Feyspeak

by WritingSpirit

Talon

Pride.

Synonyms are few and far in between, yet when they do arrive, they always felt like the final piece of a puzzle. His mother embodied it well, the word 'pride'. It was an old friend of hers, he remembered her saying once, so much so that he was fortunate his father was there to balance it out. His parents were both unicorns, proficient in both the arcane and the mundane, with a growing certainty that he would be gutted had he mentioned the latter before them. One could say that they were proud parents when they discovered that their son emulated them as such. Whether it be by fortune's favors or fate's twisted endeavors, he was never exactly sure.

Nevertheless, he had pride.

For who he was, for what he did, for everything that changed him into what he was today.

His mother must be sorely disappointed to see what he had become.

"Pride..."

"Hmm?"

The shadow had glanced back from its prospects, heeding his shameful call of attention.

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

"It will merely wax your disinterest."

"Tell me."

The voice it adopted was firm, yet there was a frailty to it. It was a frailty only he could hear, for it was never frail before anyone else. Whether it be fortune's favors or fate's sickening endeavors, he didn't care; the shadow was seeking to him for solace, not an inquisition. So he sighed, submitting to its whims and fancies as he rested his head against the shadow's withers.

"It is not right, doing this."

The shadow grinned before the moonlight. "One never knows. With all that was done, and all that they did prior, I trust that they can find a way to put it to good use."

"But this magic, this tongue... it's wrong. It's foul."

"Th'murgan."

"Don't," he paused for a breath, squirming, "Say that. Don't. Please, I forbid you. Do not taint your glottis with those wretched words."

"You may think it wretched, but it would soon be spoken across the mountains and valleys of this land and the lands beyond it. Ponies will come to accept it, as they had accepted this common tongue in the days of yore."

"But Fe-Feyspeak?" he barely choked on its name alone. "These words— no, these words are imbued with power. These words, th-they reek purely of magic. Are you saying that the common mind should be provided the responsibility of using such unimaginable, unprecedented power at the tip of their tongue?"

"We are all of the common mind," the shadow reminded with a frown. "We merely rose from them to lead them, remember that. Your parents were once part of — seeing as you love to use that term — the simple-minded rabble."

"My parents were more than just the common pony. You know that."

"I do, but I remember their roots, as did they. And if pride dictates that they are to help devise a new form of speech to expand the capabilities of the common pony's tongue, so be it. You may have pride, but they have a pride that they figured can be put to use, and so they did."

He fell silent, embracing his defeat like he wished the shadow would do to him. It may be tender with its touch, yet he will be forced to remember, time and time again, the rigor that breathed behind its facade. The shadow's smile soon returned, this time facing the moon and reveling in its serene gaze. Hope was a flicker in those eyes, genteel and bright. He may be wary around it, but for the shadow to emit hope, he found it tranquil, much like the oblivious quivers of a firefly. His mother would chastise him for chasing shadows in the dark, though he was sure his mother wouldn't mind to hear that he had been searching for an inkling of hope in the night.

Yet what is hope if not a lie?

---

"So, what's in here?"

A wanderer and an overly-curious filly, his cynicism came to surmise.

If only that would suffice, but of course, he was stuck with said filly who, he was sure, once drafted crusades in the name of discovering the truth to everything prior to their journey. He dared not speak out, lest she don an abrasive scowl worth the swing of the adult hoof. Instead, he raised his lantern unto this solitude of whistling walls and crumbling floors, his hoof trailing along the slew of jagged rocks that dotted the cavern. He remembered how they stood tall and proud once, those rocks. Long ago, he can't remember exactly when, but he clearly recalled them being sentinels, once stoic and silent, heralding all that strode down this little-known passage.

"Well?"

He sighed. "You'll come to know in time."

