//------------------------------//
// Entry 01: The Badlands 
// Story: The Human's Guide to Equestria 
// by Irritus185 
//------------------------------//



The Badlands are a geographical oddity within Equestria. Located at the country's southeastern border, the region is encircled by the Macintosh Hills and Mt. Vehoovius mountain range. It acts as a connecting corridor between Equestria and the dragon lands of Jormundr. Unlike the majority of Equestria, the region is extremely barren and devoid of plantlife - the closest thing Equestria has to a wasteland. Nature and magic run rampant in the area, allowing monstrous wildlife to roam free and dangerous mana leaks to occur at random.

Ponies are banned from entering the region thanks to the overwhelming amount of chaos and elemental magic left over from the Battle of Discord, so weather, animal, and earth manipulation is nonexistent. There have been a few attempts to colonize the area since Discord's defeat, but all have failed catastrophically, leading to the aforementioned ban. Trying to enter the Badlands without permission is one of Equestria's few serious offenses, and has appropriately harsh punishments.

The Badlands are considered a level 5 danger area; Not even the dragons or griffons want to traverse the place. Though they are considered the most warlike of Terra's races, they are still smart enough to avoid places where giant lizards and birds are considered little more than appetizers to the local wildlife.

The only race stupid enough to actually live in the area are the changelings, and considering their last attempt at an invasion (known as the Canterlot Wedding Battle), it makes sense for such a suicidal species to try and raise a civilization there. Though, it might also explain why Queen Crysalis was so adamant about taking over Equestria - anyone with even half a brain finds it preferable to challenge a sun goddess than to live in the hellhole that is the Badlands.







Have you ever woken up at the bottom of a crater before?

Sorry, perhaps that was a bit too sudden and vague to ask of a person. Allow me to try and clarify that.

Have you ever found yourself waking up, only to realize that your body is currently laying in the middle of a meter-deep depression of sun-baked clay and slate yet surprisingly without any of your bones pureed to mash?

No? Then you arrived in this world in a much better (or much worse) fashion than I did.

When I first opened my eyes, it was to behold a rather dreary and ominous reddish-grey sky. Almost the entire area was encompassed by a thin covering of smoke and opaque clouds, except for a single breach in the cloud cover directly above me, showing a light blue sky that seemed infinitely more inviting. Strangely, it appeared as though something had punched through, as there were wisps of the clouds trickling downwards in a vague funnel shape. Within seconds, though, the hole began to fill itself in as the clouds drifted in the slight wind.

Considering my position, I could only conclude that I was the one who had made the hole, which begged the question of how I was not only alive, but also not a broken mess after striking an extremely hard surface at what could only be terminal velocity?

Time for a body check. Pain receptors were still in optimal condition. My entire body had an all-around soreness, like I had just stopped after a ten-mile jog. Only it wasn't a jog so much as a full-tilt run, and it wasn't a quick stop so much as colliding at full-tilt into a brick wall. So pretty much nothing like I just said. My everything hurt in ways I didn't think were medically possible.

Attempts to move my extremities proceeded nicely. I was able to wiggle my fingers and toes, so odds were I hadn't snapped my spinal cord. My arms and legs moved without any sharp, debilitating pains, just the ongoing soreness, so I don't think I had broken any bones. My head tilted forward and side to side with only a light twinge, like I had slept funny.

My chest was sore, my throat itched, and I couldn't help but choke and hack for a bit, but I think that was due more to the absurd amount of sand and ash I was buried/covered in than to any internal injuries. Also, my vision was fine, though a little hazy. Once again, I think that was because of shock more than anything.

Plus, my male friend hadn't had any soul-crushing events happen to him. I was pretty happy with that as well.

Once I determined that I had no horrifying injuries that would kill me within the next hour or so without immediate medical attention, I moved on to the next order of business - a mental checklist.

First of all, where was I?

My brain quickly replied with a finding of, [FILE NOT FOUND.]

How did I get here?

[FILE NOT FOUND.]

Well, that could be rather troublesome. At least I had some information on my current status, like... Wait...

There appeared to be vast gap in my knowledge much more worrisome than my inability to discern my current location. There was also the fact that I was taking waking up in a crater in the middle of nowhere much better than I probably should have. Perhaps I had taken an injury to my brain? No, wait, focus on the real problem. There were several things that were setting off alarm bells.

Where am I from?

[FILE NOT FOUND.] 

My age?

[FILE NOT FOUND.]

My family? My friends? What I was doing at all before I woke up?

The same blaring of [FILE NOT FOUND] continued ad nauseam.

...My name?

[FILE NOT FOUND.]

...

It was at this point that I realized someone was screaming. It was a high-pitched, unending wailing, much like the kind you would hear when someone was looking into the abyss of their most deep-seated terror, or was having the mother of all existential crises. I wanted to find out where the screaming was coming from, but I was a bit busy locked in place with my hands over my head and my face buried in my knees in the fetal position.

Ah, interesting; the one screaming like a child with night terrors was me. How embarrassing.

It took another few minutes for me to finally calm down, or maybe it was just the fact that I finally ran out of oxygen and passed out momentarily. In either case, when I came back to my temporary senses, my mind raced as I attempted to figure out just what was happening.

New checklist started: I had no idea who I was, where I was, where I came from, or how I arrived here from there. I apparently fell out of the sky, but that was silly because I would be little more than a squish mark on the barren ground if that had really happened. Also, I didn't have any bruises, gashes, or any other external sign on my body to signify blunt-force trauma. The crater poked a few holes in my denial theory, but I was going to delay any real argument while I held off my impending mental breakdown.

Did I have any clue as to my identity? My thoughts raced back and forth as I tried to find some scrap of information to work off of.

...Why was I thinking of Chuck Norris fighting Bruce Lee? And giving them RPG stats?

...Wait, wait, I could work with this. Alright, my brain was grabbing random bits of ideas and memes, so that meant I didn't have total amnesia. As I dug deeper, trivial information and basic statistics started to become ever clearer. Also, a working theory gained more structure as I shuffled through the mish-mash of stuff rattling in my head.

