"So," Grimliss clapped his forelegs together. "I'm not going to be teaching you first. I have a few subjects that know quite a bit about the spirit world and would be best at teaching you the proper basics."
"But I already know the basics."
Grimliss frowned and mumbled. "Yes. The crappy basics. AAAAAAANNNyways, follow me."
The god-king swung around and went behind his hut, leaving Stelimus as confused and terrified as before. If he woke up now, he was certain the hospital room would have been transformed into a koi pond from all his sweat. The young stag took a deep breath and gulped loudly, mustering his courage to move forward, which he did. The 'backyard' had no difference in appearance to the rest of the swamp, but Stelimus caught his uncle talking to...nothing.
"Yes. I want you to teach him...No, he can't see or hear you so you'll have to find a solid form. Hm? He knows the 'basics', but they're the ones from my uncle." Grimliss rolled the lights in his skull. "So that basically means that he knows nothing." The stag bobbed his head from side to side. "Well, he did learn about spirit essence from a wendigo but, eehhh. Yeah. I thought the same. He's here?" Grimliss turned around to see Stelimus looking at him as though he were locked in an insane asylum. "Stelimus, this will be your teacher." He casually presented...nothing.
Stelimus scrunched his mouth briefly then looked left to right. "Um..."
Before he could say anything, Grimliss walked away towards his hut for some unknown reason, leaving the stag to stay amidst a vast horde of undead and spirits. "Well...When do we...start?" He nervously chuckled.
The swamp started to shake again, and, this time, it looked like a large amount of mud and dead trees were rising upwards like a bubble right in front of the stag who was simply too terrified to move and looked at the scene with a face paler than his white fur. Bones bubbled through the piling waves of mud to the point where a wide assortment of skulls and bones poked through the muddy and mossy moss like a body that was just impacted by a train. Two slits near the top of the mound opened up and carried the appearance of jail bars with a yellow light on the mound's right hole and red light on the right glowing behind them. A very large mouth, stretching to both sides of the mound, opened up and reminded Stelimus of melted cheese in a garbage dump.
It exhaled for a lengthy period of time then began to speak after spitting out a few ribs from its mouth. "Stelimus." It's voice was akin to a loud whisper with lengthened ends. "Your uncle wants us to teach you about seeing spirits as you should."
"What the hell is this?!"
"You can't see us, so we have to take a form that you can see. We'll each take different turns into teaching you."
"And how are you going to teach me?"
"Right now."
Stelimus frowned. "I said 'how', not 'when'."
The mound started to narrow, grow, and reform. Legs made of intertwined bones, mud, and rotted wood sprouted from its underside. A neck pushed out from the torso and a deer's face grew outwards. The head dropped down and stared Stelimus directly into his face while the face's details started to become more apparent and detailed. The right antler of this creature grew upwards and was made of rotted wood and vines while the left one was, as expected, made from bones that...grew out of one another. The muddy mouth did not change at all and retained its large, dripping appearance. In fact, it was formed into quite a large smile. Stelimus gulped and his pupils shrunk three sizes that day. The muzzle of this creature just kept getting closer to him the more Stelimus leaned away until he could lean away no further and fall on his back.
"LET'S GET STARTED, THEN!" The creature bellowed.
Stelimus was lifted up by the giant and placed back onto his hooves.
"This world is one that your uncle has created for us lost souls and those who wanted to redeem themselves before meeting whatever entity is responsible for their judgement in the after-death."
"D-d-don't you mean...after-life?"
The giant stared at Stelimus with disappointment. "I am in the after-life. Those who confuse after-life and after-death are probably the ones who taught you about the spirit essence you control." The giant stomped ground and pulled out a rounded, polished stone from the swamp. It was in remarkably good shape despite its location. "This mirror will show you the spirits standing all around you so desire, but I would wait. Not many of these are affiliated with your uncle and WILL try to pull you through to steal your body."
