Windfall threw his head back and cursed pitifully at the uncaring sky.

“Tusan också! Också!”

Windfall was blaspheming for all he was worth, but Breezie lungs weren’t exactly built for bellowing. Had there been any other creature in the desolate swamp with Windfall to hear his cries of despair, they might have confused it with a mosquito’s buzz.

“Jävla det till helvete,” he whispered despairingly as he lighted down on a cattail and wrapped his frail forelegs around himself miserably. “Helvete, helvete, helvete...”

Windfall had remained stoic when the village presiders put him to a förbannad vote. He’d stayed silent when each presider reached into their respective satchels and tossed an offering of colored pollen to indicate their respective judgement: yellow for innocent, red for guilty. He’d even bowed his head in quiet acceptance when he saw there had not been a single fleck of yellow among them. The vote was unanimous.

He was förbannad. Banished.

Only after the portal to the village closed behind him, leaving Windfall alone in this endless, terrifying swamp, did his facade finally break. The outcast had flittered in furious circles aimlessly for minutes on end. He’d cursed and raged and raged and cursed, but Breezie wings weren’t exactly built for physical exertion. Before long he was exhausted and had to land.

Puny and forlorn perched on this lonely cattail, Windfall knew he should feel guilt or regret, but instead he felt something else. Something the Breezie language didn’t have a word for. But the Ponish language did. And while Windfall didn’t know much Ponish, he knew the word for what he felt right now.

“Betrayed,” his thin, flute-like voice whistled through the reeds around him. “Windfall izt been betrayed.”

It was ironic that the friend who’d taught Windfall the term “betrayal” and so many other Ponish concepts was the one who’d ultimately demonstrated it to him. Windfall had gone his whole life not sharing his poetry notebook with anyone, but Seabreeze had seemed like a kindred spirit. Seabreeze dabbled in Ponish. Seabreeze would cuss or insult if the situation demanded it. Seabreeze seemed to appreciate all forms of speaking, not just the narrow, underdeveloped semantics of Breezen. Windfall had shown his poems to Seabreeze because he thought the latter would see past the surface, would appreciate the artistic contrast of penning loving descriptions of life and nature in Abyssal Cuneiform, the language of Dark Magic and ancient occult scriptures. Because using black speech to write beautiful verses was proof that all words were inherently neutral, was it not? Seabreeze was unafraid to use gentle languages to communicate anger, so he would certainly respect Windfall being unafraid to express spirituality through diabolical script, right?

Wrong.

Seabreeze had been disgusted by the notebook. He immediately informed the village’s presiders, and the poems were confiscated. Windfall initially held onto some hope that the subject matter of his verses would exonerate him, but when the presiders reached Windfall’s sonnet praising the bravery of the Pollen Pilgrims (Breezies who braved the wilds beyond the village to gather supplies), he knew he was sunk. Rendered in Abyssal Cuneiform, the sonnet could be arbitrarily interpreted as a war march, and the author could be labeled as a dangerous fanatic.

To call a Breezie “dangerous” was of course laughable. One would sooner find an unfriendly pony or a peaceful dragon than a Breezie with a mentality twisted enough to wish harm on anyone. And in the extremely rare cases a Breezie did exhibit troubled behavior, well, a förbannad vote could take care of that. It had certainly taken care of poor Windfall. The presiders hadn’t even let him take his precious poems with him through the portal and now here he sat, with nothing left in the world but resentment.

Interrupting Windfall’s thoughts, a swollen mud bubble burst near his cattail perch. The resulting gust sent him spinning away deeper into the swamp, trailing a fresh string of profanities behind. Breezie reflexes weren’t exactly built for snap decision making, but Windfall still struggled to right himself because he knew plunging into the muck and drowning would be a terrible way to go.

A flat stone slab flashed in Windfall's periphery as he tumbled, and with some maneuvering managed to intentionally crashland on top of it. Too small and weightless to be injured by the fall, Windfall got to standing position and looked curiously up at the solid mass he’d been lucky enough to encounter way out here.

In front of Windfall loomed an ominous stone structure halfway between a cave and a sculpture of a ram’s head. It looked like it hadn’t been inhabited in along time. A very long time. Biting his lip, Windfall glanced around, trying to discern whether it was getting darker out or it was just the structure’s shadow on him. Either way, now that Windfall had gotten all the thought-clouding anger out of his system, he grudgingly needed to start thinking seriously about his own survival. The sun would set soon, and with the dark came predators. Breezies were slow fliers with no natural defenses, which meant everywhere outside their magically sealed villages were extreme danger zones. It also meant Pollen Pilgrims were endlessly respected for their bravery and that being förbannad was generally accepted as a death sentence.

