-Huoshan, lower tier, merchant district, Tianhuo-
I was performing a light patrol of the many stalls today when I heard some whining near me. Looking about, I did not see a single sign of any particularly ‘familiar’ canines.
Sighing I turned to look at my shadow and mentally stashed away some ‘light’ commentary about my wife worrying about keeping me safe, mostly for later perusal with her. She obviously knows that I can take care of myself, except domestically where my wife has always shined of course, but I suppose a little unknown backup didn’t hurt.
Marrying a lambkin, I actually should have somewhat expected her to do something like this. I thought my wife wasn’t as paranoid as many other lambkin were known for being… clearly I was wrong.
“Please get out of my shadow Blighter.” I’d recognize the completely twisted and warped wolf shaped shadow monster, one that Paprika had corrupted with love and snuggles into whatever led to its current state of existence. That such a state was contagious and that Blighter could virulently infect other shadow monsters was mildly concerning, if there were any shadow monsters left in the world for it to infect. “Also, shadows are not naturally bright pink.”
Thankfully we already sealed off any chance of a shadow monster incursion into Equestria. It is sad that our Fœnum counterparts still required their version of the keys to keep their world safe and that they couldn’t permanently do the same as we have done.
Blighter was one of the many familiars of my wife, it did not need to eat and it was constantly affectionate. Blighter being able to hide in my shadow was something that I wish I had known sooner, must have been silently following me closely without my noticing it up until now.
A wolf shaped mass of pink with no defining features poked its head from my discolored shadow. It pressed itself up against my side when it fully pulled itself from my shadow, it was whining quite pitifully.
I couldn’t actually call this thing a shadow monster, it didn’t have the endless hunger and thirst for the destruction all life in the world for one. I didn’t know what to call it aside from an abomination born from a monster of pure destructive hunger and massive amounts of what could only be purifying alpaca love.
Paprika will always be one of the scariest beings in existence to me.
Blighter seemed highly upset about something and I too started to feel it… something was very much wrong.
“Pom.” I blankly stated while staring off into space, Blighter’s whimpering grew slightly louder and the people in the market place started to become agitated by the sight of the strange whimpering canine.
Would Blighter technically be a chi-based lifeform? Any answer to that would just make Paprika all the more scarier.
I stopped my patrol right then and there to calm Blighter down, for I too was now worried.
-Ponyville, three hours after the Sieve Precarious incident, Fizzle-
With one last mash of my hoof, I finally dropped the badly battered pony on the floor and turned to Twilight Sparkle. I had not been kidding when I promised to beat whoever aided in this black and blue.
“I’m sorry about this Twilight, but I still remember what happened the last time the Sieve Precarious was used.” One could only hope the Sieve Precarious was permanently destroyed, though I also hoped it could be fixed. We still needed a way to bring our people home from wherever they ended up. “I just seriously needed to let all my frustration about this out. So… is the artifact truly destroyed?”
“Discord said it’ll reform eventually, it’s apparently a part of the annoyance package plan with almost everything he makes to cause chaos… stupid Poison Joke, at least it doesn’t spread… Anyway, it’ll just reset to only taking us to the chaos dimension. We actually have no idea of how to set it to where those that were sucked in went and given the chaos of its destruction, it isn’t a very feasible method of retrieval as the destination was completely random. At least where they went certainly wasn’t Tambelon.” Twilight looked at broken pony on the floor with a bathysphere like cutie mark. “Is he… going to be okay?”
“I’ve done nothing permanent to him, give him a medical scan and see for yourself.” That was honest, what I was about to say next was less so. “I only just apprehended him a bit enthusiastically…. I got it all out of my system, honest.”
“I wonder what Applejack would say to that. Anyway, I’m still going suspend you from active duty for a few days Fizzle and your pay will be docked accordingly.” Thank you Twilight, I actually welcome some time off from my job of trying to create something approaching competence in the royal guard. It’s a pretty good thing that they are actually getting somewhat competent these days. Given the incentives involved, they better continue to do so or else. “We should be thankful the portal changed destination before that poor goat got sucked in and that everyone went to the same place. We won’t need to open a path to Tambelon and when we find them they should all be together.”
“Thank goodness for that, I would rather not directly deal with that realm and the demon goat that runs it.” I proceeded to bind the slightly mangled Diving Bell for selling an illegal chaos base artifact to a Grogar cultist, especially one I happened to be intimately familiar with. “The question now is, how are we going to locate them? Thinking of reaching them is secondary. Poise De’ File is unlikely to help us modify the Sieve Precarious and Discord would be even less helpful than that for the fun of it.”
