The Shadows of Yadith

"Oily waves lapped in laughter,

On the black river Styx,

And on the horizon we saw the gleam,

Of the Festival, of Orchids."

- Dreaming Song - The Festival of Orchids

The red mist cleared before me and I saw my path.

It rose up into the highest peaks of this terrible black mountain; a mountain of which no earthly creature was designed to perceive… let alone traverse.

Yet walk I did, upon a silver path which warped and twisted in hexagonal steps; made not of metal, but a queer stone which no equine will ever see upon our primitive planet with its feeble notions of normality.

I walked this foul path; a path which was ever winding, but which had but one destination unto which no other route could be taken.

The destination in the form of that white-robed thing.

It stood amidst the crimson mist whilst an inferno of colours raged in the heavens above, beckoning me with elder portent, and with the promises of arcane mysteries to be unveiled. Its movements were hypnotising and I could not resist the alluring call; incapable of escape on my terrible journey into the unknown; drawn to that figure that mesmerized me, like the eye of a furiously maleficent storm above, turbulent and uncanny.

The white robed walker stood there upon high, surrounded in an aura of the crimson mist which boiled and frothed like the lifeblood of titans. Once more he beckoned forth, like a wizened master of the ancient mysteries of the primal spheres, calling silently from his throne of scarlet vapour.

Above, the mists swirled in a terrifying enigmatic mass, stretching further than the horizon, crossing into space in a never-ending vortex of cosmic power, whilst below it, only the faintest light of stars could be seen. To my terrible speculations, it may have stretched across dimensions, past galaxies and across all space and time. It was an eternal hurricane of the elder times, which had undulated and surged since the dawn of creation, and twisted and heaved in incandescent, indescribable colours when Thurim was nothing more than the primeval hopes of primitive tribes.

Up higher and higher I climbed, through the mist of crimson to that figure, that form, which clutched by soul and which all equines might bow to, although they would not know why. The figure which sat amongst the mists, contemptuous, sinister and strange, and knowing that which would have driven Al’zarith to the furthest depths of insanity, knowing that which not even the strange elder races might know without shuddering in horror.

I arrived at the summit and stood before this ancient monster of the dead stars. Around us the ever present mist rolled, its scarlet tendrils and hideous vortex’s reaching everywhere in nightmarish abandon. As I stood upon this high peak, I could perceive a great flat expanse of land which surrounded the spire in every direction. That which was not covered in the enigmatic and obscuring mists of red showed the ruins of a vast alien civilisation stretching as far as the horizon, A remnant of a dead past, now tattered, forgotten, and left in terrible decay.

The hideous leprous terror beckoned one final time with a hoof or paw or claw, I could not fully tell.  It had partly taken the aspect of equine, perhaps in some mocking jest towards a doomed race of which there was no hope of survival. It welcomed me, this strange monstrosity which sprawled across an eerie throne of disgusting white obsidian. It was a leering aberration of noxious repulsiveness which could not be described by any written means, but as a sneering face with foul decayed teeth. It received me in this shattered dimension, and when I asked from whence it came, out poured a noisome and scornful laugh which caused my flesh to crawl like it was infested with a thousand insects; writhing and oozing underneath my skin.

“I am it who dwells beyond the furthest reaches of time, he who walks the veil, she who is of a thousand forms and nightmarish apparitions. You feeble creature of blood and flesh, you cling to nothingness, incapable of comprehending your own irrelevance. You are nothing, equine; you are bacteria.”

This primal monstrosity squatted before me like some foul degenerate ape from the most terrible reaches of the Zebra Jungles. I stepped back as the pallid horror leaned in and opened its cavernous and porous jaws wide in maleficent glee.

“You think above you is a vortex? Fool! It is so much more than that, your feeble senses are incapable of perceiving it! So I shall show you.”

Then the true horrors engulfed me and my mind was turned to a static of maddened shock… and a never-ending screaming.

Hideous and profane horrors and abominations unveiled themselves… I- I- I… I could not look away from it; I could not close my eyes. Every way I turned I was confronted with the foulness of oblivion and the stygian dimensions of the outer spheres!

May the gods have mercy on me!

The foul leper half-breed cavorted before me and let out a screaming answer which blasted my mind with an endless horror that thankful few have witnessed. Above me a black void opened in the heavens and engulfed the ever twisting centre of the maelstrom…

That nameless chaos which I now knew was no vortex!

“Behold!” that profane demon had shrieked.

“The eye of a God!”

May Celestia save my soul…

THAT THREE LOBED BURNING EYE!

***

I woke half of Oakbridge with my primal scream, thrashing and twisting in psychotic terror which no stallion or mare should be forced to bear.

My gods that dream!

It had scorched my soul with nightmares which tested the bounds of my decaying sanity. I wept and flailed as strong farming ponies restrained me to my bed, yelling and grunting with strain; demanding that the poor doctor put me back to sleep again.

I felt the needle go into my neck and howled once more, desperate to escape the clutches of Morpheus and my infernal night terrors which further fragmented my already-shattered consciousness. But, at least sweet opium acted as medicine to the horrors of my night delusions and brought about a dreamless sleep.

When I finally awoke, sluggish and aching, I realised the extent of my situation.

I was covered in bandages and my whole body twitched and burned with the foul sensation of crisp flesh and blistering, flaking skin.

It was only through the administrations of a highly skilled and professional doctor, who had arrived on the last train from Arkmane, that I had survived. My skin and burnt flesh was being repaired with magic, but they informed me that there would be serious scarring despite their best attempts.

I had been burned, they said, with no flame which any natural source could conjure; I had been engulfed in the blisteringly furious heat of supremely powerful magical energies.

They probed me over how I had come to be in this situation, but as I was forced to recall that nightmare beneath that crumbling abyss, I could only unleash a phlegm-choked and hysterical giggle at those… things which had dwelled beneath… and that abominable deity which they had almost unleashed.

