//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 // Story: The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Sassaflash // by Dromicosuchus //------------------------------// Voormithadreth. The mountain had first become visible above the ice plateau shortly after noon on their third day of travel, and now, days later, it seemed to hang there, a black point pressed into the white horizon. Distant and small as it was, it still possessed a strangely compelling quality, drawing the eye to it from across the empty sky and the featureless ice. Everything converged on the mountain. “Don’t look at it, Mr. Mule,” warned the Dark Lord Sassaflash, emerging from her tent and squinting in the dazzling morning light. The Mule had woken some time earlier, and had already packed his tent into a neat roll. He blinked, looked down at the pots and pans he was currently scrubbing out with snow as if he had only just noticed them, and then turned to the pegasus. “I been trying not to, Miss Sassaflash. Only it’s looking at me, sort o’ like.” His gaze wandered back up to the horizon, and his eyes began to glaze over before he realized what he was doing and jerked his head away, shaking it to clear his mind. “And seeing as how we’re walking straight for it, it ain’t that easy not to look.” The old creature shot another furtive glance at the mountain, then pulled his attention back to the cooking utensils in front of him. “Nonetheless, try not to give it your attention.” The mare raised her head, staring off a little to the right of the dark point in the distance with her eyes unfocused. “Your observation is a perceptive one. It is looking at us--or rather, the being that dwells beneath it is. Tsathoggua is a slothful and indifferent Thing, but It is still one of the Great Old Ones, and It is watchful.” She turned, and began to disassemble her tent. “Fortunately for us, being seen is not the same thing as being noticed. We may not have drawn Its attention. Let us hope not, at any rate.” The Dark Lord lapsed into silence, brow wrinkled as she pulled a strap tight around her sleeping bag and hooked it on to her pack, and when she spoke next it was just to ask the Mule to pass her a pair of snow goggles. Not long afterwards they had finished packing up the campsite, and after a few last checks to make sure that nothing had been forgotten--and, although neither of the two would have admitted it to the other, to put off the long, arduous trek over the ice for as long as possible--they set out across the glacier. Time passed. Pale blue shadows twisted underhoof as the Sun rose higher in the sky. Wind whistled. Fragments of ice, fine as dust and sharp as glass, danced and whirled across the ice sheet, rising up in the air in great phantom clouds before subsiding again into eddying wavelets rippling across a dry ocean. Emptiness. The Mule raised a weary hoof, sank it in the mesh of ice and snow that made up the glacier’s surface, and pulled one of his hindhooves free. Step by step by step he plodded on, trying to ignore the dull, heavy ache that had settled into his back and bones. It had been years since he had last made a voyage like this, and it felt like every one of those years was pressing down on him now, burning in his legs and cutting at his lungs. He was a mule, and he was strong--but he was also, he had to admit, not nearly as young as he used to be. The swaying burden on his back began to slide, and the Mule hunched his shoulders, trying to nudge it back into place. Just keep going. He’d get to where he was after eventually, no doubt about that. He always did. Just keep going. Just keep going. The thought swelled in his mind, bloating and crowding out everything else in a rushing sweep of blackness. There seemed to be subtleties and complexities to it that needed to be unraveled, if he could only concentrate on them--but as soon as he tried to focus on one, it vanished like a will-o’-the-wisp, leaving him grasping at mist. It was somehow very important that he catch that thought, or pattern of thoughts, in the blackness and confusion… ...And suddenly he was falling, his legs buckling under the weight of the heap of tents, cookware, hay bricks, books, and other paraphernalia pressing down on his shoulders. He pushed forward with his forelegs, slipped again, and then slumped down, black spots wheeling through his vision, into the cold, hard firn of the glacier. He tried to draw his hooves back underneath his body, but for some reason he seemed to be having trouble moving