Chapter 3
I tumbled out of the portal, rolling head over heels for a couple of feet, before finally stopping with my face firmly planted in the ground. I heard a light giggle come from behind me as a slender arm reached under my chest and bodily lifted me from the ground. The glint of pink around my chest was the only warning I needed to know that Alice had decided to steal yet another moment to cuddle.
Seriously, only known her for fifteen minutes and she’s already become more clingy than my girlfriend.
I flailed about for a minute, vainly trying to get myself out of her grasp when she laughed again and let go of me, causing me to stumble a few steps forward. “Alice, do you mind if we actually got to work instead of you just trying to cuddle me?” I asked only to groan in frustration as her only response was to renew her giggling. I decided to ignore her for the moment and instead focus upon where we were.
We were in what looked like a fantasy version of a middle-age city, complete with impossibly tall castle and enormous houses filling the street. The surprising part wasn't the old world décor though, but the fact that it was ruined old world décor. The castle had chunks of it missing, small streams of smoke pouring from the holes, and the houses around me were in ruins. While not destroyed to the point of being rubble, ceilings were missing huge chunks of thatches, and most of the street was partially on fire. The whole city was in ruins, and I got a distinct feeling that we weren't about to be received with a warm welcome.
“Aramiiiillllllll!” Alice whined, jumping on me from behind and throwing her arms around my shoulders, hugging me to her chest. This time I just went limp, groaning in my mind as she rubbed her head against my crown.
“Are you two lovebirds going to stop cuddling anytime soon or are you just going to stand there?” called an imperial voice. My head whipped towards the origin of the voice only to freeze in surprise and alarm.
Standing not twenty paces ahead of me was a creature, its body a weird conglomeration of both insect and equine. The creature had the rough form of a horse, but its body, the color of polished onyx, was filled with holes, forming jagged limbs that reminded me sickeningly of Swiss cheese. It’s face seemed to be more along the lines of a human however, it's mouth only protruding slightly from the head, it's eyes yellow with feline slits for pupils, and aquamarine hair falling down its entire face. A jagged horn and ripped wings also adorned the body, making the final product one of the weirdest creatures I had ever seen. As the creature called out to us Alice's grip on me grew firmer, her arms pressing me tightly against her chest.
“No!” I spluttered, once again struggling to free myself from Alice’s grip. “We’re not dating or anything!” to which Alice only gasped playfully and let go of me, pretending to sob softly into her hands.
The creature before me raised her eyebrow and chuckled slightly, rolling it’s eyes. “Yes, of course you’re not dating.” It said, sarcasm dripping from every word, then began to walk off, throwing the last of her words toward us from over her shoulder. “Now then, I suppose that one or both of you are humans and if so, then I do suggest you follow me.”
I looked at Alice, she looked at me, then we both dashed off after the insectoid pony.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We had been following the pony for around twenty minutes before we had reached what seemed like our destination, the ruined castle. It was a grand structure that was a blend between a medieval European castle and an extravagant English cathedral, but it had been freshly ruined, just like the town around us.
During our walk throughout the town, we had passed groups of what were definitely ponies, but different from the ones that lived back home on Earth. To start with, they seemed sentient, using tools, strategically moving items from scattered areas of destruction to organized piles, and, most of all, TALKING to one another. They were all talking to one another, acting like humans who had just survived a horrible storm or some other type of natural calamity. The other big thing that caught my attention was how they were all techni-colored. I don’t mean just strange versions of the usual white, black, brown, and grey that most horses and ponies were, but they were even green, yellow, pink, blue, and orange to name a few. They were the weirdest creatures that I had ever seen, excluding myself and the insect horse before us.
All through our trip to the castle Alice had been strangely quiet, her eyes absorbing in the chaos from all around us. Her mouth had stretched into a grim line, and I can’t say I blamed her. I hadn’t noticed a single creature who was actually hurt beyond the minor scratch or scrape, yet I felt ready to hurl at the sight of all this misfortune, all this pain that surrounded us. I had been hoping that the creature that was still leading us would give us some kind of information about what had happened, but after her first few comments she had stayed surprisingly silent, electing, it seemed, to let the scenery from around us do the talking for her.
