//------------------------------// // Part 2, Chapter 4 - Atop Sorrow Hill // Story: What We Are In the Dark // by StormkingArcana //------------------------------// ---Chapter 4 // Atop Sorrow Hill--- Gaul woke to darkness. Startled, his first instinct was to reach for his weapon. He frantically reached over to his right side, and his hand closed on something smooth and soft. Gaul immediately pulled his hand away. “That’s NOT my axe!” Rainbow Dash’s voice echoed out of the blackness. “What do you think you’re doing to Fluttershy?!” “Wait, what was I doing?” “Don’t play dumb with me! I saw you groping her! Take this!” Something hard struck Gaul’s nose. He recoiled in pain, and the taste of blood filled his mouth. “What’s going on? I can’t see anything!” The blows kept coming, relentlessly. Gaul groaned and curled up in a ball. “That’s enough! It’s obvious that he’s injured.“ said Fluttershy, who had woken up by then. Dash snorted in disgust, but stopped beating on Gaul. “He should be!” “Dash! I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm. Besides, that’s no way to treat someone who saved the life of your friend.” --- The group was sitting around a tree, at the top of a large hill. The grass was swaying in the light breeze. The tree was thin and withered, but was deeply rooted in the hilltop. Although small and ancient, the tree stood firm, a steady sign in the ocean of grass. Rainbow Dash looked around for a moment, then stopped with a startled look on her face. “Where did my wings go?” Gaul was happy to provide an explanation. “I have no freaking clue.” Gaul sat up, and rubbed his face. As his hands passed over his blindfold, memories filled his mind. Running, climbing, fighting, a thousand images passed through his head. He remembered a life he seemed not to have lived. Fluttershy checked for her wings too, and they were missing as well. “Hey Dash? You might want to take a look at the rest of us. I don’t think we’re still ponies. Gaul, do you know anything about these new bodies?” Gaul remembered some things, but many of his memories were still vague and cloudy. “I think so, but I feel like I’ve been in this one forever. I’m something called a ‘human’. Try moving around a bit to get a feel for things. Most of it should be instinctual, so don’t worry too much about it. --- Dash turned to look quizzically at Gaul. “Why do you wear that cloth strip around your face anyway? It seems like that would be the reason you can’t see anything.” Gaul untied the blindfold, and was surprised when the world around him was still dark. The others had awoken by that time, and Rarity’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Where are your eyes?” Gaul thought about it, and more images ran through his head. A hateful family abandoning a eyeless child in a blizzard, wishing for its death. A kind, yet firm man, who discovered the child half-frozen and unconscious lying in a cave. A fearsome white dragon about to feast on the child, suddenly felled by a single quick stroke from the man’s axe. The child was him, Gaul realized with a shock. --- Applejack stood up with a jolt. “What was that? Did everyone else see it too?” The rest of the group nodded their heads in agreement. “I suppose that answers the question. He was born without eyes, and everyone hated him. His family tried to kill him by abandoning him during a snowstorm, but he was saved by a ‘Hunter’. Somehow he can ‘see’ with his other senses. I can’t tell you how I know this, but it’s true.” --- Twilight walked over to give her ideas. “I would suppose that, given our current forms, we somehow left Equestria and our pony bodies, and landed here with these new ones. Wherever ‘here’ is...” Gaul seemed to agree. “My memories tell me that we’re somewhere my people call Minegarde, which would be my homeland. Specifically, we are standing on Sorrow Hill, because the tomb of an ancient king lies below the hill. “ “I can sense a jungle not too far to the west, that’s where my house is. We can all stay there for the night.” --- As the group traveled towards the jungle, Gaul walked along in silence. He was thinking about his new-found memories, and what the meant for his life here. He was clearly blind, as the blackness around him indicated. How did he preform all those near-impossible feats indicated in his visions without sight? There was an explanation, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Pinkie Pie was lagging behind the rest with a droopy look to her face, so Gaul tried to cheer her up. “You realize that my house is built over a hot spring, right?” Pinkie’s step quickened, and she was soon skipping along ahead of the rest. “Come on everyone, hurry up!” --- When the party got to the edge of the jungle, they realized that the forest was flooded with water. While Rarity was hesitantly poking at the shallow water, Applejack waded right on through, and soon realized that the water was pleasantly warm. “It’s not bad at all, it’s kinda warm!” Rarity flinched as she stuck a foot in, then relaxed after she realized that the temperature was not as bad as she had anticipated. “You’re right, it’s really quite nice!” Gaul smiled calmly. “This is the Wellspring Forest, if I remember correctly. The water is warm because of runoff from the hot spring. That means we are getting closer to my house. Come on everyone, lets go!” The group continued onwards, splashing each other and laughing in a carefree manner. --- The companions entered a clearing, and were amazed by what they saw. In the middle of the grove, there stood a titanic tree, with a pool of bubbling water surrounding it. In the branches above, a large house was built around the tree trunk. A spiral staircase curled around the trunk, leading to the house. Rarity was astonished at the sheer size of the tree, but even more so as they began to ascend the staircase. The tree was slick with water, but the staircase remained dry due to a cleverly slanted roof. The water poured to either side of the walkway, creating a veil of water that distorted the image of the trunk. --- When they reached the top, Gaul opened the door and stepped inside a luxuriously adorned room. the rest of the group followed, and were amazed by the sheer amount of trophy heads on the walls. There were heads from many different beasts, including a reptilian creature with a large frill, a stony creature with two large horns, and the fearsome maw of a horrifying leech-like creature. “As a Hunter, I am hired out by the Hunter’s Guild to slay a variety of monsters. I tend to look for souvenirs of my most difficult fights. See that spiky blue one over there? That’s a lagiacrus, a massive sea wyvern that can expel shocks that can boil water. It took me an entire week to slay my first lagiacrus, along with several burns and scalds. I remember relaxing in an ice bath after the hunt, which wasn’t very relaxing because I kept thinking that the lagiacrus would pop out of the tub.” Gaul laughed heartily at the memory, “What an amateur I was back then, A lagiacrus couldn’t even fit in the tub, and I knew that.” The rest of the party chuckled nervously because they had no idea what Gaul was talking about. The group walked through the carved wooden doorway into the next room. the first thing they noticed through the thick steam was a large circular pool of clear water, taking up most of the room. They could see the bottom of the pool, and it seemed to be made of some kind of perforated stone. “This is the main hall, where the heat from the spring gets siphoned off to heat this pool. It’s very relaxing, I tend to soak here after a particularly difficult hunt. We can come back here later on, if anyone is interested.” Pinkie was delighted to hear that. Gaul led the group up a set of stairs to see the roof. ---Chapter 4 // Atop Sorrow Hill // END---