The giggling turned to moaning, and the moaning to screaming as I was forced to remember those terrible things once more. Those hideous, titanic eldritch, rubbery, amorphous fronds which had sprung from the ground like abhorrent, profane, perverse protoplasmic fauna… Oh god... that thing from the deep had unleashed itself to greet its eternal children of the sky…

Once more, they were forced to restrain me as I bucked and twisted, once more pushing me back into that dreamless world which was the only balm to my broken sanity.

As I resurged from my dreamless sleep and the terrible truths reality inflicted every time I awoke, I learned to what had become of me after that foul realm of abhorrent putrescence had burned with purifying flame.

I had stumbled onto the edges of town, terribly scorched and mutilated by fire. Delirious and deranged, I had screeched about demons and sacrilegious monstrosities from the gulfs of space. The folk of the town first thought me a monster from Timberdale and had rallied a force to remove me, but the young shop keeper saved my life. Once he had seen beneath the burns and tattered clothing, recognising the face that unearthly fires had ravaged, he calmed them down and brought me to the only doctors they had.

They had tried to save my burned and ruined form, but to little avail; none in the town had the medical experience to treat such injuries.

I would have died there if the train from Arkmane had not brought with it the elderly doctor and his wife. Out of their generosity and kindness, they had tended to me during my recovery, tolerating my terrible outbursts of screaming, which had driven all but the most curious watchers away; pale-faced and frightened.

I had mentioned in my delirium of how Timberdale was no more; something that appeared to have caused much speculation and inquiry into the matter. It was discovered that it was true however, after some timorous investigations by some of the more courageous townsfolk.

Half the town had sunk into the marsh and the other half was nothing more than a blackened, skeletal corpse upon the horizon. Not one creature seemed to have come out of the blazing inferno alive; none but I had returned from that town since then. There were vague mentions of burials and a mysterious disfiguration of the corpses which seemed to have either been formed by the flames, or proved substance to the rumours of the demonic nature of the inhabitants.

There was nothing of any real value left and no undamaged creature ever turned up from the blackened pit that was once Timberdale. The things that they buried were nothing more than charred skeletons which were only vaguely suggestive of the things which I knew Timberdale had truly hid.

When I learned these cautious rumours, I let loose an uncontrollable laugh. What simpletons they were to think that demon worship and degeneration had caused such things! I knew what had come from… above. What the limitless epochs of time and the infinitudes of space had moulded to shape from the clay of creation. The villagers with their simple superstitions could have never comprehended that these things had always been, and were subservient to no god they knew, only that thing which… which groaned and gibbered from the deep, in its subterranean vaults; which none but I now lived to tell of.

But I would not tell – I could not – my mental state was already under question, and any mention of these foul alien throngs would have only driven them to deliver me to the Trottingham asylum. No, I kept silent on the matter and only through my brief outbursts of hysteria did they ever perceive that there might have been something more; some other detail about what had occurred within the town.

Thankfully however, the villagers did not press questions upon me; neither did they attempt to take me into custody on suspicion of being the cause of Timberdale’s destruction. The fires had been too fierce to be sprung from a simple attempt of arson, and even if I had been responsible, they did not care. Those disfigured mutants had long since eroded any sense of compassion the townspeople had for them. Even for Equestrians, there were some groups too monstrous to abide. Even if they didn’t consciously think it, I believe each of them thought that I had done them a service in the decaying city’s elimination, and were unwilling to bring me to justice for the perceived crime.

It took me a week before I finally reclaimed some stability within my fragile consciousness, but even then the doors of knowledge which I had opened could no longer be closed. I still shivered oddly in the cold breeze that sometimes came through the window of my room, remembering the chill of the crypt beneath and the rotting cadavers which piled and rotted within.

As my body and mind began the slow process of mending, I kept my ears open for new information to keep my mind off the things I had seen. Even mundane and everyday life events such as a talk about a broken pitchfork became precious, and I craved the normality which had been denied me since my searches into the unknown and abominable.

The doctor and his wife had boarded with a local family whilst they had cared for me and I occasionally saw the rough farmer folk which I had seen only sparsely in my brief visit before I left for that… hell-spawned place. The owner of the house was a heavyset stallion of middling years called Aldercolt Apple; a northern offshoot of the large Apple family which seemed to find itself in every city there was to be. Although he had put up with much of my midnight howls without complaint, I could see that he had begun to grow impatient with me, and was glad I had finally begun to show signs of recovery.

Once the bandages had been removed from my face, I was able to speak clearly once again, but found that I could no longer do so without a stutter in my voice, and a continuous stream of nervous twitches and spasms. The Oakbridge ponies did not question me about the town, but to my distress, the doctor and his wife from Arkmane did. Thankfully they did so with care, knowing that my mind was frail; only asking of me the occasional question whilst asking about the events before those fateful days.

I could only answer with grave caution and intense restraint however and could only shake, whimpering, when they asked more than I was willing, or able, to tell. If I began to dwell on what had happened there, my voice became higher, more maddened, and my stutter more severe. When they asked about Golden Rein, I could only tell them that he had died before breaking down into a mixture of sobbing and maniacal tittering. It was clear to them that whatever had happened within that place had broken me completely, and my responses to their polite questions seemed to show that I had not been responsible for the blaze that had engulfed the town… I wish that the doctor had been correct.

Still they clung to the rationalism which I had once purported, and my vague hints that there might have been something worse, something terribly wrong with inhabitants of the town, were lost on them. The principle that there might have been an ominous nature to that harrowing place, other than genetic degradation sounded like so much nonsense now. Instead, they drew their conclusions on the books and ancient lore which I had gathered, which had been delivered with me in torn and cracked saddlebags, and argued that such occult notions of frightening beasts had imprinted primitive superstitions into my mind.