As we started to enter the castle I finally worked up the guts to ask the creature in front of us. “Ma’am, I wanted to know, what is your name?”
She threw me a haughty glance from over her shoulder along with a sly smile and said, “Peasants like you will refer to me as Queen Chrysalis.”
“So then Chrys-” I started to say before the creature before me threw another look at me from over her shoulder.
“No, Queen Chrysalis.” She interrupted, her sly smile becoming a small frown of disapproval.
“So then, Queen Chrysalis, where are we and how do you know about humans if I don’t know about you? Do Humans exist in this world? And, for that matter, what are you?” I asked, forcing myself to say the servile title of Queen to a creature I knew little to nothing about.
Her expressions shifted from their usual mask of haughtiness and instead showed a wide variety of shock and surprise. “You don’t know about us? Really? Every other human seems to have at least found out what we are by now. How did you last for so long with no clue about what we are?”
“Last what now?” I asked, my face also screwing up into a picture of pure confusion. “I have no clue what just happened to me besides a storybook character coming to life and throwing me into this world in order to become a missionary. He said something about Equestria, is that what this place is called?”
Chrysalis’s feature’s fell back into a their usual haughty frame as I spoke, and she looked forward once again, leading me and Alice, who now was smiling broadly and holding back a giggle with her handclaw?, further into the castle.
“This place is indeed called Equestria, and no, humans do not naturally leave here. We have, however, experienced an influx of humans arriving in Equestria due to what seems to be a chess game.”
“How does chess bring humans to another world?” I queried, scratching my head.
“Because this isn’t a mortal representation of chess, but rather a chess game played by the very gods, each using one piece, with Equestria being the board. Now, I don’t know who sent yo-”
“It was Paladine. He goes by many titles, but I believe that he would enjoy being called Paladine the most.” I interrupted, eliciting an annoyed growl from the Queen in front of me.
“Be that as it may, I do not know who sent you, nor do I truly care as long as you restrain from causing the wide scale destruction and pandemonium that the rest of the pieces have been causing recently.”
I looked around at the ruined walls, the freshly burned tapestries, the clawed up carpets, and the torn walls with my mouth hanging open. “You mean to say that the reason this city is in ruins is because of humans? Humans!? How the hell did humans cause this much destruction without arms?”
Chrysalis laughed derisively, saying, “Just because they were sent to a new world does not mean that they suddenly became cripples.”
“Arms is a shortened version of armaments, a word which here stands for guns.” I explained, sighing.
“…Oh…” Chrysalis said as Alice finally busted out in a fit of giggles, crossing her arms around her chest in laughter.
“So then, how did humans cause all this mayhem if we didn’t have guns, or am I the only one who had to make do with a sword?”
Chrysalis shook her head once, then went back to talking in her haughty tone. “They didn’t have those so called guns that you seem to all talk about, but neither were they truly human anymore. All the humans on this world have been changed into new creatures, at least all that I know of. Does that answer your question, or do I need to make it simpler for the simple minded peasant?”
I ground my teeth together in frustration, then whispered, “No, I understood what you said. My other question is why you brought me here?”
Chrysalis stopped at a door, then pushed it open. “Because there are wounded people, and, human or not, we need all the help we can get.”
The room beyond was horrifying to behold. It was a ballroom, grand and opulent, something befitting the status of a king or queen, but it had been wrecked just as badly as the rest of the castle, parts of the floor being broken clean through, showing floors further down, and one wall was patched up with giant rolls of cloth in order to keep out a draught, but even this wasn’t the despicable part of the room. The despicable part was what the grand room had become, a giant war hospital. Assortments of creatures were spread out on the floor before me, to include anthropomorphic cats, more insectoid versions of Chrysalis, bulkier looking ponies than those I had seen in the town, and even gryphons.
As I absorbed the scene in front of me, I felt something come over me, some kind of undeniable power forcing me to assess the situation. I asked the simple question, “Where are the worst wounded?” but it didn’t feel like a simple question at all, but rather the most important thing that I would ever say in my life.