“It brings a flame to my eyes that you know me so well!” Discord, the draconequus Chaos Lord himself, appeared and wiped a stream of fire from his eyes and the rag he used to do it went up like flash paper. Also his arm caught fire, half his body was catching on fire and was quickly turning to ice. “Hmm… I think I might have freezer burn.”
“We really don’t want to know about your biological issues Discord.” My comment was met with a disturbed look from Twilight who slowly turned her gaze to Discord, he grinned at us.
“Don’t you want to learn something more about me, isn’t that what friends do?” Nothing fun ever came from Discord when he had a gleeful grin like that, though there could be worse grins to deal with. “Let me start with what a squeedily-spooch is!”
-???, Pom-
“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Groaning I slowly opened my eyes and blinked a few times, everything was a bit blurry. That sounded like Smolder.
“She’s hit her head pretty badly, at least she didn’t land on her horns and her hair took the brunt of the impact to the back of her head when she hit the street in Ponyville… it’s probably a good thing that she landed in some mud when we arrived here.” The other voice sounded like Smolder’s friend Ocellus.
“Where do you think that lambkin ended up?” If they were this close, then how could Smolder or Ocellus not see me?
“Why should I care, she got us into this mess.” Ocellus didn’t sound too harsh when she said it, but she still sounded a bit bitter.
“No, I got us into this mess trying to help her. If you are going to blame anyone, then blame me for trying to help someone in need.” Smolder sounded quite indignant. “So go ahead and blame me so I can go right back to being a cold hearted and tough dragon that’s never had any friends before, is that what you want Ocellus? I think helping people would be considered a good thing to learn in a friendship school, even if it gets us stuck… wherever here is.”
Ocellus winced loudly enough for me to pick up on it, but didn’t say anything in response.
I started to shift slightly and l rubbed my right hoof against my head. I blacked out from another panic attack… I’m about to have another one right now so why was I even bothering to wake up?
Ocellus was probably one of the changelings that has personally dealt with lambkin paranoia, while I might be wary of her… I didn’t dislike or hate her. I knew she was a friendship school student, otherwise I didn’t even know Ocellus all too much.
I’ll try to judge by her actions and intent, I’m not an expert in changelings and what I do know is that they can feel emotions.
Right now I was likely emotionally dead, leaning on the side of eventually heading towards a panic attack. It was completely understandable for me to be panicking right now, given that I don’t have any beasties to protect me and almost got dragged into what was a realm of twilight and horror.
Hopefully Ruff and Woof are okay and they make it back to Tian without any trouble. They should be okay without their Baa-baa for a while and Tian will definitely take care of them and all of my beasties.
My vision was clearing up and I felt like rubbing at my head again, I soon realized why I was having a headache. I was hanging upside down from a tree, blood was rushing to my skull and I could hardly feel my rear legs.
I saw Ocellus and Smolder nearby looking over the goat that got sucked through the portal first and they seemed to have dragged her out of some mud. Since they both could fly, and were awake, they obviously didn’t hit the ground roughly. I’d estimate I fell from a fair distance up before my hind legs were caught by this tree leading to my current predicament.
The goat looked like an islander with some mixed heritage… possibly pony or donkey. Ponies were known for being quite genetically flexible.
She looked wiry and small. Brown fur, darker brown across her belly, lighter brown around the legs, tail, eyes and mouth.
Defining features are a small beard, circular healed notch in her left ear maybe caused from an incident involving a unicorn firing a spell at her earlier in life. It was either that or a bad attempt at getting an ear piercing, her ears were floppy and big enough for it.
The two small horns spoke of her young age as a goat, she was at least teenage… joy. Ocellus and Smolder were also notably young, but not as young as the goat.
She had tan, with a hint of orange, colored hair that was tied up in a ponytail. The tropical coloring is what makes me think she’s an islander. It looks like her hair would hang down around her withers if unbound and her bangs centered on the middle of her forehead and hung halfway down her face. Her tail was short and had a similar style to her hair
She was wearing a rather unique looking teal headband, well cared for, if currently covered in mud. That was likely a gift from someone important to her… or stolen. I’d need to know more about her before I could come to a conclusion.
I have her pegged as a street urchin, if the islander thing pans out given her hair style. Street rats lived inland on continents and street urchins lived next to the sea or on islands. I’m also going to guess that mentioning her parents is an exceedingly horrible idea.
The young goat was currently out cold and would likely need immediate medical assistance, it is unfortunate that I don’t think that any of us have any skills in that particular area and it was a good thing that her breathing didn’t look too unsteady.