Windfall shook his head to clear his thoughts. He certainly didn’t have a village anymore (thanks Seabreeze, you judgmental hypocrite), but he did have this cave. And forbidding as it was, shelter was shelter. At least its jagged, unwelcoming appearance matched Windfall’s mood. Flitting up into the air again, he headed for the entrance.

The darkness in the foyer passageway was unnaturally thick. Solid, even. Windfall beat his gossamer wings feebly, but he had no real body mass, no momentum with which to push forward into the thick shadows. Why did the universe keep testing his already tattered patience? Windfall growled, closed his eyes, and focused.

Breezie antennae weren’t exactly built for spellcasting, but Windfall had taught himself a basic illumination charm to make it easier to see his notebook’s pages during long, dark nights of penning poems.

The tiny specks of light at the end of Windfall’s antennae were blazing beacons in the absolute gloom, lighting up the large chamber into which he emerged. Windfall felt his breath snatched away by the sheer relative size of cavern. Burned out torches ten times his height. A flight of stairs so long that it didn’t fit in Windfall’s field of vision. A thick, open faced book lying forgotten on the floor…

Wait, a what now?

Windfall hastily lighted down on the abandoned book, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. Oh yes. Oh Faust above, yes. The comforting smell of parchment was replacing the bitterness of being cast into this swamp with tender memories of days spent in the village library. It was there Windfall had first discovered his Special Talent for learning language. There where he poured over the archived basement texts to learn the intriguing intricacies of Abyssal Cuneiform. And on late nights after everyone else had gone to bed, on the steps of the library by the light of his antennae was where Windfall penned his most passionate verses.

He’d never see that place again, would he?

Windfall shivered and curled up on the page, his good memories gone and the present situation freshly miserable in his mind. Teaching himself taboo texts hadn’t quite led in the direction he’d hoped, now had it? The förbannad Breezie’s foreleg lazily traced the letters visible in his antennae’s light. He wondered what the words he was laying on might possibly say. There were pictures on the opposite page that certainly intrigued him, such as the rendering of a mighty looking warlock goat with a radiant bell hanging from his neck. Windfall’s speciality was words, not images, but he could tell by the drawings that this book had intriguing secrets hidden beneath its incomprehensible text. Gah, if only it had been written in Breezen. Or Ponish. Or… wait.

Abyssal Cuneiform?

Windfall scrambled to standing position and peered down at the text upon which he’d been reclining. Now that he was no longer looking at the words from an upside-down fetal position, he could see that the book was actually twice-removed from his native tongue: the text being Cuneiform, and the language Ponish. Real Ponish that had been hornwritten long ago by a forgotten unicorn scribe. Windfall rubbed his forelegs together in helpless excitement. He’d never read an authentic foreign text before, only miniature replica manuscripts copied by ancient Breezie scholars. For all the dangers that existed out here in the real world, it was only fair that some treasures existed too. Armed with his own knowledge and some supplemental half remembered linguistics pointers from Seabreeze, Windfall took in the text beneath him, savoring the words like they were the sweetest nectar from the ripest summer blooms.

Bewitching Bell.

Those were two words Windfall understood separately, though the significance of putting them together was lost on him.

Grogar.

Now there was a term he didn’t know, but he certainly liked the taste of it.

Boundless... infernal power…

The meaning of the text slowly materialized, and Windfall’s tiny head began pounding from the scope of it all. The warlock goat, this “Grogar” character, was truly a fearsome creature. Downright inspiring in his fearsomeness. As Windfall’s eyes darted all around the page, the words “Bewitching Bell” appeared again and again. The artifact was the source of the long dead Grogar’s might, and this book was an instruction manual on how to use it.

As Windfall continued to process the knowledge of this book, the frenzied smile on his face grew wider and wider as rubbing of his forelegs went from excited to frenetic. “Bewitching Bell...indestructible… empowers ze wielder...”

Tiny, piping giggles escaped Windfall’s mouth, bouncing off the walls of the chamber and growing in volume. The village presiders had told Windfall his dabbling in other languages was a sign of an ill mind. A mania that if left unchecked would only bring him misfortune and ruin. But by Windfall’s measure, his ruin was their doing, while his affinity for the alien had led him to a promise of salvation. A promise of this… this ‘Bewitching Bell.’

Windfall’s tiny chest heaved and his limbs burned as he laboriously gripped the corner of the book and flittered backwards to turn the page. If he weren’t so adrenalized, his physical strength would have failed him, but he was very adrenalized. He had to keep going. To keep reading about this alluring, beautiful Bell and all the world-shaking and destructive ways it could be used. Breezies weren’t exactly built for domination, but Windfall had been pushed too far. He was förbannad. Banished. Untethered and free to pursue any end he desired.

And the end he desired was to get out of this Faust forsaken swamp and locate the instrument that would be his ascent to godhood.

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