Gerhart's Doom
Gerhart trudged up the craggy mountainside, full-steel spear over shoulder slung, the ache of days aloft still fresh in his wings and the constant, irregular strobes of lightning arcing the dismal sky staying his flight to the wizard's keep. He’d begun this trek chasing a plea from the seldom-trod village of Glittergold, northeast of Griffonstone, from the innkeep Glauren. Of trouble it spake, terrible dreams ruining the rest of all, images of stars and slithering shadows between, and of a voice echoing wanly from a bald northern peak. More than that it offered gold, a kingly sum to who would their woes waylay, and to which Gerhart gladly agreed.
“From the north, we think,” Glauren had said, “is whence it comes. The waxing ill weather tells enough, but so too comes a voice therefrom, whisper-faint, but a sure omen.”
Gerhart bit off a savory mouthful of the roast boar haunch he’d been offered, a bribe he suspected but no less enjoyed. “And there,” said he through full mouth and smacking beak, “is where your wizard lies?”
“Sable,” spat the innkeep, “of Tenebor, his vile practice too loathesome even for that dark jungle. But to himself he’s kept thus far, as did we. I don’t know what’s changed, but something must have.”
Gerhart nodded absently. He had faced unicorns before; of them his only fear were the martial magi, but they were of distant Equestria and Sable sounded like none such. “I will deal with your rampant wizard. Expect me two weeks hence, with word or head in tow.”
He had been sure of himself then, but a foreboding was within him as he marched and soared along. A foreboding which grew as the echoed voice rang clearer, and his eyes weighed with debt to rest. It waxed horribly the first night, after he’d made camp and laid down to sleep. The voice chanted enigma, and the words took shape in his dream. Kin of the stars, greater yet than the Arimaspi of old, leered down at him, misshapen faces pressed against the membrane of the heavens. A terror like that of an ant that had learned its frightful position in the order of things shook Gerhart awake, panting, heart in his throat.
The thought of sleeping thereafter shivered his soul, and he could not lie down facing the sky as oft he did without seeing some hideous movement behind the night's curtain, real or imagined. But sleep he did need, and the few hours he'd snatched with effort from that taxing night were enough to carry the next day.
Hard on him wore the chanting the days next, and harder yet the nightmares. Visions of apocalypse, all manner of creature gathering in orgies of violence and passion, beckoning him to join in gurgled mockeries of language as if their vocal organs had been altered. A part of him considered joining them, but his nobler self dared not. So in terror and disgust, for modest sleep's sake as days wore on, he watched.
He'd broached the unicorn's tower, bags under bloodshot eyes and every movement a hard labor made harder by stolen rest. His spear felt heavy upon his back, and for once he questioned whether or not he could strike true. But he shook it from his mind, steeled his gaze upon the looming stone keep built into the bare mountainside. I must, he thought, I have no other choice.
The gray clouds rumbled as if trod by gargantuan feet, the arcing lightning casting brief images of nameless things moving wingless through the sky, and over all the voice of Sable bellowed its endless chant. Dream and waking became as one, and Gerhart, so long awake for fear of the waxing night terrors now manifest, could no longer tell reality from hallucination.
Specters of the carnal dreamers appeared where once was stone, pressed Gerhart with hideous ululations to flee by paw, by wing or by spear from Sable's darkling fate, but in him burned a fire hotter yet than the coldest corner of Tartarus could abate; hatred. Hatred for his long march. Hatred for his haunted sleep. Hatred for the mockeries of life and all things good that had hounded him these past tiring days. Hatred that sharpened a simple bounty into a moral imperative.
Beyond the point his body ought to have given out, Gerhart placed one talon before the other and scaled the final ascent. Not for stealth nor secrecy nor the benefits of surprise did he care as he approached the unlocked iron door and thrust it open with the butt of his spear. Its slam echoed up the tower, and Gerhart shouted behind it: "Sable! Your death has come!"
Through musty air and the scent of worm-eaten texts Gerhart raced, propelled by fury and fury alone. Up the stairs, unwitting as the stone walls ceded to throbbing flesh, to the beating heart of the sorceror's blasphemy.
His anger was blown out then by a freezing gust from above, and even the undulant, pustuled skin of the room could not draw his gaze from the madness at its center. There a spire of bone arose, twisted skeletons of shapes known and alien swirling upward to an open tome held aloft by nothing at all. Before it the writhing, howling figure of an emaciated unicorn, dead seeming but moving still, the puppet-strung corpse of Sable.
Gerhart should have stopped there. Would have, had he known. But up he looked, and broke the bones of his off talon with a sudden, terror-struck grip on his spear. There were the fiendish, dream-feasting nightmares! The cachinnating demons from outside Sable had invoked, titans seeming and nearing still!
Gerhart went irrevocably mad then. Instinct readied his spear. Instinct took aim at Sable. No high moral or thought remained to guide the shaft which smote the invoker, closed shut that hideous gate, compelled the stark raving griffon to flee the crumbling tower. Only the primeval will to survive shadowed forth from deep antiquity.