At the Mountains of Discord

by Glimmervoid

IX — Monsters Within

IX — Monsters Within

The waves of disintegration ripped open the nearby stairwell, and I fell into its clawing embrace. All around me metal bent, buckled and wrenched free of its moorings. There was nothing I could do. My earlier rage had left me and took with it my remaining strength. My horn ached, and I couldn't even conjure a spark. My stomach twisted as the force of gravity worked the magic I could not. I flailed as I tumbled through the air.

"Twilight," screamed Mountain Flower as she streaked towards me. Her hooves caught me around the neck, and pain shot through my side. Her wings beat against the air, and we slowed but not enough.

We hit the rocky earth with a crunch, but Mountain Flower had removed enough of my momentum that I was bruised, not dead.

"Run!" shouted Derpy as she swooped down from a hole in the roof. She clutched the crippled Rock Watcher in her hooves, but that didn't stop her body checking Mountain Flower and I out of the way. It was a Daring Do-esk move and just in time. Behind her slate metal rained from the sky. Warped sheets, still glowing girders and blocks half turned to dust slammed into the ground like the hammer of some cosmic god. The very ground shook at the impact, and baleful waves of displaced air and noise sent me rolling across the floor.

Even in retrospect, I don't know how long I lay there on the cold floor of that cave of deepest nightmare. My side burnt, a diffuse pain throughout half my body spiced with a sharp spike of agony at its core. My legs were numb, and even breathing took undue effort. Without my magic it was dark, black. Even in the unknowable depths of space there is light. Stars shine like tiny diamonds, and the dreams of far off alien gods are written across the heavens for those with eyes to see. Here, though, in the chthonic bowels of the earth, there was none of that.

Finally light came, and I released a cry that surely must have resurrected fearful memories of animalistic howls in any with the ears to hear. Thinking back, I'm put to mind of the nocturnal terrors which dwell in only the deepest and most light forsaken jungles of Urd. Derpy held the trailing end of a string net in her mouth. The other contained a glow orb — a simple glass sphere enchanted to self-luminesce. Its diffuse light revealed a rocky tunnel of some sort, lined with silver metal buttresses and dark metallic plates. While there were differences, it bore a remarkable resemblance to the path we'd used to enter the spire. To my left, the tunnel disappeared into dank darkness. To my right, an immense fall of partially rotted slate metal blocked the way. Of the Elder Things, there was no sign.

"Everypony okay?" asked Derpy around the net. She shook her body and wings to remove the dust as her wandering eyes searched the room.

"Ouch," said Mountain Flower.

I didn't even manage that much.

Once recovered sufficiently to move, I hobbled to Rock Watcher's side. Against all probability he yet lived. Every three seconds he took a shallow breath. It barely seemed enough to sustain a pony even half his size. The disintegration beam — that terrifying weapon of molecular and atomic disruption — had worked its baleful magic on his rear left leg. Most was simply gone, and the remainder was unsettling to behold. The flesh, bone, skin and coat melded into each other, as if merged by the most horrific and forbidden of magical experiments. It did not bleed, however, and Rock Watcher showed no signs of shock. In fact, there was a disquieting aura to his passivity, as if he was an un-living thing just imitating life. He gave no response to outside stimulus, reacting neither to his name nor a careful application of pain.

As soon as I'd ascertained his continued health, Mountain Flower dragged me away. She retrieved a roll of bandages from our medical kit and rapped my ribs. It helped some, but I still felt sharp pain whenever I breathed deep. She also cleaned and covered a few minor scrapes on Derpy, who then returned the favour. I giggled as Derpy acted the medic, which earned me a stab of agony and a dirty look, but it wasn't my fault. The combination of fierce concentration, walleyes and a bottle of sterile wound wash held in her mouth was downright comical. After that we passed out drinking water and food. I partook of the former with some effort but demurred on the latter, even when Derpy offered one of her prized and hoarded muffins.

As the others ate, I looked at Rock Watcher. He showed no signs of malnourishment or dehydration that I could see. Had the Elder Things fed him? They must have, and I'd need to work out how to do so myself.

