“The Shepherd folk of forgotten Mu,
Spun talks of arcane beings new,
Of the Great Simurgh, the Emperor of birds,
Who came upon them and taught them words,
And scripts of magic and of earthy fire,
To light the way to transcendence.”
-Timur Khan- the Murghian Manuscript
Upon the unearthly winds it blew, the strange fabled creature of lore, from a lost realm far off in the mists of time, where the palaces of the god kings loomed. It came here upon a crimson summer morn, when the first light of the shinning sun rose above the high mountains of Kajir and Xhan like a disk of beaten gold. It was upon the high hill that I spied it, the strange one from the lands of which the elder tongue spoke in mystery.
The eldritch Simurgh.
Tending to my sheep I perceived its rise above the mountain of high Xhan and heard the tremors which were caused by its arcane song, the sapphire feathers if purest blue, and the gold and crimson tips of the majestic plumage, its wings engulfing the sun in a tender grasp.
Titanic and ancient, this elder father of the skies had seen the world thrice risen and destroyed and tended to knowledge forbidden to equine-kind. It was the hawk of the earthy gods, and had spoken to that which gibbered in primal slumber, and its black herald whom spoke for it. There it had learned the subtle truths of existence, and transcended into a dimension of otherworldly mystery.
But lo! I beheld it in the morning sky, its crest of many colours raged like a heart of fire and its breast unto which arcane blood beat in time with creations dance, and were in fable, the immortals had sprung forth.
Its call resounded forth like the crash of the universes titanic awakening, and I beheld the splendour of kings but being a petty imitation of such miraculous divinity. Divinity of which an olden prince whom dwelled at the edges of the world, travelled between the heavens and the earth in plumes of flame and liquid magic.
“Like hellfire upon the wind
And majesty, which observation sinned
The Great Simurgh rose high in splendour,
A vision of divinity in the earthly sky,
To fly the winds of time upon high,
The eternal emperor of birds,
Spoke unto them the words:
Akhaan, Malah Shameer!
A terrifying elder of divine desires,
A titan of cities and lost spires,
Which spoke to ponykind in the fledgling years,
Of arcane lore to their perceptive ears.
Thus spoke the eternal emperor of birds,
And spoke unto them these immortal words:
Akhaan, Malah, Shameer!”
What gift had I been bestowed by the appearance of such a titan of old before my unworthy eyes, its transcendent glory awed me, but within my heart I felt the terror of the unearthly and alien overwhelm me in paralytic fear.
I knew this was the being unto which all creatures would proclaim their awe, and say they had seen the divine in action; I could not deny that such attraction and repulsion drove me to believe with the fervour of a fanatic in the divinity of this ancient.
The olden transcendent spread its wings before me and the plumage of reality exploded in an array of incandescent hyperion light which all was blinded. An undulating call which resonated with knowledge roared forth like a storm, and I felt to my hooves with veneration of the arcane delight which had graced my presence. When I looked up from the simple earth, the grand Simurgh had left this linear plane and ascended to the obscure eldritch place were the Old Ones slumber, dreaming in chaos to of beat of drums and piping cracked flutes.
Such glory I had never seen, and shall never see again upon this mortal realm. However I was determined to seek out this being of lost time, and see its splendour once more in the halls of the gods of the realm beyond, of which, only the mad prophets dare speak.
Stallions of Naar called me a fool when I stated my intention, “whom shalt tend thy sheep when thou art gone on a mad fools quest?” they incredulously inquired, but when I told them of my selling of my property and assets shook their heads in confusion.
“No good will come from thy interference with that which hath seen beyond, best left for the gods, not of mortal flesh and bone which would strive to hunt it” they said, attempting to change my mind from following this folly quest. I did not heed them however, and shook off their well meaning advice with distaste, for I was driven to chase that incomprehensible messenger from the far off realms.