I knew things. Specifically, I knew a lot of weird, stupid, pointless, interesting, and non-personal things. I felt like someone had taken random encyclopedias, web sites, news articles, and the like, and had crammed them into my skull, all of them vying for attention. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, or at least none I could see at the moment. It was as if I knew everything and yet noth-wait, back up.

Amnesia. Compartmentalization of knowledge and experience. Separation of objective and subjective knowledge. The difference between just knowing something and having done something.

How much of what I knew was just trivia I had picked up, and how much was because I had done it but didn't have the emotional connection? If my memories (ha) were right, then the type of amnesia I was experiencing had literally removed any personal weight from my past. Anything I did remember would seem like I had read it out of a book.

Or maybe I was just grasping at straws because I had broken down and was searching for some semblance of an explanation. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

But just sitting in this hole wasn't doing me any favors. If I wanted to find out what had happened to me and where I was, I needed to get moving. With a groan, I rolled myself onto my stomach and slowly rose to my hands and knees, my body aching in protest. It was not pleased with me for trying to move when all it wanted to do was curl up and pass out again.

Crawling my way out of the crater, my hands getting scraped from the cracked stone, I finally got to look at my surroundings beside the sky. I was not satisfied with the view.

It looked like a nuclear fall-out site. Well, maybe not that bad, but it wasn’t helping my frazzled psyche to convince itself that everything would be hunky-dory. The ground was reddish-brown, very similar to the sky, and completely devoid of any type of vegetation. It was cracked and dry, so odds were there was very little precipitation in this region. The wasteland spread far out in front of and behind me. From the position of the sun (I'm pretty sure it was late into the afternoon, wherever I was) I could make out mountain ranges to the west and east of me, rising high into the sky and through the cloud cover. Various gorges and crevices crisscrossed across the plains, disappearing into both horizons, and there were multiple stone towers scattered around the region, either composed of tall, long plateaus or boulders stacked on  one another.

So be it then. I was apparently trapped in the world of Mad Max. I'm not quite sure what the connotations behind that particular cultural reference was, but I think it's safe to say that if I came across any other people wearing masks, I was going to hide and hope they didn't kill, rape, or eat me. Or, if they did, then they did it in that order.

First things first, find some shelter, or at the very least some shade. I didn't seem to have many wilderness survival tips in my grab-bag of a brain, but I knew that at the very least. The sky might have been covered by clouds at the moment, but UV rays weren't particularly beholden to cumulonimbus, and I did not need to contract skin cancer on top of whatever fresh hell I found myself in. Luckily, one of those stone towers was near me, so my body didn't get the chance to complain too much as I dragged myself over to its side and propped my back against it.

I had already completed my physical and mental checklist, so now it was time to see what was on my person. Hopefully I'd find something that would help me out now or spark some latent memory. Frankly I was hoping more for the former; it wouldn't mean much to suddenly remember all that I'd lost only to die because I only had a wallet on me when some wild animal attacked.

First up were my clothes. I was wearing a rather nice if dusty and somewhat scuffed up suit. I had on a white cotton shirt, a silk tie with a darkish blue checkerboard pattern, black (now red-clay-smeared) slacks, dress shoes, and a navy-blue chalk-striped jacket. If what I was wearing was any indication, I had to have been pretty well off. I removed my jacket and looked at the hem, cuff, and neck. Yup, this was custom-made, not some mass-produced thing grabbed off the rack or rented.

So back wherever I was from, I either had a really good job or I came into some money. Either way, this little tidbit did nothing much to help me now. I started to rifle through all of my pockets, grabbing whatever I found and laying them in a neat line in front of me.

All I had to my name was a half-empty, crumpled pack of Lucky 777 cigarettes, a cheap zippo lighter you could buy at any convenience store, a small notebook about the size of my hand, a ballpoint pen, and a metal flask that looked like it had been ripped right out of the prohibition era.

No wallet, keys, phone, music device, or anything that could point me in the right direction of who or where I was. What I did have on me didn't even help me that much, except for maybe the flask. Speaking of which.

I picked the canister up and turned it over in my hands. It was crafted out of stainless steel and wrapped up in dark, tanned leather. There were no markings on it, except for what looked like a scratched-out word on its bottom. From what I could tell, it may have been a serial number, but it was pointless to really think on it further.

Tentatively, I popped the cap and took a small whiff. My head reared back. Yup, that was alcohol alright. I tilted the flask forward and spilled a bit into my palm, the lukewarm liquid splashing a bit and…

...Was, was it colored fuschia? I think it may have been glowing too, though that may have just been the influence of the fumes I was inhaling. What the hell kind of drinker was I? There was no way this stuff was legal or crafted by any real liquor-maker. So this either meant I was too poor to afford real alcohol, or I was some sort of uber-redneck that had sold my soul to the god of moonshine.

My clothes debunked those ideas quicker than they started. Maybe I just had really shitty tastes? My tongue flicked against the booze. The taste felt like somebody had smashed my head in with a brick wrapped in pyrite and a garnish of dandelions before dumping napalm down my throat.

...yup, my taste in liquor really was just that shitty, because that was the most awesome thing I had ever tried in my life... that I could remember, anyway.

Capping the flask back up, I placed it back into my jacket pocket. Until I found a fresh source of water, this was going to be my only one. I wasn't quite sure about the dehydration elements of alcohol, but it was better to have something than to just die with my pants around my ankles because I hallucinated a swimming pool with skimpy swimsuit models. I put the other items away too, but paused briefly to remove a cig from the pack (huh, only six left; bummer) and light it up.

The soothing yet scratchy feeling of smoke collected in the back of my throat as I inhaled and blew out a puff. I was apparently an old pro at this; lung cancer ahoy!