During this break, my horn went from numb to aching, which was an improvement magically speaking. I probably could cast a spell if I really needed to, but it would cost me in migraine like pain. On weak hooves I staggered upright again and took a good look around. Derpy held the netted glow orb in her mouth, but its light shone only weakly, almost wilted next to the primal dark of the tunnel.

The wall of metal to the right had fallen from above, crashing down the stair shaft until it reached this tunnel. It looked quite impassable, formed from contorted pieces of slate grey metal mixed with furfuraceous dust that shimmered like an insidious poison. How much of the spire had the war shoggoth's morbid death cry destroyed?

To the left the tunnel shot away arrow straight, but as before the walls buckled and wavered around that perfect central plum line. The dark metallic plates which lined the wall lacked much of the phenomenal strength afforded other materials of Elder Thing manufacture. While those structures fashioned from silver and slate metal survived the corrupting ravages of time completely unscathed, entropy found some hold upon the dark metal. Why this should be so, I do not know. Perhaps the tunnels and their coverings dated to later in the Elder Things' history, when the need to conserve valuable and dwindling resources became keener. Indeed, in places the dark metallic plates were missing entirely, either removed or never affixed in the first place.

"Twilight," said Derpy, voice cut with worry. I walked slowly to her and froze in place. There was a hole in the wall, cut through the plate and into the rock beyond; a shoggoth filled it, curled within the rocky egg like an abominable organic geode.

The default appearance of an adult shoggoth is a slimy organic mass, covered with throbbing tentacles and cancerous clusters. This shoggoth broke the trend. Its body was tight, compact. It formed a perfect sphere, extremities pulled inwards to shelter within the protection of its thick, membranous skin. It appeared alive but showed no sign of movement or awareness, as if hibernating. It lacked the mottled grey-green colour of the cleaners and instead bore a purer hue: a deep red. In colour, transparency and consistency, it resembled nothing as much as one of Pinkie Pies' famed cherry jellies. Within the obscene sphere hung hazy shapes — tentacles I realised, rolled up tight like wire on a shelf. It took me a moment to mentally disassemble what I saw, but I have a good mind for spatial problems. Like a horrific flower from the depths of time, the monster unfurled in my mind and became a classic labourer shoggoth as depicted on the crystal mural, without any of the later mutations.

"There's another," said Mountain Flower, from four meters up the corridor. My side hurt; I hobbled to her and saw. Within a second hole lay a second shoggoth. It was near identical to the first, save for a few tiny mutations. Its colour appeared marginally more natural, and its two main tentacles were a slightly shorter. Beyond it was another and another.

In a deathly quiet we walked the tunnel through the earth's womb. Mountain Flower stayed close to my side and lent me what aid she could, but I'm ashamed to say my mind was on other things. Derpy carried Rock Watcher across her back. Every four meters was a hole in the rock, and every hole contained a shoggoth, balled tight for hibernation. Each was a little different from the one before, a little more mutated, a little more turbid. By number 523, I recognised the coming end state. As we pushed on, labourer type shoggoths transformed before our eyes into the cleaner sub-strain. They lost their tentacles and gained body mass. The formerly vibrant pigmentation of their protoplasmic flesh succumbed to the organic colours of mould and decay. I can only guess what changes occurred to their internal biology. The final shoggoth was number 1024. With it the change was complete.

"Why?" said Mountain Flower as she shivered against me. I couldn't blame her. The shoggoths slept in their legions, over a thousand in this tunnel alone — a genetic record of their race and an army out of the stygian depths of time.

"It's a backup," I said, voice hollow in the gloom. "When the Elder Things gave the shoggoths fecundity, they gave them the ability to change. Each generation brings mutations, and a patient sculptor can breed for desired traits. Whatever passes for leadership among the shoggoths wanted a cleaner, and this is how they did it."

"They're parents and children," said Derpy, horror in her voice.

"I'm no expert in shoggoth biology," I said as I took refuge in the uncaring sepulchre of scientific fact, "but the changes seem more indicative of multi-generational gaps. I imagine we're seeing a snap shot every ten or twenty generations." Shoggoth reproduction was asexual; that slowed the process down.

"But why!"

"A record. This is evolution. The scale of time is immense. An unwanted or destructive mutation may only become apparent a thousand years later. In such a case, they'd want the ability to go back."

"But what of the rest?" asked Mountain Flower.

