There is little to be said of the city of Hercoltian, littler still to draw the ire from Canterlot’s Department of the Uncanny, Cryptic, and Calamitous, and almost nothing to explain what Friendship Problem had sent Starlight halfway across Equestria. And yet here she is, head still ringing from the whirlwind of train travel, side uncomfortable from the veritable stack of papers straining to burst free from her saddle bag, and stomach somewhat queasy from what little she’s already heard.
Nopony knows exactly when the building appeared; there were no builders, visitors, foreign friends not yet made with which to judge the passage of time from ‘zero’ to ‘one’. It is as if the blasted thing sprouted from the chthonic earth from an era unseen, the entire mass a rich yet pitted marble with cracks reminiscent of the interlaced feathers of a Pegasus couple. It is not quite ugly, the uncertainty and roughness of it’s oldest, lowest parts quietly ascending in quality in tandem with height; even here and there, where Father Time was gentler with his sickle, one may yet make out the gentle contusions found in the beginnings of art and sculpture.
It is ancient, yes, but there is wealth there, and effort; a building that likely contains a quality addition to a frontier town.
Yet there is something in the aura of the building that radiates ‘unwelcoming’, not with the ferocity of a furious predator’s den, but with quiet oppressiveness; a ruined graveyard yet unwilling to part with sanctified purpose. It is cold there, an impossibility under the blistering heat of an island sun, and the bravest ponies who dare to press their ears against the walls all report the same thing, at least after the offending ear has been treated for frostbite.
The sound of sliding chains. The jostling of shuffled clothing. The low moan of something forsaken.
With the quiet, unofficial unanimity found only in the descendants of survivalists, Guard Ponies, and frontier folk, a wooden fence was erected around the accursed building, and the problem was very carefully ignored in favor of working with crops and nourishing an, at the time, admittedly emaciated settlement.
It was all going well, a sort unspoken truce between whatever dwelled within that building and the inhabitants of the yet unnamed village. Here and there, speckled throughout the history, fourteen incidents arose only because some foals choose to disregard the warnings of their elders.
Seven colts and seven fillies; none wounded, none killed, but something subtly wrong with each of them when they returned, days after a missing ponies search had been called off. It was their personalities; not quite ‘warped’ so much as ‘dramatically different’, only to gradually shift back to their default natures, as if a template or a role had been foisted upon them and they had little choice but to comply.
Unsettling, yes, but a small price to pay for the return of a family member, an unusually large harvest of olives, honey, and grapes, and an unpredictably pleasant summer. So for the first thirteen missing foals, each lost and found at some point over Hercoltian’s several hundred year long history, the phenomena was accepted with a shrug, a redoubling of warnings, and additional fortifications to the fence.
But this is the modern era, and missing foal reports are not, cannot be treated with the same blase acceptance that ran rampant through early settlements and dangerous times.
The report goes on, an undercurrent of poorly-concealed disdain running through the overly-inflated document even as the author/assembler grudgingly acknowledges the various checks, the verification that this is no Feral Changeling hive-in-the-making, that this modus operandi fits no other shape-shifter known to Equestrian history, etcetera, etcetera.
Starlight groans, throat scratchy from bouts of nervous giggling as she had read the report, and slumps against the crinkly pillow of her inn room, decidedly refusing to unpack the various baubles Twilight had probably enchanted; fretting could wait until tomorrow, after Starlight’s lagging brain caught up with her flagging body.
***
“Could you tell me a bit more about the most recent missing ponies case?” Starlight finally manages to say between the seemingly relentless gout of words streaming from her talkative guide, Long Winded.
“You talking about the Purse household?” the stallion says, the response fainter than normal given that he hadn’t paused to breathe in perhaps two minutes. “The Purses were one of the founding fam-” and after a good few minutes Starlight’s brain decided it has done enough listening, went fwip, and generally just ran on survival functions alone. It’s enough, at least, to follow the nearest source of noise as it, true to name, delivers perhaps the most exhaustive bit of exposition imaginable.