Yet they wondered deeply about the spire of light which had been launched into the sky during the height of the ritual. Thankfully however, they did not ask me about it due to my condition. Besides, they argued, such magic would have required an advanced piece of machinery or numerous expert magicians to produce, and it was clear that I had not had any close relationship with the Timberdaler’s before.

I listened to them muse about such arcane mechanisms and giggled at their folly; remembering well those cerulean fires and the thousands of horrifying, screaming faces which had been hidden within.

The one thing which drove fear into my heart and mind however, were rumours of the mysterious strangers who had arrived many hours before I came stumbling out of that abominable hell which stallions had once named Timberdale. Queer in looks and cloaked in heavy cloths, these strangers had asked many curious questions, first on where I had fled to, the second about a mysterious idol which I had in my possession, and finally to report any news of my return to them.

The folk of the town however, had found their strange ways of speech, which lurched and changed, to be utterly terrifying. Beneath their waxy hide, it seemed as if something rolled and seethed, and the silent sound of their gliding hooves was utterly hideous and almost ghostlike.

A passing mare on her rounds to deliver the daily newspapers had a frightful experience with them when she stumbled on the path. She had accidentally fallen to the side of one of the mysterious strangers, and as she had moved to apologise, she suddenly went cold and rapidly backpedalled from them. She had said in hushed and shaken tones however, that whatever she had felt beneath that waxen skin was something repulsive, and beneath that clammy flesh, there was nothing solid, she hadn’t felt a single bone in the body of that leering figure.

The locals talked almost as much about these characters as they did about the ruins of Timberdale. They did not trust them however, and despite the strange creatures later claims that I had stolen the statue they refused to say a word to them. They knew that there was something deeply unnatural about these queer folk, and they were willing to hedge their bets with a colt obviously of flesh and blood than these silent, mysterious figures of neither.

The two had returned and asked if I had done as such recently, and the townsfolk hadn’t told them anything of my plight. As far as they were concerned with these people, they hadn’t seen a thing. They had hissed something terrible after that, in a brooding dark language which caused the pious to make holy signs, and others to shiver.

They had at least left thankfully, and I was free enough in my time of recovery from those things which I knew were no true-blooded ponies. The idol which they had inquired about also caused some discussion, but none thought that it might be in the hands of me. As far as they could see, I held nothing more than a strange and highly antiquated puzzle box, although it was of curious size.

The doctor and his wife had thus left it well enough alone, obligingly overlooking the box in their attempts to analyse how I had received my injuries. I doubt very much if they could open it, even if they had tried, and I knew that they would be aghast at its contents.

Now relatively free from my bandages, I could sit up in bed and made some halting steps for the first time in a week of magical and non-magical healing.

For all this time, I had avoided looking at the mirror, but the grimaces and flinching of the honest farm ponies might as well have told me that which my reflection could only convey. My face was a ruin, some people might weep about it and call out that it wasn’t fair, but instead I felt cold and fell silent, unable to focus on the idea that the damage was irreversible and I would see that face I knew no more in the flesh, but only in blurred grey pictures.

I remember I sat out in the sunshine sometimes on an old bench propped up by a couple of pieces of sturdy wood on the porch. I sat there, dazed, cold, and uncomfortable, and just watched as village life passed me by. But this caused me to being thinking about what I had seen.  I could remember it all so clearly, and that had been enough to cripple me for the first half of the week of my recovery.

Soon, I began to think about the infinitude of the cosmos, I doubt many ponies have wondered about how vast and unexplored the gulfs of space are, and the infinite chaos in which the universe eternal spirals. Some have speculated on the nature of such things, but most have been based on the rudimentary logic, and empirical notions of science. The only others would be the pulp writers who fill the heavens with nothing more than little strange green ponies, and write such nonsense so extravagant that one can barely restrain contempt.

Neither of these had considered the possibility of life being utterly alien from the shapes and forms of the Equestrian species, and the notions of science were ultimately restrained by convention rather than wild fantasies.

Within the queer blackness of this strange world, I wondered at the sleeping titans which might lurk, hidden away amongst the stars. Waiting for a time in which the cosmic changes might allow them to spread. I imagined their thoughts gave rise to the secret cults and societies, who, following the modes and rituals given to them by dreams of the first equines, would lead to the carcasses of gods waking and arising once more, and the fall of all the cosmos.

Shivering oddly at a sudden chill, I felt my soul turn to ice at the thoughts of these things and vainly tried to return to the ignorance I had once held, but to no avail. The gates of doubt had since opened with a mighty gust of wind and blown out the candle which my fellow Equestrians held, and which I had once championed. Now nothing remained, only the assurance of our eventual destruction and the cynical nihilism of a prematurely aged and pessimistic stallion.

I wondered deeply on this idea, even if the cults existed in scarcity amongst Equestria, they were there. I had seen enough in Timberdale to realise the true power of these terrible associations, and what they might bring down if we did nothing to stop them. I wondered also to whether the Celestial sisters knew of this terror in the darkness beyond the stars, doubtless they had lived long enough to know of it, as I now knew of it.

Were they keeping these operations a secret from the public, to protect Equestria perhaps? Maintaining the traditional order whilst expunging the decaying leftovers of foul and ancient decadent cults?

I did not know.

I could not know.

I did not want to know.

When I was not considering these morbid things, I was staring listlessly into the deep pond before me. Since my experience a profound sense of powerlessness had overtaken my spirit. I felt like nothing more than an insect in the cosmic infinity of the stars.

I was overwhelmed by a sense that I was nothing, absolutely nothing; I would go through my life and not achieve anything of note, I was less than a grain of sand on the winds of a mighty storm of the history of this universe.

With this came the terrible isolation, and ultimately, suicidal inclinations. I could not bear what I had seen beneath that horrifying town, in the pits of decay and amidst those vulturine horrors which once stalked the world. Neither could I bear the thought that if I ever tried to tell anyone, that I would be sent to a madhouse or spurned as a fool or deluded neurotic by the ponies I knew. This process had already begun with the doctor and his wife, and it would continue throughout my existence, to the last breath of my life.

