//------------------------------//
// CONDEMNANT·QVOD·NON·INTELLEGVNT 
// Story: IN·ICTV·OCVLI 
// by Woodrow Wilson 
//------------------------------//

What was of immediate notice, to me, was how these folk held themselves. 

They seemed to stand with some great confidence and some sense of superiority to even their most equal, which I saw by Avians in exact armour and exact medallion as the other giving them low but angry-sounding tones. 

I also deduced that their squawking was not their language, that was their calling. It appeared that they spoke in similar tongues as we did long ago, similar to what we would now call 'English', or something of that temperament. It was, by no means, similar to whatever language I spoke. I was never given a name for my own tongue, so I considered making one when I realised these peoples must also have a name for theirs.

Their language, also, had some similarities to known, living languages, which I was taught to me long ago in the ways of inferior Linguistics. It was not long before I learned the names of the Benefactors of my Captors. Perhaps their titles, as well, it seems some of them have similar parts of their names. 

Though, while I spent my time sitting in my rather unfurnished cell, I felt somewhat dehumanised. Compared to modern standards, whatever may this prison be was rudimentary and rather confining. It was clearly not of Man's construction, being in no more similarity to a crate in which you put animals. But even the vilest beasts had more comforts than I.

It beheld nothing but a slab of stone with some drying plant matter laid across it; Some crude form of a bed, I think. And beside that was a small pot and some washing basin that constantly flowed with water. The cell was crudely maintained, the stone brick surrounding me and the earth beneath me shown me how little they do care for prisoners. This was, by no means, the worst cell, but I am glad to not have been passed behind what solid-grey door which sits at the far end of the Cell Block.

I was brought here in my unconsciousness, I knew, as I had set up from my 'bed' and first read my room.

They seemed to try and speak to me, and one seemed to be angry at me---perhaps he was the one who I shot at to let escape before my imprisonment? Whatever. They all were birds to me.

Sometimes they brought me food, while one or two birds with white long-coats followed and wrote down. I thought I saw them use paper, and their written language was some kind of rune or hieroglyph, which I found difficult to discern whichever it may be. I could not figure at all who these were, but I can only think with how they stalked every muscle-twitch I made in my luncheon and supper. 

Oh, and of course. I saw how time passed, I counted the meals twice a day and watched the guards change for shifts. It appears I have been here at least a week, but I could not recall the difference between my collection and my awakening. 

I attempted escape exactly once in this period when they shifted their roles and fed me supper. I recall exactly that they had swords and daggers, and they possessed gauntlets lesser than the one I wore upon my left hand. I could feel pity in them, their sad lives in such repetition in a world so primitive. They looked used to it and grown to it, with which I could not argue our differences. If I could understand and discern their culture, may I have been able to compare their level of intelligence to mine own. 

I knew they tried to break into my gauntlet, as well. Though, they failed twice. Twice? I know, I was awake in one instance. 

All they managed was to remove my ammunition for my rifle, but they never got my food fabricator nor my pistol. I would not use my pistol, because even as I had murdered their kind, they kept me alive and I had only to accept such hospitality in the face of such evil. I wish he had not so attacked me, trying to get me when I put him down and wished he concede. Regardless, what was done is done, and in memory, he lives eternally.

They had only just fed me supper for my fifth day awake, and I had returned to the slab of stone and grass which was my bed. I lay and pondered here, as the guards stood formidably beyond my pet cage with their back to me. I thought about when I had seen myself, and in it, I wished I had not seen me, yet I couldn't halt myself to wonder heinous things, such as: Why am I not a Man? Why has Reality so punished me? What in all of the Empyrean Heaven has created me?

I was a beast, and I myself an alien mind in an alien body with thoughts of mine that was wondered in a cage of flesh beyond comprehension. I stopped thinking and swore to it I would never think about them again, but the thoughts even haunted me to my dreams. 

In the night, I dreamt. 

In this dream, I felt cold, a surreal cosmic realm in which I flown through and created and destroyed with a sheer will. I felt cruel, as machines and creatures alike were built up and run-down again and again for infinity, as was the time in my head relative to Reality ten-fold. 

In this dream, I crossed a being that I could not control, one I could not create nor destroy nor influence in my realm of death and rebirth, and in a cosmos of my purest creation, I sat with this alien, which I could not formulate with even the vaguest concepts in its anatomy. 

The appearance it dawned was not one of any threat, but one of Regal stature. It stood with a posture that said it was learnt and with an aura of intellect that was not possessed by even the most sincerely dedicated of those in my living history, for as far as that went. 

It was not tall, but it made up for it in the prompt seriousness stuck on a sombre face. A face equine-Esque, a muzzle upon a skull that was attached on a frail frame, laden with an attire akin to Lords and Ladies. It wore Pearls and gold and silver like those in the planetary governments and it held a tongue much like those diplomats and representatives shown on Holo-Screens and data slates across the galaxy.