This ‘sleep-mode’ isn’t, however, aware enough to stop, and she quite literally bumps snout first into the Stallion, bringing her brain back online quickly enough to hear him belt out, “-and that’s how Purse Ur and her son, Purse Us, liberated enough of the island from monsters to settle! And here’s-”
The Purse household had a quiet sort of wealthiness, the type that tells from comfortable carpets from decades earlier and over three dozen types of museum quality armor lounging comfortably in dust-free corners of a spacious room, at least from what little can be spied from the already open door and its occupant.
Coin Purse, if Starlight’s foggy memory is to be trusted; the coin Cutie-Mark is certainly there, bold as brass. What isn’t there is a smile, however, and with a bark the pony asks, “May I help you, or are you here just to rubberneck at another’s misfortune?” The lilt in his voice raises just a touch higher at the beginning of that last word, as if unaccustomed to saying it.
“Why hello again Mr. Purse, and how are-” Long Winded begins, with the sort of jovial thick-headedness found in those who enjoy the sound of their own voice so much as to become lost in it. He makes for a decent bit of background noise, though both other parties are loath to admit it.
“Our official statement was that we wished to see no more of you ‘ghost-hunters’, ‘Monster Specialists’ or, ahem, ‘entrepreneurs’,” Coin Purse states, a casual bit of disdain coloring his emphasis enough to reveal his feelings on the matter. “If you’re here to tell me my family is on an ancient buffalo burial ground, you’re not just a fool but an actual pest; and, finally, if you’re going to say I or my daughter have problems with authority figures, I would ask you go to the nearest psychologist disposal point, the local furnace.” Then, spiel done, the door begins to swing closed, only for a hoof to stop it.
“I’m none of those things,” Starlight manages to say through the gap, an uncertain smile on her face, “So, surely it won’t be an issue if we, heh, talk or something?” The look she receives could wither flowers and set their corpses ablaze, but it abates after an uncertain nod and moment of contemplation.
“Who are you?” Coin Purse manages, as if still deciding to be frustrated at the foreign hoof now resting uncomfortably in his domicile, or somewhat thankful that this, at least, would likely be a different conversation than normal.
“Maybe we could continue this inside?” Starlight manages through grit teeth, the uncomfortable compression on her hoof already well into the realm of ‘a bit painful’.
***
All things end in blood and thunder; murder and the approval of some malign sky god, a fact that echoes back and forth through time like a pendulum. Perhaps the blood grows less thick and the thunder less potent, but such things are as immutably existent as the body in the middle of the room.
It is still. Unsurprising for something decapitated.
His Its head is on the wall, where it was mounted. By the body.
The rest of the room is meaningless, a void; here and there jut the corners of something, a mass and volume intended to obfuscate and waylay, but such things are consumed in the dark. A microcosm of the not-house, the greater whole just as maze-like; confusing, maddening, enough twists and turns to trap even a soul.
Yet the room is not the not-house, not of those walls and corners half-real and half-imagined; the rest is cold and drafty, the gentle lap of distant, foreign seas bouncing on walls made to confuse not merely sight, but also sound, touch, taste. No, no, the room is more than that, for it carries some half-lost scent, and the undertones of comfort that only a lair can; the effect is consumed by the decaying blood, of course, reaching in all directions like some aura of aged rot.
In this musty, fracedinous room, the body waits.
***
“So, your daughter-”
“-Is quite alright, yes, yes, just a mite more rambunctious than she was prior to this whole dreadful business,” Coin grunts, even as the precocious foal in question topples something audibly metallic the next room over and starts loudly bellowing about, well, gibberish; places that don’t exist and imaginary friends and foes with distinctly non-local names. It’s all almost applause-worthy, in a depressing kind of way.
“I see,” Starlight manages, carefully suffocating the urge to pivot in her chair and noticeably look over at where something clearly more exciting is occurring. Nothing can stop the shift of her traitorous gaze, however, but for a moment she has the audacity to think, perhaps, she got away with it. Then, with an almost icy glrch, something in Coin’s neck clearly spasmed, and, yup, it’s clear he saw.
“I’m going to go settle that little bit of... playfulness,” Coin mutters, the smile on his lips revealing far too many teeth to be genuine, even as he rises from his seated position, pivots with a mechanical precision found in loveless ballerinas, and marches into the next room over.
