# Gerhart's Doom

Gerhart trudged up the craggy mountainside, full-steel spear over shoulder slung, tempted to fly the rest of the way to the wizard’s keep despite the ache of days aloft still fresh in his wings and the constant, irregular strobes of lightning arcing the dismal sky. He’d begun this trek chasing a plea from the seldom-trod village of Glittergold, north and far east of Griffonstone, from the local innkeep Glauren. Of trouble it spake, terrible dreams ruining the rest of all, haunting images of stars and the shadows between, and of a potent voice echoing 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, unclear even at its loudest, 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 darkling 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, be it 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. It had become such that he'd turned to drink in order to dull his senses and dim his dreams, a grog of spirits and water from the river nigh. It had worked, but only as long as he'd drink to spare, and as the days wore on his store of spirits failed.

So he'd broached the base of 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 from afar. But he shook the question from his mind, steeled his gaze upon the looming tower of stone built into the bare mountainside. I must, he thought, there is no other choice.

The gravid 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, outcast of Tenebor, bellowed its endless chant. Dream and waking became as one, and Gerhart, so long kept awake for fear of the night terrors that now comprised his reality, could no longer tell the one from the other. But of one thing was he certain.

What began as a simple bounty had become a moral imperative. Cold nihilism had coalesced around Gerhart's soul, pressed him to flee by paw, by wing or by spear from what fate Sable had in mind for the world, yet in him burned a fire hotter yet than the coldest corner of Tartarus could abate; hatred. Hatred for his long march, hatred for his ruined dreams and stolen sleep, and above all hatred for the mockeries of life and all things good that had haunted him these past tiring days.

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 and ambush 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 stellar 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.

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 out of time and space Sable invoked, now so near!

Gerhart could no longer think. Instinct readied his spear. Instinct aimed at Sable. Instinct threw.