disturbance was like an alarm which woke up the guardians of the river and ended their deep sleep. A huge water fountain shot into the sky when the first leviathan broke through the water surface. A snakelike, blue scaled body glinted in the light of the moon.

The one was followed by many, more and more guardians appeared in the waters. They never looked the same for everyone of them differed in anatomy. But at least the leviathans in this area were all armed with countless octopuslike tentacles moving anxiously through the water. They positioned themselves in a defense line to intercept the inrush of the behemoths.

“Now we´re fucked up twice!” shouted Syronyx angrily while he and Gladiox headed directly toward the river. “Why do I always get mixed up in your damn ideas?!”

“GET DOWN, NOW!!!” shouted Gladiox, grabbed Syronyx´s neck and together they ducked down on the ground fast.

In the next moment one of the leviathans unleashed a glowing ion blast which was actually intended for the two ponytaurs. But the energy bullet missed the targets and hit a behemoth of the hostile pack instead. The creature didn´t see that sudden assault coming. It lost its footing and thereupon it fell down the mountain howling loudly. There was a gaping hole in his chest, it glinted blue.

The pack stopped at once and realized it had just been challenged. The hunt for the defenseless prey was interrupted because there were enemies in front of them who were willing to fight. The hunt became a battle. The behemoths roared raging, the rocks around them began to tremble. Then the furry bulls rushed forward and took aim at the leviathans´ defense line.

“If we survive this, I am going to murder you!!!” Syronyx shouted at Gladiox over the loud riot around them.

The behemoth pack had quickly forgotten about the two snips and one monstrosity after another tramped over them now. The talons of their feet bounced just centimeters next to the ponytaurs and the earth quaked from their footfalls. Only by accident the little bodies survived this melee without getting trampled down while the behemoths headed for the leviathans and clashed with their archfiends. An enormous battle began, a battle of monster against monster. Animal brutality dominated here. The leviathans used their teeth, thorns and tentacles to beat back and disable the enemies, while the behemoths on the other hand summoned up their entire body strength to tear hunks of meat out of the fishlike creatures and used their horns for ramming strikes.

Meanwhile Gladiox and Syronyx watched unbelievingly the spectacle from afar and couldn´t believe how lucky they had just been. It was the ideal moment to take flight and to leave the hostile pack behind them. But Gladiox had other plans. He looked into the thick of the fight and he obviously thought about how close he and Syronyx were to their goal.

“Tell me you´re not thinking about passing the river,” said Syronyx almost demanding.

Gladiox didn´t even look at him when he answered, “This is perfect, Sy. While they are fighting we can slip past them.”

Syronyx jumped up and slapped the back of the head.

“Are you totally nuts now!!!?” he shouted right into his ear.

Gladiox shook of the pain and talked back, “We will never get a chance like this again! We are so close to the border right now, don´t you hear the calls from the other side? It´s like a greeting melody.”

“Your hunger is running riot with your mind!” Syronyx blustered. “We almost got trampled down and you want to have a drama like this again?!”

Gradually Gladiox had enough.

With an angry hiss he told Syronyx to shut his trap. “You´ve got a counterproposal, windbag?! Just face it there is nothing left for us on this side! Right here we are going to perish sooner or later. I, for one, am going to perish with some future in sight!”

And so Gladiox turned away and started galloping. Although every single fiber of his body advised him against it, Syronyx pulled himself together and ran after his companion. After all hesitation was the biggest of all imaginable mistakes. And so the daredevil ponytaurs ran to the rampaging battle.

Gladiox focused on a certain point and slithered at full speed between the legs of the first behemoth. He didn´t dare to decelerate because he feared it could incite him to wimp out. He smelled the magical flows on the other side, he heard them, virtually saw them. All of his thoughts were focused on them.

With a great leap the ponytaur landed in shallow water. Not much farther and it would go steep into the depth. He had to get through, without being overtaken by a leviathan from below or carried away by the current. So he took the first opportunity deciding fast and jumped with all of his strength on top of the snakelike body of a leviathan who was in the middle of a fight right now. An absolute suicide squad for the slippery scale body coiled up in all directions. Still it was advantageous that the monster was too distracted to notice the little tot who used its body as a bridge. Gladiox kept on the move to keep his balance and galloped further. His performance was even encouraging enough for Syronyx to imitate it. He jumped on the body of a leviathan as well and followed his fellow in full hurry.

Over and over the ponytaurs had to jump from one leviathan to another to get further across the river. Over and over the slippery ground submerged in the blustering floods only to emerge again after a second. The atmosphere was dominated by an infernal row when beasts roared at each other, thuds hit bones and sharp talons cut through flesh. One time a past floating leviathans´ carcass which missed one half of its head served the ponytaurs as a bridge. Gladiox and Syronyx had already crossed the bigger part of the river when the tide turned.

An underwater couching leviathan had just spotted Syronyx, then a tentacle darted out of the floods and entangled the ponytaur in the blink of an eye. Syronyx was pinched and there was no possibility to escape. In panic and anger he called for help, but Gladiox couldn´t hear him over the noise. He just ran along without noticing anything.