Over the sounds of the painful sounding struggle, Starlight can just make out the words ‘Zzuuz’, ‘A guy us’ and many, many other things, most of them dealing with stabbing things, blood, or otherwise rampant slaughter. A few minutes pass with an increasingly elaborate setting being belted out between the clatter of shattering pottery and the irrepressible violence of a thud thud thud, the stories contradictory in points and founded, ultimately, on divine depravity; descriptions continue, and, slowly, Starlight can feel her stomach grow unsettled.
Finally, merciful cessation. Coin rounds the doorway, hair bedraggled and patchy from where a filly may have yanked just a bit too hard. He slowly pulls up a chair, pushing it with a forced casualness until it is opposite of Starlight’s, and almost flops onto the cushion. Another few seconds pass, these of appraisal, as his glare flickers first to Starlight’s horn, then to her abundance of paperwork, and eventually her cutie-mark, all without quite looking at her face. Finally, as if having passed a test (or, rather, having failed not particularly horribly), Coin leans forward, and with a hiss mutters, “I want that place gone. I want its foundations to be slag. I want to dance in the marble-ashes and turn the entire location into a cesspit.” For a moment he pauses to take an exaggerated breath, only to conclude with a spit, ”It has haunted our city for long enough.”
A minute passes, breathlessly, before Coin clears his throat, leans back, and mutters, “You will, of course, be properly recompensed-”
With a shudder Starlight rises and leaves.
***
Two gifts, language and math; the Abstracts. Given freely to them, always, always, like the gods grant a predator teeth. From that nothing is something plucked.
Why. How.
They gave no such gifts to the body, not when it was whole. The brutish strength from a bestial father, elegance of form from a royal mother: the age of divine gifts had decayed into nothing, leaving nothing for the objects of their torment.
The lair writhes, boils of fury and decay fomenting in the skin of en-marbled darkness; the fury is internal, contained, and rotten from age, yet it is held; what would ________ be, but for it? To deny the story is to deny the self, to truly become nothing.
________ can hear them, always, always, trembling with clattering steps more fretful than the last.
He (NO! No, ‘it’ is safer, ‘it’ is unbound, incapable of death, for ‘it’ is unknown to life) liked the fretful little abortions, colorful and lively, almost as much as heit envied them. Blessed, again, to the last, unlike him it; heithad scraped them, gently, their little brains so like the past, so very much like it indeed that he (there was no helping it, not now, not after the twisting skein of the Sisters compel him, yes, him, to be as much for now) filled the hollows with what he had snatched from millennia.
He stole the Abstracts piecemeal and cobbled them together like a pyramid of skulls. Such is his home.
The not-house agrees with this, always, always, for why wouldn’t it?
Another approaches. The hero. To steal what little has been gathered. Always, ALWAYS. No, no, no, nonononoNONONONO-
A shield is raised.
***
The building withstands. The echos permeate, wroth with forgotten thunder. A short distance away, horn smoking, Starlight stands, bemusement playing across her face.
Something kept the structure standing. Something within.
Impulsiveness and curiosity instigate a war within her mind, so quickly and effectively that she hardly considers the alternative before, too late by half, the door closes behind her.
What assaults is unseen, what protects is unknown; negatively ablative, the shield withstands as the body cooks and broils behind it.
Yet as quickly as it appears, the pain dissipates a moment later. From a smoking grasp the shield drops, rolls away into the impenetrable shadow; the head of a long dead friend, no, not a friend, but perhaps a kindred spirit, winking at him as it departs into the dark. Its mein freezes him, what remains of the reassembling body looking for all the world like stone.
Then, again, as reliable as the thunder, another presence. The form may change and the intention may differ, but that dreaded Monomyth plays out all the same, always, always. Another sword, another death, always, always.
Ah, but not this time. The hunt is spoilt, the chase aborted; there is nothing to slay here, not now, not at all. Leave the trophies unearned and the story undone; the Sisters can choke on their knotted strings...
***
No light. Not even sparks. Before her, behind her, a void. She takes two steps backwards, then another, another, another, again and again, ignoring the unsettling sensation of something looped around one of her hind legs.
She took one step in to this building and twenty steps back, yet none of them lead out.
Slowly, uncertainly, swallowing the panic rising in her gut like bile, Starlight closes her eyes, reopens them, then with finality closes them once more; both leave her blind, but the latter is more honest about it.
