There is little to be said of the city of Hercoltian, littler still to draw the ire from Canterlot’s Department of the Uncanny, Cryptic, and Calamitous, and almost nothing to explain what Friendship Problem had sent Starlight halfway across Equestria. And yet here she is, head still ringing from the whirlwind of train travel, side uncomfortable from the veritable stack of papers straining to burst free from her saddle bag, and stomach somewhat queasy from what little she’s already heard.
Nopony knows exactly when the building appeared; there were no builders, visitors, foreign friends not yet made with which to judge the passage of time from ‘zero’ to ‘one’. It is as if the blasted thing sprouted from the chthonic earth from an era unseen, the entire mass a rich yet pitted marble with cracks reminiscent of the interlaced feathers of a Pegasus couple. It is not quite ugly, the uncertainty and roughness of it’s oldest, lowest parts quietly ascending in quality in tandem with height; even here and there, where Father Time was gentler with his sickle, one may yet make out the gentle contusions found in the beginnings of art and sculpture.
It is ancient, yes, but there is wealth there, and effort; a building that likely contains a quality addition to a frontier town.
Yet there is something in the aura of the building that radiates ‘unwelcoming’, not with the ferocity of a furious predator’s den, but with quiet oppressiveness; a ruined graveyard yet unwilling to part with sanctified purpose. It is cold there, an impossibility under the blistering heat of an island sun, and the bravest ponies who dare to press their ears against the walls all report the same thing, at least after the offending ear has been treated for frostbite.
The sound of sliding chains. The jostling of shuffled clothing. The low moan of something forsaken.
With the quiet, unofficial unanimity found only in the descendants of survivalists, Guard Ponies, and frontier folk, a wooden fence was erected around the accursed building, and the problem was very carefully ignored in favor of working with crops and nourishing an, at the time, admittedly emaciated settlement.
It was all going well, a sort unspoken truce between whatever dwelled within that building and the inhabitants of the yet unnamed village. Here and there, speckled throughout the history, fourteen incidents arose only because some foals choose to disregard the warnings of their elders.
Seven colts and seven fillies; none wounded, none killed, but something subtly wrong with each of them when they returned, days after a missing ponies search had been called off. It was their personalities; not quite ‘warped’ so much as ‘dramatically different’, only to gradually shift back to their default natures, as if a template or a role had been foisted upon them and they had little choice but to comply.
Unsettling, yes, but a small price to pay for the return of a family member, an unusually large harvest of olives, honey, and grapes, and an unpredictably pleasant summer. So for the first thirteen missing foals, each lost and found at some point over Hercoltian’s several hundred year long history, the phenomena was accepted with a shrug, a redoubling of warnings, and additional fortifications to the fence.
But this is the modern era, and missing foal reports are not, cannot be treated with the same blase acceptance that ran rampant through early settlements and dangerous times.
The report goes on, an undercurrent of poorly-concealed disdain running through the overly-inflated document even as the author/assembler grudgingly acknowledges the various checks, the verification that this is no Feral Changeling hive-in-the-making, that this modus operandi fits no other shape-shifter known to Equestrian history, etcetera, etcetera.
Starlight groans, throat scratchy from bouts of nervous giggling as she had read the report, and slumps against the crinkly pillow of her inn room, decidedly refusing to unpack the various baubles Twilight had probably enchanted; fretting could wait until tomorrow, after Starlight’s lagging brain caught up with her flagging body.
***
“Could you tell me a bit more about the most recent missing ponies case?” Starlight finally manages to say between the seemingly relentless gout of words streaming from her talkative guide, Long Winded.
“You talking about the Purse household?” the stallion says, the response fainter than normal given that he hadn’t paused to breathe in perhaps two minutes. “The Purses were one of the founding fam-” and after a good few minutes Starlight’s brain decided it has done enough listening, went fwip, and generally just ran on survival functions alone. It’s enough, at least, to follow the nearest source of noise as it, true to name, delivers perhaps the most exhaustive bit of exposition imaginable.
This ‘sleep-mode’ isn’t, however, aware enough to stop, and she quite literally bumps snout first into the Stallion, bringing her brain back online quickly enough to hear him belt out, “-and that’s how Purse Ur and her son, Purse Us, liberated enough of the island from monsters to settle! And here’s-”
The Purse household had a quiet sort of wealthiness, the type that tells from comfortable carpets from decades earlier and over three dozen types of museum quality armor lounging comfortably in dust-free corners of a spacious room, at least from what little can be spied from the already open door and its occupant.
Coin Purse, if Starlight’s foggy memory is to be trusted; the coin Cutie-Mark is certainly there, bold as brass. What isn’t there is a smile, however, and with a bark the pony asks, “May I help you, or are you here just to rubberneck at another’s misfortune?” The lilt in his voice raises just a touch higher at the beginning of that last word, as if unaccustomed to saying it.
“Why hello again Mr. Purse, and how are-” Long Winded begins, with the sort of jovial thick-headedness found in those who enjoy the sound of their own voice so much as to become lost in it. He makes for a decent bit of background noise, though both other parties are loath to admit it.
“Our official statement was that we wished to see no more of you ‘ghost-hunters’, ‘Monster Specialists’ or, ahem, ‘entrepreneurs’,” Coin Purse states, a casual bit of disdain coloring his emphasis enough to reveal his feelings on the matter. “If you’re here to tell me my family is on an ancient buffalo burial ground, you’re not just a fool but an actual pest; and, finally, if you’re going to say I or my daughter have problems with authority figures, I would ask you go to the nearest psychologist disposal point, the local furnace.” Then, spiel done, the door begins to swing closed, only for a hoof to stop it.