Stepping closer, his hoof slowly brushed over one of these fallen stones. There were inscriptions there once, carefully and intricately carved by some of the great lithographers of yore, their beauty long pared from the deft fangs of the olid winds scouring throughout the tunnels. He could, however, still faintly feel their empaestic grooves humming at his touch, to which he gently stroked them with the very tip of his hoof. The language itself reflected the runes' age — a dialect of the commonplace vocabulary whose roots trace back to the ethnic ponies of the northwestern lands, as an examination of the ecclesiastic runic texts he discovered in the mountains of that region had disclosed to him, to which he quickly destroyed them for their heresy thereafter— though some of it was legible enough in the narrow vision of his lexicon to tell him they were on the right path.

"This way."

The depths spiraled much further than he originally thought. As much as the land deformed, he never did believe Jörmungandr moved the mountains, though some versions of the myths would concur otherwise. He tread before these familiar walls, the filly obediently falling behind. Their shadows danced to an irregular thrum of candlelight, their misshaped figures reaching out tentatively, as if to pull them from underneath their hooves. The filly shivered quietly, lest she provoke his scorn. The magician, however, was rather content engrossing himself with inscription after inscription, so much so that he failed to notice that her attempts were in vain, for she was shaking like a baby left in the frozen hinterland, and rather violently at that.

"Is this the right way?"

"Perhaps," he mumbled, much to her disdain, before suddenly stopping. "Halt."

"What? What is it?"

Faint was the scent, yet its presence remained. He gave a powerful whiff, raising his lantern higher. The cavern winds reciprocated with an exhalation, its breath dragging the odor upon them once more, to which the filly immediately clamped both hooves over her wrinkling snout. The magician repressed his nausea, proceeding instead to search the mnemonic shelves in his head, leafing through tomes and grimoires of yore before a single, wretched word quietly drew forth from his tongue.

"Skaurlh'eite."

Light coalesced into a sphere, drifting forth from his horn and hovering forward against the currents. The pair hastened their pace, reeled in by their snouts, their nerves driven delirious amid the effluvia. It was only when they emerged into a larger antre that the azure orb began to coruscate. The passage opened up, only to converge into a narrow bridge growing above a gaping abyss and extending beyond to a grand mesa at the very end, where a towering, derelict structure welcomed them. As they crept closer, however, the filly gasped, throat clenching onto the squeamish air, whereas the magician felt his cheeks blanch free of color at the sight before them.

"Blasphemy."

Bodies piled around this grand plateau. Bodies, in the hundreds, surrounding what was formerly a basilica. They reeked and rotted, flesh melting into the ground, bone molding into a putrid filemot muck, eyeballs souring into sarcoline phlegm. His world screamed at the sight, this feast for the maggots, at the utter desecration of this subterranean sacrarium. Much to the filly's horror, he stepped forward, hooves sinking into this land, fertile in the visceral and the humoral. It wasn't until the sixth squelch of his hooves, dragging out pieces of rib and remnants of a plumage, that he came to realize what these bodies were. His hoof drove down into the murky depths, wading through sluice and chyle, before finally pulling out, from a bloated cusp, an ornate insignia, its outline dotted with emeralds whereas its surface sheened in gastric acids, bearing a shape alluding to what these bodies once proudly represented in the throes of life.

"Gryphons."

The filly remained speechless, paling.

The magician instead knelt down with a grimace. "Three weeks into decomposition. Soldiers? No, not all of them." he paused. "No, the military was escorting them. Refugees, perhaps, traveling westbound. The war? No, something more senseless drove them here. Say, their township was overran by monstrosities, though most of them had escaped."

"I... I don't want to stay here anymore..."

"Crossed the border into this land," he continued, the filly's pleas failing to reach him as he combed the cadavers. "Few encounters along the way, though nothing worthy of note. Disease killed some of them, though the plague merely took out those already weak and famished. It would not explain why the soldiers perished as well. Gryphons sought for pride in the military, so it should be obvious that they were well fed, well trained. The gryphon infantry have been known to survive through the harshest famines throughout the wars of history, so why now?"

"Can we leave?" the filly begged. "Please?"