So I stared wishfully towards those deep waters, occasionally sitting on the bank and staring into those murky depths. A few times I waded in and wondered how long it would take for me to drown. I almost took the step one day, but something restrained me from doing so. Whether it was the last pleadings of a rational part of my mind, or some lurking fear of what might lie beyond, I cannot explain.

I think the doctor and his wife had grown suspicious of my sojourns to the pond, and the despairing looks I frequently gave it. I was no longer allowed to walk towards those still waters and sit at the edge of those deep, safe, underwater worlds. Instead they attempted to restore my spirits and often read to me of the literary classics of the past eras, trying to occupy my mind with other leisure activities too, but my mood could not be lightened.

The dreams also persisted now that I was no longer in the dark hold of narcotics, leading me to hideous far-off realms which all equine-kind should never have to see. I tried to withdraw from sleep, but each night I failed, and was forced to a terrible red-covered realm, where masquerading creatures dined and howled and gibbered. Once, in a truly terrible nightmare, I saw those craven beasts praying maniacally to a terrible statue carven out of abysmal basalt. A statue which twisted and leered horribly, and heard the far-off chants in a language so loathsome I tried to silence it with my screams.

Each night I awoke from these dreams with startled cries of fear on my lips. My hide drenched in sweat, and tears running down my cheeks as, once again, I was forced to contemplate the things I had seen.

Finally I decided that I could no longer bear to be in this town. There were too many memories… recent… horrifying memories for me to bear.

I proceeded to prepare for my departure, and for the first time in a week, began to clip off my patchy stubble, which had grown slightly long since my recovery. This however, forced me to look into the face which had been ruined by physical scars and my poor mental health.

Staring into the mirror at that gaunt figure with puckered whiplashing scars engraved in his flesh by the intense heat, was utterly alien and unsettling. Furthermore the shock of seeing how quickly my once shining coat and mane had turned into nothing more than straw like hair – bleached pure white at the roots – caused me to stand there paralysed for what felt like hours.

Running a hoof through my mane I felt something strange, and only once I pulled my hoof away did I realise that my remaining hair, which showed my true colour, was falling out.

What stared at me from the mirror was another pony; I could scarcely believe that in less than a couple of weeks I had changed so hellishly, so severely that I could barely recognise my own reflection. Nevertheless, I began my grooming, and soon began to calm down and enjoy the small luxury of this task which I set my entire mind to.

I could no longer bear to look at my current mane, so I set about cutting it short and functional, tending to the rest of me, I began to scrub off the remaining hair in the bath, watching as large clumps of it began to coalesce on the top of the water. I was careful around my scars; the skin there was new and not all-together perfectly healed and could still easily be broken.

Once I seemed to be more presentable I began to inspect the long, mottled scar tissue which covered a large portion of my body. Magic, thankfully, had been able to restore much of the damage inflicted on me by backlash of that chant. Still, it could not repair everything, and I had been left with long streaks of yellowed and hairless flesh across my body. A v-like scar ran from the left of my eye with one point, twisting my mouth into a lopsided, cold, and horrible grin with the other. It only served to emphasise my prematurely aged, cynical, and sunken eyes.

Now that I appeared to be showing signs of recovery – if not entirely in health but instead in mind – the doctor began to give me more leeway with what I did with myself during the days that followed.

I remembered how jovial I had once been, how happy… Now I realised I bore a mask of silent foreboding, a grim coldness like winter’s ice which was accentuated by my new snow white fur, making me appear like some icy windigo half-breed. I doubt even my parents would have recognised this forlorn creature which stood in a black suit before the mirror. It was as if the very act of peering into the unknown had re-forged me into something new, something different.

Something dead.

The doctor had quietly insisted on a few more days of rest and recovery, and with nothing else to do, I busied myself in my tomes of lore. Despite seeing the accursed things which dwelled at the edges of the world, I still felt the dreaded pull of that ancient knowledge. It was not a rational urge, but instead an incessant illogical calling which drew me back to those cryptic pages of archaic knowledge. Surprisingly, they had not been damaged by the fires, and not one page of any of the books was blackened by those terrible, ravaging flames. So I sat there in my room, caressing their paper and feverishly scanning the diagrams and signs which crowded every surface.

For hours on end I sat, engrossed in the knowledge which was arrayed before me, flicking through pages and half-speaking the elder chants which crowded the margins in crabbed scrawling. This new knowledge both terrified and allured me, like the fabled sirens of ancient myths. I learned about equine-kind and the lost epochs of time, the origin of the degenerate Wyrm beasts of the deep sea, and the chittering terrors which acted as foul swineherds to their primeval cattle. Still more I learned of the foul things which lurked in dark places amidst the cities of ponies, the hideous throngs which hold court beneath the earth, and laugh at the naivety of equine-kind.

Strange allusions were made to that mad emperor in the ancient past of the Griffonic Imperium amidst the writings of the mad zebra Al’Zarith. The one only known as the strange M’onos-Gyphic’yn – the first and last of his name – whom had entered the primeval pyramid tombs of his forefathers with his most experienced warriors and returned, alone and mad. The insane emperor had dabbled in sorcery and rumours told of stranger things which he whispered from his steel throne. Finally his madness and his consorting with evilly-willed changeling warlocks lead to the country rising in a bloody civil war with the cultic throngs the emperor.

The forces of the rebels were many and they finally deposed the emperor from his throne after a year of war.  However, they could not kill him, for he disappeared in the twilight of the morn in a miasma of abhorrent purple fire, never to be seen again. What they had found within the Imperial palace was so dreadful, so abominable, that all those who entered swore a vow of silence, and sealed and burned the palace. Still, rumours were told of how the mad emperor had painted across the walls with images of the foulest demons from the voids beyond. This strange emperor was attributed four terrible black tomes of evil sorcery, which none but the chosen could read from.