"Then why would you even pull it out, you freakin' idiot?" Stelimus thought to himself.
"Haha!" The creature laughed with an insane undertone then returned to being serious. "The 'after-life' is the soul leaving the body which can no longer house it. The body decays and, regardless of what you believe, the soul is released into the world with no way of communicating with the living."
"Hu. Then, I suppose, their 'god'," Stelimus waved his hooves in mockery. ",comes to take them to heaven or nirvana or something." HE smiled smugly.
The creature did not seem to appreciate his humor and its eyes turned a dark, swamp green. It stomped near Stelimus then its head lowered towards him. The muck started to slide off what was a gigantic deer's skull made of fused, individual skulls.
"Regardless of what you believe, there are higher entities in life. Whether they show themselves and intervene is up to them. I believe you would know this, 'ape'." The creature poked Stelimus' chest.
"Ape?"
The eyes returned to their two colors and stood up, its calm expression returned. "That is the after-life. The after-death is when the soul reaches the next plane of existence, but many are so entrenched into their world that they prefer to remain within it. As such, many try to steal the bodies of the living or choose a new host to be reborn from." The creature flicked some mud off its right hoof to show reptilian claws. "There are many points to make, but the first thing you must do to come into contact with the spirit world is to either be born with a connection and train to awaken its full potential, or be put in a near-death experience."
"You're not going to kill me, are you?"
The creature's eyes looked upwards briefly, then shocked Stelimus' with its claws. The stag felt like he had just been electrocuted and his heart held in a stone-like grip. Before he knew it, he had collapsed onto the floor and felt his life fading.
"I'm waking up. Finally!"
Instead, the stag found himself awake in the swamp, but his deer body looked like it was made of white ink and being dissolved in water. He raised his hooves to get a better look at them then looked up to see an enormous amount of deer, ponies, and creatures he had never seen before. Ever. Some looked like dogs, others like the minotaur from the Crete Island. Then there were the enormous creatures, the flying creatures, and things that outright terrified him, and they were all looking at the prince, but they were...smiling?
"That's enough time there, eh?"
Another pulse brought Stelimus 'back to life' and gasping for air. "What the hell just happened?"
"We put you in a near-death state. Now you have a link to the world of spirits, and quite a few of them seem to naturally like you. Curious," the creature rubbed its chin with its dragon claw. "Hmmm. By the way, you should return to see your uncle. He wanted to see you as soon as we put you through that experience."
The prince didn't not hesitate and scurried back into the hut as fast as he could.
"Ah, Stelimus! Glad you're here. I believe you know my new decorator?"
"Decorator?" Stelimus was confused.
"Hello, Stelimus."
It was Mix-Up. The stallion that Stelimus had met some years past.
"I'm going to ffffffucking kill myself if I stay with him any longer..." Stelimus started thinking a bit more on what he just thought. "Wait, no. That would be a bad idea, especially around here."
"You're not very good with social interactions, are you, uncle."
The god-king stood on his hind legs and proudly placed his hooves on what would constitute for hips. "No, I'm not!"
Stelimus threw his forelegs forward in rage. "WHY ARE YOU PROUD OF THAT?!"
"Hmmm. Because," he calmly replied.
"I'm the one who colored the sky and modeled the sky," Mix-Up casually added in.
"Yes, Mix, that's nice," Stelimus rubbed his eyes.
"Oh, he's done all SORTS of things to my swamp, and each one has been better than the last. Even my residents have loved the changes in light and scenery," Grimliss said.
"It was always so...repetitive, so I though that, with something on this scale, a bit of repetition but with enough uniqueness would give the swamps a nice flair."
"One that didn't smell of rotting corpse." Grimliss chuckled. "Stelimus, are you okay?"
The stag was curled into the fetal position on the ground and shaking. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home," he was thinking to himself.
Grimliss walked up towards him and started to think. He calmly leaned over his nephew, most likely in a bid to calm him down.
"Err, you forgot the ruby slippers," he pointed out.