Chapter 11: The Pillar of Abaddon
The waters of Eternity’s Crossing, the great sea south of Equestria, were warm this time of year. Creatures of the sea, both fish and the deep-sea leviathans, hunted in its depths for food and mates. The entire stretch was vast and broad. Despite pony settlements like Canterbury, New Saddle, Hoofington, and St. Petershoof so close to Eternity’s Crossing and the Equestrian bay of Bridle Shores, and the faraway countries of Zebrica, Camelu, and Cervidas across the great expanse, neither side had come anywhere close to exploring the deeper sea depths.
Charting Eternity’s Crossing was never going to happen, partly due to infeasibility, partly due to superstition. The churning waters were difficult to navigate due to frequent storms and building submersibles capable of navigating the dark waters and resisting the great pressures were not yet available to even the wealthiest individuals. Whether pony, zebra, or cervidae, no one would set foot near the sea. Being creatures of the land, none wished to explore what they were so obviously unfamiliar with.
But as long-told and equally long retold stories proclaimed, an ancient and powerful race dwelled in the deepest reaches of Eternity’s Crossing. Since recorded memory, ever since the very founding of Equestria, legend stated that all creatures came from a grand and wise race, a species of sea-dwellers that once ruled the world from the confines of their ancestral home of Marelantis. As the legend stated, they spread their influence across the globe with the help of their great stores of knowledge and mastery of magic, populating the lands with quadrupeds.
However, the greed and hubris of their race was great. Under the weight of their own pride and misuse of their own magic, they sunk their proud city. Deprived of their homeland, the refugees had gone native. Over time, over the stretch of thousands of years, facts became myth, and myths became legends. Some say that Marelantis still lives and its citizens are cursed to never leave the seas. Some say their eternal rage at their fate was the source of the perpetually dangerous waters and powerful winds. But legends are just that: legends.
Speaking of winds, a great gust began to develop in the expanse of Eternity’s Crossing. Hurricanes were uncommon, but thunderstorms were not, and it was an easy feat for the weather teams on both sides of the seas to have a potential devastating storm on their hands with no means of controlling it. The wind, fed by the moisture and warm air, was not destined for such a fate. Compelled by a particularly strong pressure front from the south, the wind burst northward with vigor.
The wind’s trek was swift; the sea surface provided a steady trek for its first land-based destination. Hoofington was the largest city and contained the most people over a vast, urban sprawl. The city was one of the port towns, even though it was a fair ninety miles upriver
It gusted through the concrete jungle, ruffling overhangs and the whatever dresses the mares might be wearing. A few stallions bent low in hopes to sneak a peek under the hems, but the wind was not yet strong enough for such a task. The married stallions soon regretted the lecherous impulse when their wives discovered the direction of their wandering eyes.
Onward it moved, bringing with it the scents of sand, surf, and brine. Some ponies stopped in their tracks to absorb the scents carried on the air currents. They sighed in contentment, silently wishing to return to beaches visited in the past, be it on dates, family gatherings, or trips taken as fillies and colts long ago. Ponies were a docile and peaceful race; something as simple as remembering more pleasant times was a joy to hold and treasure.
The wind wind left Hoofington, but was becoming sluggish after its long journey. After hundreds of miles, after numerous natural and pony-made obstacles overcome and traversed, the wind was struggling to continue. The wind was granted only so much strength due to the warm ocean waters. Navigating urban sprawls, the great pillars of iron, wood and steel, had drained the wind, but all was not lost.
Flowing northwest, the wind filtered through a great valley. It could feel could feel strength up the mountains. Water. Pressure. Strength.
It was coming. Warmed by the sun and fed by the clouds holed up high in the mountains, the wind could continue. Down the mountain, the energy came. Once more, the wind had the energy to continue.
The scent of salt had long left the wind and replaced it with the scents of water and earth. The wind now coasted with the speed of a swift gust. It flew across scant villages and hamlets in the wide valley south of the nation’s capital, picking up the scents of sap and fresh pine. Just as the busy city ponies of Hoofington enjoyed the brief smells of ocean, the stout and hearty earth pony farmers took a moment to partake in the scents the wind brought them before toiling away in their fields. While it was close to dusk, a farmer’s work was never done.
The wind exited the valleys and entered the oblate plains of Equestria. The flat lands gave it plenty of room to maneuver and few objects to fight, but it came with the price of having no sources of energy to replenish its fading stores. The wind gusted past small towns and provinces, but was rapidly consuming its strength. Its dash became a stride, than a pace. The wind was quickly losing power, and there was nothing it could do to remedy its dilemma.
As the last vestiges of hope were dying, the wind felt even more power than before. Not just scattered collections of moisture and pressure, but clouds deviantly rich in both. Heat, light, wind, a never-ending buffet of energy for the wind to feast on. The wind coursed through an equine town, its streets full of citizens and soldiers alike. Its destination was the western mountains.
Through the forest, it raced. Compelled by pressures to rise, the wind rose up the Drakenridge Mountains and up to the peak of Dragonmount itself. There, the storm was at its richest. Everything the wind needed, it was provided. ‘Twas a worthy storm, indeed.
The wind was fed on a diet of warm air, currents rich in heat and moisture. If the currents would be so kind, it could join the storm clouds themselves and partake in the thunderstorm howling above the skies. The skies were black with the scale of the thunderheads and volume of moisture held in those clouds. The effect was only emphasized by the crimson of the dying sun and the silver of the waking moon.
The wind had progressed a great distance and overcome many obstacles, but nothing could help the wind as it was abruptly torn asunder.
