//------------------------------// // The cauldron. // Story: Exploration turns out to be much longer than expected. // by Totito30 //------------------------------// J´zar slept very little again. This time, as he closed his eyes and hid those golden orbs from the world, another view appeared. “Where am I?” he wondered, unused to dreaming. He was standing in a tall tower made of stone, looking through a window to the ground below him. A group of people were crawling in the mud-covered field the tower watched upon, but one called his attention in special way, and once J´zar looked at that person, he could no longer move his eyes. It was the twenty years-old J´zar, in his time as an Aspirant back in the year 531. J´zar didn’t remember that training exercise, but there were many things he didn’t remembered of those times. He seemed to be crawling with the others in a field covered with mud. Then a cold, chilling voice spoke from behind him. He tried to face the speaker, but his entire body was motionless. "¿Why do you fight for them" the mocking voice said "if they do not appreciate your efforts? Why if they do not know a world’s fate?" The voice started to laugh maniacally as J´zar fell through an ocean of darkness. "¡Hail, warrior of the foolish!" the voice screamed. A hand reached for J´zar’s shoulder, which promptly rose up from his sitting position and grabbed the creature’s neck, ready to shatter it like glass. He realized he was just holding Twilight Sparkle, who had tried to awaken him from the nightmare just as he was about to kill her. Letting go on his grip, J´zar kneeled, his mind filled with images of a man made out of what seemed to be pure darkness sitting upon an obsidian throne in a badly illuminated room. The man smiled. "Give it to me" the creature said "¡GIVE IT TO ME!" J´zar came back to reality immediately. He was able to think clearly again. ¿What had he seen and why? ¿What was going on? Only questions filled his newly-recovered conscience. "¿J´zar? ¿ Are you okay?" Twilight asked, still gripping her own throat because of J´zar’s reaction. "Yes" J´zar said, trying to stay on his feet despite the knee-shaking "I think" "¿What was that?" Applejack asked "Ya were shakin’ like a leaf in a windy day, mumbling things we didn’t understand" "I do not know. It must have been some sort of vision" J´zar said with his mind uneasy "¿What time is it?" "It’s morning. We have already eaten" Rainbow Dash answered "I thought you would never wake up" "I thought the same several times during my life" J´zar joked "If we have nothing left to do here, let’s go" The second day of travel was very much like the first, except this time, instead of going up and down through hills, they just had to relax and walk in the plains, always heading towards the mountains. J´zar knew that Ix would have preferred that location above all others because Ix had been born in Switzerland, and those cold mountains surely remembered him of his motherland. -Jazzy! –Pinkie Pie screamed from behind him. -Hmmm? –growled J´zar, annoyed by the massive amount of pseudonyms he was attaining. -And, –she giggled while looking at Rarity, who walked besides her. J´zar rose an eyebrow wondering what where they talking about- ¿is there anyone special at your realm? -¿What do you mean? –asked the warrior in confusion. "You know, a very special somepony –she chuckled again. "Erm…No" J´zar answered trying to decipher the expression. "¿Really? ¿But don’t you wish you had one?" Pinkie asked again. "Well, no" J´zar reasoned "I think of love as an excuse for being foolhardy" "¿But don’t ya wanna have foals?" inquired Applejack, as if the idea made her shiver. "¿Children?" J´zar mocked "They would only get in the way of my military career" Applejack kept watching J´zar with an accusing look for the entire day. Finally, the day ended as they reached the first rocks of the mountains. Behind them there were the long and open steppes, and in front of them a pass which extended for barely twenty yards between the two mountains, with thick bushes at both sides. J´zar was wary of it being an ambush, so he kept a hand on the hilt of one sword all the time it took for them to get to the other side. The cauldron was a barren wasteland of rock and gravel which stretched for miles. Treading it was almost a torture. The mares had their hooves to protect them from the sharp rocks on the grounds, but J´zar had only leather boots with sabatons and his feet were bleeding after barely half an hour of walking. But J´zar didn’t cared. He had felt pain so much in his fifteen centuries of existence, tasting it was now like wearing an old glove. They came upon lonely trees that were dead even before J´zar had been born, the empty branches remembering them of clawed fingers trying to reach the skies, sprouting from bone-white trunks acting like cold hands. "Makes me think of the last sentence from a poem I read once" J´zar said. "¿And what was it like?" asked Twilight. J´zar cleared his throat and recited: "And from the shadows that fly ghostly behind the bust of Pallas, my soul shall rise…Nevermore." The air itself seemed to tremble when J´zar’s deep and cavernous voice pronounced the last word. A lonely crow left the branches of the tree, fluttering its black wings through the ashy sky. With almost surgical precision, a single arrow stabbed itself into J´zar’s right shoulder. Reeling backwards from the force of the impact, J´zar reached into his shoulder and grabbed the arrow. The right pauldron of the armor had stopped the arrow from piercing J´zar’s flesh, but the arrow was stuck between the armpit and the breastplate of the armor. J´zar ripped it off raising his arm and looked at it. The tip was serrated and jagged, designed to rip off large chunks of flesh when pulled out. The rest of the arrow was made out of ebony and the fins to stabilize it across its flight path were crow feathers. "¡Take cover!"J´zar yelled as he unsheathed his swords. The mares ran to a natural trench nearby and waited, popping only the tip of their heads to watch over the rocks. "¡I said cover, not peeping holes!" J´zar reaffirmed, pulling down the heads of the mares with his hands to cover them completely. He then turned around and scrutinized the mountainside, trying to find the shooter. He was not concerned about getting hit. Full plate armor could stop anything smaller than a Magnum round. A few more arrows fell around the area, but they all missed or hit the rocks, not harming the ponies. J´zar finally located the archer. It seemed to be hiding in a small pile of rocks a hundred yards away from them. "¡Rainbow Dash!" the warrior screamed. "¿Yes?" an excited voice answered from the trench. A pair of violet eyes popped out of the rocks and quickly retracted before an arrow hitted the stone right where they had been seconds ago. "¡I need you to distract him while I approach by the flank!" J´zar yelled. Another arrow fell from the clouds, this time striking J´zar in the middle of the forehead. Luckily, the iron mask stopped the projectile. "¡Done!" accepted the mare, taking off the ground with a few swipes of her wings. The archer fired at her as soon as she left cover, but the pegasus was too fast for him, and the arrow missed. Rainbow Dash traced a wide arch around the firing position, the arrows flying through the air and missing. J´zar started to run at full speed towards the rocky formation, dodging the occasional arrow. But the archer was too slow for both, and J´zar reached his position. With fury, he stabbed one of his swords into the enemy’s chest. Looking closer into the body, he realized the archer was a Banished, but that was impossible. No Banished was capable of learning how to operate a bow with so effectively. Not with the feral mind they possessed. "J´zar…" Rainbow Dash mumbled "…look" In front of them, built in the face of the mountain, a massive castle rested. Rainbow Dash had never seen such a majestic building before. The ancient castle was so big, the spires of Canterlot paled, and the skyscrapers of Manehattan seemed obscene and hollow. "The Wolf" observed the warrior "It has followed Ix from the Maw" "You certainly like referencing feral beasts, ¿don’t you?" asked Rainbow Dash. "You do enjoy making loops in the air, ¿don’t you?" J´zar answered. "Yes" the pagasus didn't seem to understand the mock. "It was a rhetoric question!" J´zar said with playful annoyance. The party reached the castle within the next few hours, and camped a few hundreds of meters away from it. J´zar made sure not to sleep, fearing having to meet the black creature again.