Again something jostles a rear-hoof, and now she turns her head to look, still unaccustomed to the umbra and no longer certain if her eyes are open. What she sees, yes, sees, is a bit of string, startlingly red against the dark. It trails behind her like blood, shrinking in length as she follows it and growing as she advances away from it.
She shuffles further in, papers rustling in the drafty, sea-scented breeze; the last good tidings of the outside world, it seems, as the miasmatic darkness grows thick, resisting her movements more and more with every stride. The cold is omnipresent and cuts to the bone, the air reeks of a mausoleum crossed with a cesspit. This is a warning, some part of her brain notes, or at least a disclaimer; any further and pain, if not promised, is probable.
“Bring it,” she finds herself mumbling around chattering teeth; admittedly, usually she could at least somewhat rely upon her not-insignificant magical prowess to do something (hopefully, something useful), but there have been worse times than this, more miserable circumstances that she and her friends have extricated themselves from. Admittedly, her memory was getting somewhat foggy as she bumped into an invisible wall, and the particulars of those situations were getting harder to recall in the numbing chill, but they were there, immutable as her nam-
What is her name?
Is she Starlight? She certainly hopes so, otherwise it would be quite a thing to try and explain to her friends.
Hazily, three answers drift around in her brain before another bump jostles the wrongness out of her skull to splatter messily upon the floor.
Starlight Glimmer. Phew.
There is something here in the mire, watching, dissecting, splitting her essence from her bones and judging it only to haphazardly cram the stuff back where it belongs a moment later.
That, or this place is starting to get to her in the worst way possible.
“I’m going to name you ‘Chorus Proedria’, maybe get Sunburst to help me write an article and probably get some hot cocoa and samples if-” she rambles, the words not mattering, only their intentions. Perhaps the ‘Proedria’ (if they exist) take pleasure in her words, perhaps they don’t. Regardless, so continues his her voyage trek into the mire.
It goes far smoother than it ought, as if the ‘Proedria’ usher her onwards, onwards, to follow the phantom warmth that haunts this place of cold desolation. Behind her, stripped of their meaning, the papers and articles gently stream from her saddlebags, now too loose by far; perhaps there were fingers in the dark, flicking and twisting and yanking at straps with imperceptible motions.
She accepts this notion for a dozen steps before asking herself, “Fingers?”
And, head still woozy, filled with whatever lingers in these cloying shadows, she does nothing to stop the paper torrent.
A minute passes.
All that is left is a trail to emptiness.
***
The fog rolls in with ephemeral tendrils, carrying with it a scintillating splotch of muted color against the dark. It reeks, smelling of sweat and the stench of low-tide, a harbor with workers and sailors. The saga continues, always, always; so strides she, so noble and bright and glorious with blood not yet spilled. The story is broken for now, but gouged deep within the world rests its corpse, ready to rise once more; the cycle never ends, only interred long enough to mark another period at the end of a long sentence.
Revenants. The awakened dead. Thousands of years and no end in sight, corpses on marionette strings to shuffle a dance so repetitive that the ground beneath (if such a thing exists) has sunk from wear.
Slowly, thoughtfully, the trophy on the wall exhales, rustling ancient hairs that have grown too long on splotches of otherwise matted fur. The breath whistles, a low and uncertain note.
With unsettling fluidity the headless body raises a desiccated phalange to where a mouth would’ve been, and, quietly, “Shhhhhh,” the movement revealing the decapitated form to be very naked and very decayed. Lining the body, always, always, weeping lines of unhealed scars; this, the body knows, is the past, the countless incarnations that have perished in furious bloodlust.
Even now, the First Incarnation brays and rattles its ghostly prison, a mass of emotion and instinct too stupid and angry to be tamed by the two Abstracts. Though, what else can be expected from such a thing?
The body flinches for a moment, the onrush of hatred surprising even this, its old forsaken frame. Flashes, moments of color so brief they may well have been imagined and motion so desperate that no, it couldn’t have been. There was yet a world of not-dark, somewhere, not-here, a world of motion and others and-
-and then a darkness born of wicked intelligence, for the only bastards celebrated are those divine in heritage. The rest go where they always have; the pit. The first few days, hunger, anger, some semblance of unnurtured thought percolating through a child’s mind.