I read also of the strange beings upon the towers of broken Theg-N’kha, who spoke with the things from the dark, and who built terrible, looming nightmare-temple cities of alien-white obsidian. Such things I recalled in some of my night terrors, and others I remembered from descriptions of things like Theg-N’kha, from stories whispered by the survivors of the tragic Thorn Expedition in Antarktos.

Amidst this cultic history was the murmuring of the strange folk of the forests, the lingering death in the Changeling wastes, the Lotus faces of the sea of decay, all of which was melted in with hushed fragments, whisperings of things which had learned to walk when they ought to crawl…

Sometimes, when I was alone and assured that no beast nor pony would disturb me, I did a reprehensible act. I took from its metal cage the terrible old statue and spent time peering into its strange geometries and hideous limbs… Sometimes… in the dead of night, when all was silent, I thought I could hear it pipe its flutes within the hellish prison which it often dwelled.

Since my return to pseudo-normality, something had changed within me. That which I often would have found to be irrational, degraded and degenerate before was startlingly refreshing. The ancient magics whispered in my lost tomes called me like a siren to a sailor. I began to draw upon the walls strange sigils and maddened signs which Aldercolt Apple baulked at when he first saw them, paling even more when I giggled coldly at his quailing.

My nights were visited by nightmares as usual, but something else disturbed me even more in the waking world. Often, I would be unable to sleep and would toss and turn in bed. Something caused me a deep unease in the quiet, ancient, and dark pine woods around me, I often sat there in the dark, listening for strange noises.

Once I heard them terribly clear, and their connotations opened new vistas of fear within my mind. Those noises! Oh those noises! My flesh crawled at the realisation, gods damn my warped mind!

Something terrible was now beginning to stalk me… No, not stalk, but hunt… hunt like a predator playing with its prey.

I could not sleep that night. Instead I crawled away from the bed and stared at the window at the far end of the room with fear bordering on outright hysteria. I lay there till morning, and just before dawns rise, I thought I saw something… seep from the shadows with oily putrescent flesh! I could almost hear the chittering shrieks of those abominable creatures again! Oh the foulness, the evil that had come to claim me!

I could no longer delay in the township and pressed for my release into the world again. My seeming stability of mind and the progressive healing of my burnt skin convinced the old doctor to let me go. So I commenced to organise my remaining possessions and stitch up my torn saddlebags for the journey ahead.

I bought a ticket from a diminutive teal mare at the station and waited for the train to arrive later in the day. My journey was not back to Arkmane as one might expect, but instead deeper into the mysteries of the loathsome statue. Drawn by the rumours of that abhorrent cult in Trottingham, I knew that I might find whatever was beneath the mound of the society known as the Silver eye. To turn back now would be to leave open something which must be closed and halted at all costs, and despite my feeble condition, the burning call of the statue still drove me to continue.

The old doctor and his wife had decided to come with me, to ensure my good health and the continued healing of my scars, but also to continue on their own journey. The doctor patiently advised me that I should perhaps visit a psychiatrist in order to end the continuous nightmares which I often had. Finally he gave me a small bottle of laudanum which he cautioned against using too often, lest I become addicted to the substance.

I waited for a while, sitting on one of many of the wooden benches nearby the rails. The doctor had gone into the grocery shop to arrange for some food on the way and I was alone but for some other passers-by who trotted about with infrequency.  Sometimes the less restrained of them could not help but stop and stare aghast at my terrible burns and ghoulish appearance, even as I returned their curiosity with bitter scowls.

After a while, something terrible, lurking and foul drew my attention…

Some time ago, a cold wind had rustled through the branches of the trees and through the pine woods of Oakbridge, and I had paid no heed to it, too engrossed in my thoughts. But slowly my ears pricked up at noises which were not of the rustling of the wind, but of stealthy movements.

Turning rapidly, I scanned the dark brooding trees for anything that might be there, and amidst the gloom I thought I perceived certain shapes which caused me to almost let out a shriek of terror.

I could not catch them fully with my gaze, they were too quick! Too monstrously fast and cunning! Using the darkness of the shade to hide those abysmal forms! But I was almost certain that there were strange watchers in the undergrowth around the town. I thought I saw them flitting back and forth, always just out of focus and as hidden as stealthy black shadows, but… They…. Were…. There!

With a cold terror which could not be restrained, I finally whispered that dark truth…

Something… or some things… were watching me!

I almost babbled out my fears as the old stallion returned, but I managed to restrain myself from doing so. I doubt his old rheumy eyes could have caught anything amidst the shadows. He would not see those decrepit, soulless vessels of zealous bloodlust, those avian monstrosities of the unnatural… but I knew, I tell you! I knew! I could see them… I could smell them.

In the far-off distance, I heard the distant wailing of some dread pipes and clenched my eyes against those piercing notes.

Turning to my seemingly-unaffected companion I asked him a question which had haunted me throughout my travels.

“How can you stand that infernal piping?!”

He turned, staring at me in bafflement…

“What piping?”

Suddenly I knew…

The piping was coming from within my head.

When the train arrived I promptly locked myself within my room with vague reassurances to the doctor. He had grown worried about my edgy nervousness, but I could not restrain myself with those things lurking in the dark, those fiendish aberrations of nature!

It was well that the train arrived so swiftly, for much longer out there I believe I would have been incapable of maintaining my senses. I shifted heavy furniture across the door and blocked the windows of my carriage. Once I was sure I would not be disturbed, I huddled myself within the lore of the past and buried myself amongst the cryptic hieroglyphs of lost ages, the only illumination coming from my torch.