"No... no... they didn't lose their lives. They merely lost their will. They had begun adhering to the scriptures of inevitability, not probability. They succumbed to those prayers and they made it quick. Tiercels, hens, eyas, all in unanimous resignation. They breathed too long in this foul air, exposed too long to this fetid sun. And so, they decided to expire, altogether."

"Please... I... I need to..."

"This was not a mass grave." he grimaced. "This was a site of mass suicide."

All semblance of thought was quickly interrupted by a loud splash.

The magician whirled back at the sound. For a moment, he believed it to be of varmint origin; the hour of the hunter should be at its peak, so it wouldn't surprise him that the critters nigh the nadir of the natural order would skitter into the depths of the earth. He gazed beyond the carneous plain, searching for the more misshapen of the shadows on the walls, only to realize that his own shadow was solitary.

"Filly, there shan't be drollery of any sort when you are with me. Come out. Now."

His call was not answered.

"Filly? Are you there?"

The silence shrieked in response.

Quickly, he sauntered back, lunging over crushed talons and molten marrows. He found her collapsed, panting with breath feverish and faint, and curled up among the prone bodies beneath her within the vast morass of viscera, her forehead glistening in cold sweat. He knelt down to reach for her form, stricken with violent tremors, though it was only when his hooves traveled down her barrel to carry her and traced with terrifying accuracy the distinct lines of her scapula and ribcage bulging underneath her skin that he was left with no choice but to scowl.

"What have you done to yourself?" he murmured.

Hastily but carefully, he heaved her onto his back, before slowly cantering into the forgotten basilica. The iron door groaned from his arcane thrust, the bodies littering the compound spilling into the cracks as he climbed inside. Dust fluttered across the stone tiles, his hooves leaving griffin-red marks of dissidence as he strode down the nave. He carefully set her down before the steps of the shattered altar, before reaching into his saddlebags and pulling out what was his luckiest haul: a mix of redcurrants and bilberries, fresh from the branch he had plucked them from.

"Th'murgan..."

"Hush now. Eat," he said, placing a berry at her dry lips, parting in welcome. "The wanderer must always have a meal for this day, the next day and the day after that, at every given time, lest their fortune runs cold."

He then took out and uncapped one of his many leather waterskins, filled with the rare treasure of pure freshwater, pristine and crystal clear as the spring he drew it from. Almost immediately, the filly's lips latched onto it, gulping and gulping until it was almost empty, before opening once more to usher in his collection of baccate delicacies.

"Filly, how long have you starved?"

"F-Five days..."

"Mm, severely dehydrated as well. Fortune favors you that I have fruitier edibles to spare aside from the common bundles of hay, which at this point would only serve to prolong your thirst. I would ask why you set off on this journey with nary a resource on you, as I would ask why you did not accept the loaf I offered upon our chance encounter by the lakeside, though I suppose you would need a little time to rest and retrospect."

"I'm... I'm sorry..."

"Spare your apologies, for they are wasted on me. Save your breath, speak less, if not at all."

"Brax'cem mer... Th'murgan... brax'cem... pl'arei."

His frown wrenched up, both at her demand and her tongue, only to fade with his sigh.

"Just this once."

And so, the magician held the filly close despite his sullied hooves, intending to heed at least her one request, being a little lenient than his usual disposition would allow. Slowly but surely, she convalesced, her breathing regaining its balance. Her whimpers softened, her tremors tempered, until she slumbered like he imagined any healthy filly would in the comfort of their home. With a brusque sigh, he forced his eyes shut and listened to the whispering winds seeping through the cracking rafters, their soft palavers caressing those already fossilized in his mind, until he too found his semblance of slumber, relinquishing the last of his doubts as he cast himself into the ocean of his dreams.

---

"Th'murgan."

"Thaumaturge."

A shadow.

"Dost thou don that crest with pride?"

"Never. Not once."

A different shadow.

"Why?"

"I don't deserve it. I never did."