them. It’d be fine. Just keep going. There was a sudden, gentle pressure under his forelimbs, and the exhausted animal felt himself being raised up out of the snow. Turning his aching head, he saw Sassaflash at his side, her shoulder pressed against his own as she strained to lift him upright. He struggled to his hooves. When she was certain that his quivering legs would be able to support him, the mare raised her head, bit down on a knot in one of the ropes dangling off the Mule’s pack, and gave it a sharp tug. The Mule felt his load lighten as several stacks of books slid off his back, sinking into the snow with a muted whud. Another tug, and several more packs tumbled off. The Dark Lord stepped back, snow crunching under her hooves, and looked at her minion. “Better?” The Mule wavered, but remained upright. “I--I reckon so. But miss, can you carry all them things? Your own pack’s already mighty heavy.” The pegasus squinted back at the fallen supplies through her snow goggles, her ears flattened back against her head. “No. No, I cannot. But you, quite clearly, cannot carry them either.” She sighed. “They will have to be left behind. Possibly we may be able to retrieve them on our return voyage.” “But your books! Ain’t some o’ them--” “Originals, yes. One or two are irreplaceable. Kindly do not rub it in.” She undid the straps of her own pack. “I was inattentive, and you need to recover. We will stop here for twenty minutes--longer, if necessary. Get some rest, drink some water, and eat some pemmican. I have sorting to do.” The Mule, too tired to argue, tilted his head. “Sorting?” “Yes. The wheat from the chaff. Or rather,” continued the Dark Lord, trudging over to the pile of supplies half-sunken into the snow, “the wheat from the moderately less essential wheat. I do not pack chaff. Amuse yourself as you will.” “I might could make some tea,” volunteered the old creature. A dubious look flickered across Sassaflash‘s face, as if she suspected that tea-brewing was too strenuous an activity to be risked, but she nodded. “That, Mr. Mule, would be acceptable.” The tea kettle and spirit lamp were, fortunately, not buried too deep in the pile of cloth rolls, satchels, and bundles that the Mule had been carting around, and before long steam was twisting upwards, glinting in a rainbow of colors as it froze in the frigid Hippoborean air. Sassaflash had spread out a blanket on the snow, and was ensconced in the middle of it, surrounded by books, herbs, instruments, and other items. One by one she took them up in her hooves, gazed at them, and one by one she laid them aside in one of two piles. Nearby, the Mule, still a little dizzy but recovering thanks to the rest and food, busied himself about the tea. After several minutes of silence, Sassaflash, who had just regretfully consigned an ancient, fire-damaged orihon to the discard pile, looked up and asked, “How are you feeling, Mr. Mule?” “I been better, but then I been worse.” Shrugging bony shoulders, her minion scooped a tin cup on to his hoof, and prepared to pour out some tea. “‘Tweren’t nothing but a little fainting spell. I allow as how I could start now, if’n you’re done sorting them things.” “Imprudent,” snapped the Dark Lord. “We leave when I am certain you are up to it, not before. I cannot have you collapsing en route to Voormith--to the mountain, let alone once we arrive.” “But miss,” protested the Mule, “I just pushed myself a mite too hard, is all.” He extended a hoof, holding the steaming cup out for Sassaflash. The pegasus crooked her hoof through the loop of the handle, frowning. “That would not have happened had I been paying proper attention.” A sharp, sour note crept into her voice. “It should not have happened. You are my minion, and I cannot allow you to be damaged. I was remiss.” Tilting his head to one side, the shabby beast considering this for some moments. He shrugged. “That’s real decent of you, Miss Sassaflash, but I ain’t sure that most ponies’d say you was to blame.” “‘Most ponies.’ Hm!” The Dark Lord took an angry gulp of scalding tea. The ensuing coughing fit effectively stifled all further conversation, and by the time Sassaflash‘s esophagus and trachea had finally worked out their differences and determined who was going to perform what physiological function, the subject of the responsibility for the Mule’s collapse had drifted to the wayside. They set out again shortly afterwards, the Mule’s burden lighter than it had been and Sassaflash‘s, in some ways, heavier. Her employee noticed her casting one or two wistful glances back at the pile of precious books and other belongings sitting there on the glacier, sheltered under a spare tarpaulin in case they might be retrieved on the return trip. He decided that it would be best to say nothing. Step by step, yard by yard, and league by league they traveled, and step by step, yard by yard, and league by league Voormithadreth drew closer. As they approached the grim, slumping mountain, its flanks trailing long streamers of steam belched out from deep rifts in its rocky surface, other peaks began to emerge from the horizon around it, cutting into the sky like tiny black teeth erupting from blanched gums. They clustered around the central four peaks of Voormithadreth, a court of giants in attendance on their colossal king. “The Eiglophian range,” said Sassaflash, and the Mule nodded as though the word was not completely new to him. The two travelers made camp that evening in the lee of a craggy nunatak rearing up out of the glacial ice, its surface draped with snow and encrusted with lichens and weird pad-like growths. By mutual and silent agreement, they pitched their tents on the southern side of the outcropping, setting it between themselves and the distant mountain. There was still a faint, prickling sense of uneasy watchfulness to the place, but it felt somehow more diffuse and less focused than it had when they were trekking across the ice plain. Overhead, livid green aurorae swayed and broke upon one another, falling down out of the sky in cascading cliffs and waterfalls of light. The glow of the spirit lamp flickered off the ice, painting the crystals with liquid flashes of yellow and orange and casting long shafts of light and shadow out across the glacier. The Mule sat by the little fire, trying to slog his way through a dense and impenetrable monograph on the legends of Hippoborea that the Dark Lord had decided, after much hesitation, was safe enough for him to read. Sassaflash herself was sitting a little further away from the lamp on an unfolded blanket, her neck craned up in a sphinx-like pose as she muttered to herself with her eyes closed. At length the Mule, tired of trying to make sense of an old parable concerning Voormithadreth and seven geases (quite apart from anything else, he hadn’t the faintest clue what a geas was. A type of herb, he suspected. Or possibly some sort of waterfowl), closed his book with a firm whump and set it to one side. His employer’s ear twitched, and she half-opened one eye. At first the old creature thought she was just going to give him a squinty-eyed death glare and go back to whatever it was she was doing, but after a moment the pegasus’ shoulders slumped and she lapsed into silence, staring with forehooves crossed into the fidgeting flame. For a time, all was still. The Dark Lord and the Mule did not speak, or read, or eat, or do anything else; they simply existed, small shining points of life in a vast plain of dark, star-studded emptiness. Wind swept across the wastes, cold and dry as death, while the aurora contorted and convulsed in majestic slowness overhead, twisting across the skies in its mad, senseless dance. Sassaflash raised her head, and, staring up at the stars, murmured, “How do you bear it, Mr. Mule?” “Beg pardon?” “Loss. Pain. How do common ponies endure them?” “Same as you, I reckon; they just does.” The Mule shrugged. “When Missus Mule died, I was fair heartbroke, until I--that’s to say, I found her--” He paused, uncertain how to proceed. Then, weighing his words carefully, he finished, “I dreams about her of a night, and that helps. It’s kindly like she’s back with me. Almost, o’ course.” “But then you wake up.” “But then,” agreed the Mule, “I wakes up.” “Mm.” The pegasus mare looked back at the flame of the spirit lamp, writhing and guttering in the cold Hippoborean wind. “Dreams! Do you know, Mr. Mule, the purpose of the incantation I was reciting earlier? It was a dream-spell--or so Abd Al-Hisan claims, at least.” She gestured to an ancient, yellowed book lying open beside her, bound in a dark, pliant material of uncertain nature. “I have had little success replicating his results, and he himself states that the rite is useful primarily as a means of achieving the proper mental focus. It will not lead the dreamer to the Seventy Steps, or to the Two Gatekeepers.” “Seventy steps,” murmured the Mule. In a louder tone, he asked, “And what might be at the bottom o’ them steps, Miss Sassaflash?” Raising her gaze to meet his, the Dark Lord gave