It had a single white glove on its right hand, a dress of the midnight sky and a great length of hair that whispered in the winds and moulded into the constellations surrounding them and me. I remind you that such sights are magical, and they must be of creation beyond myself because such waving hair moved like it were upon gusts of breeze while we sat in my poor mimicry of the Empyrean Heaven.

It was beautiful, I will admit in incredulity. I understood, then, such a thing must be from a more ultra-cosmic realm. Nothing can permeate my dreams and remain untouched, it was impossible unless I believed it to be, which I did not. I believed I could destroy it, and feel the gratification of corrupting the purest in a realm that had no real consequence following it. 

With this regal thing, I floated in the vacuum, basking in the radiation of a quintillion-trillion stars, when it suddenly passed to me in thoughts that I recognised not of my own.

"Thy mind ist incredulously vast, and with it, We spy intellect most greater than our comprehension," an ancient voice yet so impeccably youthful, "Consider, they who imprison thee art weaker than thy left arm---dost ye hearken our word? Thou, midst thy captors, could most easily hath an freedom so greater than whenst thee arrove, yet... thee hadst yet runneth? Thou hav'st yet flew and eschewn justice to the heretic-pandering Griffons?"

I understood them clearly, yet they sounded unlike any I have heard in the universe. Their voice was even less distinguishable than their form, their words foreign yet home-like; Neutral-like, as of a young man or young woman. 

I was inclined to reply, in my utmost curiosity and in an urgency passed on with their tone of confusion.

"Only one has wronged me, and they spare my life for, what I must assume, is knowledge. These are Griffons, you say? As of the creatures long ago, in books as old as the stones of the universe themselves? Griffons, those half-bird half-cat things that were invented by the creators of democracy?" I looked at the creature, floating to the front, probing them mentally, analysing them as they analysed me, "Ah, I cannot read you. Why cannot I know the name of the thing I created in my own mind? Are you of my mind, or are they, those Griffons, probing my skull and you are their diplomat? Tell me, or I shall kill my self in this cosmic aether and we will not speak, and I will find for myself that of what you are,"

The thing did not respond for a moment, looking away from where I now hung. The stars about us were beautiful, in this dream.

Then without my consent, the very realm I controlled bent against my will as if I was no longer in a dream of mine, and we stood in a room in some distant land. 

It was walled and floored of stone, roofed in oak and furnished much like they are in Arthurian legends and archaic texts of olden Mankind. Great bed of silk and the invading Thing stood in a balcony beyond a window. Below which was a kingdom, basking in their life. They looked much like this creature; Of equestrian anatomy, on two legs alike in appearance to deer, with a colour to their flesh or fur that was unique to each one. Some possessed wings and some possessed features like horns on their skulls. Some wore attire that shows marks upon their thighs that were also as unique as every star in the night sky.

"We bringst thee to our Chateau, of which we rule a land beneath scrutinising eyen, not unlike thy captors and their pandering benefactors. We are the Mistress of The Night, with which we rulest all of every nycthemeron and control the stars and satellites within all of Heaven," she transformed slightly, unfolding six great wings, two of which were small and hid her face, and another pair were great and large and covered her form, and another pair covered her hooves, "Our little Ponies call us their Majesty, The Hallowed One, Luna, Empress of all the Great Republic,"

Then she splayed her wings out to her sides, taking up the entirety of vision beyond the balcony we stood upon, and I was hidden in darkness, not unlike that of all of the Empyrean. As if I fell upon the Event Horizon of the infinite Singularities, and with it, I disappeared into a peacefulness akin to dying.

"Our dearest, I beg. Come to us. Come, so that thou willst not suffer forevermore, and thy soul may rest within our arms. Be'st warm with us, like thee are now, and thee may bow to our infinite and Eternal Throne," and those wings lifted from me to reveal the Eternal Night, her laying me upon the earth to see up at the Galaxy, it's swathes of stars and stardust painting like abstract pictures and drawings created before the earliest time I could recall.

In all its beauty I forgot this was a dream, and returned my eyes upon her, training in to her own eyes as I stayed on the ground and her standing high above me in regal confidence.

"Awaken, my Child, o' ye kindest One. Come, show us thyself in the Awoken Realm, and I will show you Greatness unlike you ever known before," to which my eyes shut and opened again to reveal my dank cell. 

"Awaken! It is the day in which we rid you of misery, wicked Thing," the voice screeching, bringing me to see that it was one of these so-called Griffons who speaks to me. I banged on the bars with it's metal gauntlets, and I turned and sat up, awakening in full by the torchlight that emanated from the avian's claw.