I took slow, leisurely puffs of the cancer stick as I considered my options. I was stuck in the middle of a wasteland that I did not recognize at all. Despite the fact that I had no real personal memories, I should have at least been able to find a similar match in the pure encyclopedic file system that was now my brain. I might have been in the Mojave desert, but I didn't think there were any mountain ranges that matched the narrow geographical nature of my location. Also, there was too much red and not enough plants... I think.

Dwelling on my identity, I made the assumption that I was probably in my late twenties to early thirties. My clothes suggested I had a high-paying and respectable job, so I wasn't college age at least. I didn't have any real wrinkles or age spots on my arms and legs, so I wasn't too old. Until I found something that could reflect my face and actually see just what kind of ugly SOB found himself in such dire straits, I couldn't really narrow it down any further.

I think I might have been American. The whole Chuck Norris thing, mixed with a dozen other memes and shows that were pretty prevalent in America, pointed me in that direction.

And that was it. Approximate age and guesstimated nationality. That was just… really sad. Why was it I knew the average speed of an unladen swallow (African and European), but couldn't recall if my name had an 'S' in it?

I let out an annoyed growl, followed by a short, pained yelp as the cigarette finally burned its way down to my fingers. I dropped the butt and stomped on it, shaking my fingers before sucking on them to cool the small burn.

Could this all be just a really sadistic fever dream? Was I maybe just imagining all of this and would wake up soon? My pained nerves promptly flipped me the bird and told me to jag off. Not even my brain was jerkish enough to weave such a pointless and convoluted scenario despite its inability to recall basic personal facts.

So yeah, this was real, or as real as I could make of it.

Crap.

I resisted the urge to have another cigarette to calm myself down. I only had so many left and had to ration my only source of relaxation. I did not want to find myself in the throes of withdrawal whilst in the midst of mortal combat.

I sighed and leaned back, banging the back of my head on the stone. All of this just really sucked. I could see out of the corner of my eye that the sun was already beginning to set, and prepped myself for a long night. I didn't want to start wandering around in the dark with my lighter as my only source of illumination. Of course, I also didn't want to freeze to death when the temperature would undoubtedly sink to the single digits, but I really didn't feel like looking for kindling when all I wanted to do was sleep. Guess bundling down and huddling up was my only option.

My eyes searched around for a suitable sleeping spot, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a small indentation in the rock face a few feet from me. It was little more than a small gash; barely more than half of my body would fit, and it would be cramped, but it was something.

I stumbled over to the indentation and hunkered down, wrapping my jacket as tightly around me as a I could. I could already feel sleep coming easily to me, but that wasn't shocking considering what I had gone through during my short period of consciousness. Hopefully the next day would be more lenient to me, and I could find out what was actually going on.

Just before I drifted off, a small tremor shocked me awake and a rumble echoed through the air. I looked towards where the noise was coming from, and my jaw dropped.

A volcano. A mother-bleeding volcano, with ash and soot and everything, was going off within viewing distance of me. Luckily (ha), no magma appeared to be racing down its sides to melt me into cursing human goo, but that didn't really make me feel any better. I was still within proverbial spitting distance of one of mother nature's cruel jokes on natural selection. So now I could possibly die of exposure, dehydration, starvation, and lava!

Huzzah! The fun has quadrupled!

That's when the ash that slowly began to float down from the clouds came into my field of vision and my brain just decided to sign off, taking the last vestige of my survival instincts with it. Fine, if my life wanted me to reenact Pompeii's last hours then so be it, but I was not going to be conscious when it happened.

Soon, I was asleep, praying to any god that would listen that this was just some sick joke and I'd wake up... wherever it was that I came from.

Joke's on me; god exists, but she's a troll.







Mt. Vehoovius is one of the few active volcanoes in Equestria. It is also the only volcano, gods willing, I will ever be within viewing distance of, and even that was unwillingly. The volcano perpetually pumps out smoke and ash, lending to the poor visibility of the Badlands' environment. Daily ash showers hinder any chance of vegetative growth, and the ambient heat of the geothermal veins kill off any plants that do manage to take root.

I'm still waiting for some hard-headed pony to try and plug the volcano up and thus doom us all. While I am intrigued by the geophysics of this world and the tampering thereof, such as the pegasi's control of the nation's weather patterns, I don't need to be told that trying to tame the molten pimple of mother nature is a horrible idea.

Doesn't mean that some idiot isn't going to attempt it sooner or later, though, and when they do, I'm going to find a nice nuclear winter bunker in the Crystal Empire.







Surprisingly, I wasn't completely cocooned in ash when I woke up; there was simply a thin layer that coated my suit and hair. It did cause me to wake up with a monster of a sneeze, but I could forgive the huge annoyance if it meant not becoming a future fixture in the nearest museum's moron wing. Running my hands through my hair, I dislodged as much of the ash as possible before getting to my feet and stretching.

I was still left with a chronic soreness that reached deep into my bones, but it was better than the day before when I couldn't even move a muscle without feeling a charlie horse coming on. At least now I could move around and possibly find my way out of this hellhole. Shielding my eyes from the morning sun, I chanced another glance around at my surroundings.

The sky had cleared up some, and I could actually see beyond the dense cloud cover. That didn't really help though, as the full wrath of the sun now came down upon me. Stupid sun. Already I could feel my body's temperature begin to rise. I had to get started as soon as possible if I wanted to cover some distance before it got to noon and the sun got really bad.

But I had to choose a direction first. My choices were north and south, since east and west were cut off by the mountain ranges and I didn't fancy my rock climbing skills were up to par... if I even had them. Damn, not having any clue as to what I was good or bad at was really going to haunt my every decision.

Really, though, there was only one way I could go - north. South went towards the volcano, and my new rule of thumb said to always avoid death-spewing rock formations whenever possible. So, with a path laid out and no plan to speak of beyond 'walk as far as possible and hope I don't die in the middle of nowhere,' I started to make tracks.

Walking through the wasteland was just as boring as it sounded. Everything looked the same and there was no life to break up the monotony. It also started to get painful after a while; while dress shoes were good for parties or interviews, they were horrible for trekking the wilderness. I could feel the blisters that were getting ready to pop up on the soles of my feet already.