So I left my simple life in Naar, amongst the reed thatched huts and whitewashed walls. Where gentle hills and ancient forest dwelled since time immemorial, and which melted amongst the fields of golden grain and grazing sheep like a sleeping titan of old. I left the world which I had only known for the open hieroglyphic sandstone road to Koth, the sleepless Library city, whose silver spires held the knowledge of countless ages from eons of ancient song.
Between the forest of the titans of nature I wandered, amongst the white birch and watchful of the wild things which dwelled within. Here in these strange lands, the mysterious Lankaine rule, and it would be perilous to encounter one of those fair strange beings, whom was rumoured horrifying things. Around my neck I held my sacred Ankh, the sign of the pilgrim amongst all cities and protection against the Lankaine if one were to cross paths with the eldritch devils of the forests.
Thus the traveller roamed the long road to Koth,
Fearful of things which might be,
But driven by a vague expectancy,
Of the call of the Emperor.
Fair groves he did encounter,
And ancient trees whom had seen the forests first leaves,
Amongst the strange realm of natures weave,
The Fair ones dwell in olden splendour,
And trick unwary upon the path,
To the deathly realms of pain.
On the high road I trotted, and exited the forest amongst the fields of Flax. The winding road showed the way to the town of Quar-Tezhk, where the greatest weavers plumbed their trade upon racks and spinning wheels, which wove great tapestries of fabrics beyond compare.
These were strange folk, who spoke and dressed in curious ways and which covered themselves in white cloth in which only their eyes could be seen. Quar-Tezhk pressed upon a small hill and its white walled and cobblestoned streets showed good maintenance in the face of the weather.
It was said in Naar, that the Arch-Weaver of Quar-Tezhk had seen that which had made him blind and mad, but which had discovered the finest way of weaving in all of Mu, and a way into the “Other”. Strange patterns and elder signs covered such woven work and men found it appealing as well as exotic to dress in such fabrics. I wondered whether I could speak with he who had seen beyond, and press questions upon him in my quest for the Emperor of Birds in the far off lands of the earthly gods.
Within the labyrinth of streets I quested, seeking a mean to follow the divine, for it would be best to gain knowledge before Koth, in order to find the sacrosanct nest of the firebird. The white walls of Quar-Tezkh gleamed a shining in the summer sun, and I perceived that sigils of warding against the evil eye, and that of the archaic and powerful Elder sign, who’s many edges spoke of vaster things within the gulfs beyond.
Up on high before a gentle incline of stairs a great temple loomed, and between them in the streets, bundles of reeds were stacked high, and the Tezhkian’s in their obscuring robes, tended to the dyeing and weaving of strange tapestries.
Within their collective all races were employed, and all had a part to play within the creation of the work. The Earth ponies tended to the Flax fields, their green hooves apt to such abilities, although there were some who were such experts that they could create the patterns by hoof. The Unicorns tended to the priestly activities and weaved the tapestries with their professional magical skill, and the Pegasi maintained perfect conditions for growing.
I saw many of these tenders and makers swarm across the skies, and weave the strange fabrics of the dreamer’s cloth. I wondered to what properties it might have if the sigils and runes were interpreted and arcane power bestowed upon it. But now I approached the queer temple of Quar-Tezkh and all thoughts of such things fled like cool winds on a winter’s night. I had arrived late in the evening and now the sun began to descend below the purple and crimson horizon in an aura of colours and shades.
Meanwhile the temple shone enigmatic in the blood light of the dying sun, until the great scarab would roll it back into the heavens once more and restart the cycle anew. A dome of beaten brass and pillars and walls of jasper loomed ahead, and all were guarded by the shrouded metal faced guards whose silver masks gleamed eerily in the crimson dusk.
I approached and passed by a pool of reeds and lotus’s, were large golden fish roved languidly in the gentle waters of the temple. Beneath the waters I perceived a glow and wondered to what had caused it. I stared into the depths and withdrew at the sight, for below glowed the power of an ancient elder sign, charged with transcendent power, to protect the temple from the horrors beyond the elder spheres.