a peculiar smile. “The Dreamlands. An entire world unto itself, built of the shared dreams of tens of thousands of years’ worth of Dreamers, and accessible only to a scant few. In that realm strange things may happen, and stranger knowledge may be earned, to be carried back by the Dreamer to the waking world. I hope to enter it, although thus far,” she gave the ice in front of her a frustrated little kick with her forehoof, “I have met with little success.” “Is that so.” The Mule looked at Sassaflash expectantly, as though waiting for her to realize something or make some connection. Whatever he was looking for, though, he did not seem to see, for after some seconds he gave an enormous yawn, and rose to his hooves. “Well, speaking o’ dreams, I’d best get me some sleep. Goodnight, Miss Sassaflash.” “Goodnight, Mr. Mule.” ----- Slow days passed, and Voormithadreth drew ever nearer. With time, more details of the mountain and its surrounding retinue of smaller summits became visible. Four jagged peaks, snowless and black, stabbed skyward from the mountain’s crest, while below them rocky flanks dropped in long, jagged fits and starts, their slopes interrupted by sudden cliffs hundreds of yards tall or abrupt flattenings into sharp-edged obsidian plains. Here and there the rock was riven with great jagged fissures, venting clouds of billowing steam, and around these the mountainside was tinted a dusty green by stunted and misshapen half-trees. The Mule, squinting out over the dazzlingly white glacier, couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as though rather than sloping gently up Voormithadreth’s slopes, the glacier just stopped at its edge, with the mountain rising up from the midst of a perfectly flat plain of ice. It was as if it had abruptly come into being one day, an alien presence that had been rudely thrust into reality. Finally, the morning dawned when the Dark Lord, eyeing the mountain askance, declared that they would be there within a day. Turning to the Mule, who was currently packing up the remnants of their campsite, she said, “We should be able to strike camp at the mountain’s base this evening, and tomorrow we will scale the peak. If we are fortunate, we ought be able to find a suitable point of entry--the steam vents should aid us in that respect--and there we will make a secondary, smaller camp. From there I shall venture into the heart of the mountain, where I plan to--” “Hold on just a dadblamed second,” interrupted the Mule. Sassaflash gave him a Look. Her minion, unfazed, continued, “Begging your pardon, I’m sure, but did you say you was going to go on down inside that mountain? And it being a volcano and all?” “A volcano?” The pegasus raised an eyebrow. “When did I ever say that the greatest of the Eiglophians is a volcano? It was one once, yes, but it is long since extinct. Its fires have been dead for eons.” The Mule’s brow wrinkled. “You sure about that? It don’t look dead to me, what with all them steams and cloud smokes.” “Oh, the steam.” Sassaflash gave a dismissive flutter of her wings. “That is not volcanic in origin. It is warm only, not superheated, and should be quite safe to enter. Well, not safe,” she amended. “Nothing on that mountain is safe. But the steam is not dangerous in and of itself.” “But...where’s it all coming from, if that ain’t a volcano no more?” The Dark Lord considered his question for several seconds in silence. Rising to her hooves, she trotted around the campsite so that she was standing between the Mule and Voormithadreth. With a quick swipe of her hoof she doffed her hood, threw back her head, drew a deep breath--and exhaled. A cloud of steam swirled out of her throat, rising and twisting through the bone-dry air. For a few moments the Mule simply stared blankly at her, uncomprehending. Then his eyes widened. “You--you don’t mean--them smokes is all from…?” “It is not called a Great Old One for nothing, Mr. Mule. The Sleeper of N’kai is a vast and ponderous Thing, and strange fires burn in Its belly. The labyrinths riddling that rotten-cored mountain are thick and humid with Its heat.” Her minion digested this. Then, with firm decision, he said, “I don’t reckon I want to go in there.” The Dark Lord rolled her eyes. “How fortunate for you, then, that you will not be required to. You will remain at the secondary camp outside whatever suitable entrance point we find, and I will descend into the mountain’s heart myself, there to find the Beast and lay my trap. If successful and uneaten, I will then