It seemed hours passed in this state, reading feverishly and copying down copious notes of the ancient dark magic and mysteries of the past. A new interest in esoteric intrigues controlled my thoughts and actions, and I could no longer constrain it to the abyss within darkest recesses of mind. But through my ruminations into the lost past, I came upon knowledge which struck me like a bolt of lightning and lit up my world with hope.

Within the book were the strange and unearthly sigils of the ancient past, but amongst them were the arcane magics of the elder spheres and the symbols which bind and banish that which might seek us harm. Still other signs whispered of stranger things, of the horrifying Red Sign of the Crimson Mare, The Te’ycho Ward which fell from the stars in the age of Mu on a silver meteorite and drowned with the continent in the final upheaval. I learned of the nightmarish symbolism of the books of black metal, which hold the prayer to Xhav’xh’azak, the titan of madness and devourer of knowledge, and I even read tales of the things which tunnelled and festered beneath the earth, guarding an ancient black sphere which could reach out into the gulfs of infinity.

But beneath it all I heard tell of that sign, a lost sigil of portentous power and unthinkable strength. It was gone from equine memory, and the last remnants of such a symbol in the vestiges of equine consciousness were eliminated with the fall of Thurim and the destruction of the lost continent. In the hooves of mortals it could wreak a deadly vengeance on the malicious abominations which clung at the edges of reality, it could act as a shield against the sleeping gods which rolled and turned in uneasy slumber, but they would not be checked by it when they awoke. In the hooves of good it could do much, but in the talons of the demoniacal entities, it could wipe the world of life and wake the elder gods from their primeval dreaming.

What this sign was and how it came to be was only hinted vaguely at, and despite all my searching, I could not find more than scraps of details regarding this thing of considerable power. It was said it was what Muraag, the High abomination priest of Thurim, had attempted to use to bring the great Dark One into existence in this temporal plane. Thank the gods that his madness had been brought to a close by the brave warriors of the past! Who knows what greater evils that eldritch sorcerer might have brought down upon the quaking citadels of equine-kind?

If I could find this sigil, perhaps I could be safe. Perhaps we all could be safe from what screamed and flailed at the edges of reality? But something else also forced me onwards in my decision that I should find this lost artefact.

The tomes of knowledge told had told me that it could be used for both good and evil. What then, would occur if it fell into the wrong hooves? So much had happened to me already. Too much. The memories were almost unbearable and the knowledge excruciating, but I held on to the vague hope that somehow we might yet survive as we had done before in the face of these primordial terrors.

Visions flashed before my eyes and I relived the horrible dark memories of that place, deep beneath Timberdale, a place of festering necrotic flesh and mouldering corpses, of avian things from beyond comprehension and their abominable children. Gods, what madness might be wrought by them if they gained such a power?

I did not know if it was my mind which had conjured up those sounds and sights in the forest, but neither could I be sure that it was not reality either. The others… they had not noticed, but they had not learned to see with true sight; they could not see the horrors which lurked just beneath the natural threshold of existence.

Maybe I was mad, but was not the gates of madness also that which led to the brilliance of discovery? The aberrations which lurked within must be halted in whatever way it could be done, they must not succeed!

My task was futile, but it would give some meaning to my shattered existence, something to hold on to and keep me grasping at the tattered hems of my degraded mind. I would find the sigil, destroy the cult of the Silver eye, and hope that my maddened floundering would maintain the existence of our idyllic species, if only for a few more moments of our universe’s history.

I stared at the box which lay, strange and mysterious before me, the nightmarish statue and its infernal casing which had seen and known too much for our ignorant realm. It held a vital key to this hell-bound mystery, I knew it was so. I would plumb the insane depths of the waters of the void and bring back knowledge to fight the evils which had spread their fetid shadow over this world.

Perhaps it was the sudden revelation that the universe was nothing like our planet. That we had survived merely by a freak chance of nature. Lucky in our own way, not to have fallen to the innumerable tides of burning terrors, but suddenly a vision opened within my mind.

The universe was one where weakness meant extinction.

We are weak.

Centuries of peace and harmony had brought about a terrible stagnation, we had ignored the truth of reality and fled into fantasy, our idle peacefulness had no place within this world. It was all a terrible delusion.

It had made us ripe for destruction.

Our ancestors, in their flawed ways of warring with one another, with their visions of a dangerous world, and their superstition and objection to the strange, had been right in their own way. It had allowed our species to survive the true terrors which had lurked at the precipices of this mundane sphere. What horrors had grown beneath the surface of the earth during our thousand years of peace?

It must have been deep into the night when I finished with my research into the tomes of knowledge, for when I pulled back the curtain and looked out the window, the stars were gleaming in the heavens. I knew which ones belonged to the princess of the night, for they were brighter than the others in the sky, but even she had once conceded that some of the stars were not hers. The immovable glittering lights in the sky which glowed but dimly upon our fragile realm opened new wonders in my mind. What queer dreams and elder wisdom did they possess? They who had seen all, even before the rise of the Celestial Diarchy… What hid amongst the stars? Ancient races, decadent and mad? Hideous nightmares of the elder spheres? Or were they but empty realms of cold death, showing the skeletons of a thousand lost empires and a billion extinguished races?

Only the strong survive.

The train was rushing onwards in a blur of steam, crossing the brooding landscape of the north with amazing speed, but still I did not feel at ease within this place. The forest and lakes all hinted at repugnant things hidden below. Those tall trees which had seemed so strange before… all of which hid a horror which I now knew. Within that dark night, I thought I saw something move amidst the trees like oily shadows of an eldritch beast and shuddered in utter abhorrence at the worrisome thought. At the edges of my vision, I thought I could see pale blue lights amidst the stygian woods, and I was filled with a lingering sense of dread for a coming terror which brooded and bided for now, waiting for the right time to strike.

