Chapter 7
The Past (...and Present...and Future...) of Spry Canyon pt.1
Mitch must have been the comatose pony Spitfire had been talking about, because when Eagle was back from his flight, which had been abnormally clumsy for some reason, Mitch was still asleep. As such, Eagle decided, grinning slyly, to wake him up. He slunk into the room, next to his face and proceeded to be as annoying as possible.
“Mitch! Mitch! Mitch! Mitch! Mitchell! Mitchell! Mitchell! Mitchell! Ponies!-”
At the mention of the last word, Mitch immediately bolted upright, yelling some incomprehensible word. Fortunately fEagle was to the side of, and not over his friend. He immediately gained awareness of his surroundings (something rare for him, or anypony, really) and started talking to Eagle.
“Eagle! I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.
“Got what?” Eagle exclaimed back!
“My pony name!”
Eagletone immediately put his hooves to his cheeks in joy.
“It’s Bass Clef!”
“Awesome! Now, eat breakfast fast, because we have to be at Spry’s as soon as possible!”
“Okay!”
After that short exchange, Bass Clef got up, ran down to the dining area of the saloon and ate. Eagletone and Cache had nothing to do, so they decided to simply hang around and talk. Josh seemed to have woken up earlier, and had just finished when they came down to eat, so he was there too; everypony else was out and about. Four of the twelve barstools were occupied now.
“So,” A grinning Eagletone began, “You know what you said about me and Spitfire, Josh?”
“...Yeah, what about it?” he inquired, the tone in his voice making it clear he was oblivious.
Eagle raised one eyebrow in a way that told him to think.
And then he got it. “...Seriously?”
“Hey, if the horseshoe fits.”
The other two former guys at the barstool didn’t even get what they were talking about, having forgot all about a certain incident.
“Remember, on the train?” he hinted to them.
Cache suddenly burst out laughing for reasons other than what Eagle was thinking - reasons only he knew. “So you two are a couple now, are you?”
Eagle smiled - they finally got it! “I was asked that once before, but I’m gonna’ say ‘heck, yes!’ this time.”
Bass Clef shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, man. Anyways, I’m done eating so do you wanna’ head on over to Spry’s?”
“Sure,” Cache agreed. All four ponies got up, since there was no longer anything for Josh to do where they were.
“I think I’ll go to the train station, see if I can do anything there.”
And with that, they went their separate ways. Eagletone, Bass Clef, and Cache opened the door and walked out into the desert heat and a Western setting, and walked down the dirt road to the house of Spry Canyon at the far end of the small town, wooden buildings, some painted, all along the way.
It was a lot hotter now that it was no longer morning, something that Cache pointed out. The other two agreed on this, especially Eagletone, who had been out before it had gotten too hot. This made them all the more eager to get into the cool of Spry’s house, so they quickened their pace and didn’t talk with anypony on the way, despite what their inner-bronies told them to do.
***
Spry Canyon was sitting in his room, which at the moment was rather dark since he didn’t want the heat of a candle adding to that of the day. Not to mention he had grown used to being in a room that was just light enough to read in. He sighed, remembering old times of long ago. Very long ago. That was how he passed the time now, remembering those days of adventure and mayhem so that he might never forget some of his best - and worst - experiences.
As he sat there, reflecting like he so often did, there came a rare knock at his door. He had been expecting this, of course, and went to greet the True Three Bearers of the Elements of Balance. He opened the door and was not disappointed by his Sight, though his eyes were rather blinded by the sudden almost-noonday sun. “Eagletone, Cache, Mitch! Come in, please,” he said, welcoming them into his house with a gesture of the hoof.
Mitch was eager to share the news of his name with the older former-human, who responded positively. “Ah, so you finally got yourself a name that makes sense, did you, Bass Cleff?”
He nodded eagerly.
“Well, that’s all well and good, but you all three know why you’re here,” Spry said, sobering the company. “To learn. To learn about everything that is important right now. To learn about the Elements of Balance, what they are and why they are.” Eagle nodded and sat down comfortably, the other two following suit. Spry continued, “To learn about Oblivion. Who it is, and why it exists.” He was met with confused faces on this one, which he had expected. He decided to start with one thing first.
“So, you know that you three are the Three of legend, but you don’t know what that means. I’ve said that you’re the ‘Bearers of the Elements of Balance,’ but you don’t know what that means either. You may have guessed already, but these are one and the same.”
The three nodded, understanding.