return to the surface, and we will prepare for our return to Equestria--and my conquest of the Sun and Moon. Yes, Mr. Mule, what is it?” Lowering his hoof, the Mule said, “I don’t reckon I want you to go in there, neither.” Her voice a dead monotone, Sassaflash responded, “Your concern is touching. Nonetheless, my task requires that I venture into that mountain and face down the Thing within. You will simply have to bear up under the uncertainty as best you can. Now come, Mr. Mule. Enough blather. We have a long day’s hike ahead of us, and momentous events for which to prepare.” ----- They made good progress that day--almost too good for the Mule’s liking. Every step towards Voormithadreth was a relief, and every step back a strain. To his alarm, the old creature soon realized that it wasn’t that moving towards the mountain was physically easier; it was a mental drive that pulled them onward, insistent and irresistible as the need to draw breath. They were being drawn in like moths to a flame, tumbling down towards the sharp-edged basalt peaks. As evening drew on, they began to encounter rougher patches of ice, scarred with dirty striations of rock and rubble or shattered by broad, snow-veiled crevasse fields. The apparent flat plain of ice around Voormithadreth was, it was now evident, not a plain but a bowl, with the ice of the surrounding sheet terminating in many wilting glaciers that pushed great moraines out into the lowlands surrounding the bare, lifeless flanks of the mountain itself. The ice, for whatever reason, could not survive too close to those rough black slopes. Their descent down the crumbling slopes of ice to the outwash plain was difficult and exhausting, but (aside from a few near-misses and slips) uneventful, and before long they were standing on the dry gravel of the lowlands, hooves planted on solid, snowless ground for the first time in nearly two weeks. Despite the Mule’s mild protestations, Sassaflash insisted that they continue their trek until they were on the slopes of Voormithadreth itself. “We are too exposed in this place, Mr. Mule; too easily seen. I would prefer for us to be in rougher terrain before we make camp.” Her minion gave a resigned shrug and plodded after her, his hooves clacking on the flaking stones underhoof. “They’s beastes and suchlike hereabouts, then?” Turning her head to look back at him, the Dark Lord gave an irritated twitch of her tail. “I really couldn’t say. There are any number of beasts that might live here; wendigos, the Sleeper’s shapeless offspring, perhaps a remnant population of Voormis...it would be better not to take any risks. So come. We have a ways to go yet.” “Alrighty, Miss Sassaflash.” It took nearly an hour of searching before they were able to find a campsite that met Sassaflash‘s exacting standards, but at last she declared herself satisfied with a sort of hollow space between three hulking boulders, half-sunken in the scree of the mountain’s low slope. There they pitched their tents, and after a brief dinner and the Dark Lord’s habitual cup of tea, they retired. The Mule remembered none of his dreams that night, but he woke up twice with tears in his eyes and a knot of fear in his throat. At around three hours before sunrise he heard a faint, ululating cry coming from outside his tent, and was afraid at first that they had been found by some monster of the ridges and slopes--but a moment later he realized that the sound was just Sassaflash, whimpering in her sleep. He pulled his sleeping bag tighter, and tried not to hear. Too soon, the Sun rose, and too soon the two travelers found themselves scrabbling up the slopes of Mount Voormithadreth, weaving their way up unstable slopes of fallen debris and inching along narrow ledges and through cracked trenches in the living rock. Their progress seemed impossibly slow, and yet, little by little, the outwash plain and glaciers behind began to fall away, sinking lower and lower beneath them. All the while the Dark Lord kept her eye fixed on a distant fumarole, pumping steam out from the mountain’s heart into the frigid air. They wound their way higher, skirting a cliff here or gingerly clearing a path of fallen rubble there, and finally, after nearly ten hours of hard climbing, they reached a point where, rather than sloping outward, the loose rocks sloped inward, falling down towards a dark pit beneath. Clouds of steam drifted out of the hole, carrying with them a horrible, sickly-sweet odor, acrid and organic. Deep beneath, Tsathoggua was waiting.