A passing unicorn priest silently levitated by, and I called after him in haste. Turning he gave me a silent and blank stare as I rushed to him. Two guards, clad in their silver masks, lamellar armour and runic flowing black robes moved forward in case of danger, but I halted at a respectable distance from the arcane priest of the olden gods.
I plead an audience with the high mad priest of the mysterious order, desperate for answers to my search for the firebird. I had money aplenty, and if certain donations or sacrifices were required, I would willingly subject myself to temple authorities to attain an audience with the high one. desired speak of the Simurgh, on my long pilgrimage to the lost realms of the archaic lands beyond.
The priest simply nodded, and activated his magic to claim several gold coins that I had offered, leading me into the inner temple and amongst the bass reliefs which depicted the ancient earthy deities which oversaw all within the lost land. Visions of paradise and alien gardens loomed, and amongst them wandered the transcended ones, those who had reached the pinnacle of enlightenment and danced amongst the lost realms of elder lore.
The priest opened a great bronze door before me, covered in arcane runes and dark symbology which suggested things which made me shudder. Queer staring gold faces with glazed white eyes peered at me oddly as I passed by. The gates opened a way into a great hall upon which a deep chasm filled with dark, blue cobalt waters lapped and swirled, like they were connected with some great force of the ocean beneath. But that could not be! For I was far from the Emerald Seas which frothed on the eastern coast, far from anything which could cause such rushing in the lands of Quar-Tezkh.
I sensed within me a grave disturbance, and an chill like the hooves of winter rushed across me. There was something wrong with this terrifying whirling vortex, something unnatural which caused me to withdraw from it in fear, only to encounter the ice cold hooves of the priestly hierophant of the Temple.
He pushed me forward and I stumbled under his strength, which seemed almost unnaturally powerful for one of such limited stature. I tried to escape but magic coloured in dark red surrounded me and lifted me onwards to the swirling whirlpool of dark water. I tried to call for help but before I could do so the magic tightened my jaw so that I could do nothing but breathe in frenzied terror as the black abyss grew ever larger before me. Around it lay bricks of gold, and terrible symbols had been etched upon them which caused me to try and scream once more, a horrifying punishment had occurred under the wrath of the gods, and I would be one to perceive it.
The dark waters now seemed so deep that I could only say that they showed a colour like pitch or oil and as I was raised above it, I thought I saw lights in the depths within those cold, ancient waters. Suddenly I was thrown from the magical grip of the priest and plummeted into the black abyss of frothing waters.
As I screamed in terror, the water surged up in unearthly spirals to devour me amidst its cold unclenching grip.
***
I floated amidst darkness,
Amongst the blackened streams,
And movements of water in which the dark gods dream,
Of a time of the awakening.
And then he came before me, the prophet of old
Who spoke a thousand fold,
Things which ponykind had seen.
“Fear he who searches,
For horror will come,
And darkness shall plumb,
Amongst his eternal nightmares.”
Devoured by the oily mass I saw that mad creature of the waters, that long hideous neck of scales! that twisted serpentine head! Those limbs of eldritch cold! All which whispered in the black waters of the abyss! I heard it speak in rhyme and wondered at its meaning. What darkness would come and spread amongst nightmares? I beheld the creature, part water and part solid, embalmed in arcane bindings of red of orange, who spoke of such things in queer undulating sounds which came to my ears as the rhyming song of elder knowledge.
“My words be as if dust,
Before the call of the transcendent song,
Blown as if nought,
Upon the winds of an elder throng,
Seek out the ancient one,
Whom from ancient lore he doth keep,
And guard the way to Kaxthanerion,
Where amongst the spires of he doth speak.”
Ancient teeth grinned through decayed and bound lips as the dead creature which had been mummified opened vistas of nightmare new upon my simple mind. The leering prophet who was dead and living grasped me with disproportionate discomposed limbs, and using a long crocodilian tail dragged me further up to the surface of that foul oily lake of blackness.