“The Elements of Balance are like the Elements of Harmony, something I’m sure you all know of.” He was met with knowing grins. “They are indeed very similar, even having come into existance at the same time, along with the Elements of Creation which no longer exist, having been consumed in the Dawn of Ponies as we know it.
“But,” he continued, “They are also inherently different in a number of ways. For one, you may have noticed that nopony has ever even heard of them, and for a good reason. They exist only for one purpose and one purpose only: to destroy one entity that never should have existed in the first place. Or in the case of the time they were created, should never exist.
“There is also one more, completely integral difference: The Elements of Harmony cannot take a life. They can purge something or someone of evil, like with Nightmare Moon, but if that thing or person was evil to begin with, it can only seal it until the bearers change, something that happened with Discord. In a way, the Balance Elements are sort of a step up in both ability and danger in the wrong hands, for they can do many things, but the most important thing about them is that they can take a life. They were made to kill evil.”
The Three were dumbstruck.
“Oblivion is this ‘Monster’ you speak of. It attacks entire civilizations, and when it does, they literally cease to exist. Yes, I know the laws of conservation of matter and energy state that this is impossible, but you must remember that Oblivion himself is impossible. I thought that the only way to stop him was to seal him back into his own dimension, but I must have been proven wrong by the Royal Sisters,” he said, the last part mostly to himself. “They must have found a way to halt his destruction without sealing him, which takes an irreplaceable source. Despite this, I assure you that it is only temporary. We have a limited amount of time before the Princesses never existed, either.”
Everypony in the room looked thoughtful after this portion of news.
Spry Canyon sighed. “Now that you know the basics, I suppose I should tell you my story It has everything you need to know to help you in exact detail. Cache. Allow me to place my hoof on your shoulder and your two friends’ on the other.”
All three were rather confused, but complied, meeting immediate results. All their normal thoughts were cleared away, replaced by those of Spry Canyon. His voice no longer sounded there, but distant. Distant and very echo-ey.
***
“I told you already of a small portion of my travels with Starswirl the Bearded. I shall tell you all that you need to know, now.”
They seemed to be flying through a thick fog in a dark, endless place, but as he finished talking, everything cleared somewhat, ending up in a blurry rendition of a wide-built, strong man walking through a red desert filled with beautiful crimson sandstone mountains, mesas, and plateaus.
As he was walking, he was admiring the harsh beauty of his natural surroundings. Of course there was little around him that was not natural. He was hiking alone, on a well used trail in a National Park. Suddenly, the strangest thing happened - a light blue, glowing portal opened up right under him with a tenor rumble. Rob had no chance to respond to this, and immediately fell in. The vision suddenly became first person.
They saw mostly darkness, with some colorful gas-nebulae-like things taking up some of the space that they were falling through. Their course was, strangely enough, not straight - instead, they seemed to be tossed around often and violently by the wisps of colorful stuff.
They tried to scream, not only in panic, but also in pain, for, like Eagle and Bass Clef eight days ago, they were turning from human to pony, and they definitely felt it. When they tried, though, they were cut short, unable to make any noise from their throat.
Their falling speed increased, along with the level of light when suddenly, they more or less flew out of the middle of some sort of building with an audible *SZHOoo-ooOSZH* the sound somehow playing and reversing.
They, however, hardly noticed this, because at that moment, they blacked out seeing some gray, white, and blue shape moving towards them.
The vision was paused as Spry said, “My apologies for having to show you this; it is how your friends got here, though the portal they entered was different. The original portal - the one I went through, was open for only a fraction of a second for some confusing reasons that I’ll get to later.”
The vision then continued, back in third person now.
Rob woke up surrounded by a deep blue aura. Needless to say, he was rather surprised, jumping back.
“Whoa!” he said, startled.
“Ah, you’re awake,” a voice audibly older than his own said. A gray unicorn - for that was the only thing that it could be - clad in royal blue and silver robes with a blue gem in the shape of a swirl, who Rob saw was creating the strange aura, walked in. This unicorn seemed to concentrate a bit, and the aura suddenly stopped, seeing as the spell to quicken awakening had done its job.
The pony spoke again, much to the surprise of Rob. “While you were unconscious, I took the liberty of gleaning your mind.” Rob looked a little offended. “It’s very strange,” he said, noting that somehow he was an anomaly, “There are many parts of it that are impossible to access, something that not even the Royal Sisters could do. As I can tell, you’re definitely no assassin sent to do your job, so tell me, who are you?”