It also didn’t help that the ground was very uneven. It sloped back and forth, rising and falling with a mixture of hard-baked clay and stone and sand drifts. My shoes didn’t have good traction as it was, and constantly having to adjust my step so that I didn't twist anything was draining my stamina faster than I liked.

I tried to keep to the shade as much as possible, and was sparing with my flask. I did recall that I should only take short sips, but considering that was from a novel in my memory system it could have been wrong. Not like I had much of a choice in the matter; without any accessible water sources around me, I had to ration myself as much as possible, and getting drunk would change my trek from ‘stupidly hard’ to ‘nigh-impossible’.

After the nth stumble as my feet slipped the wrong way on shifting sand and smooth stone, I let out a growl of frustration that came out as more of a cracked whisper. Ugh, what I wouldn't do for a walking stick or something to give me a better sense of balance!

It was around that point that fate finally threw me a bone. I noticed ahead of me a row of dead saplings, dried and weathered to an almost pure white. Slowly making my way to them, lest I trip, I took in the sight.

My heart swelled. Two neat rows of saplings arched towards each other, the branches fallen off from their long-dead trunks. I think they might have been birch from the pale bark, but they were long since petrified. Still, the way they were positioned gave them the look of being artificially placed and postured. This might have been a garden or promenade, meaning someone had lived here long ago. Sure, they were gone now, but if some person had been here it might mean that I would come across other instances of past civilization, and thus a better understanding of where to go next.

The trees were narrow, about the width of my forearm. I grabbed the smallest one - about the height of my shoulder - by the top and put my feet against the bottom. Using leverage, I yanked the sapling back and forth, adding more force and sharper movements with each swing. There was a low cracking noise that eventually gave way to a sharp break, and the sapling snapped off right where my foot was pushing at it. I gave it a once over.

The top curved at about the last foot or so, ending in a blunt tip. I turned it around to examine the broken-off part. It was jagged, so I had to be careful not to stab myself in the foot, but I was sure it would get sanded and even off after using it against the ground enough. I took a closer look at the trunk, curious about how old the tree was before it died off, and paused.

There were no rings. There wasn't even an inside to it. There was an outer rim, but the inside was dry, smooth, and pocketed like a sponge. That... that didn't make any sense. I gave the outside of the sapling a closer examination. My brain slowly ground to a halt.

This... this wasn't bark. It was too smooth, too singular, with none of the patchiness attributed to the outside of a tree. I turned it around, looking for something that would divert me from this train of thought. But nothing did. Now that I looked closer, the thing curved a bit too much for a tree. It was more obvious near the tip, but the entire thing was in a vague C-shape.

I slowly turned around to look at the rows of trees. There were twenty in each of the two rows, perfectly symmetrical to each other and varying in height, getting taller the closer they were to the middle and more curved the closer to the outside.

These weren't trees; they were rib bones. What I thought were saplings growing out of the ground was actually the skeletal remains of some grand beast that had slowly been buried under what could be centuries or millennia of sediment deposit.

And if this was the just the torso of the creature, then by comparing it to the basic quadruped back home, the proportionate size would be...

[FATAL ERROR DETECTED. EMERGENCY REBOOT INITIATED.]

I woke back up standing on my feet, the popping of my knuckles as they went white around the bone the only noise besides the soundless scream tearing its way through my rictus of horror.

...okay then. I was now officially in either the Land of the Lost or Dr. Moreau's summer retreat. Alright, no problem, just as long as I didn't come across a relative of whatever creature I just went God and Adam on I should be fine.

Really.

Completely.

Definitely.

I'm still amazed I hadn't just lost it there and attempted ritual suicide with my new-fangled walking bone, but some little corner in the back of my mind reminded me that it would be a terrible end to the nightmare that was now my life, if terribly appropriate. It was right, though. For all I knew, this could be some paleontologist's dream I was fiddling about in. Except I did know; dinosaur bones were discovered a lot deeper than what I’d found here. Those had millions of years to have mud and junk piled on top of them. These bones did not.

Which left only one plan of attack for me - drink until existence faded and life was nothing more than a series of black-outs where the terrors couldn't possibly find me!

Except I'm pretty sure chugging my moonshine would outright kill me, so I settled for a quick sip to calm my nerves, fished out another cigarette, and continued on with my new literal stick o' death.

The rest of my travels followed the same pattern; I walked as much as I could, drank as little as I needed to, kept to the shade as much as possible, and shrank the distance between me and possible salvation. I took breaks when the heat and sun got to be too much and hurried along whenever the clouds sauntered past with their comfort-giving shade.

My nights in this post-apocalyptic wasteland ended the same way as the first; I hunkered down in any crevice I could find and slept. Woke up, and started again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

About a couple hours into my third day, I came across the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Now granted, all I had ever seen was death, lack of life, and horribleness, but I'm sure that even if I hadn't been dropped into nature's PMS-time it still would have been the greatest thing since sliced bread.

There, caught between two stone plateaus that arced into a strange conglomeration of shapes, was something that sparkled in the sunlight. I almost rushed forward in pure, wanton desire but restrained myself, hoping against all hopes that what I saw wasn't a mirage.

A small hole, no bigger than my clenched fist, had eroded its way through the stone face of the tunnel. Trickling out of it and into a basin that was cast in shadow by the overarching plateau and about the size of a normal bathtub was water.

I think I would have cried at the sight, but I'm pretty sure any internal moisture must have been cordoned off to keep my body in working order, so I just leaked dust instead. Falling to my knees, I dunked my head into the basin, not caring that I had just dirtied my one real source of water, and took a long, enthusiastic slurp.

It was the best thing I'd ever tasted. Cool, refreshing, watery water. I took another long draught and then fell backwards, whipping my wet hair over my head, the small rivulets streaking their way down my clothes and body. I had probably just consumed every microbial flora in the region and would be paying for it later, but I didn't care. I needed that.