Finally Gladiox charged one last time and jumped from the scaly ground to the safe shore. He did it. The first time after millennia a ponytaur entered Equestria. And it had consequences nopony had expected.

Immediately after Gladiox had set one hoof on the dry shore, he was totally overcome with the local atmosphere. He felt the magic flowing through every corner, every layer of this country. The amount seemed unlimited. It pulsated with such intensity it actually brought Gladiox into ecstasy. This feeling was indescribably good, the best emotion in all of his time. And he embraced it.

He let the magic flow into himself, like an abyss which wouldn´t give anything back it had once swallowed. He soaked it up to the fullest. And there it awakened inside him.

First just a strange symbol appeared on his so far blank flank, then the transformation began.

Gladiox was hardly noticing that while on the other side of the river he had been pinched as well. A leviathan had spotted his success of crossing the river and afterwards stretched its tentacles for him. They wrapped his limbs, his belly and his throat. But right now it didn´t matter to Gladiox at all for inside him his alternative form finally awoke and it brimmed over with power.

His coat became thinner on the breast and belly area until it almost entirely vanished. Instead the hair grew exuberantly on the head, back, tail and forelegs and hind legs. The still somehow delicate body of the ponytaur began to grow at high speed, mighty muscles started to take form. Clicking noises were produced when a new skeleton was formed for the new body. A body which grew more than twenty times bigger in seconds. While the head grew the split horn on Gladiox´s front faded away. Instead two massive bulllike horns burst out of the parietal bone of his head and angled in shape of a horseshoe to the front. His legs which were typical for a horse changed radically and the hooves made room for bulky fingers, each one with a crimson, razor sharp, meat hook like claw on its tip. The tail became longer and weightier, the teeth inside the mouth spiky, the jaws more and more powerful and the eyes glowed yellow like brimstone. At last the coat ignited from the head to the tip of the tail and assumed the shape of pitch black flames.

Gladiox realized the transformation he had managed and roared thunderously with triumph. Finally he had done it. He had achieved his behemoth form. Now he was no longer at the bottom of the food chain. The huge amounts of magic he had absorbed in such a short period made this possible.

This new creature couldn´t be held back by some slimy leviathan tentacles. So Gladiox grabbed them and pulled them away from his body like annoying parasites. It was the first time in his existence he could actually use something like claws at all. Afterwards he turned around back to the river to demonstrate that he had done it. Still this wasn´t the end of all evils.

Over millennia no ponytaur or behemoth had ingested so much magic in such a short time. It triggered other awakenings of powers which had been forgotten since the time of the demarcation. Powers of the primal chaos no behemoth was able to access for ages. Now Gladiox was the first lucky one who was and these powers chose him. For he was the first one for so long who made contact to the land of order.

Without a visible effort Gladiox lifted off into the air. The chaos free of definitions and explanations let him levitate without any scientific reason which could explain that. The ascending behemoth was followed by lumps of rocks which bordered the dry river bank. They shortly hovered up and then dissolved. Only subatomic particles remained which were ingested by the hungry monster. It began to gorge. To gorge matter.

More and more soil loosened from the ground and dissolved afterwards. One bold leviathan hurled an attack with tentacles against Gladiox and walked right into a trap. Immediately after its arms had reached the striking distance of the behemoth they also dissolved and faded away into him. The gorge field surrounded the creature like an aura.

At least by now, while the wounded offender retired groaning back into the floods the other leviathans and behemoths interrupted their fight and watched disbelievingly the spectacle from the other side of the river. Even the grip around Syronyx´s body became loose and he could escape. In full hurry he reached the realm of Equestria as well and was safe.

Meanwhile the leviathans unleashed a continuous fire of ion projectiles lashing down on Gladiox. But they all vanished before they could even scratch him. His chaos influence, a separate, not visible radiating aura annulled rules of nature and cosmos and became stronger the more food the behemoth had gorged. In this moment this influence was powerful enough to make the ion assaults deflagrate. Gladiox however amused himself more than ever before during his existence. Nopony was able to touch him, nopony could cause him trouble. The flows of magic still ran into his body and fed him more and more. Now he was able to fight back.

With a thunderous roar and a momentary flashing up of his eyes the behemoth unleashed an area wide compression wave pushing the leviathans under water and blowing the pack away from the riverbank. In that second Gladiox was the most powerful being of the primal chaos on the planet. And thereby the primal chaos gained might.

Before anyone was able to recover from the last blast wave, the most powerful symbol of the primal chaos returned to life. Enormous wings arose out of Gladiox´s shoulder blades. The pure wings of primal chaos weren´t bound to the laws of space, mass and matter in any way and they continued growing. In seconds they extended over the sky for kilometers and drenched the entire Mt. Ziz in their shimmer. A shimmer of countless colors as due to of the immense chaos influence right now the physical laws regulating the natural visible spectrum of colors were disabled. As a result the sky was flooded with all imaginable colors for kilometers.

