Equus and Why it's Weird

Every creature on Equus looked out of their windows, and into the sky; something new was there - something that hadn’t been seen before. At some point in the bleak and wintry night of yesterday, a new body had appeared in the sky. It resembled – to many – an orange, albeit, an orange that had been spiked by thousands of great broad iron nails leaving its shape somewhat malformed. This was something no one could quite recognise, and when a princess had tried to raise it – so that they might know what it was – it had not moved. It had stubbornly stayed there, unwaveringly perched just within the orbital field.

Of course, the reason they could not move it was because it was not actually within the bubble of psychic energy that held their atmosphere together. While ponies and zebras panicked, frantically reading through the notes of ancient prophets and scribes, looking for anything within their kingdoms that might have given even the slightest hint as to what it was, the eldest of the dragons, Alfreynd, was merely looking on in contemplative fear. Though he was but a child, barely beyond a neonate, when something similar had graced the orbit of Equus, he remembered it so well.

That was the harbinger of the hunt—the herald of those who slay with extreme prejudice, and seemingly without preference, for sport. The sound of steel harpoons embedding his parents had never left Alfreynd’s ears, and now that held an even greater power over all other sounds. But, after his initial howl of terror; after his first blurred and fire lined visions of the past had subsided; he realised that what he saw before him was not that same herald, nor even of a similar kind to it, this was something new.

So this greatest of dragons, whose howl had been the one that woke all who were asleep across the planet, to the old, old, homelands flew. When Alfreynd flew great folds of scale and scars seemed to blot out the sun for those he passed over, if just for a moment, but he paid them no mind. Upon reaching his goal, he landed at the centre of a broad, hand-dug caldera, just north of that which is called the Dragon’s Lair, but still beyond the standard map, and awaited the coming of whatever new, strange, people this new celestial sphere heralded. He did this not to protect Equestria, nor out of any foolish notion that he might defeat the creatures that arrived if they were enemies, only so that his own fresh curiosity might be sated when they did come. And so that the first thing these beings would see, if they were the sons of those who had come before, would be an object of destruction that they had forged, that they had made from clay, that they, their forefathers at least, had forever scarred.

Now starts the first Report of Brother Margot.

Narrative Format,

Observed through nano camera,

All words, unless specified, are contemporary to events described.

Brother Margot slipped from the restructuring machine, wobbly on his new, extraneous, legs, and attempted to use the adapted implant to do something simple. This simple thing was levitating the tablet that contains his missionary’s briefing over. He had used psychic cybernetics before, but clerical augments were known to be finicky, so he wanted to try doing something basic with it first. It would be annoying if it failed while attempting to replace a fission rod, for example.

The tablet wobbled, before becoming enclosed in a field of turquoise lights, that seemed to look like the bands of a galaxy, when seen through a long exposure camera. It then promptly, and at great speed, fell directly before his eyes. Slightly too close to read properly, he lifted his hand – wait, it wasn’t a hand anymore – his hoof to push it just a little further away until the writing was legible. He then calculated the distance, put the tablet back on the table, and tried again. With the same speed and promptness, it now appeared precisely where it would perfectly balance privacy and legibility. He then searched through the tablet till he found his briefing and read it. The missive went as follows:

“Dear Margot, Tru’liar-3rd Class,

“You have, due to some skills you supposedly possess, been chosen as our first missionary to be sent to... SOL3, ah, good old earth. You’ll be required, upon arrival, to survey the area, check your stamps, and then head to Griffinstone. The small capital of a superficially poor nation, on the outskirts of civilisation. It is hoped that this will prevent the locals from hunting and killing you, then eating your – actually no, that part of the standard shouldn’t be in this briefing. This is to prevent news of your arrival from spreading too quickly to more developed nations where you may be arrested and asked to explain what the hell your orbital station is. You have been assigned a modified Merquinp Construct. It is called Maril, and only looks like a dragon, it’s not covered in scales, but it might breathe fire. Please treat it with the utmost respect.

“Your task is to first gauge how much of the gospel can be introduced to your first flock; then to found a feudal holding at Griffonstone. From there you must develop the city into the trade hub it was meant to be, sort out any water problems, and renovate the major aerodromes in the surrounding area. If there are none to renovate, build them.

“From that point, it is mostly up to you. The main goal is to integrate the planet into the theocracy, but any subgoals you pick up along the way are to be explored to better integrate yourself into the populace. The linguistic deviation from Galactic Standard should be extremely minor where you land. Still, when entering more developed states, the linguistic changes can become a bit racially toned, so your discretion is advised when absorbing new phrases, lest it is derogatory toward some extraneous group.

“That concludes this briefing. Good luck, and please – try not to fall off a cliff.”