Cannibalised for resources, I thought but didn't say. Food was scarce in the icy wastes beyond the Stormwalds, and after producing suitable offspring, a parent's role would be superfluous. That could well be a secondary purpose of the record. In times of great hunger, less vital specimens could be repurposed as food. But that wasn't the only secondary use. In times of war, they could be awoken to form an army. An army which would need to expand beyond the Uncharted North to feed itself. An army at Equestria's very throat. What else slept beneath the shoggoths' frozen realm? Were there other tunnels like this? Where there halls filled with sleeping warrior shoggoths, the immense infernos of their constitutions too hungry to light save in direst need? Were there aberrant strains so deadly even the shoggoths feared to wake them? I shivered into Mountain Flower, suddenly very glad for her support.

It was then I truly decided that a return to the Uncharted North by a future expedition was impossible. Our singular purpose must be never to awaken this sleeping behemoth. To do so would be to lose the sleeping horrors of the Elder Things upon the world. To do so would be to usher in our own deaths.

We walked in silence along the long dead corridor, not discussing our purpose, never needing to. We had recovered Rock Watcher, though I hesitate to apply the term rescued. That meant we needed to head back to the sub-expedition camp. The collapse had blocked the way we'd come, which meant we could only go forward and hope an exit presented itself.

After a few hours I risked a compass spell. My horn twisted like an unoiled screw, but I got a direction. The tunnel headed a few degrees west of true north. It was the wrong direction for home, but with each step away from the shoggoths' realm I cared less and less. The road stretched seemingly forever, and without teleportation the miles weighed heavily upon me. We stopped to rest every four hours and had enjoyed three such spells by the time the character of the rock changed.

This seemed a reasonable omen, and we stopped for the night. By this point I'd quite lost track of time and felt a start of shocked as I looked at the traveling clock. The display read 3pm of the 18th of July. It took some concerted mental effort, but I located all the shattered fragments of my internal chronology. We'd left the sub-expedition camp in mid-afternoon of the 16th. Crossing the Mountains of Discord proved a challenged, and we didn't make its far foothills until dawn of the 17th. We'd then rested for approximately six hours before finding the underground tunnel. Within the ancient, artificial world of the Elder Things there was no day and night, no passing hours. That said, we must have spent over a day wandering its unearthly halls and labyrinthine corridors. I'd told Spike to wait two days before returning to the main camp at the Storm Horn. That meant he'd be setting of right then.

From my pack I retrieved the lone bottle of dragon fire I'd brought, along with paper and ink. The bottle flickered green and combined strangely with the gentler glow of Derpy's orb. It took an hour, but I wrote out a moderately detailed summary of what we'd found and the warnings he must deliver. Spike would take the letter south with him and make sure it reached the hooves of the right ponies. He was my number one assistant, and if I could trust anypony (or dragon) with such an important task it was him. I dearly wanted to tell him to wait for us but couldn't do so in good conscience. His task was too important to delay. Derpy, Mountain Flower, Rock Watcher and I would have to make our own way back to the main camp.

That night the dreams returned. I stood between two competing pantheons, one terrible and fair, the other fair and terrible. They were Ultimate Gods, creatures beyond mere aliens, beyond mere gods. They came from twisted spaces and altered universes, where all is blight and confusion; they were those twisted spaces and altered universes and were that blight and confusion.

Half danced and piped around the boundless daemon sultan, that Blind Idiot God who sits unthinking at the epicentre of all infinity. Half stood apart and cried out in ascetic supplication to the Beyond-One, who is at once all of space and time and yet locked beyond it.

Their joined music was all enveloping. It filled the universe. It defined the universe. It was the universe. Its interaction's birthed complex dimensions, which neither poet's words nor mathematician's notation yet exist to properly describe. It was the foundation, tower and sky. It was everything and nothing, and I was less than that when considered before it.

Patterns existed within that cosmic music of crystal spheres and Ultimate Gods. To grasp even the smallest part was to known madness. To hear it was to be torn asunder. No individual could shape or known it. No single being could cause its cosmic scope to shift. Its authors were uncaring towards all but their masters and songs. Equestria was but the smallest grain of sand on the most insignificant atoll within a universal ocean beneath even their least member's notice. And yet...