These wings energized the chaos influence of their wearer like an accelerant and signalized one thing: Their wearer was absolutely free and not bound to any rule of the universe. Physics, chemistry, biology, the pillars of the universal laws were simply removed. These wings themselves chose their wearer prudently and their appearance meant the primal chaos came back to power. And Gladiox was their wearer.

But right now the behemoth was in such an exaltation it was not enough for him anymore. He wanted more and he knew where to get it.

Despite the fact that the wings on his back had a length of numerous kilometers it was no problem at all for Gladiox to turn around with them because they were totally independent from physics. He turned to Equestria the country which was strictly forbidden for somepony like him. A country full of life force, magic and matter in general. Although Syronyx had been calling up to him he should wait Gladiox took wing and left the border behind.

Though he came along with only a few meters per second he was already able to sense how the veil of magic became thicker the more he got upcountry. Every behemoth had dreamt to plunder this land and now it was open to him alone. Until then this was the best feeling for the young behemoth. He was so confident of victory and so boastful... until suddenly the sun rose.

It was the first time Gladiox saw it. The sun crossed the horizon and let its golden light shine on his furry body.

All of a sudden the shimmering wings of primal chaos disappeared and were gone. Gladiox´s chaos influence which technically held him alive right now decreased at high speed. Nothing carried him in the air anymore. With a confused scream he fell from the sky. The highly aggressive sunlight seemed to overload all of his senses at once.

But that was not the worst thing. He burned. The sun radiated strong magic, charged with pure order. That was poison for all beings of the primal chaos. In the twinkling of an eye the rays burned like molten rocks through the skin of the behemoth. His coat of black flames vanished and his real coat beneath it caught fire. Not even a minute and Gladiox´s giant body was completely covered in flames. They penetrated his inside through the molten wounds, devastated his bones and organs and they caused the most dreadful pain imaginable.

Gladiox´s ecstasy and sense of superiority had disappeared and now they were replaced by mortal fear.

There had always been stories of the lethal sun in Ödland. Stories like the sun lets behemoths vanish and it watches beyond Mt. Ziz. Now Gladiox had to experience the reality of these stories the hard way. The pain was so intense, he couldn´t move. He fell like a stone into the depth.

From the ground Syronyx could see what happened. He was stunned as he had to watch how the so strong appearing behemoth body of his associate was about to be burned to ashes by nothing more than the simple sunlight. While Syronyx galloped down the stony mountain he could recognize over and over again entire body parts loosening from Gladiox´s body during he was still in free fall. Until the blazing monster hit the ground at the foot of the mountain.

Although there was at most half of his body left the impact of the behemoth was huge. Huge enough so the ground gave in and Gladiox fell through it into an underground cave. A cave deep enough so the sunlight couldn´t reach him anymore.

Half dead Gladiox lay on the wet bottom of the grotto while the fire died out. Most of his body was nothing more than skeleton fragments. The only reason why he didn´t have to pass away right now, was because of he, as a being of the primal chaos, was not bound to the same order of life and death like others. Still it didn´t change anything to the fact that his entity had almost been ended. He panted with pain and every try to move ended with a new moan.

The bats in this cave took flight in panic and vanished through the entrance Gladiox had made into the ceiling. Although it was already dawn they accepted the light intensity to get away from the alien creature. A creature technically not even from this universe and foreign to all order. Though Gladiox was already finished. There was only one option left for him. To turn back to his ponytaur form.

His body began to diminish, the claws became hooves again, the head got his original form back, the coat spread equably again and the rest of the body deformed as long as Gladiox had his old form back.

There was one thing he could benefit from. The damage a behemoth body had gotten left only minimal consequences for the body of the ponytaur, so it served like an armor, an apparently combustible armor. Accordingly Gladiox was still pretty mauled afterwards, but at least the exposed bones were covered by meat and skin again.

Nevertheless he had no power reserves left. The sun had disintegrated the force of the primal chaos he recently had been full of and hadn´t left anything of it. This was not Ödland anymore, this was Equestria and it was governed by different rules in general. Gladiox realized, he had completely ignored that after the crossing of the border. He had only thought of his need for appeasing his hunger disregarding everything else.

It took hours until Syronyx had reached the foot of the mountain and had discovered the big hole in the ground. Thereupon he had climbed down to Gladiox and helped him to return to the surface.

After they had left the wet cave, the sun was already pretty high. Even though in the ponytaurs current form the sunlight was inconvenient but not as deadly as when Gladiox had been in his behemoth form. After all it was not only the sun. The entire country was soaked with order. It was a completely different habitat than Ödland. Although the chaos influence of the ponytaurs suffered from that it was tolerable as long as there was something to gorge.

While Gladiox was still barely able to stand on his own hooves the view compensated it for him and Syronyx. Before the ponytaurs was Equestria. They had found their way back from the exile. A paradise full of food. Gladiox and Syronyx could gorge here and become even more powerful than their pack leader Gyrazzan. The nutriment seemed unlimited.

They had no premonition how pathetically weak their will was supposed to turn out...