Margot read through it one more time, before pocketing the briefing and searching for the button that activates that Merquinp robot, that would make finding the way off this oversized citrus far easier. After much wasted time searching through resin and glass buttons, sensor pads, input ports, devils heads, and many other strange things that probably weren’t meant to be touched he found a book that said “Don’t Panic!” very loudly on the cover and a large box which said “Merquinp Intragalactique Shipping” on the side of it. He prised the side off the box and poked the construct for a while before realising that the book with it was not, as it seemed, a handy and vital guide should he get lost in the vastness of space, but an owner’s manual. The slightly off white and barely readable disclaimer on the first page said as much.

After flipping through the pages for a moment, Margot found which button he was meant to press to turn the poor robot on, and carefully poked it in the eye. Except he didn’t have fingers, so he picked up a pencil with his ~~implant~~ horn and used that instead. While Maril was booting up, Margot checked his new body in his craft’s overly polished walls. The wobbly image conveyed a few things: he’s white, chalk white, with partially dyed brown hair. The dyed bit was turquoise. And he had a mark on his rump, a tattoo. It showed a print copy of the Blandic Rites beside a quill, probably meant he was a scribe or something. He was also a horse – that certainly explained the extra legs anywho. Deciding that this must be, in some way, typical, so he turned his attention to the now fully awake Maril. Maril chose to take this new attention well.

“What’re you looking at yeh’ petty-dwarf-midget-horse?”

Margot coughed, and responded, in a failed mimicry of the machine, “You, yeh big metal lizard, where’re yer wings? Are they packaged separately?”

Pausing, Maril checked its back, there was, indeed, a distinct lack of wings.

“Where’ve you put them?” It spat angrily, “I was told that meh knew specification had ’em with it. I was sure of that. It’s the only reason I bloody agreed. Where have you put them, horse.”

“Nowhere.” Responded Margot calmly, “They must have forgotten to give you them at the refit. What a shame. And here I was expecting a flying partner.”

Downtrodden, Maril sighed and stepped out of the delivery crate, packing filler falling all over the floor as it did so. This was not the first time the outfitters had “forgotten” to send it off fully refitted.

Margot noted the robot’s saddened expression, paused for a second to contemplate how he knew what a lizard’s sad face looked like, and then asked Maril to help him find the landing capsule.

Since nothing had happened after the appearance of a giant punctured citrus fruit, much of ponykind had accepted it as part of life. Only a-few isolated astrologers were watching it, but they would take months to send observations back to any major universities, and so do not matter in the slightest. Not a single filly nor foal had gained a cutie mark from this ordeal. That alone meant that it was of no importance, those arrogant micro horses thought.

Patiently awaiting any change, Alfreynd knew better, far better, as he waited in the fake caldera that was the traditional landing site for the hunters in the lost ages. He watched, for a week or month or more that floating not-sphere, knowing that something would come from it soon. Of course, something did. That something was a small if ornate, landing pod. He tried to follow its trajectory with his finger but found no success. Instead, he only saw it blur as it came hurtling towards him, unnoticed by the ponies only because it came from the east and not the west. It nearly crashed into Alfreynd himself, luckily coming to a burning halt just before smashing his jaw in two. It had been caught by a just reawoken landing mitt, the old rusted and ill-maintained arm just barely able to bring it to a halt in time.

“I told yeh I should be the one drivin’, but nooo mister Monk just has to show his prowess as a landing pilot, and look what nearly happened. We nearly crashed into this poor gent’s face…” Though starting brashly, Maril’s voice trailed off at the end as it realised that the gentleman was, in fact, a creature whose size was so absolute, it left the crater blackened by its shadow. Maril also questioned how exactly it new what this great, grand, reverence-worthy beast’s sex was, and, hoping Alfreynd couldn’t hear its thoughts, poked Brother Margot into turning, whose eyes were utterly unfocused until his nose nearly touched the dragon’s.

The scream sent birds flying.

Maril and Alfreynd thought it was hilarious.

Margot did not. He thought it a completely reasonable reaction to almost touching muzzles with what was most obviously the uncrowned king of beasts. The dragon’s bellow of a laugh certainly didn’t help.

“You, little pony, not-dragon, are clearly not hunters. Or, if you are, not anywhere near as brave as your predecessors. So why, I ask of you, have you bothered to come here? This is, undoubtedly, the worst place to vacation I have ever been; The locals are incredibly and constantly rude; There is a complete lack of even the most basic conveniences; worst of all, there is barely even a pub anymore.”

Maril drooped its eyes and muttered in unseemly tongues. Margot, far more politely, responded:

“We,” glaringly he worried, “have come to stretch those words of yours into lies, by rebuilding the estate that rests in that barren bad-land into a beautiful and flowing temple of gold, milk, honey, and – quite averse to old scripture – beer.”

Maril blinked, and Alfreynd unfolded novels worth of wrinkles in pleasure at the thought, the idea, that the people from beyond may have come, not to destroy, but to rebuild. To resurrect an empire old enough, that he had seen its rise and fall, and fought through the wars therein.