From the worshipers of the Nuclear Chaos came a message. Within the deranged beat of abominable drums and the irrational whine of malformed flutes, I heard it. Turn back, it said. Turn back.

From the priests of the Key and the Gate came a second message, encoded in gravity waves and the shape of stars, within the prime number line and the depths of pie. Go on, it said. Go on.

This time I didn't awake screaming. I couldn't have even if I wanted to. For long minutes I lay in terrifying paralysis, my muscles locked motionless, eyes staring unblinking into the long primal dark of the tunnel. In my hindbrain where perhaps the Elder Things' engineering yet lurked, I could still hear the music of the Ultimate Gods. It called and warned as one.

Our sleep cycles were highly distorted, and it wasn't until 11pm that we again set off. The rest had done me good, and my magic had recovered sufficiently to teleport again, though not to take the entire group without strain. This proved no great hindrance, and we soon devised a system of speedy travel. Derpy and Mountain Flower would fly ahead, scanning the walls for caves which might lead to the surface. Once they'd gone three or four miles, they'd use their glow orb to signal me, and I'd teleport with Rock Watcher to them. In this way I received the frequent rest I still required but also travelled with greatly enhanced swiftness.

Distance was hard to judge. In retrospect I know we travelled some 150 miles along that chthonic road, but all I knew at the time was my growing fatigue as the day wore on. 7am of the 19th found me staring ahead into the dark, watching a pinprick of light swing back and forth as Derpy and Mountain Flower raced onwards. They used much of their speed and all of their skill. The tight walls of the tunnel pressed down upon the available space like the grasping coils of a constrictor snake. It made for difficult, claustrophobic flying. At places, they could barely stretch their wings.

Suddenly they stopped. I focused, judging distance. They'd gone only two or so miles, not that far. Something queer twisted in my chest. A way out? I waited with bated breath for the signal, then it came. Long flash. Long flash. Long flash. I teleported without a second's pause.

My companions stood before a narrow gash in the wall, formed of jagged rock. It resembled hag's teeth or possibly dragon fangs. Either way, it dripped brackish water and glittered with promised menace.

"We can't squeeze through," said Mountain Flower. "But it looks to go a long way." Derpy nodded, a wide smile on her face. Her eyes did a happy dance all their own.

Again I reach a point in my tale were further detail would only distract from the message I intend to impart. Sufficient to say this: I gathered my strength and teleported Derpy, Mountain Flower, Rock Watcher and myself through the gap. After much wandering through that witch's rock and many dead ends, we found our way to the surface.

True sunlight seemed strange and alien as I stepped back into eternal winter. The cold hit me next. The eon old realm of the deathless shoggoths lacked even the pretence of a lit hearth's welcome, but it also lacked the deadly edge of the icy knives I encountered now. Aware of Rock Watcher's condition, I floated him back into the cave. My eyes watered and not just from the cold. The light felt foul, as if split, mangled and debased to some obscene purpose. I turned a slow circle, taking a panoramic view of the local area. The multi-mile high spire speared into the sky 150 miles away and beyond that were the black, cyclopean Mountains of Discord. We'd exited through a gargantuan monolith with a surface like melted wax, and it blocked my view to the north. To the sides were endless snow fields, populated by more of the queer monoliths. I knew from our flight in that they filled the cryptic plain.

"Mountain Flower," I said as I continued to scan the environment, "fly up and have a look around. Check for dangers."

"On it," she said with a happy smile and leapt into the air. Pegasi are creatures of the sky; being trapped within the Elder Things' crypt couldn't have been a pleasant experience for her. Within seconds, she became a dwindling dot against the all-encompassing white of the sky.

I followed her path for a few moments before returning to my survey, not that there was much to see. Ice and snow more ancient than ponykind filled the world. Something like a bird hung just below the cloud layer, far above even Mountain Flower. Assuming it wasn't just an odd shaped cloud, it was the first such animal I'd seen.

