Lost of thoughts

by CraftAids


feyenaileethar

He turned from one all-encompassing void of dark nothing and moved left, into another all encompassing black. His hooves clip-clopped against the hard rock. He didn’t mind the temperature or the humidity and he didn’t bother to remember it. He did, however, start walking more quietly. It seemed like a good idea. He bumped into walls in the dark, unable to see anything but never quite making a wrong step. His hoof ground against inclines he didn’t expect to be sliding down. He felt himself brush against stalagmites and stalactites. He found sharp edges where he had been prepared for sure footing and his leg twisted, giving out under him. Usually this lead to short drops, like missing a staircase step. Usually. He had to crawl back out of at least one gravely pit. Somehow, none were filled with spikes. While walking, he found himself dropping into water and he just swam through the cold liquid, to the other side. Sometimes, he just stopped and held totally still and let his lungs burn for a time before continuing on, unopposed.

He found an angular gem, glowing orange in the cave wall. As he passed, it grew brighter. He did not hesitate or look at it. He didn’t use its light to pick a path forward. He just wandered into a small hole in the wall, a foot off the floor, to the left, and kept moving. He was getting better at moving quietly.

He heard clicking and hissing. He stopped. Blue orbs darted across the ceiling in pairs. The creatures collided and jumped and moved past loudly and playfully. They did not concern him. He continued on.

There was a glimpse of shining, purple rock down a path to his right. He moved past that path and took a right into the darkness. He drug his side along the curve of the hallway wall. There was a faint, green glow in the hallway ahead of him. The green grew brighter as he continued on, until the narrow hall he was in came to an abrupt opening.

Green orbs, as large as he was, were stuck to the walls and floors and ceilings. They glowed, bright enough to make out the surfaces they were stuck to. Rock both jutting and curved filled the room, forming a cluttered space of rounded surfaces and pockets and small, etched pathways. Black creatures wandered amongst them, along walls or floors in the dark. Inside some of the sacs, colorful horses floated. Black creatures sat perfectly still next to some of the green sacs with the horses in them while their black, jagged horns glowed with green fire, further lighting their surroundings.

He walked between the sacs. He paid no mind to the floating, sleeping forms of the colored horses. He merely placed his hooves quietly, forming and following a trail across the chamber floor and into a hole in its wall. Inside, a small staircase brought him up to one of the ledges overlooking the sac chamber. He followed the ledge edge. It was cut from the rock and dirt of the wall and it followed the wall’s curve. He followed around its bend. The ledge was interrupted by a large rounded rock face, extending up to the ceiling of the chamber. He crawled up it. He continued until he reached the corner between the rock face and the ceiling, and then he continued through a square cut into the ceiling and into the black space beyond.

There were no blue eyes. There were no green flames. There was an occasional buzz and the shuffle of some wall clinging bug-legs. There was the filling and emptying of 242 lungs from every direction. He did not slow. His face brushed a warm, hard shell. He stepped on a leg. He walked over the top of one of them. He kept looking forward, single-mindedly focused on a goal he could not see, his goal. He extended a hoof and found a solid wooden surface.

Normally, sleep in the sleeping chamber was as uninterrupted as eating in the eating chamber. It was the way “normal” was supposed to be. Wake up, eat, fight boredom in some mildly productive manner, and sleep. The love storage was well stocked: the 7,000,007,040 sided – most creatures would say “circular,” but changelings knew better – love combs were mostly full. They could sense threats before they arrived. It had been peaceful for months.

A bright light shined through the door, then it slammed shut.

Freshly awoken, with stinging cave dwelling eyes, the changelings looked for the creature responsible for this unpleasant interruption to their rest. Green tongues rapidly flicked. Some horns lit, burning their eyes more. Wings buzzed. They found no fear. They found no rage. They found no cold bloodlust or joy or confusion. Visually, nothing was in the chamber with them that wasn’t a changeling. No changeling would admit to opening the door. The queen snapped. “Shut up! Nothing is in here, so nothing came in here!” Most of them looked back to the door.

Outside, inside, in the light shining through broken windows and missing bits of roof, he moved down brick halls, by doors and chairs and over carpets and up stairs. Molded, sun bleached banners hung on the walls. Bits of stained glass littered the ground. Very few stained glass windows remained in their windowsills. Torches, still burning, hung on the wall. He passed it all by until he came to an unlit torch supported by a metal pole sticking out of a vertical slot. He thought he should feel like squinting. He knew he should be suspicious. Instead, he hooked his hoof over it and pulled down. The floor under him and the wall next to him turned, removing him from the hall and sealing him away.

The changelings flooded out from their door, shouting “Someone found us! Someone found us!” for the benefit of their slower members. Changelings flew out open windows. Changelings opened every door. Changelings stood and scanned the castle. Changelings sprinted down the halls. The queen approached the doorway and glared out at the world. She then closed the door and went back to sleep.

Terror reigned over the little forest creatures outside in the form of giant fangs injecting paralyzing substances. Bug wings in the halls churned air until dust filled it to saturation. Nervous changelings produced extra, dripping green goo. The orange, pink, and purple gems were glowing – some faintly, some brighter – as confused changelings swarmed over them.

Slowly, the gems were growing. Floors were cracking open. Walls collapsed in piles. Furniture was nudged out of place or crushed. Where the gems grew, their edges dug trenches and bricks moved aside.

“I don’t care. Stop telling me!”, the sleeping queen dreamt that she shouted. “Do you see a pony? Are the gems helping you find a pony? Then, don’t tell me about it! In fact, don’t tell me when you catch it. Just stick it with the others.” The queen shut them out from her mind.

So, the gems took up slightly more space and the changelings remained scattered and impotently agitated.