“I’m none of those things,” Starlight manages to say through the gap, an uncertain smile on her face, “So, surely it won’t be an issue if we, heh, talk or something?” The look she receives could wither flowers and set their corpses ablaze, but it abates after an uncertain nod and moment of contemplation.
“Who are you?” Coin Purse manages, as if still deciding to be frustrated at the foreign hoof now resting uncomfortably in his domicile, or somewhat thankful that this, at least, would likely be a different conversation than normal.
“Maybe we could continue this inside?” Starlight manages through grit teeth, the uncomfortable compression on her hoof already well into the realm of ‘a bit painful’.
***
All things end in blood and thunder; murder and the approval of some malign sky god, a fact that echoes back and forth through time like a pendulum. Perhaps the blood grows less thick and the thunder less potent, but such things are as immutably existent as the body in the middle of the room.
It is still. Unsurprising for something decapitated.
His Its head is on the wall, where it was mounted. By the body.
The rest of the room is meaningless, a void; here and there jut the corners of something, a mass and volume intended to obfuscate and waylay, but such things are consumed in the dark. A microcosm of the not-house, the greater whole just as maze-like; confusing, maddening, enough twists and turns to trap even a soul.
Yet the room is not the not-house, not of those walls and corners half-real and half-imagined; the rest is cold and drafty, the gentle lap of distant, foreign seas bouncing on walls made to confuse not merely sight, but also sound, touch, taste. No, no, the room is more than that, for it carries some half-lost scent, and the undertones of comfort that only a lair can; the effect is consumed by the decaying blood, of course, reaching in all directions like some aura of aged rot.
In this musty, fracedinous room, the body waits.
***
“So, your daughter-”
“-Is quite alright, yes, yes, just a mite more rambunctious than she was prior to this whole dreadful business,” Coin grunts, even as the precocious foal in question topples something audibly metallic the next room over and starts loudly bellowing about, well, gibberish; places that don’t exist and imaginary friends and foes with distinctly non-local names. It’s all almost applause-worthy, in a depressing kind of way.
“I see,” Starlight manages, carefully suffocating the urge to pivot in her chair and noticeably look over at where something clearly more exciting is occurring. Nothing can stop the shift of her traitorous gaze, however, but for a moment she has the audacity to think, perhaps, she got away with it. Then, with an almost icy glrch, something in Coin’s neck clearly spasmed, and, yup, it’s clear he saw.
“I’m going to go settle that little bit of... playfulness,” Coin mutters, the smile on his lips revealing far too many teeth to be genuine, even as he rises from his seated position, pivots with a mechanical precision found in loveless ballerinas, and marches into the next room over.
Over the sounds of the painful sounding struggle, Starlight can just make out the words ‘Zzuuz’, ‘A guy us’ and many, many other things, most of them dealing with stabbing things, blood, or otherwise rampant slaughter. A few minutes pass with an increasingly elaborate setting being belted out between the clatter of shattering pottery and the irrepressible violence of a thud thud thud, the stories contradictory in points and founded, ultimately, on divine depravity; descriptions continue, and, slowly, Starlight can feel her stomach grow unsettled.
Finally, merciful cessation. Coin rounds the doorway, hair bedraggled and patchy from where a filly may have yanked just a bit too hard. He slowly pulls up a chair, pushing it with a forced casualness until it is opposite of Starlight’s, and almost flops onto the cushion. Another few seconds pass, these of appraisal, as his glare flickers first to Starlight’s horn, then to her abundance of paperwork, and eventually her cutie-mark, all without quite looking at her face. Finally, as if having passed a test (or, rather, having failed not particularly horribly), Coin leans forward, and with a hiss mutters, “I want that place gone. I want its foundations to be slag. I want to dance in the marble-ashes and turn the entire location into a cesspit.” For a moment he pauses to take an exaggerated breath, only to conclude with a spit, ”It has haunted our city for long enough.”
A minute passes, breathlessly, before Coin clears his throat, leans back, and mutters, “You will, of course, be properly recompensed-”
With a shudder Starlight rises and leaves.
***
Two gifts, language and math; the Abstracts. Given freely to them, always, always, like the gods grant a predator teeth. From that nothing is something plucked.
Why. How.
They gave no such gifts to the body, not when it was whole. The brutish strength from a bestial father, elegance of form from a royal mother: the age of divine gifts had decayed into nothing, leaving nothing for the objects of their torment.
The lair writhes, boils of fury and decay fomenting in the skin of en-marbled darkness; the fury is internal, contained, and rotten from age, yet it is held; what would ________ be, but for it? To deny the story is to deny the self, to truly become nothing.
________ can hear them, always, always, trembling with clattering steps more fretful than the last.
He (NO! No, ‘it’ is safer, ‘it’ is unbound, incapable of death, for ‘it’ is unknown to life) liked the fretful little abortions, colorful and lively, almost as much as he it envied them. Blessed, again, to the last, unlike him it; he ithad scraped them, gently, their little brains so like the past, so very much like it indeed that he (there was no helping it, not now, not after the twisting skein of the Sisters compel him, yes, him, to be as much for now) filled the hollows with what he had snatched from millennia.
He stole the Abstracts piecemeal and cobbled them together like a pyramid of skulls. Such is his home.
The not-house agrees with this, always, always, for why wouldn’t it?
Another approaches. The hero. To steal what little has been gathered. Always, ALWAYS. No, no, no, nonononoNONONONO-
A shield is raised.
***
The building withstands. The echos permeate, wroth with forgotten thunder. A short distance away, horn smoking, Starlight stands, bemusement playing across her face.
Something kept the structure standing. Something within.
Impulsiveness and curiosity instigate a war within her mind, so quickly and effectively that she hardly considers the alternative before, too late by half, the door closes behind her.