"Some kind of low hills north of here," Mountain Flower shouted down. "Some kind of strange ligh—"

There was no warning, no moment's grace in which I might have acted. Midway through her last word she fell from the sky like a rock, and I only just caught her with my magic in time. Even so, she bit deep into the ground, and powdered snow erupted into the air. It hung in a hazy, voluminous cloud. The shadowed outline of Mountain Flower stood inside it. She opened her mouth, and sound like the aeonian winds of deepest space wailed out. The painful notes felt like the blackest of hymns to my ears, but there was nothing I could do. The snow settled, and she stood revealed. Her wings curved up and over her back, an instinctive animal gesture to increase apparent size. Her eyes flashed back and forth, as if reading some terrible but invisible tome, and her every muscle shook. Her voice changed, the shapes of words forming in the scream.

"Error, error," she said in a voice too fast to be natural. "Mi-go attack incoming. Attempting closed time loop calculations. Error. Error. Engaging countermeasures. Launching Hounds of Tindalos protocols. Launching Gate protocols. Launching Key protocols. All protocols engaged. Error, error. Faults found in Yog-Sothoth interface. Error. Error. Mi-go attack incoming. Attempting closed time loop calculations..." It went on and on, again and again. And with each repetition she changed.

Her flesh melted like a candle left too near the fire. It ran in rivulets and gathered in gnarled lumps. It shimmered and liquefied before my horror filled eyes. It became thick and rubbery, almost plastic. Its membranous outer coating came to resemble opaque black slime. A hundred writhing tentacles rose from her, and her eyes rotted to nothing. Her cutie mark was the last to go, dissolving as if under potent acid. Within moments she became a thing out of nightmare and primal myth. She became a shoggoth and attacked.

Even with unlimited time to contemplate and unrestricted access to all our nation's great centres of learning, I still do not completely understand what happened. Some things are obvious to deduction. The low hills spied by Mountain Flower were the low hills depicted on the crystal mural, where the Elder Things built their wonder weapon in a time even ancestral memory fails to reach. Through some method of decayed industry, it reached out to Mountain Flower when she looked upon it. Using that connection, it infiltrated and suborned her mind. The Mountain Flower I knew — the brave and loyal Svalbarding pegasi who dreamed of attending a Cloudsdale university — died at the first glance. What fell to the ground was a monster; not her — never her.

Things become more complicated when explaining her transformation. The crystal mural depicts shoggoth conversion as an involved process, using special chemicals and secret genetic keys. That last I can believe the desperate Elder Things gave to their weapon, but what of the first? I have several theories but no proof.

Perhaps contrary to my initial understanding of the process, the special chemicals are not essential but rather serve a secondary role. If this is the case, they might fill any number of useful though not vital purposes, from increasing the potency of the resulting shoggoth to rendering it more susceptible to control.

Alternatively, the Elder Things' wonder weapon might simply be a construct of such immense power that it can bypass an otherwise vital step. There is precedent for such thinking. A unicorn skilled in alchemy might use her magic to remove the need for an otherwise key catalytic ingredient, for example.

A third possibility occurs to me, but it is one I am reluctant to consider. If I am correct and the Elder Things locked secret genomic potential within our cells, who is to say that potential has gone completely untapped? Evolution is a powerful force. It is perfectly conceivable that over millions of generations some of that waiting power broke loose, joining with our minds, souls and magic. If all living creatures in Equestria are already half-shoggoth, might part of an otherwise inviolate process become superfluous? Might that half-realised potential be why the Elder Things foalnapped Rock Watcher?

Such vexatious thoughts have weighed heavily upon me since my return to Equestria, but at the time I had neither the opportunity nor inclination to consider them. Mountain Flower's transformation continued as she charged towards me. Warped tentacles grew from her once head, thick rubbery things which twisted together to form a spiralling horn. From her back splayed a fan of translucent webbing, a mockery of her once wings. In that moment she resembled a blasphemous alicorn, a debased idol formed to ridicule those most harmonious of beings. She had a measure of an alicorn's power, too.

Light the colour of a fallow bruise flashed, and a titanic telekinetic wave blasted me off my hooves. I slammed into the snow and rolled to a stop, my injured ribs screaming at me. Derpy cried out in shock and threw her glow orb with a flick of her neck. It shot at Mountain Flower, the netting trailing like the tail of a comet, and exploded in pyrotechnic fury. White aetheric flames ran over Mountain Flower's debased body, but they did not burn and disappeared in moments. It did provide a distraction, however.