A titanic shockwave burst forth from a large cave littered with small gems and bits of valuable metals. Inside the cave, which was now highlighted in an eerie violet haze, stood a large, black doorway containing a steady, violet energy. Just like its brethren only a few days prior, the gateway’s peaceful, violet currents abruptly morphed into violent, red zephyrs.
If anypony were anywhere even close to the immediate vicinity, they would know swiftly and brutally how different it truly was. There would be no timid mute or creature of darkness exiting this time. It was something far, far worse.
A deep rumble echoed from within the portal’s confines of blood-red energy. The portal, while still filling the entire cavern, was not as large as the one currently being disassembled over Ponyville’s skies, but it was still a respectable forty meters by fifty meters in size. Unlike before, the extra space was needed.
Heralded by the sound of rattling chains, a clawed talon burst from the portal’s confines. Its exact likeness could not be defined, as the entire limb was shrouded in pitch black mist and copious amounts of viscous and equally black liquid. The horror struggling to enter Equestria growled once more, a deep and venomous cry that shook the cavern to its foundations. Stone cracked under the weight of its limb. It needed more. More power, more energy. It still needed to come through.
The portal itself began to hiss and oscillate with excess energy. The very obsidian border itself cracked and jettisoned a foul, black fog. Slowly, ever so slowly, the creature inched its way through the portal and onto Equestrian soil. The creature was host to dozens of limbs, hundreds of separate connections and tendrils. There was so much to the beast it was impossible to describe in mere words. Every inch of the creature was moving in a chaotic harmony as bones shifted and muscles stretched and coiled. The patched of body that weren’t coated in slime or mist were covered in thick, slimy hide or iridescent scales that shone with every color of the rainbow. For every twitch the creature made, every shamble and shuffle it produced to extract itself from the portal, it incurred the sound of ringing iron.
Despite the beast’s oily hide, the black tar, and obfuscating mist, the beast’s entire body shone with a hot, white brilliance. Chains made of pure light encircled the monster and prevented it from struggling too rapidly, some of them nailed to its very flesh. Whenever one of its many tendrils or limbs pawed at the dirt and stone, whenever the black fog surrounding the monster ventured just a little too far from its host body, the chains tightened under the strain. The monster and the fog thrashed out of irritation, but the holy chains did not budge in the slightest. It thrashed once more, but they still held fast. No matter how hard or how fast the fog or the beast shifted, the shackles of light still held dominion over them both.
The beast was nearly through the Nether Portal. Foul, oily secretions spilled onto the floor in volumes along with even more of the black ooze. The beast planted its limbs into the stone, tendrils, tentacles, and claws, and heaved. The stone cracked and splintered under the beast’s vast girth. Despite several tons worth of pressure and the leverage granted to it, the monster could still only inch its way through the Nether Gate.
The Gate itself was oscillating thousands of times per minute. The pressure and strain was becoming too much to bear, cracking at chipping at the obsidian holding the entire structure together. It would not last much longer under the extremes being put on it.
With one final exertion and a monstrous bellow, the leviathan’s massive bulk exited the crimson expanse and the Portal shut down with a flash. What the monster’s clawed limbs did not slash, its bulk crushed under its obscene weight. The cave was once a brief respite for a dragon and the behemoth was easily as large. It shifted its exoskeletal hide, observing the cavern around it. Slowly, it headed for the cave’s exit.
The eldritch creature secreted vast amount of the toxic, black ooze, making the compacted mountain stone hiss and dissolve under its influence. The beast emitted another great cry of challenge and black, bottomless rage. Some power, some long-dead knowledge, detached from the creature and sought refuge in the ooze.
The beast did not seem to care about what it had just done. The sludge, compelled by powers unknown under the stars of Equestria’s sky, twitched. In a sudden and great burst of speed, the sludge launched at the largest mass of death ooze. The process emitted loud slurping and squishing noises, none of which the monster paid any heed. The beast ignored the process unfolding in front of it and proceeded to lurch out of the cave, its bindings ratling with every movement. Stalactites scratched its hide, which the beast obliterated with one of its many limbs out of irritation. Stone and gemstones were crushed under the monsters massive bulk. Nothing could stand in the beast’s path and survive.
Behind the monster, pieces of the sludge had hardened. A pair of eyes emerged from the sludge. Then another. And another. Fragments and skin and bone were rising out of the muck. Sludge collected and hardened to calcium, calcium to bone, bones to limbs. A creature had come into being in only just a few, scant seconds. The leviathan, pleased with the result of its work, gave another growl. This one was much darker and lower; it was satisfied with how events were unfolding. Everything was going according to plan...
Upon arriving at the exit, the beast was surrounded by black storm clouds and the cacophonous thunderstorm currently ongoing. The beast gazed over the harmonious Equestrian lands. Once again, it reared up and roared a challenge to the ponies below. Every ounce of its rage, pain, and thirst for vengeance poured into its cry. It reverberated down the mountainside and above the noise-consuming storm around it. Every iota of injustice, every fragment and shred of torment and pain molded its cry into something more than a challenge. A promise. On the mountaintop, more than just an event occurred. It was a reckoning.
A three-headed creature lurched from the muck gathered in the now shattered remains of the portal. It rose from the filth, black tar dripping off its skeletal, rotten form. It fell at first, but rose once more from the ooze. It steadily levitated in the air and held its position behind the leviathan, waiting.
Oh yes, there would be a reckoning, but first, there was work to be done...
Minecraft/MLP:FIM crossover.
Chapter Commentary: LINK
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For those curious, I use hlissner's Equestria map.
Edited by: Material Defender, Cor Thunder, Wolfmaster1337, Deathscar