I curled up under the bed and hugged the ancient volumes which I coveted to my chest. A dark and terrible night loomed ahead, and I gazed at the laudanum tincture with longing. I could not take the drug. Gods knows what might happen if I did. It would only make my capture more likely in my drug-hazed stupor. No, I would not take it, not even the ease the nightmares which haunted my dreams and waking hours. I decided to pack everything away into my saddlebags for a hasty flight into Trottingham in the morning and I closed my eyes. I imagined that I could not hear the ever-present ghoulish piping… or of the chittering of things that should be dead.

Deep into my nightmares, the dreams took me, through the void of unnameable colours and clashing howls which split the night. Deep into the dark realms were the ancient cults dwell. I rode on the back of a foul winged beast, not of any known race of this world. Its flesh was slick with leprous oil and its body seemed rotted and cadaverous to my eyes, its wings were of thin membrane which glowed dimly in the weird light with horrible suggestions of nightmarish properties.

I was robed in a curious white fabric which rustled on cosmic winds, containing symbols which would make even the hardiest soul screech in horror at what it suggested of the realities beyond. Around me, more of the nameless, flying things soared and swept. On each of their backs knelt a robed figure, covered in white.

For an eternity, we swept ever onwards on the barbed winds of hell, and I saw many of the things which had been hinted of by the elder tomes. The black pyramids of the Griffin Emperors, the ancient labyrinth of Tezin-Kebash, and even the lost, crumbling spires of the palace of Fallgorn, which glowed green with ancient magic and mysterious life. Each opened new mysteries, but also new terrors, and I bitterly gazed down into the strange places which had been there before equine-kind became sapient; onto boiling seas in dead realms, where monstrous beasts lived in a cycle of blind, endless carnage below a fractured, gibbous moon.

Eventually, we flew towards more earthly shapes and forms, and I beheld an old city which I knew was Trottingham. The lights of a thousand lamps gave the land below a visage of nightly stars which had descended from the heavens, and I was awed by the display. Then a sinking dread filled me, for was this not the place of the cult of the Silver Eye, and their manse upon the mound?

At last I saw it, and tried to flee from the looming turrets and ruinous decay of that broken citadel on the mound, yet my dreams would not allow it, and I was dragged there on the back of that winged horror which had no name.

The dream cut and I was left floating in the darkness of a silent void, but at last I was torn from this cold realm, back into the dreadful realities of the grim and hideous dream. A circle of a hundred equines crowded around an oily lake in some dark recess beneath the earth. Within its depths, tints of gold and other, more inexplicable, colours bloomed, and I was filled with the lurking dread of that which was abominable and unnatural. A tall, dark stallion stood on an ancient spire of jutting stone and howled into the night, reading from a warped and twisted volume which I knew was the dark Libro Tenebris Mysteria, written by the black wanderer, and the volume I had once sought to gain.

I could not hear what was spoken, nor anything else within that mouldering chasm. All was silent.  Even the craven beasts which flapped and gibbered in the high stone cavern’s roofs, made not a sound. I knew that the crowd and the figure I inhabited all spoke as one when the high priest finished his esoteric mutterings, and saw from within the primal lake of oil, something glow and grow within.

Waves began to lap at my hooves and I saw that from the centre of the lake, a powerful surge emanated, causing the waters to rise and clash against the jagged stone basin of basaltic stone, a bright light shone through the murky shadows of the oil and I knew that something had been drawn forth.

The waters parted in a perfect circle and all the oily waves around spiralled like the arms some portentous turbine. Suddenly, everything seemed to stop for a moment, the waves continued as if in slow motion, and the cultists and animals stood as still as statues. It was as if the world had stopped for that brief moment and held its breath in horror of what was to come.

Suddenly, there was bright light, a towering spiral of otherworldly flames, and inside my head, I screamed in horror, for I had seen from whence those flames had come.  Within the fire grew thousands of screaming faces, and I felt my mind almost snap once more at the sight of those equine souls, all burning in agony.

My host shielded his eyes, and it seemed as if the cultists stepped back as if overwhelmed by what they had done. But now it was completed and could not be reversed, there was no returning from this abysmal nightmare which they had raised.

From within the flaming pillar of light and howling souls, there came a shadow, a form dragged from the outer realms into this one, a titan beast which would bring about the end.

There was a blaze of blinding light, a searing moment of agony, and then….

Darkness.

I awoke with a start, unleashing a horrified scream as the full terror of the dream hit me. Oh gods, what had they done? What maddened depths had they visited and brought with them that dark prince of destruction?

I found myself huddled in the darkness, whispering to myself in endless repetition, a mantra which I knew could be only truth, whispering and rocking back and forth in mindless terror.

“This is the end… the bitter, bitter end…”

I do not know why I did what I did next, it seems my senses left me and I must have lapsed into a maddened hysteria.

I found myself sprawled amidst the insane work of my fractured mind. I knew I had blacked out, for my dreams were always tainted with the monstrous visages of beyond, but this was something else.

Across the room, were scrawled thousands of sigils, languages and the ancient runic texts of the Haaku. Diagrams and pentagrams, symbols and drawings, all covered the room in white chalk, and amidst it all, I stood within a fourteen sided symbol, which I knew from memory was that of the raising symbol of those lost souls deep beneath Timberdale, and which had been recorded in The Fall of the Star Prince.

I backpedalled wildly, flinging my forehooves against my chest, looking in horror at the white dust which coated them. I sought to find something to remove the symbols which covered the entirety of the train carriage, but could find nothing. Then, staring at the shuttered window, I hastened forward and threw the blinds open.

Midnight.

I felt around in my pocket for some cloth or handkerchief to wipe those blasted runes of dark magic from the walls and floors, but could find nothing. Suddenly, as I felt around in my breast pocket, my heart froze in horror.

Beneath the fabric… I felt the essence of that which I had taken below. I raised it before me with my magic and stared at the monstrous crime I had committed… the very crystal essence of a dead soul.