After relishing in that blissful experience, I filled up my flask with as much water as I could shove in there. Hopefully being mixed with the liver-destroying moonshine would kill off whatever was living in the water and I wouldn't have to worry about purifying or boiling it, especially since I could do neither of those with what I had.

Taking another dunk and drink, I took a gander at the pool's reflection and finally saw what I looked like.

I was a generic mothertrucker.

Really, there was no other way to describe myself. I wasn't exceedingly handsome or horrifically gruesome. I didn't have any real distinguishing marks like a scar or mole or anything of the sort. My face was fairly blocky, with a heavyset jaw and thin lips. I had closely cropped, light brown hair; somewhat tanned skin, though that may have been from trekking in the desert; and dull green eyes. I was probably in my late twenties, though. The corners of my eyes were starting to get what I hoped were just stress wrinkles, and nothing else hinted at an older age.

I had the kind of face that could easily blend into a crowd and would be mistaken for someone else constantly. I was plain and boring and normal. My physique was a little better than average, with no beer belly or sagging, but my looks were a dime a dozen. With my suit I could just be another of those hundreds of businessmen you see swarming the streets in city movies.

It was a bit anti-climatic, but it did make me feel better now that I actually knew what I looked like. So, moving on to more important things…

After making sure that everything I had (what little there was) was in order, I took the time to explore my private oasis. The tunnel had bored all the way through the plateau, making for a very inviting place to stay. There was shelter and water. It protected me from both the sun and the occasional ash rain.

However, there was no food, and without that, I wouldn't survive very long. Even now my stomach sang out in despair. I don't even know how long ago I had eaten. Had I eaten anything before I was transported here? Hell, could I even eat anything here, or was it all poisonous? Did I have food allergies that would kill me off without even realizing it?

Seriously, not knowing anything sucked.

My stomach growled again. Ugh, what I wouldn't give for something to eat right now.

My ears perked up at the sound of sand shifting. At first I thought it was the wind, but it soon became clear it wasn't. It was too localized and I didn't hear any breeze. I'm sure I would have heard something; this tunnel was perfect for picking up and amplifying noise. It sounded more like something was scratching back and forth, scraping along the ground. There was also the faint sound of chittering, like rocks quickly rubbing against one another. A shadow moved across the entryway to the tunnel.

Immediately I tensed up and grabbed my walking bone. This could be either really good or really bad - really good in that some unwitting creature had approached the oasis and I had a good chance of finding something to eat, or really bad in that said creature was closer to what I had received my bone from and I was the unwitting meal.

I involuntarily held my breath as I awaited whatever it was that was approaching. I didn't have to wait for long.

A jet-black scorpion skittered its way to the water, leaning forward to taste it. Its multiple eyes were red and almost comically over-sized, but any levity was instantly executed at the wicked barb on the end of its tail and its two pairs of scythe-like claws. Its chitinous carapace was scarred with multiple battle wounds, and one of its six hind legs was actually removed at the mid-joint.

It was also the size of an SUV.

Really bad then.







Much like the Everfree Forest in central Equestria, the wildlife of the Badlands is prone to many forms of genetic and magical mutations. This is primarily due to the heavy concentration of chaos magic, alongside fire and earth elemental magic. Chaos magic, as its name might imply, tends to have wildly varying effects on living creatures, most of which are the stuff of nightmares.

So. Many. Nightmares.

Fire and earth magic have a much more predictable effect - higher resistance to extreme temperatures; greater strength, endurance, and toughness; and a tremendous increase in size. The vast majority of creatures in the Badlands are those that started out as simple desert animals like any you could find in the San Palomino Desert, which are then juiced up to monstrous levels with the magical equivalent of steroids.

A horned lizard becomes the size of a truck and gains the ability to shoot its crest like a heat-guided missile.

A kangaroo rat becomes the size of a refrigerator, grows barbs all over its body, and starts hungering for red meat.

A butterfly becomes the size of an airship and starts dusting the area with poisonous scales that can burn your skin off with a slight touch.

It does make sense, however. The Badlands is a dangerous place, and exists as the epitome of survival of the fittest. If you want to survive, you have to be able to eat, maim, or melt any other creature you come across more easily than breathing.

Which is exactly what the Badlands wren does during mating season. Apparently, the female will only allow a male to mate with it if it brings the drooping, dissolving carcass of a rival Badlands wren. A fascinating mating ritual, really...

I am so glad I'm never going back there again.







So I had death breathing not even ten feet from me, and all I had was a frickin' bone. Someone up high either really hated me or had a very cruel sense of humor. I stayed perfectly still in the hopes that it would ignore me and go away. Hey, if it worked for t-rexes then it could work for monster scorpions.

It was then I remembered that theory was actually proven to be bunk. The scorpion proved that it also ascribed to that idea when one of its eyes swung at me and it halted in its drinking. Slowly, very slowly, it rotated on its legs to face me. The two of us stared at one another for what seemed like ages. Me, being the polite and also somewhat hysteric dumbass that I am, chose to break the silence.

"Um, hi?" Huh, that was actually the first time I’d heard my own voice (other than screaming, anyway). Kinda masculine and deep if you ignored the trembling and audible whimpers.

The scorpion responded in kind. Its mouth parts twitched, giving off a scraggly chirp, and then began to spin in place like a blender, chopping at the air with a whining hiss.

So it also had a death mouth. Par for the course.

I gave a rather manly shriek of terror and flung myself backwards as it jumped at me. Scrambling backwards on my hands, I retreated further towards the middle of the tunnel, hoping that the darkness would aid me.

It was then I recalled that scorpions were nocturnal, meaning they hunted at night, meaning the dark had jack shit on them. So I had basically just voluntarily jumped into my assailant's perfect hunting ground. Luckily, it evened the score a few moments later.

