Chapter 2: The Di’Jinn Priest and The Little Black Pony or A Tale of The Boy Who Loved Unicorns
~o0o~
Outside the Temple of the Di’Jinn, a herd of wild black ponies gathered. No one could explain where they had come from.
They simply appeared one night.
Out of nowhere.
As if wished into existence.
“Oh, no!” The Di’Jinn recognized what had happened.
Who they were.
By what method, they arrived.
Quaraun, in his youthful, childish innocence, devoted countless hours to staring at the wanted poster of King Gwallmaiic, Elf Eater of Pepper Valley, brushing his hair and lusting for The Elf Eater.
“I wish...”
Those ghastly, horrible, deadly words.
The Di’Jinn regretted teaching Quaraun how to cast wish granting spells.
For he employed wishing spells often.
Usually without thinking.
Quaraun liked wishing things into existence. Pink roses in the desert, where pink roses ought not to be. Blowing in the wind, nodding their heads, oblivious to their unsuitable surroundings. Pink frogs in the estuaries along the river. Swimming in the leafy green reeds.
It became an exceedingly bad habit.
And that night, the evening the little black unicorn with the gleaming silver horn, arrived in the desert, Quaraun, absentmindedly said: “I wish...” while voicing his childish desires to meet The Elf Eater.
And they arrived.
Tumbling out of the sky.
Plummeting into the desert sand.
Ripped from their homelands, and spit out of a portal into the desert.
Thousands of little, miniature, shaggy black horses, no larger than goats.
They roamed the desert of Di’Jinn. In places, no horse could survive, feeding on what no one knew.
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At the head of the herd marched the smallest pony of all.
A beautiful shaggy black pony.
A strange-looking pony.
A black pony whose fur was grown grey and clumped with mats from years of not being brushed.
A wild-looking pony.
A pony with fangs.
More monster than pony.
A Kelpie kin, of this there could be no doubt.
A strange-looking pony with wild matted braids in its mane and tail and a gleaming silver horn shining upon its head.
Where the Di’Jinn went, the tiny unicorn and its mysterious ghost-like herd of Shetland ponies followed.
But they followed, not the Di’Jinn.
No.
They followed Quaraun.
One day, rumours began to circulate that the unthinkable had been done. The Grand High Emperor himself had been implanted into the body of a host.
Thullid raiding parties searched villages for Thullid Spawnlings. The Thullids terrorized nations in a desperate search to find their missing King. And everywhere the Thullid went, a small black unicorn followed.
Watching.
Waiting.
Waiting for the day when the Di’Jinn would return to their temple with their beloved sacred pink Jellyfish in tow.
While ZooLock himself was never found, the Di’Jinn stopped searching when they received a desperate plea for help from the Moon Elves, of all people.
Among other things, the Di’Jinn were known as great healers. And the Moon Elves had in their midst a mad child they knew not what to do with. A child that had 6 years prior been attacked by Thullids and was suspected of being a Spawnling.
The Moon Elves were used to insanity in their kin. It was natural for them. So insane were they that they did not see their own insanity and judged anyone who was normal as insane. And thus, poor Quaraun, who was not insane, was deemed to be the most insane of all. Simply because the other Moon Elves were too insane to recognize harmless normality as sanity.
What wasn’t natural was the small Elfling named Quaraun, only 9 years old, who one day walked out into the village and said to the other Elflings:
“I wish you would all drop dead.”
Immediately they obediently obeyed, and every Elfling in the village dropped dead.
Were the child not the crown prince and the only male heir of the royal family, the Moon Elf villagers would have stoned the strange child to death. In fact, they tried to do just that. But his uncle, the King, immediately locked the child in the tower of the Moon Elf castle. And then sent a message to the Di’Jinn.
No one in the village understood this, for it was unlike their King to contact any outsider. He wouldn’t even consort with lesser races of Elves, let alone a demonic beast like a Thullid. And yet, here they were. The Thullid’s infamous Di’Jinn priests, standing in their village. With the Moon Elf King, handing the only male heir over to them. It shocked everyone. And when the Di’Jinn returned to their temple, with Quaraun in tow, they called off their search for their missing pink Jellyfish. And after this, they focused all their attention on the young Moon Elf.
All around the Di’Jinn temple stood armies of little black ponies, monitoring, lingering, holding back, waiting.
Every day for seven decades, the little Moon Elf left the temple to take care of the wild ponies playing in the river. All the ponies kept their distance, save one: the one with the gleaming silver horn.
Then one day, when Quaraun arrived at the river, he found the Di’Jinn waiting...
The ponies fled in terror, but few escaped the wrath of the Di’Jinn. And the black unicorn stared in terror as the Thullids slaughtered his army.
The young Elf stood over the dead ponies in tears.
With the herd of ponies dead, the Thullids turned upon the unicorn. But they didn’t live long enough to kill him.
“You’ll not kill my Unicorn!”
Was the last words the Thullids heard.
The unicorn watched as every last Di’Jinn withered away and died in horrific agony, under the wrath of their beloved pink Jellyfish.
~o0o~