At least my Huoshan Guard profiling lessons were paying off, good to know.
I wondered what her involvement in this mess was, she wouldn’t have gone after that unicorn or the artifact otherwise.
Okay enough of that, put my mind on some tasks instead of facing the inevitable pit of dread that is not having canines to protect me from the dangers of this place.
I curled up and tried to tug my numb legs free, only to find that my hind legs were currently quite stuck in the tree and I wanted to get down from here.
Okay, list some things we needed as a group. First things first, could I see any food, water and shelter.
I could see banana peels around here… food is not an issue then. Though I wondered what could consume so many bananas.
I can see a stream a short distance away, no problem with water there. It looks both fresh and quite clean.
I’d still boil it though, err on the side of caution and all that. We’d probably have to carve a large rock into a bowl or find some clay. We were basically working from nothing as we didn’t have any supplies or camping equipment before we ended up here.
Moving on, we can easily build a lean-to for four easily enough from all the surrounding resources or at the very least we’ll be safe in the trees in the case of large predators.
Had I not been ‘functionally’ exiled from my home, I wouldn’t know a single thing about camping or surviving outdoors.
There didn’t seem to be any large predators, most of what I was hearing was bugs, birds and nothing violent or volatile in the surrounding brush of the forest. This place seemed peaceful, too peaceful even. Please, for the love of the longma goddess Jiutian, let things stay that way. I don’t think I can face any danger by myself all alone in the middle of nowhere.
Oh right, I wasn’t alone!
“Hey, up here, I need help...” I really didn’t say that loudly, it came out above a whisper at least.
Was I really so timid? Yes, yes I was.
“Did you hear something Smolder?” Ocellus asked and looked around with fright, she reminded me of a lambkin in that moment.
I could really use a good friend right about now, instead I would settle for two people I was barely acquainted with and a goat I knew nothing about.
“Up here.” I said a little bit louder while cupping my right front hoof to my face and waving my left front leg to attract attention. The two thankfully heard me this time and turned around. They saw me dangling from the tree. “I could use a little help here, my legs are trapped and I can’t get down by myself.”
“Hold on second, I’ll find a way to help you down. Ocellus stay with the goat.” Smolder started flapping her wings.
“Gladly.” Sighed Ocellus, mostly with relief that she didn’t have to deal with me. That was going to be a rocky uphill thing.
“Oh no, take your time.” I drawled lazily. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Smolder flew up and hovered close to where I was.
“Can you brace you’re front legs against the tree?” Smolder asked after a moment of looking at my predicament from a better angle.
“Yes, why do you ask?” I started to shiver as if I already knew what was about to happen.
“Well I think I can get your legs free, but you might fall to the ground.” Smolder was a pretty nice dragon, she was actually concerned about me.
To be fair we should all be concerned about the contagions in the given surroundings...
No, bad Pom! Do not go full blown lambkin paranoia, keep it together!
I’m in a nice, quiet and calm forest, with some friendly people who are stuck in the same situation I was currently in. Well not exactly the same situation as being stuck in a tree, but yeah…
I took a deep breath, centered myself and then stretched out my legs to put my front hooves against the trunk of the tree.
“Do i-eeeahhh, oof, ahhh-ow!” Okay, I was okay and will be fine. Just keep telling yourself that Pom and maybe it’ll be true soon enough.
Smolder had tackled my trapped legs free, the back half of my body pivoted and I slammed back first into the tree. Following that I promptly tumbled to the ground in a painful heap.
“Are you okay? Sorry for not warning you.” Smolder came in for a landing next to me as I worked to get my numb legs under me and wobbled onto my front hooves.
“I’m… I’ll be fine. Nothing’s broken at the very least.” Well better introduce myself to Garble’s sister formerly. “Pom Lambchop of the Huoshan Guard, head of the Huoshan Canine Division. It’s… I want to say good to meet you properly, but given the current circumstances... Your brother Garble spooked me when I first met him, but he’s proven that he’s not that bad a dragon after we worked things out.”
“Gar-gar didn’t hurt you did he?” Smolder wasn’t even going to question me being a Huoshan Guard, I'm kind of obligated to protect her because she’s a dragon.
“Aside from a mild heart attack that normally occurs when a lambkin is spooked, no.” I held out my right hoof and she grabbed it with her right claw to help me steady myself.
“Nice to meet you Pom, I’m Smolder and that’s Ocellus. So you were part of the protection detail for my brother and the diplomats?” Dragons like Smolder are honored in Huoshan, so long as they weren’t outright jerks.