Maril broke this floating mood. “Where is ‘ere? Are we close to Griffonstone?”

Alfreynd thought, then said, “Yes, young faux-lizard, it is just beyond that baby hill, and slightly further after those mountains.” Raising a finger, its flesh hanging low, sharpened claw pointing out the pass that should be followed.

“Thank-ye for saying the first properly worthwhile thing I ‘ave heard all day. Now, Margot, stop being in awe of this,” it paused to think of the right descriptor, “large old geezer, and head back to what we’re actually meant to do.”

With that, the old dragon, heaving, nodded his head, flapped his wings three times, and flew off. The two missionaries stood, awed, as the twisting beast of green and gold took flight. Waiting for him to turn entirely out of view, and then, finally, actually setting out on their journey to Griffonstone; Margot carrying in a purple leather bag a thick tome version of the gospel, and Maril everything else.

They wander, slowly, up and over the momentous ridge of the landing crater, down its huge exterior bank, and into the pine wood at its base. Redwoods of incalculable age seemed to climb forever, up, and up, and still further up. Tipped by the nests of great corvids, who, aching under the weight of greying feathers, rise into the sky, searching for wars in lands far afield, or dead and decaying mammoths, or others that should be extinct – their kin and meals.

A squirrel, harried and hurried by a starved fox, skitters beneath their feet, climbing into the hollows of a tree – that sits too high for the fox hunting it to jump. A rabbit hides beneath a log in a small corner of a great warren that stretches these woods’ entire breadth. A water bear – far from water – clambers through the moss, avoiding paramecia too small for a ponies eye. Maril, in a form that all except dragons recognise as draconic, breeds terror into the small birds it wishes to watch, and, by no fault of its own, scares them into fluttering between broken and twisting leftovers of a Janilean age.

Margot sees then, hidden amongst rotting wires and cement, a young gryphon. In her hands, she holds a pen and is writing and then scratching out and writing, then scratching out some words about something. Into the uncaring ruins and forest, she shouts,

“I cannot write, I cannot think, nothing that I do is of any merit and all that I try is worthless even as ash.” Cooing and then folding into herself with slight tears of sadness.

“I should have listened to my father, to my mother, to the rest of town, to my teacher. I am not a writer. I am a fraud with a p-pen.”

Urged on by the feigned mockery of Maril, Margot steps lightly into the clearing, taking care to make his foot hooffalls loud enough for her to hear but quiet enough for her to miss. He takes care to be kind, and clears his throat before speaking,

“Miss,” he fumbled, “may I ask.. What you are writing? With the world around you being so loud, it must be as well.”

“It’s nothing. Nothing of any worth, nothing I would show to someone.”

“Don’t say that.” He cocked his head, “You must have something, or else you would not have broken from everyone else to run off and write it.” He smiled, “So come on, tell me what it's about.”

She fumbled with the loose pages she held, and mumbled, “It’s about-”

“Look at me. Good, now speak up.”

“It’s about,” she said, still a little meek, “A grand gryphon wizard, who, without magic of their own, uses carvings and wires to produce mechanical marvels. They harness the power of lightning to aid themselves in the creation of a great machine, called Grylom, that aids in the construction of a wonderful advanced civilisation, whose buildings seem to grow out of the stone. But he becomes overwhelmed by the twists of his creation, and destroys it, leaving a great crater where the city’s heart once stood.”

“Breathe, go on,”

“Now that his machine is destroyed, the city around begins to decay. Eventually, this forest grew on its buildings, leaving now only its ruins.”

Surprising the poor girl, Maril applauded

“Brilliant, wonderful, inspired – The Maril Herald, five stars.”

“Really?” she timidly asked “But it’s so... weird. There’s no love, no grand castles, no ponies, no dragons – only creation and destruction. Who would want to read that?”

“Where we come from,” continued Margot, “A great many. Or, at least, probably anywho, me.”

“Thank you, you flatter me,” she seemed to cheer up at the thought, “But i’ve been struggling, struggling so much, to find the right words. I think it’s too new to my home, too different, too wonky.”

“So did Shelley, when she wrote Frankenstein, in all likelihood. But remember, tropes, currents – that normality that your originality overthrows – all started with someone like you. Take the oldest story I have ever read, Gilgamesh and think of how weird that must have seemed. Here, I’ll read the author's story for you.”

He grabbed a book from his bag and pretended to search, before landing on a page he already knew well.

“ Ina scribe-hall, no writing could be heard, not a sound besides either. Then a voice said:

“Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, Gilgaameeeesh’ it was a Sumerian named Parabesh. ‘How do I write about Gilgamesh? Who indeed has ever thought to make for myself, or for the crown, a new myth? From whence can I pull my ideas, and, further hence, wherever am I to put them? For I am too dense, I should write about facts, about truths, about what makes sense.’