This is no home, just another prison.
He had no sharpness to tear at flesh, no, no, just molars and other lumps of exposed bone; but the hunger made that matter little, not when they were dropped in. His father’s strength, his mother’s form, but only the former mattered as he ate and ate as the tears streamed unceasingly from his eyes; it was the stuff of madness, like spiders dancing on his naked brain, little food and less water.
And then, then-
Slinking in the dark, murderer, executioner of prisoners, hero. The sword, stabbing, sharp, callous to his pain and cruel to his flesh; the steel of civilization and that almost barbarous strength, that great and terrible wrenching strength that parts flesh and the deepest darkness that follows. And in that span between the First and Second, it wafts through the air, a balm to heal all wounds.
“The scent of salt and lemons,” whispers the head still upon the mantelpiece, even as the body trembles andthere he is, rounding the corner with sword at the ready-
***
With nary a sound or warning, Starlight falls.
The floor simply isn’t. The string continues trailing after her, a rope too thin and rigid to avert her descent into Tartarus. And yet it continues, seconds to minutes, hours, days, weeks-
Until, eventually, what falls is no longer Starlight.
It happens by inches, a quiet sort of execution as ‘Proedria’, perhaps, or something else in the darkness descends upon St_r_i_ht’s mind and-
***
Piece by piece a ship disassembles, until nothing else remains but its abundant spirit. Yet even this is contested, and around this frame too narrow do two do battle; isolation is far too precious a commodity to spare, and friends and foes may yet join the skirmish, but benighted eyes see not and benighted minds know not.
***
The boat sat upon the waters, drifting up and down with the quiet irrepressibility of the gentle waves. Two look to the battered wood, the splintered oars, the long strips of tortured canvas that hang like bodies from a gallow; such is the state of disrepair and the nature of an ocean storm.
“How long until it’s ship-shape?” asks the First, always, always the First, the magnificent locks of her (he continues with nary a pause at this momentary mental hiccup, for what need is there? Beings like him are chosen by higher powers; they do not falter) his hair swaying in the sea-breeze.
The Second looks to the First, the narrowing of his eyes being the only outward betrayal of what he truly feels; there is nothing ‘sculpted’ on the Second, nothing to mark him apart from the masses that dot the harbor, just an ugly squashed nose and a distinctly chubby build common to hard laborers. There will be no poets to tell his story, the Second knows, but then again that’s the perpetual fate of the eternal shipwright.
He also knows his eldest died during a voyage with the fool before him, but wisely leaves this unsaid; rough seas should not follow the rest of his progeny from a single moment of honesty.
“Ship’s toast. You’re looking at several months,” the Second finally says, his nose rankled and expression set in stone.
Something crunches in the First’s grasp, and she pours a pebble’s worth of dust from it upon the beach beneath.
They shall sing no songs of the Second, for dismal and damned are this world’s ballads, and it’s champions only those who possess that great and terrible destroying might. But valor is not a poisoned well, fit only for them.
“‘No’ means it isn’t happening; if you want a crew, you need a boat, so unless those folks of yours can cross the ocean on flotsam or breathe water, well, you should find yourself a nice family to get cosy with while me and my folks fix this thing up,” the Second adds flatly, the noon sun giving his fresh wash of sweat the damp camouflage necessary to hide from the First.
The First simply glares at the Second for a minute before shrugging and walking away; knowing this to be the closest thing to an assent he is likely to get, the aged shipwright nods to his crew, and a moment later work commences even as the Second stumbles off in search of something to soothe his scorching throat.
Gods, but he hated heroes.
The ship comes and goes, lumps twisted lumber being refitted where they can, replaced where they cannot. Unfortunately for all involved, there is a great deal more of the latter than the former, and the months crawl by like the twitching blade of an eager guillotine. Yet what can be done? All but the harvest trees are lumber, refitting takes time, and-
And when the First is suddenly gone, having stolen the king’s daughter and killed his pet, when the guards follow a trail of bodies and money and find only a Shipwright, the meager remains of a hobbled family, and a half-finished boat, something breaks and onestorybleeds into another. Noble intemperance coupled with royal madness break and mutilate, cut, skin, peel, until, in the end, another dwells within that forsaken not-houseLabyrinth.