“Beware the Simurgh!
Do not chase!
For elder songs will erase,
That which kept you fully bound,
To earthy planes and natural things.
Beware the Simurgh!
It is a servant of titans beyond,
Do not try to understand its blackened song,
For madness looms,
In those lost black spheres.”
Upwards I rushed and suddenly dark violet light loomed ahead, for I saw the whirling vortex which showed the way to the barrier between this and the true world. This was a realm beyond the realms, I was frantic that I would leave this terrible place… and its repugnant terrible denizen to lie within it once more in sleepless madness. I had wondered to how the waters were breathable, and what else loomed within these dark corners of the earth, and shuddered at the abnormal things which might exist beyond.
Suddenly the light became unbearable and my eyes clenched shut before the purple glare which showed the way forward. My companion gibbered in glee and whispered of that which should have been forgotten, before I suddenly was birthed back into this realm upon the twisted limbs of the decayed ancient.
The light invaded my eyelids and scoured my eyes with torturous agony, before I was engulfed by the clutches of unconsciousness amidst the dark howls of the archaic eldritch prophet, and other things which gibbered within the darkness.
***
I awoke an older stallion, and nothing since would look the same. All was tinged with the dark wine of that blackened sphere, and I could see it gush and flow amongst the walls of this realm. I walked out the temple hunched and broken, for it was told to me that it was a miracle that I had survived the torturous nightmare realm of the shadow waters of Nytheis.
Few creatures could have survived a meeting with the prophet they said, and fewer still came back… unchanged. The realm was tainted with that which only the most powerful could endure, and held the ways between death and life.
I saw now that which I had not seen, the dark robes and fabrics of the Quar-Tezkh lit up before my eyes and I peered into geometries unknown to the honest and the pure. I could not stay in that terrible realm but fled from the town in fear driven abandon, ignoring all that might will me to stay, and fled into the dwindling light. Into the dying sun I rushed, following that which showed the way to the spires of Koth, and away from the madness which dark whispering had unveiled.
The terrors of that meeting seeped into my consciousness for days and nights, in the wild fantasies of my dreams it stalked me, that terrible realm and what it had suggested. I continued on my way to Koth in the vain hopes that the search would block out those eerie and disturbing images of that strange dimension, and give me peace of mind.
Everything seemed suggestive of that place beneath, and I wondered to whether reality was nothing more than a painted canvas unto which the sphere of that place loomed, crawling and seething in coiling, undulating repulsiveness under the brightness of our dimension. These thoughts ended with time, and the suggestions became less intense, but I could not fully shake the feeling of seeing… others beneath the fabrics of reality. Each night they took me back to that oily, shadowed, cold realm where the dark prophet whispered and I heard the thousand tongued gibbering of those things which were beyond sight.
But still the Emperors song drew me onward.
Why did I follow? I do not know. Why do things happen as they do in dreams? All I knew was when it called, I had to follow.
The prophets warning had been powerful, but the sweet music and eldritch sight beckoned upon each recollection, and I found I did not have the power to resist its dark pull.
I travelled far, across the wooded lands of the great forests, through the shrub planes of the nomadic tribes, over the dreaded grey sand dunes of the Kazarine desert I walked. I remembered of the tale of Thurim, and that which had once lived in this land, now a blasted desert.
Once this had been a lush jungle and afterwards the farmland of a mighty civilisation, but nought remained from that time. Nothing remained but the wastes of grey sand, and rumours of a abhorrent, decadent and otherworldly statue which was said to linger were Thurim once stood.
It was in this repugnant land of sands that Koth ruled. The Library city whose golden spires and huge corridors were lined with elder knowledge, which lurked dark within the heavy stone walls and iron gates of the antiquated citadel.
Silent and half forgotten, this olden hoary realm loomed and tantalised me in my dreams, and after many nights of travel I saw its dark silhouette on the horizon of earthly fire. I beheld it and wondered in awe, for all my life I had lived within the small hamlets of Naar, and had not travelled far from their quiet field and dales.