There was another chirp and then the blasted thing started to glow, its whole body lighting up in the dark with a light-blue luminescence. Because of course it could glow in the dark too. Why not? I don't know how that could work as a hunting trait, but honestly I was a bit preoccupied with surviving the next few minutes to study its rather contradictory evolution as a predator.

I split my attention between the thing's claws and stinger, unsure which would come at me first or which would be worse if it hit me. Those claws looked like they could rend flesh from bone like tissue paper, but I wasn't enjoying the idea of being pumped full of a super poison that would cause my blood to boil or skin to slough off.

But escaping further into the tunnel had worked to my advantage. The ceiling wasn't that high, and the scorpion's tail scraped along the rock as it stalked me. As long as it couldn't shoot that stinger like a bullet, I was fairly certain that one particular death possibility would elude me. But it wouldn't for long; I was still backing up and would eventually end up in the open again where it could freely try to sting me, and the tunnel did very little to lock away the use of its claws.

Which it immediately proved by jabbing out at me. Instinctively, I brought up the bone, smacking the claw aside enough to avoid  being impaled by it, though doing so felt like I had just parried a goddamn ballista strike. My arms ached from both hunger and exhaustion, and I didn’t have the endurance to keep blocking this thing's hammer strikes.

And neither did my walking bone, for that matter. Another few strikes by the scorpion and it managed to latch onto the bone while I foolishly tried to wrestle it from its grip. With a sharp 'crack,' its claws sliced through, bone fragments shattering everywhere.

I now had two smaller walking bones, neither of which were going to be of any real use to fend off the beast. So I did the stupid thing and chucked one of them at the thing's head.

I didn't know if I had knife throwing as a hobby or what, but something in me felt a little badass when the jagged edge of the broken bone lodged itself right in one of the scorpion's largest eyes. Ichor sprung out like a leak, and the creature gave a feral cry of pain and fury as it began to thrash around wildly, slamming into the walls and ceiling.

I took that as a sign to get out of dodge fast, and dashed away in whatever direction was the opposite of the scorpion. I didn't care that I had left the only water I knew of behind, or that I still hadn't really rested before the scorpion showed up, or that I could very well be running back in the direction I came from. All I cared about was that, when the creature came back to its senses, I wasn't in them.

Chugging along like I was in the goddamn Olympics, I ran as fast I could across the wasteland, my breath coming out in gasping spurts. Then, like an idiot, I spared a glance over my shoulder to see if I was being followed.

It's like Schrodinger's scorpion. As long as I didn't look, there was the possible dual state of being both chased and not chased by an enraged death arthropod. The second I did, the wave function would collapse and I could no longer ignore what was happening. And so it did – in fact, it collapsed right into the form of a blood-thirsty and very pissed off monster scorpion.

Bloody quantum physics and multiverse theory.

I knew I couldn’t outrun it, and it was clear that it would catch up to me long before I found a non-existent tree to climb up. Turning back around, my brain twitched in subconscious awareness and mutinously applied the brakes to my feet. Skidding to a stop, I caught myself before I tumbled into the large, circular sand pit in my path.

The pit was about a dozen feet deep, two dozen in diameter, and conical in shape. Something tickled at the back of my brain about the familiarity of the structure before it was keelhauled by the impending doom on multiple legs coming right at me. I didn't have time to run around the pit, as that would just present my back to its stinger. Which meant I had to face it head on. With nothing but a two-foot section of bone that had already proved its unworthiness not even minutes before.

Well, that wasn't my only defense. I did have something else, but it was so insane an idea that even thinking it would work should be immediate proof I belonged in a mental institution. Then again, with all that I've seen, I supposed the best way to beat crazy is with crazy.

Shucking off my jacket as quickly as possible, I held it up in front of me like a bullfighter would a cape. As delirious as I had obviously become, I couldn’t bring myself to go, "Toro! Toro!" Which was just as well, because my next action would have ruined the effect, anyway.

Just as the scorpion got in close enough to use its stinger, I shrieked like a banshee and chucked my jacket right at its face. The thing blundered right into, caught one sleeve on its claw, the other on its leg, and fell in a skidding crash like a Tex Avery cartoon. I tried to dodge out of the way, but my reflexes weren’t up to snuff so the thing just smashed into me and brought both of us tumbling down into the sand pit.

As I rolled further and further to the center of the sand pit, I started to wonder why the structure seemed so familiar to me. It was in the middle of nowhere and didn't look like it was naturally occurring. A sinkhole would be more like a hole than a funnel, right? That's when it hit me.

I had just fallen into an antlion's sand pit trap.

And that's when the bug chimera popped up and tried to eat the both of us.







The Badlands antlion, or Dethicus Rex, is a distant cousin to the manticore found in the Everfree forest. Much like its temperate relative, the Badlands antlion is what happens when nature and magic get drunk together and try to hide the result of their mistaken night of debauchery. There is no way on Celestia's great, green earth that this monstrosity should be able to live given its huge daily caloric intake requirements and limited mobility. Where did an ant and lion even meet anyway, let alone procreate properly?

But who am I kidding, this is Equestria, where logic doesn't matter! Equestria - if the nightmarish abominations that stalk the plains don't kill you, the puns will.

Well, perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh. The Badlands antlion does fill a niche in the Badlands' intricate food web - it eats anything too dumb to ignore the giant 'I will devour you' sign posted on the edges of its sand pit trap, thus eliminating the creature from the gene pool and purifying the terrifying terror that is the Badlands.

Luckily, its wings are vestigial and it doesn't have the natural magic that allows pegasi to defy Bernoulli's principle, so Equestria's populace doesn't have to worry about fat-ass feline insects of death swooping down on them.

Yet.







The kaijuu antlion looked like some insane toymaker had spliced a lion with an army ant and made its ass a furry, bulbous mess just for shits and giggles. The head and torso was that of a reddish African lion, with long, spindly, and furless legs spurting out from its chest and hardened, dragonfly-like wings encased on its back. Its abdomen was a somewhat flattened ovaloid with dark brown fur. The antlion's mouth had sharp feline teeth, but with the addition of sickle-like jaws with several sharpened protrusions that gnashed back and forth and, if my knowledge of the normal antlion was spot on, were most likely hollow and filled with venom.