This shadow was tempered by time. This shadow rose as all the other shadows do. This shadow was pervading and prevailing to the common mind throughout its life. However, this shadow, amongst its kind, was the keenest of them all. And it's keenness was macabre, searching and extracting from within him the tapeworms of sentiments before they take root in his head and reap him of reason. This shadow eventually was the shadow that realized, before all the other shadows, a sentiment he was secretly nurturing; the one parasite he was graciously willing to feed.

"Your mother spoke to me."

Pride always spoke loudly and clearly, so it would seem.

"What did she confide in you?"

"Your nightly excursions. They seem to worry her deeply."

"They always do. Tell her I mean no harm, nor do I intend to seek it out."

"One couldn't help but notice that said excursions seemingly coincide with the nocturnal promenades of another."

A shadow.

A different shadow.

"T'is merely fate that entwines our threads as such."

"One does not recall fate ever having a rhythm."

"The rhythm is irregular, yet a mere rhythm all the same."

"Yet we can both concur this rhythm is of the conventional sort, correct?"

"A gentle one, I would reckon. Much like those promenades you speak of."

"Or an excursion, perhaps."

"Yes, that. Now, if you will excuse me."

He spoke no further, for he knew that if he spoke, the shadow would transude his larynx and espy the slight reverberations he was desperately suppressing. Vulnerable was his form before the darkness staring into him, despite knowing that no ill will shall befall upon him, for the shadows always worked for the better in mysterious ways. The common response to xenophobia came to mind, though to demean the shadows to the standards of the proletariat would be heresy, not that they minded. Certainly enough, the shadow before him smiled and nodded in dismissal, though not before slipping to him a little memento.

"Take care of her. Please."

---

The magician's eyes flew open.

Darkness greeted him, as did silence.

"Filly?"

She rested still. Stirred by his call, certainly, though her return to slumber was quick. Her snores were effeminately light, much like a feline's, though for it to be the only sound resonating the transepts and back perturbs him. She still clung tightly onto him, much to his annoyance, though such a matter was trivial. Rather, his concerns were raised by something else.

If the filly was asleep, then what caused the loud crack that roused him?

Hastily, he relit his lantern with an accursed mutter, basking them both in an oblong light. His gaze remained wary at its edges, waiting for a pair of eyes or a set of fangs to glint back at him. Slowly, his eyes darted between the pillars and their shifting shadows, before drifting to the crumbling balconies of the upper aisles. His shadow danced erratically beneath him as he raised his lantern higher, seeping into the cracks of the floors. The air thickened, the specks of dust waltzed their array of taunts, until his voice finally found his way back to him.

"Who's there?"

The silence remained frigid and firm. With a wrinkle of his snout, the magician settled back down and reached into his saddlebags, pulling out a coruscant pearl of red from a satchel. He gently tossed it from hoof to hoof, even as his eyes scoured the derelict walls once more, before finally, with a powerful swing, he hurled the pearl straight into the air, thought not before providing it a gentle whisper.

"Seek those bound by the rhythm of flesh and blood."

Amid its fall, the pearl suddenly held itself aloft, radiating brighter than ever until, with a near-silent boom, it emitted a rippling sphere of incarnadine energy from its core across the cathedral with a low hum that managed to prod at the sleeping filly's senses. The light struck through the walls, impaling the darkness that lingered within. Quickly, his eyes soared throughout the room, before fixating onto a singular, visible pulse hiding in the corners of the upper floor. As the pearl began to crackle and dim, he quickly raised his lantern once more, never letting those fading pulsations of light out of his sight.

"I know you're there!" he called out. "Come out now!"

With a defeated sigh, the figure stepped onto the balcony and into his view, adorned with an effervescent scowl. He reciprocated in turn, his brows furrowing both in scrutiny and revulsion. Rising to his hooves, he trotted forward, hiding the filly behind him from the figure's view. As his horn began to kindle, however, the figure unsheathed a twin pair of curved daggers, its serrated edges glistening in a venomous violet. The filly herself, of course, remained oblivious to these sudden tidings, even as the voice of her temporary ward resounded across the halls.

"Pray tell, what does a gryphoness seek for in these very depths?"