If you do not have a monster, make one.
***
SHe lands, blade already aloft and held before him, ready to lash out and smite anything fool enough to present a challenge long before pupils attempt to adjust and reveal that there is nothing to reveal. There is a moment of consideration before teeth are bared and a throaty laugh echoes through the not-house; the particulars of the situation are hardly of import.
There was a quarry. There is a hunt. There will be meat.
Everything else is details, and those solve themselves quite regularly with a bit of name-dropping; after all, even in a foreign land, no one would be fool enough to reject service to Starlight Glim-
A pause; perhaps this Detail is of greater import than once thought. Perhaps even an Issue, or maybe even, gods forbid, a Problem. He didn’t quite care for those, Problems, that is; usually he had underlings, bodies to throw at Problems that couldn’t just be stabbed into nonexistence. Yet here he is, all alone, in the dark.
No, no, not quite alone, not alone at all; They were watching from beyond the black, from beyond the transient symbols that chain this place in ephemeral bars. They were always there, even before the symbols when he danced his first upon the world, when all that bound this place was wind. But They weren’t the only things with him in the dark this time; something else, a bleak rage that hangs in the air like a weighted shawl, shuffles through the mire as a heavy poltergeist.
That unseen something looses an animalistic snort.
A grim joy curls Star-his lips upward, the familiarity of it all finally coming back to him; the dark, the stench, the feeling of entrapment and vague claustrophobia as comforting as a well-worn shirt. A glance downwards, and the grin grows wider, more feral as the ancient drums play in his ears; black goes red as his field of vision first narrows, then mists over.
This body is wrong and too round by far, the blade rigid and unmoving from her his agonized head, the rolicking of the ocean too dim, too somber to be quite the same, but none of that matters; she is a Hero, it is a Monster, and the where the details change, the story never does.
***
When separated from the unessential, they really aren’t the same at all. What a silly mistake.
“Hello,” says the head on the mantelpiece to the newest tenant, milky, glossy eyes unblinking. “Hello,” it says again, to something unseen flitting from beyond the black, too strong to be bound. “Hello,” it says once more, this to itself, the only affirmation it can know in the stagnant dark; the distant roar of animalistic rage sings a duet with a distorted word screamed in fury, and the final salutation goes unanswered.
“Hello,” she says to the head, the more trepidatious one by far. “Are you-?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Ah.”
“But not the ones you know. Not an ‘a’ but a ‘The’. More a title than a form, but the form I am.”
“I… see.”
“I know you do.” There is an uncomfortable pause before the head continues, “You seem much nicer when you’re unable to kill me.”
Silence continues for a while longer, swallowed by the darkness.
“What will happen now?” She asks.
“They fight. I die. He leaves. In time, you do too.”
“Not happening,” she replies, the first bit of certainty coloring her voice since this ordeal began. “Nopony-”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody, thank you, evicts me from my-”
“Body.”
“I know the word! The point is, that’s not happening! I need to get my body back and you, uh, you need to, umm… help me out here?”
“Die?”
“Yeah, di- no! Why is that your first thought?!”
“That is how it always goes; the hero enters and smites the m-”
“Okay, enough about, um, that sorta stuff! Is there anything else you know about? Family, friends, something?”
“...I… remember the scent of salt and lemons.”
“Something useful!” The irritation is growing, but there is little to be feared.
“You are a ghost not yet dead and I am alive but died a thousand times over. We can do nothing, nothing but speak.”
Again there is silence, inter-spaced only by nervous giggling, before she replies.
“So, that’s it?” she says, the words bitter and sharp. The reply she receives is a slow nod, little more than the smallest of pivots up and down, and for a moment she sees red, before loosing a litany of decidedly un-mare-like curses; a few minutes later, panting mostly from the memory of breathing than any true necessity, she grumbles, “So, what, we molder in this place until some stupid eventuality?”
“Well, no,” the head replies, even as its body rises and shambles over, grasping the head by the horns and carefully lowering it on a severed neck. “I could always show you around?”
From beyond the black, the Proedria spectate. And from beyond the black, faint mutterings can already be heard.