Trying to catch myself and knowing that simply trying to run would be pointless, I did the next best and stupidest thing: I kicked off the side of the pit right at the antlion. Judging from the surprised and disturbingly human expression on its face, I knew that it hadn't expected this. Most prey that fell into an antlion's sand pit trap immediately tried to run up the pit's walls, but thanks to a frankly genius bit of engineering and architecture, the sides would  continuously fall if any pressure was put on them. If that wasn't enough, the antlion could throw sand at the prey to trigger a cascade itself.

Everything tried to escape from an antlion; nothing actually ran right at it. I was the only creature it had met with enough brains to be dumb enough to ignore its instincts and do so. And it's what saved my ass.

Extending a foot, I made contact with the antlion's head and made like Mario, bouncing away and barely avoiding getting my leg scissored off when it jerked its jaws up to catch me. I still have no idea how I managed to pull it off but thank the sheer violation of physics that allowed me to do so.

The antlion turned to make a second strike at me but was distracted when the mega scorpion rolled into it and proceeded to attack. Not wanting to have their battle turn into a three-way, I scrambled my way up the slope, hoping that my lesser weight wouldn't trigger a collapse. It did a few times, but I still managed to escape the pit, using my half-walking bone as a makeshift piton.

I collapsed upon finally emerging from the pit, pulling myself onto the large boulder that was perched on the edge. I heaved in great gulps of acrid air, coughing. I rolled onto my stomach to pull myself forward, my curiosity overcoming my fear. Honestly, I wanted to see how battle of monsters would play out. My brain was already trying to give them stats.

What I saw wasn’t much. The battle was already over, the victor enjoying his spoils. I watched as the antlion crunched down on the scorpion's carapace, ripping a chunk off. Its head twitched when it noticed me staring down at it, and turned to look directly at me. I gulped when it started to growl, its eyes narrowed.

I began to back away as it started to pull itself out of its hideaway. Don't tell me it was still hungry! That scorpion must have been four times my size; there had to be plenty of meat on it! Or maybe it was just ticked off because it hadn't gotten to kill me. I don't know; I don't speak murder.

As it raised itself on its spindly legs, the ground began to rumble. Instinctively, I looked to see if the volcano was erupting again, but found nothing. I looked back down. The antlion had paused too, swiveling its head back and forth. The sand around it started to shake and the rumbling grew more intense. I could almost see the sweat beading its face.

The rumbling tapered off, and the antlion gave what looked to be a sigh of relief.

Then the ground opened up beneath it, and a giant maw of teeth clamped down on it and shot into the sky. A giant worm the size of a skyscraper and colored all things girly curled itself further and further upward, crunching the newest predator-to-prey example in its jaws as blackened tentacles pulled the corpse further and further in. Like a snake, it swallowed the beast whole, the bulge in its throat rapidly traveling down its body.

Something thumped beside me. I turned to see that a pair of the scorpion's claws had rolled against my side, one of which was still wrapped securely in my jacket.

I creakily turned back. The giant worm was staring at me with its beady eyes. Its tri-sectioned jaws unhinged and opened up, the multitude of tentacles wiggling out, and it let out a bellowing yowl, spraying me with saliva and monster salsa. I could see chunks of antlion stuck in its numerous rows of yellowed teeth.

So, this was my newest way to die - eaten by a tentacle monster. I supposed I should count myself lucky; at least I'd only get eaten.

...please let it just eat me.

But it seemed its latest meal had been enough for it, because it just closed it mouth, cocked its head, and then jumped into the air before burrowing back into the ground and disappearing from sight.

I was still for a few moments as my brain processed what had just happened. I was front and center to this world's edition of the food chain. And this was definitely not my world. I don't care how many crackpot theories there were of Elvis still being alive, these monsters did not exist on Earth even with mad science at play.

I wasn't on Earth.

I was somewhere else entirely.

I focused on the claws next to me.

Well, at least I had food now.







The Tatzlwurm, or Tentaclus Vermes, is another addition to the menagerie of horror that is the Badlands. Though referred to as a great earth serpent, it is actually more closely related to the plain earthworm given that it has no internal skeletal system and relies entirely on its dense musculature and hardened skin to protect it from outside attack. What appears to be colorful scales and feathers are actually minute cilia that the wurm uses to burrow its way through the hard earth and rocks of the Badlands.

Much like the poisonous mud frogs of Froggy Bottom Bog, the bright colors are meant to signify danger. Unlike the mud frogs, the tatzlwurm does not have to rely on its venom, seeing as it has the ability to eat and digest pretty much any substance on Terra. Not even the dragons, with their ability to eat multiple types of minerals, are as super-omnivorous as the tatzlwurm, and the creature's nigh invincible resistance to any form of poison, drugs, disease, and heavy metals makes it one of the most dangerous creatures in not only Equestria, but all of Terra. Luckily, the tatzlwurm is notoriously weak against magic, particularly unicorn magic, so as long as you have that on you when confronted by one, you should be relatively safe.

Just watch out for the mouth tentacles. Not only can they crush minotaur-tempered steel, they also have miniature prongs, similar to a jellyfish, that shoot out microscopic harpoons laced with a neurotoxin that can cripple a full-grown griffon.

Plus, they're tentacles. Just... Hrrrr...







Mega scorpion jerky is actually pretty tasty. Sure, it can't compare to a good steak (or at least I think it can't; damn it, amnesia!), but it's palatable. The flesh reminded me of lobster with its spongy consistency, and it really shriveled up once you dried it out, but it certainly lasts.  Plus, I hadn't died of an embolism yet, so the poison wasn't spread throughout the scorpion’s entire body.