Rob had heard all of this, but he was still stuck on the fact that one, he had just fallen through a portal to here and two, this was a unicorn pony and it was speaking. After thinking about it for a moment, something clicked. He put a hand to his face and said, “Oh, great. Now I’m in Carson’s little pony land... Why is my hand so hard?” For he suddenly realized that his hand was definitely not much of a hand. He looked and saw that he was a pony as well. Instead of screaming, or anything a normal person would think of, he simply put his hoof back to his face, sighing - fate had a rather cruel sense of humor didn’t it?
The gray unicorn repeated his question, now slightly annoyed.
“Oh!” Rob said, having forgotten about him. “My name is Rob.”
“Rob?”
“Rob.”
The older unicorn put a hoof to his long beard in thought. “‘Tis a strange name you have, ‘Rob,’” he informed. “Regardless,” he said, changing the subject, “I suppose some introductions are at hand on my part, are they not? I am Starswirl, dubbed ‘The Bearded.’”
An apt name, indeed. Rob thought. I remember something about all these ponies having strange, somewhat fitting names. Stuff like, ‘Twilight Sparkleypants,’ or something like that.
“Well, I suppose this could have been better met, Starswirl... Why do you seem so familiar, like I’ve seen you before?”
Starswirl shrugged. “It may be a number of things,” he said.
Rob suddenly had a very random thought. “Starswirl, what to I look like? I just got here from somewhere that is obviously very far away, and I seem to have changed my form from something somewhat similar to a primate, to this that you see.”
Starswirl’s expression became that of interest. “Indeed? This is certainly unusual news! Alright, let’s have a look.” He walked around Rob, doing a quick glance at his features. “Well, you appear to be an Earth pony...” Rob was confused that this. “Ah, let me explain: There are normally three types of pony races in this world of Equestria; The strong and reliable Earth pony, the light and fast-flying pegasus, who has wings, and the intelligent and magical unicorn like myself. Anyways, you have a green coat, hazel eyes, short brown mane... And your emblem appears to be a great, red mountain.”
Well at least I don’t look too silly, thought Rob and said, “Thank you.”
“Well,” Starswirl started, “You said that you changed forms and you don’t know how?”
“Yes.”
“I would like to know what your original appearance is, if that would not be too intrusive,” he inquired.
“Oh, well... Like I said, somewhat similar to primates, we walk upright, we wear clothes, we don’t have any fur, but we have hair on the tops of our heads. No tail.”
“Really?” Starswirl asked, intrigued.
“Yeah, really. Now, if it would be possible I would like to go home as soon as possible.
“Well, do you know where you came from?”
“Does ’Milky Way Galaxy’ ring a bell?”
“Not at all, I’m afraid. I should know, seeing as I am Head Royal Astronomer, among other things.”
Rob sighed. Obviously, it would not be that easy.
Starswirl’s brain was thinking, though. With the sound of a crazy idea that just might work in his voice, he told Rob, “From your account, it sounds like you are not from anywhere near. In fact... You’re not from anywhere at all.”
Rob was now questioning this pony’s sanity. Hah, I’m the one who’s a pony that’s seeing a talking unicorn and I’m questioning his sanity?
Starswirl then finished his train of thought. “You are not from anywhere because you’re from an entirely different dimension.”
Well, that made a lot more sense than anything else Rob could come up with.
Starswirl was now continuing on, his train of thought almost passing Rob by. “By all accounts, you shouldn’t even exist to me, and I to you,” he said with a hoof to his large beard. “Unfortunately, the boundaries between dimensions are completely impregnable. I fear you may even be going home. The again... that directly contradicts your account! Blast!” he said, punctuating the last word by stomping the hoof that was in his beard onto the ground.
Then it seemed as if he had an epiphany. His pacing that he had started and had gradually sped up suddenly halted. “Unless... Oh, bollocks, I knew I shouldn’t have tampered with the flow of time! Pardon the language.”
Rob was had read enough books, watched enough movies, and taught enough math to know instantly that the chances of him now becoming involved in this unfortunate turn of events was approximately eighty-seven point six-two-four-eight-nine percent.
Starswirl on the other hand knew that his calculations were wrong and that they were more like one-hundred percent.
“Don’t tell me,” Rob interrupted before the gray unicorn could say anything, “Now I have to help you fix time and space, and we have no idea what troubles we will fa-... see.”