She pointed a hoof at a line of creatures, mostly gryphons and stallions, and it was obvious why. Their wounds were compound fractures, open cuts, third degree burns, and even someone with their innards piled outside of their body. I rushed over to the first one, a stallion with a huge gash in his flank, and saw his eyes, both of them glazed over in pain.
I reached down to the wound and touched it, then felt a sudden rush of power emanate from my hand. It pushed from my hand into the wound, and I could see the gash closing slightly, changing from a possibly fatal wound to a simply painful one. His eyes lost their glazed quality and stared straight into mine. His lips, so strange to me, seemed to mouth ‘Thank you’ before he fell unconscious.
I didn’t know what had just happened, nor did I much care, but I knew that there were more people who were in extraordinary pain, and, human or not, I needed to help them. I don’t know why I had to, but I did, so I began the grueling task of trying to heal a line of grievously injured creatures.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sat on the ground, my feet pushed out in front of me, my back to the wall. I had just worked for over an hour forcing myself to cure the wounded. I don’t know exactly how I did it, but after the patient number forty I had gotten the gist of my power; I had a well of energy within me that I could exert over living creatures, and the energy within me would dwindle as it was transformed into pure life force. The pure force would then cure wounds upon whomever I was exerting the energy upon.
As I sat with my thoughts I saw Alice walking towards me with a butterscotch colored pony. I suspected it to be a mare by the curves of it’s flanks and the following eyes of all the stallions.
As Alice reached me she jumped on me and gave me a great big hug saying, “Hey, Aramil, lookee here! I just met her, but she says she’s an emergency nurse for Canterlot castle.”
“The one we’re in right now?” I asked, smiling as Alice’s words confirmed my suspicions.
“Yep.” Alice grinned, sitting down next to me. “She said she wanted to know who had helped all the emergency case patients and so I brought her over here to meet you.”
“How do you do ma’am.” I said, raising a claw to her. I immediately blushed as I realized she had no hand to except it, but, to my great surprise, she put her hoof in my claw and shook it, somehow firmly grasping my hand without the aid of any digits.
“I’m doing good, thank you.” She said, a tiny smile playing on her lips. As she shook my claw I noticed her eyes running along the curves of my body, but what for I prayed I’d never find out.
“I brought you something.” She continued, pulling a small one ounce bottle full of a blue liquid from seemingly nowhere with her teeth and proffering it to me. “It seems that humans use items like this to replenish their magic. I think they called it a mana potion.”
“Mana potion?” I said, taking the bottle and twirling it around in my hand. It looked like a regular bottle, but the liquid inside seemed to glow from within, as if it truly did hold it’s own variant of magic.
“Yes. I don’t know why it helps, but I did follow a recipe based off of their own creations and it’s worked before, so I didn't see the harm in giving it to you.” Butterscotch said, smiling. Just then Chrysalis and a couple of hooded figures walked over to us, joining our little group.
“So then,” Chrysalis said, grinning devilishly, “how does our human like the grueling work of a common doctor?”
“In all honesty I don’t think I had to do much. It seemed more like I just channeled the will of my god through me, using his power to heal everyone. Compared to the doctors who actually have to get their hands dirty, I feel like I haven’t done anything.”
Chrysalis blinked in surprise at my response, and I took the break from being interrogated to lift the bottle to my lips, but immediately realized an oversight I had just made.
“Umm, do you all promise not to freak out?” I asked, putting the bottle down next to me.
The rest of the group, Alice included, just looked at one another before bursting into laughter, clinging onto one another for support. “I do believe that we’ve seen everything that could possibly amaze us ever.” Butterscotch choked, panting in pain.
“Don’t say I didn't warn you.” I muttered, taking my head by the neck and pulling it up.
I heard a collective gasp sound from everyone around me, and even what sounded like a retch of pure nausea when Chrysalis said, “Umm…don’t you think that’s a bad idea?”
As the helmet finally cleared my crown and my real face was revealed, my sweaty hair sticking to my head, I grinned at the now stupefied Chrysalis and said, “No, not really.”
Everyone but Chrysalis had suddenly lost control of their jaws, their mouths hanging wide open, Butterscotch panting once again. Was she still laughing? As everyone else froze in surprise, I felt Alice lean in towards me and then heard a small whisper in my ear, “Way to break it to them slowly, genius.”