In a thud of displaced air, Derpy took to the sky, though not to flee. She spun as she rose, hooves stretched to gather clouds. Mere seconds after take-off, a heavy black storm cloud brooded around her. She twisted in mid-air and bucked. In an almighty crack, a lightning bolt arced towards Mountain Flower. Once again bruise-light flashed, and the lightning bolt deflected into the nearby monolith. Stone exploded where it hit, sending hundreds of razor-sharp fragments scything out. Many slashed into Mountain Flower's body. Ripples passed through her protoplasmic flesh, but she barely noticed.

Mountain Flower beat her horrific wings with a sound like howling windigos and shot into the sky. Derpy let out a panicked cried and dodged like a deranged jackrabbit, but Mountain Flower stayed on her tail. With a pained shudder that left me feeling sick to my bones, I forced myself upright and lashed out with my magic. I caught Mountain Flower in a telekinetic grip, but it felt like holding a greased eel. Her abominable body slipped and slithered, and she shot free in a shower of oily droplets.

Her amorphous form writhed against the sky as she turned her attention towards me. Bruise-light glowed from within the opaque black amoeba of her central mass, and she struck out with a second magical hammer blow. This time I was ready. Solidified wind whirled about me in a half sphere. Her spell struck, and I deflected the force. Snow for a dozen meters in each direction jumped into the air and hung as a vast vaporous mist. While unintentional on my part, it did lend me perfect cover. I dropped my shield and struck back with a colossal blow of my own. Raw telekinetic force threw her from the sky, and no oleaginous power saved her this time. She struck the ground and dug a meters deep furrow, but even that did not keep her down.

She rose from the permafrost grave, membranous wings spread wide, twisted horn glistening like a parasitic leech in the diffuse light of the sun. I gathered my power and focused it into a beam of heat. It shot from my horn, raising a column of steam as it flash vaporised the snow. Bruise-light glittered and space warped before her. My attack twisted, as if bent, and shot back towards me. Steam scolded my eyes, and I only just teleported away in time.

I reappeared to the side, panting for breath. The skill and power displayed by the transformed Mountain Flower was incredible. It was as if she wielded the abominable Alicorn Amulet, a terrible artefact whose power I can personally attest.

High above, Derpy had gathered a second storm cloud and jumped up and down on it, causing a blizzard of lightning bolts to shoot towards the earth. They struck stone and snow, but Mountain Flower stood unharmed amid the chaos.

"Please," I shouted at the top of my lungs. "Mountain Flower, don't do this." She didn't answer. Of course she didn't. As I've previously attested, the pony I knew died as soon as her eyes fell upon that fearsome weapon of a bygone aeon.

With a sweep of her horn, she took control of Derpy's storm cloud and set it slithering towards me in the shape of a gigantic serpent. Venomous fangs dripped vaporous cloud poison, and the ashen forms of long dead stars burnt in its eyes. I turned towards it, a spell at the tip of my horn, but it exploded before I could act. The bird shaped dot I'd seen earlier shot from the sky like a missile. It passed straight through the snake and angled towards Mountain Flower. She turned towards this new threat but reacted too late. It hit her in a fury of wings, hooves and feathers. It took me a long second to recognise the attacker for a pegasus and longer still to recognise it for Bingo — cartographer and member of the expedition council.

Blasphemous words of elder ages dropped from Bingo's lips. They spilled out in an unceasing tide — twisted things, ill-suited for pony throats — and few were distinct enough for me to repeat here. "Tekeli-li," was the first and regurgitated often. Stranger sounds of decidedly different character filled the gaps between its repetitions. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh", he cried as he smashed a hoof into Mountain Flower. "Tsath kai'yoth," followed as he bit at her protoplasmic body. Prior learning and subsequent research has let me recognise the providence of a scant few phrases, if not their meaning. He cursed in the abysmal tongue of the Hadopelagic Exiles and half chirped the song language of the Morrow Mountains. He spoke with some fluency the dead tongue of bygone Yadith and the Piper's Humgonian. From his lips ushered the aetheric wails of the byakhee, strange trans-solar sailors mentioned by Abdul Alhaizum, and the chitterling speech of the insectoid horrors from farthest Shaggai. In that moment he was discord personified, and Mountain Flower fell back before him, for all her power.