“And so Parabesh sat down and wrote several thousand upon thousands of words about a man who swam across oceans, walked at the bottom of seas, fought gods that were like snakes, spoke with a man so old that the god of time could not count his years. Built walls higher than some roads were long, ruled an empire of gold and glass, and ended this mythic hunt without achieving his goal. Instead, he was left humbled, having seen and spoken to things far older and far greater than Ur and Sumer should e’er be. And yet we remember the names of cities and towns that Parabesh lived, wrote and saw than we do the ones led by Gilgamesh, By Koresh, By David. It was hard for Parabesh to be so original, and so he was glad that He was now like the God that Anansi slew, the only one who would ever have to create a trope ever, ever, ever from his poetry to his tales. He was the first and last wholly original writer we know of, and even that may not be true.”

He looked at the purple feathered gryphon and said

“So, if even the author of the first and greatest myth ever written, something so tropey because it made those tropes, struggled to think of where to start, it is unsurprising that you, sitting down to also write an original story, might struggle to know where to start. I see greatness in you like that lord of Ur saw in Parabesh, so you too must be able to write something equally grand. So, Miss Gryphon, write away.”

She raised a claw, began to say something, then just picked up her pencil and started writing. She kept writing till night fell, slept, ate something she could catch and then wrote again. She didn’t ask Margot’s name before she began, nor Maril’s, she just wrote.

Satisfied that they had done all they needed to, Maril and Margot picked up their bags and carried on down the trail to Griffonstone. It shouldn’t be far now, they had just met a runaway gryphon after all.

As they clambered bedraggled – tired, and their bodies nipped with the spittle of a particularly adventurous goat – Maril figured that it was probably going to have to carry the nigh-collapsing scribe the rest of the journey town-wards. It looked at its hands, flexing the clawed fingers to check that nothing had gotten between their thankfully responsive joints—Buecabon flexed just in the way that it was meant to. Maril, satisfied, bent down and grabbed the frankly shocked – but not appalled – Margot and placed him gently on his shoulder. Once Margot had ceased flailing and screaming (finally falling asleep only twenty minutes later) Maril continued the slow, penitent, climb down to where Griffonstone, and any hope of a clean street-corner, lay.

Upon arriving, Maril was surprised that it was not in any way physically or verbally harassed. It appeared that the locals, grumpy and penniless as they were, did not wish to waste precious work hours on a dragon that, through some circuitry quirk, seemed ready to devour the first thing that nudged it. The fact it hadn't eaten Margot seemed only to add credence to this idea, as anypony important enough to a dragon to be left untouched even as it starved was not worth waking with the sounds of violence.

Maril meandered malcontented-ly towards a once-grand pub-hotel. The wicker framing of its oaken door slightly decayed; the chipped chalk construction of its walls; the damaged iron frame of its many jettied upper floors belayed the idea of a Tudor period built establishment down into one's mind. Upon entrance every inch of the interior construction betrayed once more that arcane style, the many buttressed ceiling with openly visible beams, the dual inglenook fireplaces at either end of the room, and the fine dark and deep oak of the horseshoe bar. But everything was dusty, under-utilised, damaged by smoke and time. The ragged middle-aged publican was half-asleep leaning on the bar, perking slightly when the rapping sound of Maril’s knuckles on the table reached his owl-like ears.

Shakily, as if slightly out of practice, the publican[1] sputtered:

“ ‘Sbeen awhile since anyone’s come by this way,” his eyes flitted from a draconic face to the horse on its shoulder, “ ‘specially not a pair quite like you. Draft or bottle?”

“Draft, bitter and rough, a pint if yeh please.” trilled Maril, grabbing a few bits from its pocket.

The publican harrumphed an affirmation, then blew the dust off a pint glass, placing it against a brass draft pump he said,

“Will’e be having anything?” He gestured to Margot.

“Shandy[2], I think, ‘ang on,”

It unceremoniously dropped Margot into a padded chair by the bar. Margot barely opened his eyes, spat, and grumped:

“Yes, a ‘shandy’ if you’d be so kind.”

“I think that's agreement.” stated the publican.

“Aye.” Replied Maril.

“So,” started the publican, “I don’t mean to be rude, but why’re you ‘ere?”

“To ‘ave a drink and find a bed.”

“Okay, not sharin’, got it.” The publican thought for a second, realised what Maril had said, then spat:

“Rooms are ten bits by the by.”

Maril tossed ten and five bits on the table, picked up Margot, their two drinks, and then – with his teeth – the keys.

“Thanks, g’night.”

“To ye too.” The publican stepped round the bar and locked the door. Then went upstairs himself.

[1] The owner, and usually chief keep, of a public house.
[2] British slang referring to beer diluted with lemonade. Usually drunk by weak-livered young people.