“Yes, along with a longma named Gai Jin and my Canis Minor puppies Woof and Ruff. Nobody else got sucked into the portal besides the three of us and the goat.” If we were somewhere on the planet of Equus, then I would be happy. “Do you think we’re still on Equus?”
If we weren’t, finding a way home wasn’t going to be simple.
“No… I can’t exactly describe it, but I can feel that something is very different about the air here.” At least Ocellus willingly joined the conversation with me in it. We approached her and the poor goat, looking around the edges of the forest.
“We really need to get our bearings then, can you fly up and look around a bit Ocellus?” At Smolder’s query, Ocellus nodded and took off into the air. Smolder then turned to me.
“You are taking this far better than I thought a lambkin normally would, oh and about Ocellus…” Smolder smiled weakly. “She’s not really good at hating anyone and she’s really quite friendly, I promise.”
“I’m not actually taking this situation very well at all. I’m trying to concentrate on a lot of other things other than us being lost with the possibility that we might not have a way home.” Was it hot out here? I was beginning to hyperventilate. Was everything spinning? I’m having a panic attack and that’s only making me panic even more! “It’s not working…”
No dogs to protect me, no idea where we are, limited to the surrounding resources that could be poisonous, no shelter in sight and me quickly going into a spiraling panic about it all.
Smolder hugged me, everything quickly snapped back to being focused.
“It’s going to be okay. When I let go of you, I want you to try and keep it together.” Smolder’s hug felt nice. My breathing slowly evened out and I eventually calmed down. She let me go and looked at me sternly. “You panicking is going to cause us to panic and we already have an injured goat to worry about, so don’t add on to our problems Pom."
I took in a huge gulp of air through my mouth and exhaled slowly through my nose while putting my hooves over my chest.
“Okay Smolder, I think I can handle the stress from here, but I… I need to sit down for a moment.” I did so by going over to the goat and sitting next to her. “We lambkin don’t do too well by ourselves…”
“Obviously, but that’s why you have us.” Smolder smiled brightly and spread her claws outwards.
“Let's move into the shade in a minute.” Put off the encroaching sense of doom Pom, this place seems really peaceful and there’s not much going on around here.
Smolder soon helped me carefully move the goat out of the sun and into the shade of the trees, we were still in sight of the stream. I relaxed a little bit, only for something to occur to me.
Why wasn’t there much stuff going on around here?! Why were things so quiet?! I mean there were birds and bugs, but where were all the other signs of forest life?! It was far too peaceful here and even the slightest amount of animal noises should be heard from a good distance in this kind of place.
“Pom?” Smolder said and I squeaked and flailed my legs until I was on my back, she giggled a bit and hugged me again. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t think all those things said about lambkin were true.”
“That we’re all constantly paranoid almost bordering on schizophrenia and in general are hypochondriacs? If you have to ask if there’s a problem with a lambkin, the answer is…” I closed my eyes and said it as calmly as I could. “Yes, do you want the whole list?”
“You don’t seem that bad, how would you even become a Huoshan Guard if you weren’t at least a little bit tough or good at it?” You are a really nice dragon Smolder.
“For one, I don’t do active patrols. I mostly mediate issues between other guards and their canine companions. Otherwise I do small things to help out the locals or visitors. As head of the Huoshan Canine Division I usually have my beasties with me to protect me from anything dangerous, so I don’t really feel too safe without them.” That I could even speak well over thirty dialects of canine was certainly not going to help me here, I curled up and shivered. “Personally I don’t like fighting and I’m not particularly great at combat by myself, but I do know a few things. I’m also a small talent fluffmancer, not many lambkin have that ability or even try to learn to use it if they do. That might be useful in this situation, in case something happens and I have to protect all of you.”
“Forgive me for saying this, but you don’t exactly seem very capable of protecting us.” Ocellus landed and spoke at me coolly.
“When seriously pushed, I might surprise you as much as myself…” I mumbled as I thought about the thief I caught. “The artifact that brought us here was destroyed before we were sucked through the portal. We… we don’t exactly have a way home if we're not on Equus.”
I had finally brought it up and the silence of the forest was quite palpable, there was a stronger sense of dread that came with this silence.
The goat’s erratic breathing was worsening, but otherwise she should be able to hold on until we could do something to help her at least.
Smolder and Ocellus looked at one another quietly with worry.
“So... Is anyone hungry? Want to help me find something to make a bowl out of or do we start building a shelter next to the river?” Distractions, we all needed some really big ones. “I know Smolder can help with the campfire.”