I can no more explain his actions than I can peer into the mind of a madpony. All I can say is this: while the dark powers of the Uncharted North stole Mountain Flower's mind, they merely twisted his. Some aberrant force drove him; it whispered knowledge necromantic and debase into his mind. It sickened his soul, and his eyes showed the damage clearly, becoming wild things. Whatever power backed him, it set him against Mountain Flower. It set him against the decaying Elder Thing wonder weapon and whatever malicious machinations it might have.

With a screeching wail, Mountain Flower took to the air, and Bingo went with her. They fought as they flew. Her shoggoth strength should have won the fight in moments, but somehow he hung on. There is strength in insanity, in the casting off of civilised restraint and welcoming the animal within. But I am not sure even that would be enough, and there are darker paths to power. In the hidden places of the cosmos exist waiting horrors — merchants perilous willing to lend strength and might for a price but always one too dear for the sound of mind to pay. They reached the cloud layer so high above, and it began to boil. Whether from conscious action of one party or some unforeseen consequence of both, a morbid storm grew around them. Rain-come-hail pelted down. Lightning flashed. Thunder struck so hard the very sky seemed to shake. A scream rang out, loud enough to be heard even over the summoned storm. There was silence.

As quick as it begun, the storm faded. It died in a bass rumble of thunder, and the clouds returned to normal. Mountain Flower did not return. Neither did Bingo. Hung with sorrow, Derpy dropped to the ground and stood silently by my side. Once again, the esoteric powers of death stole the words anypony might say.

Comments

[Glimmervoid]

3137573
Thanks. I'm glad to hear you liked it.

Personally, I'm of two minds. It comes off a bit more action-adventurey than I intended this story to be. I really like the horror in the early story. It is understated and lurking. But once the story reached the spire things became a lot more explicit. The story moved away from pure Lovecraft and towards derivative works like the Laundry Files.

Partly that's a consequence of Twilight being a powerful protagonist and facing a direct threat. She has the personal power to challenge many mythos horrors and so logically does so. Partly it's because I'm nowhere near the writer Lovecraft was, and I have a habit of shoving fight scenes into things, shaped by my experiences in anime and Harry Potter fanfiction.

If I write more stories in this Mythos-FiM universe, I think I'll use a far less powerful protagonist and a more nebulous threat.

[Lucifus]

I've honestly not read any of Lovecraft's works, and I think I need to remedy that, as I've read various fan-fiction containing lovecraftian elements, and I love them.

As for this piece of writing, I do agree that much of the horror present in the earlier chapters has been diluted in the latter ones as Twilight went archaeologist on us, as well as during the scenes where she took an active role in fighting Shoggoths. I personally feel that the scene (SPOILERS -->) where Mountain Flower see's the Elder Thing's relic from the sky could have, or rather, should have induced far more horror and sorrow within readers than what I felt. I'm not a writer, nor even a intermediate Lovecraftian scholar, so I have no idea how this scene could have been altered to affect readers on a more emotional level.

I understand Twilight kind of had a bloody monster to deal with, and quickly, but I can't help but think that she seemed 'disconnected' from the situation, and a bit too logical and calm. I write this not to needlessly criticize you, just to point out one of the very few moments where I felt this masterpiece of a story left me just a little less...absorbed, or rather submerged than previous scenes did.

My one bit of advice (personal preference) is a little more focus on the interactions between the ponies present, and their feeling/emotions/current state of minds; that should help keep the horror alive. Once again mate, I absolutely love your story, and find myself checking back here without fail as you seem to consistently update daily. Thanks for the story!

[Traveler7]

3143356

Well, the reason for why she manages to seem calm could have to do with the fact that she's recording all this after the fact, as opposed to as events occur or very shortly after events occur. Time tends to heal wounds after all.

3137638

I have never heard of the Laundry Files, so my thanks for mentioning it. I shall check it out. Also, given Derpy's apparently filling Danforth's role, i'm curious if she'll look back as she and Twilight leave and see... .Something. It's been ages since I read the Mountains of Madness fully. I should get around to rereading it. Am looking forward to more stories from you though sir, so, please, do continue!

[PresentPerfect]

what the fuck c_c