Before me the titan fortress loomed, silver domes and towering spires, lost amongst mists of cloud and protected walls of golden stone which shone like amber in the high evening sky. Upon all were the archaic hieroglyphics of the lost olden times, so ancient and obscure that it had seen the arising of the equine race and the foremost dreams of the first ponies. These lost signs had been carved upon ancient stone faces of rock, but wear and decay of the primeval earth had destroyed them, and now only copies of them remained and persevered upon the hoary city of Koth. Someday the wear of time would take these also, and equines would forget that they had ever existed. But those who had put them there would never disregard their workings, which they had carved in the first eras of history.
Great Ivory gates loomed before me, and I beheld the artistry of a thousand craftsmen, which time had turned to nought but dust in the evening winds, which travelled with the sands of the desert to the lost places were the mad dancers revel. Great leviathans and beasts of terror loomed high and animate upon these titan gates. I wondered at what time these ancient monuments to history had been carved, and what beasts had dwelled in the kindling years of equine history. No beast could have formed the sole supply of Ivory for these great gateways, or at least, none which now lived upon this earth. But as I looked I realised in horror that these pieces were carved from whole, singular and remarkably unbroken Ivory which bespoke of the very things which it depicted.
The Library city of Koth was older than any other city, older than Thurim whom the exiles had founded thousands of years past, older than the palace city of Fallgorn upon the high plateau in Pha-Lyangh, and more ancient than the ancient temples of the secretive hermitic orders of the Zebra Haaku. It was a city which had lasted since the dawn of our race, and had risen with the waking eyes of our people, who spoke of batrachian aberrations from the ancient times and who waited in the deep beyond the stately shores of Zhara-Xhan before an insatiable sea.
It was told that in the elder times, of the strange wandering god from the shining domes of the Black city in the high dreamer’s mountain, and how it came to dwell amongst the equines. From caves of ice and cold fire he danced, and appeared before equines as the Prophet of the Silver Mask. He let them glean tantalising hints and whispers of knowledge, of that which they used to build the ancient citadel, and protect from the behemoths of the elder times, whom only slumber could finally arrest.
The God of the Silver Mask dwelled amongst them still, sleeping until the end of all things to be beat of drums of the drummer Khadan, whose never-ending rhythm lulled the ancient in its slumber. One day Khadan would put away his drums, and the elder prince of the stars would awake, and sing whilst the world burned in ethereal fires of shining white.
Amongst these monolithic spires and shining domes I heard the call of the ancient Simurgh, and glimpsed the whisper of its majesty once more. Onward I strode into the depths of the city who spoke suggestively of the eldritch spheres of Baal-met, and the eternal Libraries of Xhavxhazak whom terrible savants walked and the madly contorted did roam.
Within this realm walked unicorns of stately stature and upon whose faces, equines might whisper of the faces of earthy gods of the realm. It was whispered secretively, that the Earthy gods had descended and bred a race of elder dignity amongst the children of the new world.
The archives of olden lore did call, and through persuasion and coin I did gain access to that realm of silence. I wandered amongst the Dust and the withered pages as ancient as the hills which dwelled in Naar, and which had been new when the mad prophet of Quar-Tezkh was young, before the terrors of the “Other” sphere.
I searched and found that which I sought amongst the ancient pillars and strange statues of the hoary citadel. Amongst the archaic passages of Koth, where impossible white obsidian murals glowed with the knowledge of that which caused nightmares, I found that which lit the way. The realm was far, and I could not find the way without seeking out the old mysteriarch. Amongst the pleasure gardens of the earthy divines the avian emperor dwelled, and I would seek the way from the crumbling lore which the ancient one did keep.
“Transcendence unearthly did glow,
And light the way to paradise,
But mad was that which these beings behold,
And which lit the way of perdition”