He, hidden behind the wall, had found a pink gem. He was in a small, square, brick pit.The pink gem was sticking through one of the walls, forming a walkable slope and slowly reducing the wall it was in to rubble. He began to walk up it. When he stood on it, it shined brightly and grew rapidly. The top tip of it extended and dug into the ceiling above. Bricks fell and a thin, skinny shard of purple gem expanded from where the pink gem had pierced the wall. He dismounted the crystal and left it and the rubble pile behind. As he moved away, it stopped shining, then stopped glowing. The pink gem and the purple both slowed their growing. He just continued down the hall.

Armor suits lined the walls. He paid them no mind. He turned and passed through a doorway between two of them. He entered a large chamber with a large pipe organ. He approached the organ before sitting down and running his hoof across it, hitting every key.

Somewhere, a trap master and a metalsmith rolled in their graves. Somewhere in the castle, gears screeched and squealed and cried as they tried to answer the trap organ’s call. Everywhere, hidden arrows fired and trap doors opened and walls shifted and hallways rearranged themselves. Some rooms didn’t have exits anymore. Some rooms were filled with fire. Impaled, burnt, screaming, and maimed, changelings fled for their little home as the dilapidated castle ground it’s intruders for the last time. In the organ room, a passage opened. He turned and went through it.

He was standing over a cliff. There was another cliff face across from it, so it was really more of a trench. Below his hooves, gems were growing out of the wall, forming platforms. The ground was churning slightly. Some dirt and rock fell down the trench. Water ran along the bottom of the trench. He dropped over the edge.

When he landed on the first gem, he heard his flesh deform around his bones, dispersing the energy of the fall and breaking a few hundred tiny blood vessels. He stood up and moved himself over the next edge. When he landed on the second gem, he heard his flesh deform again, breaking a few hundred more tiny blood vessels and straining his bones. Eventually, with a wet thud, he landed on a gem where he found a cave mouth completely coated in a pointy swirl of orange, pink, and purple gems. He pulled himself down the cave’s slope as quickly as he could.

The path closed slowly behind him. Deeper in the cave, the dirt and rock began to show from behind the gems. There were fewer gems. The path opened up into a chamber and only one line of gems remained along the ground. The last gem in the line was purple, and it extended, narrow, out into the chamber. On the end of the large, narrow, purple gem, was a small, curved, red-orange spike. The spike extended towards the other main feature of the chamber.

Across the chamber, there was a bright, blue tree made out of sharp, angular crystal. At its center, was a six-pointed, pink-purple gem. In the branches, there was a red lighting bolt, an orange apple, a pink butterfly, a purple diamond, and a blue balloon.

That was all he saw of it, because he was focused on something else. His body continued forward as he looked at something he couldn’t quite place. He knew what he was looking at, he just wasn’t sure where it was. He didn’t think of her as being elsewhere, but he didn’t see her in the room. He was still looking right at the tree and he could see it too.

Her eyes didn’t move. He chest didn’t move. She was a purple horse. There were two large wings hanging by her sides and was a horn on her head. Her mane was dry and crinkled and floating. Behind her was just bright. Her fur was matted but maintained the sheen of a healthy coat.

He had moved toward the tree while he gawked, unaware. The dark, grey rocks in his skin were sparking and heating. The large, narrow, purple crystal contained a growing green light and the little orange-red spike on its end was glowing and shaking. The tree continued to light the room like daylight. The green light flared in the narrow, purple gem and the gem shattered into a thousand little shards. The curved, red-orange spike popped off and flew through the air. It swerved and stopped tumbling mid-air and then swung down and landed base-first, half on his fur, half on the grey skin-rock in the middle of his forehead.

Everything needed to burn. He could see the branches of the crystal tree smashing under his hooves. He could hear strangers crying. He was thinking of that purple mare strapped to a hollow cylinder of metal while someone fed an oil fire inside of it. He was thinking of looking out over all the known world and knowing it was his and for him, no one else. He liked it. His body was reaching out to touch the tree of harmony.

Beams of light shot from the branches of the tree and into his body. For a moment, he felt calm and happy. The skin-stones in his body began burning and vibrating and he didn’t care anymore. Attacking the tree didn’t seem like a good idea anymore. Panic washed over him and then was replaced with calm again. A snapping noise was heard as a fracture formed along the curved, red-orange forehead spike. A bright red light built and then there was a brighter red flash and the cave was gone.

He was standing in the forest. The rocks were glowing and vibrating and discharging sparks into his surroundings. Angry thoughts of blood and fire and, somewhere in the back of his head, feelings of confusion and just a bit of fear bumbled about in his head. The spike on his head was still glowing. As the seconds passed and images of burnt villages and killed warriors and abused furniture and people filled his mind, he became slowly more concerned about it. As the image of a group of youths forced into a blizzard entered his mind, he jammed the spike into the nearest tree trunk. He pried and yanked. The part of the horn that was over the rocks separated like there was never a connection. The part that was on his fur felt like peeling off a fingernail. His head jerked free and he fell on his haunches.

The skin-rocks cooled and he began to wonder where he was. Looking right behind him, he saw a deep trench. The dilapidated castle’s remains rested across a mostly empty field on the other side of the trench. The castle was hard to look at, with the sun setting behind it, and it’s shadow stretched across the field. He felt uneasy, knowing what was hiding in there.

He wiped a hoof over his face and found no blood. He was dirty and sleepy and a little tired. His everything hurt, but his legs and sides hurt the most. Somehow, there were no burn marks around the rocks in his skin. They were still grey, but each one had a different and changing pastel shimmer to it

He started to feel like getting away from there. He started to want to get as far away from that horn as possible. He slowly stood up, blinking and backing up, before turning, and then running out into the forest.