A couple days after my initial encounter with the area's wildlife, I started to see more and more creatures roam the area. Luckily this meant there was a more ready supply of water, supporting the increasing amount of vegetation in the region. I even managed to find some tubers that looked really similar to turnips, and they didn't kill me when I tried them. Win-win! It did mean I had to be more careful in travelling, though, but I could put up with a little physical danger if I meant I no longer had to constantly worry about the slow and silent killer called starvation.

The further I walked, the more colorful and vibrant the environment grew. The sky had more sky than clouds, and what clouds there were were more of the fluffy type than the overcast version I had grown accustomed to. I could see colors other than brown, red, and black. There was more green, and even other colors of the spectrum thanks to the plants that started littering the surroundings. I was pretty sure I even saw a giant, pink flower off in the distance. The dreary world of death had been finally left behind me, or at least the Lovecraftian version of it.

As I continued onward, I slowly made my way closer and closer to the eastern mountain range. I figured that maybe I'd find some type of civilization at the base rather than in the middle of the wasteland. I didn't really have to go too far out of my way, as the two ranges were starting to curve and come together at a head. I could only assume that I was either reaching a mountain pass or the border of the wasteland.

More time passed, and it was a little more than a week since I had arrived in this topsy-turvy crackland when I came across a series of caves spidering through the mountains. Examining the sides of the tunnel leading into it, I noted with both trepidation and glee that the tunnel was actually man-made. The sides weren't smooth from erosion but rather from someone purposefully scraping along the edges of the rock. Plus, I found older tracks coming in and out of the cave entrance.

There was a mix of hoofprints and dog tracks along the tunnel. I didn't find any footprints, but I assumed that it was because whoever had passed here had ridden the horses in. Horses and dogs together in orderly lines meant domestication, and domestication meant some form of civilization!

I carefully walked into the cave, using the remainder of my walking bone to scratch off marks to keep track where I was going. I didn't have to worry about going in blind because there was moss with some kind of natural bioluminescence giving off dim light. Soon enough the air became stale and musty, and I could make out fresher and fresher tracks.

Something was bothering me, though. The hoofprints were a little on the small side for work horses, and the pawprints were a bit too big. Judging from their size, the horses and dogs would actually be about the same size, about as big as show ponies. Also, I had yet to see human tracks anywhere. Surely they didn't ride the horses this far in.

As I pondered this discrepancy, I absentmindedly kept making marks while delving deeper and deeper into the cave.  I was also starting to find signs of what appeared to be a mining operation; Minecart tracks led further down each tunnel that branched off, and I could see abandoned pickaxes and other mining tools scattered about. I didn't know what was being mined, because whoever was doing the mining had pretty well cleaned the place out. Was it gold? Silver? Precious jewels? Couldn't have been coal or gas; I didn't smell anything of the sort.

So what were they mining, and who were the miners?

By now I had to be at least a mile in, but I had yet to come across anyone else. Perhaps I was wrong and those tracks were created by wild horses and dogs? But that couldn't be the case, they were way too neat to just be random herds and packs. Also, what kind of horses and dogs lived in caves? Then again, the world I was on could have evolved differently. Hell, for all I know, these weren't even the horses or canines I knew of.

The flickering of firelight broke me out of my thoughts, and I instinctively plastered my back against the wall. A large group was coming towards me holding torches, and I held my breath, eagerly anticipating what I would find.

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn't this.

Ponies turned the corner, pulling minecarts full of all kinds of precious jewels - diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies - and all the size of my fist! But the trove of treasure wasn't what caught my attention, oh no; it was the ponies.

If you could even call them that. They were equine in appearance - quadrupedal, manes, tails, the weird backwards shape of their legs, hooves - but they were not like any ponies my brain encyclopedia could dredge up images of. For one, ponies from my world were kind of dull in color - white, black, tan - you know, normal colors. These ponies, on the other hand, were pastel colored and looked like they had escaped from a child's Crayola box. One of them was a lime green, and another was a soft mauve!

There were less obvious physical differences, as well. Their eyes were too big and more forward-facing on their skull than the side-prey position of regular horses. Their muzzles were too short, and their faces had too many points of articulation. Their faces were extremely expressive, even if they were only fraught with misery. Their joints were different, too. One pony reached up with a hoof to massage its shoulder, betraying a ball-and-socket joint more common in primates.

Whatever these things were, they weren't ponies. They were, however, quite sapient and very capable of emotion. This was clearly highlighted when the tip of a whip lanced across one of their backs and it let out an all too human cry of pain mixed in with a horse's whinny. There was a barking noise behind it, and the pony stiffened momentarily before its cart-mate leaned against it, whispered some encouraging words, and began pulling again. The punished pony gave a small whimper and followed suit. My heart went out to the poor thing, unable to not feel sympathy for such a blighted creature.

Then I got to see the torturer of all that was cute. I was not disappointed in the slightest.

It looked like someone had crossbred an orangutan with an alley mutt. It had stumpy hind legs and elongated, muscled forelegs. Dank and dirty fur covered its entire body. A puggish face glared around with yellowish eyes like something had insulted its mother. The dog(?) stood in a  stance half-way between bipedal and quadrupedal, resting on its hind legs but using its grossly oversized forelegs to prop itself up. One of its front paws had a leather whip, which it used to strike any pony that wasn't working to the slavemaster's strict standards.

Several other monkey-dogs wandered past me in the tunnel, hitting other ponies at their discretion and growling nonsensical words. I knew they were speaking some kind of language, and each species could understand the other even though their vocal cords were producing completely dissimilar sounds, but heaven help me if I could figure out what they were saying. Eventually the carts, ponies, and monkey dogs passed me and I was left alone in the dim light of glowing moss.

So I'd just wandered in on a slave ring. Awesome. That was all I needed. I did feel sorry for the poor ponies, but there was no real way for me to help them out. I didn't understand their language and wasn't exactly in shape to mount a daring rescue. The most I could do was escape, find someone who actually could help them, and try my best not to be captured in the process.

And that's when someone clonked me on the head from behind. I was out before I even hit the ground.

Goddammit, I hated this place.