Starswirl sat down, the bells on his intricate robery jingling. “It appears so. I would have hoped to hide this little experimental excursion from the world’s view, but it seems that fate said otherwise,” he sighed dejectedly.
“Well, we can always hope for the best. Like that this ‘little excursion’ as you called it, didn’t set off some cataclysmic event that spells out destruction for this world,” Rob said cheerfully - almost sarcastically so.
The adjacent unicorn was not impressed. “Yes. Let’s,” he replied, unconvinced. He then changed the subject. “Well, for this meeting not to be completely coincidental, now all we need is a pegasus- “
*SZHOoo-ooOSZH!*
“Great. Just great.”
The vision darkened at that point, quickly becoming the misty blackness that the three had experienced before.
Spry spoke again, still with the dream-like tone. “Well, I think that this has been enough for today. You have learned how I came into this world, and you learned that Starswirl used forbidden time magic which caused me and the pegasus to appear. You also learned that it is equally painful to enter through the portal as it is through the mind, and most importantly, you learned what the Elements of Balance and Oblivion.”
***
The vision suddenly stopped, and the three ponies regained awareness of their bodies, causing some initial confusion, though they eventually settled.
Cache awoke with a sore shoulders, while the other two had sore forelegs; a result of Eagle and Mitch having placed those forelegs on Cache’s arms.
To the surprise of the three young ponies in the room (Spry had expected this) it was now visibly dark through the closed windows, testifying that hours had passed since their before-noon excursion to Spry Canyons humble abode.
“It’s dark already?” Mitch asked.
Spry answered in response, “The way this works is rather strange, although it is the most effective way to do it. Basically, it’s sort of like a reverse dream in the sense that, although you perceive it as normal speed, it’s actually very slow, allowing your brain to fully grasp every important detail.”
This seemed convincing enough for the band of friends.
“Okay, it’s getting late, as you can see,” Spry said dismissively after a moment of indecisiveness. “I suggest that you head back to wherever you have found lodging.”
They seemed to be awoken from some internal brooding as once again were reminded of the fact that they needed sleep. As such, they said their farewells and set off back to the saloon.
“Or is it a tavern?” Eagletone asked. They were arguing about what the place would be called, considering it had not only hard salt but also food to dine on, not to mention places to sleep.
“Maybe it’s just called a bar,” Cache speculated.
“I’ll stay with ‘saloon,’” Mitch said, rather uncertainly.
“Speaking of which, we’re here,” Eagle cut in, for they were.
Cache drew his head back in slight befuddlement. “I must still be on ‘vision time,’ that walk passed fast!”
Mitch admitted that this certainly seemed the case for him as well and they laughed as they pushed the wooden door open, entering the... establishment.”
They were surprisingly weary, and looked worn but energetic as they walked into the serving area.
There were a larger number of ponies in there at this time of night. Most of them, it seemed, were inebriated to some degree or another.
They decided to eat something, seeing as they had not eaten since their late breakfast. Eagletone decided to try and broaden out his tastes to something slightly more normal, while the other two just shook their heads and ordered more usual foods. They talked for a while, brooding over and discussing everything about Spry’s vision to them and their eagerness for what the next day would bring.
They finished eating and climbed the fifteen steps at the side to the residential quarters. They passed Spitfire along the way in the little-furbished but nice-looking halls. When she and Eagle glanced at each other, it was no longer awkward. Instead, they beamed.
Eagle was still feeling happy about that as they arrived at their rooms, which coincidentally, were adjacent one with another. As such, he decided to part his friends for the night with a smidgen of humor.
“Y’know, I remember my parents praying with me every night when I was seven or eight. They told me this prayer in the dark!”
He then recited this prayer in the most hilariously creepy way possible.
“Now I lay me down to sleep... I pray the Looorrrd... My soul... to keeeeeep!
“If I.... Should DIE.... BEFORE I WAKE...
“I pray the Lord.
“My soul.
“To taaaaaaaake!
“G’night, sweetie! Sweet dreams!
“See you in the morning, maybe. Fifty-fifty chance!
“... Oh, and don’t let the bedbugs bite! AHAHAHAH!”
And with that maniacal laughter, he slammed his bedroom door and left his friends rolling on the floor, laughing.
End of Chapter Seven
Author’s note: Okay guys, if you’re really religious or just the complete opposite, just remember to love and tolerate. If all else fails, just don’t read this story; I don’t want any trolls or *ahem* “heated discussions” going on in my comments box. Also, here’s a link to where I got this.