A horrible thought struck me and I almost recoiled at the very notions of such a blasted idea, such an abominable principle… but the words… the words repeated endlessly within my head, and I could find no way to escape them.

How it had found its way into my new suit, I did not know. Perhaps one of the Apples had found it and sought fit to pass it onto me once more, or maybe the doctor or his wife had found it and thought it some strange memento or charm, and placed it within the new pocket, quite oblivious to its true, monstrous nature.

But one thing was certain… it was here now.

I had taken the very body of what was sacred from within the cryptic labyrinth of the nightmares of Timberdale, but one question remained.

Who or what was it that lingered within these luminous salts?

The reprehensible idea struck me again and I gasped at it. I knew the old tongue; I had heard the ancient eldritch horrors speak it…

I could raise it up into the land of the living once again.

Suddenly, the ground shook.

The windows shattered.

And some stygian horde of evil screeched in victory.

A roaring sound blasted forth from ahead, and the entire train seemed to heave like some titanic beast struck by a mighty blow.

Screams lit the night and the sound of tearing steel screeched forth like a dreadful cacophony of terror.

I tore open the shattered window and stared out into the blackness of the night.

The train was an inferno.

Already, more parts of it were being hit by those flaming green orbs of awful black magic. I could see the stygian fiends that swarmed over the roofs of the carriages, killing with blades, mutated scythe-like hooves or with antiquated muskets, those who they saw. Above, the sky was filled with them, hundreds of nightly shades from worlds of ill, born from a blasphemous alliance with things from beyond this dimension in the foul realms of space and time.

The children had come for their prey.

Along the roofs ran huddled forms, abhorrent silhouettes of nightmares spawn, misshapen and mutated and screaming and killing with revelry those who sought to escape. Gory carcasses and blood flew into the night, and other things feasted amongst the flames, chattering and cawing in vulturine-abysmal shrieks as they dined upon fresh meat.

A pony tried to escape to the roof and jump off the carriage, but before he could make the leap in full, a dark form swooped down from the midnight shadows and cut him in half with one of its hideous scythe-like limbs. It speared the dead pony with its claws and flew into the sky, its long beak already tearing long strips of flesh from the corpse.

It seemed as if there was no escape from the nightmare that night, those titan blurs brought fire and death wherever they landed, and the train was a holocaust of chaos and slaughter.

Within several carriages, the winged death entered and performed horrible magic, causing screams to rent the air apart; twisted and horrible, no screams an equine voice should ever make! Yet they did! They did I tell you! It was madness, it was monstrous, it was… evil! An evil void-filled nightmare of hell on earth belonging to the carnal dreams of the insane!

Were these the abominations of my dreams? Or reborn… in the flesh.

The roof exploded into flames, windows cracked and a thousand shards of glass and splinters rained down like barbed daggers. Already I could see those things lurch forwards, ready for the kill, ready to kill me!

What choice did I have?

I raised the crystal up.

Howling into the maelstrom of the tempests of hell, I spoke those black words as I cast it into the circle. There is no prayer holy enough to cleanse me of that act on that night, that night which the inferno reigned.

“Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,

YOG-SOTHOTH

H'EE—L'GEB

F'AI THRODOG

UAA-“

When the last utterance came, I was blasted from my feet. A howling monstrosity, twenty-five foot tall, descended upon me with all the qualities of the abyss. Its scythe-like talons gorged deeply into the wooden floor and it raised its six eyes to align with mine, its rotten flesh falling away in hideous slime.

Its eyes… those eyes leered at me with eldritch madness and unspeakable hatred. It opened its black falchion-blade jaws and let out a scream which sounded like the damned! Gods, that scream! It was pure anguish.

Its blades descended on me, and I knew there could be no escape from this. I rolled in desperation, but one of those horrible talons struck true, slicing through my back leg and pinning me to the ground like an iron spike as I let out my own shriek of agony.

It raised its head and jutted it towards me, terrible green vapours erupting from its flesh as it sliced into my hooves which I had raised in defence. It tore through the flesh like wet paper, gorging a terrible, slicing line across one and nearly breaking the other. It screamed again and I regressed into aguish once more, both in body and mind.

I cast spells in desperate frenzy, but the abomination dispelled them with a wave of a talon. It raised its blade high above, and cast it down upon my chest.

Or so it might have been.

A roar ripped forth from the side of me, and a monstrous shadow smashed into the beast of hell with immutable force, and I howled as the scythe-like talon was ripped from my side with tremendous speed.

I crawled across the floor, my fear-driven adrenaline muting the pain, and grabbed my saddlebags. Turning in desperation, I stared into the roof and the tremulous heavens above and lit my horn.

The floor exploded behind me as I was rocketed into the night sky, landing heavily and almost collapsing as I reached the roof of the next carriage.

I dragged myself forward, stumbling with pain as I tried to reach the front of the train. Behind me, the titanic battle between the thing – the thing which I knew I had brought forth – and that terrible child of Lir, raged.

Hundreds of the lesser-changed Timberdalers swept below, uttering bellows and screams of delight as they revelled amongst the flames, killing and destroying with glee. One of them raised itself onto the roof before me and let of a shriek of joy! That foul, evil, and mutated face! Those crumbling, rotting teeth!

Its delight turned to pain as I lit my horn and set fire to its gibbering half-formed face. It fell, screaming, into the throngs below and I did not turn to see what occurred afterwards. Ignoring the pain, I charged onwards as things from the night swooped behind me in terrible violence, howling and blasting with orbs of flame as the speeding inferno howled ever onwards.

It was then that I saw them.

The followers.

They stood before the train, uncaring of the speeding arrow of fire which shrieked towards them, and eldritch magic played within their hooves…

The rails lit up in a mad aurora of white light.

The train buckled.

The flaming carriages exploded.

And I, I flew into the land of the unconscious as the inferno bloomed behind me and the force blasted me from my place.

Blackness consumed me… and I knew no more.