Songs of Innocence

Chapter 74: Rebirth of the Unspeakable One

"At which hour the earth is shattered, destroyed and dead
back to a house of fear shall beest traced the beginning of the end."
-On The Nature of Dark Magic, page 74

In a land that was not Equestria, where the sun did not shine, that neither pony nor beast had touched in ages, a single stallion walked along a narrow path of millennia-old broken stones. He did not show his face or his body, covering himself in a shoddy cloak as he walked under the pale moon. He dared not see the fearful pitch black flat wasteland around him, shielding his sight with a mask of eldritch material, looking almost like still tar.

He shuddered with dread as he drew closer and closer to the nameless ziggurat that stood at the end of the path. It filled him with such inspiration, making him want to tear off his mask and gaze upon the glorious twisted land that sanity had shunned. It was a reflection of the mind's darkest thoughts, offering a gateway into the things anyone right-minded would know should only be held by beings much, much higher.

An ominous moan filled the oppressive air as the stallion finally came to the massive gates of the structure that were adorned with iron bars like that of a cage. His eyes climbed up the structure that stretched high into the starless black sky.

Then, all of a sudden, one of the two doors opened, just enough for something to poke its head out to see the stallion. The black, humanoid creature was one he had thoroughly informed himself about: Pantagruel, son of the giant Gargantua, and gatekeeper of this stronghold of the Great Obscenity. Pantagruel may have been smaller than his father, but that was only relative; Pantagruel towered over the stallion, making the pony look like an ant in comparison to him.

"A visitor?!" he growled, sounding more annoyed than surprised. Suddenly, the door flew open, and he began to stomp menacingly towards the stallion. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE! WHAT A FOOL YOU ARE! THE IDEA THAT YOU WOULD DARE STEP INTO THIS LAND IS SO UTTERLY BAFFLING! THIS PLACE IS A HORRID MEMORY THAT MUST NOT BE REMEMBERED! NO ONE MAY ENTER, AND NO ONE WILL LEAVE OTHER THAN THROUGH DEATH!" he shouted, before swiftly stomping on the stallion as if he were a bothersome bug that found its way into one's house.

But when the giant lifted his foot, he found no bloodied pile of viscera on the ground... He found nothing at all, actually. It only fueled his anger further. He growled, and looked around, to find the stallion behind him, walking towards the doors like nothing had happened. Over the sound of his own growls, Pantagruel heard a sound coming from the stallion. It sounded like he was swallowing something.

Pantagruel stomped in fury, shattering the path around him. "YOU CANNOT SIMPLY WALK AWAY, COLT! I WILL SHOW YOU, THE... the... p-pain and... a-a-and..."

Suddenly, he felt the sensation of bitter cold, and he unceremoniously collapsed onto the ground. All his blood had been quietly drained from him, and he was left a pale, lifeless corpse at the foot of the ziggurat. 

The stallion entered it, and his breaths grew short and labored as he finally removed his mask. The foreboding room that welcomed him had walls of chiseled stony material, adorned with unlit torches and busts of long-extinct monsters and beasts. The only one he took interest in was the one that sat above the arch separating this room from the hallway beyond it. The relief offered a monstrous idea, of an unnatural creation, combining three ponies together into a singular being struggling to be one. Their faces were melded together, but failed to appear as one whole being. The pony on the right was a pegasus with a proudly-spread wing, the pony in the middle was an earth pony with only an expression of fierceness, and the pony on the left was a unicorn with a sky-turned face and a noble horn. 

The sight he admired filled him with curiosity. Was this meant to be portraying an alicorn? The thought intrigued him, and he wrestled with it as he walked further into the accursed fortress. He came to no solid answer, as his trek gradually pulled his attention back. He ascended a dizzyingly tall spire, cold and aged. The peak offered a humbling view of the eerie landscape which he could now safely gaze upon as he ascended further along a winding path that wrapped its way around the center tower of the ziggurat.