Why do I have scales?

by Unicornluv4

Past and Present

Why do I have scales?
Past and Present

There’s something captivating about the skies of Equestria; the rich shade of blue, the special way their clouds looked as they lazily drifted on the breeze, and its fresh unpolluted air. Really if a person were to just stop for a second and take in the environment they’d see that Equestria as whole had a rather unique and refreshing feel to it, something magical.

But seeing as I was currently in a free fall at about give or take five hundred feet and headed straight for the Everfree Forest I really didn’t have the time to take in the view. Harsh winds ripping past my ears and stinging my eyes made making out where I’d land hard to tell, it also didn’t help that when Celestia hit me with that thaumic lance she broke one or two of my ribs. Through the haze covering my eyes I could vaguely see a strip of blue getting bigger as I fell. ‘There’s no way she planned this.’ I thought wincing as my body jolted a bit. And so with a colossal splash I hit the river that ran the length of the Everfree, the momentum I had built up falling sent me right through the shallow waters and straight into the riverbed below.

Luckily becoming Forge Scale and winding up in Equestria had a few perks; becoming fire and lava proof, superhuman physical strength, the ability to leech off of Equestria’s residual magic energy. My favourites though were being able to secrete and shape molten metal and having skin as tough as dragon hide. The powers helped but they didn’t mean I was invulnerable; a hard enough hit could easily land me six feet under.

‘Everything hurts.’ I thought as white hot pain raced up my spine causing another involuntary spasm and in turn more pain. Moving the limbs that still had feeling in them I slowly crawled out of the river and onto one of its banks, soaked and broken. I couldn’t feel my right leg, more of my ribs had broken in the impact and breathing was getting harder. With each blink I made Celestia’s Sun moved an odd amount across the sky, ‘I’m fading in and out of consciousness’ being my last thought as everything went black.

---

1250 Years Ago:

With an almost deafening crack the sphere of lime green flames that encircled me burst, dropping me onto my hands and knees. Noticing the cement flooring of the expo centre had changed to cobblestone and my ears ringing a little I lifted myself back onto my feet. “That’s... weird.” I muttered, looking up from where I’d landed I was met with the sight of a small village from centuries past. Cottage after cottage lay in front of me, each with grass roofing, walls made of stone and even fences built from sticks. ‘Must be some booth gimmick.’ I thought.

The ringing in my ears didn’t go away and was getting a little more than annoying, so I tried rubbing at them to try getting it to stop. “They really went all out for this one.” I muttered as I eyed my surroundings, it’s like I actually was in some fantasy role playing game right down to the bleak grey sky overhead and the crows cawing from dead trees. Noticing that my arms felt a little heavier than normal I turned my attention onto them; the thick gold bracelets I wore around my wrists stared back at me, or to be more specific my reflection in their weighty golden surface stared back at me. ‘They feel like real gold...’ I thought incredulously, panicking a little I looked at the scales I had used body paint to put on my forearms, and felt my heart begin to hammer harder in my chest; they looked like real damn scales, light reflecting off of each skin coloured scale as if they were a natural part of me.

Deciding to ignore the fact that I could see really well for a guy who normally needed glasses I walked along the cobblestone path in front of me, looking at the minute differences in each cottage I passed to try calm myself down. “Calm down, just calm down. You’re dreaming and this is your subconscious screwing with you.” I muttered to myself while traversing the oddly empty village.

Hearing a thud in front of me I turn my attention away from the cottages. A few feet ahead of me on the path stood a dirty little indigo horse, eyes as big as my fist and its body oddly disproportionate for an equine. Next to it lay a bundle of sticks that must’ve caused the thud I heard; now normally a horse would just stare at you for a few seconds and then it would snort and find some grass to munch on, but this small horse thing just stared and stared.

‘Might as well find the damned things owner’ I decided before taking a step, big mistake that; the second my bare foot hit the cobblestone the horse-thing broke out of its trance and screamed, bloody screamed! A small horse actually screamed.

“Чудо́вище!” screeched the little indigo horse, hooves stumbling as it turned and ran away, I could still hear the thing screaming “Чудо́вище!” every couple of seconds and growing fainter the further away from me it got.

“Ok brain, what the hell?”

---

Everfree Forest - Present Day:

Feeling some pressure on my broken ribs I jolted awake, every pain in my broken body greeting me as I awoke. Moving my head the little I could I made out that somebody had their hand on my chest, looking up a little I came face to face with the disapproving glare of another human; a girl actually. She had shoulder length wavy brown hair, vibrant pink irises, a cute button nose and a glare currently drilling its way into my skull. “Idiot.” Uttered the girl, her tone a little flat and bored sounding for someone trying to kill me with their eyes. With my current condition I responded the best I could.

“H-huh?” I wheezed. “I had one chance to sneak into the library and get my book back from the lavender one, and you up and ruin it by putting everpony on high alert.” Accused the girl, her tone still oddly flat and adding a little more pressure to my ribs. Raising my hand I pointed at the girl “Human?” I asked/wheezed. “Witch.” Answered the girl, blinking for the first time since I had woke up. Turning my hand and jabbing my thumb at myself I tried coughing out my name for the girl, “Fuh- Forge Scale.”

“Meryl Anne Anderson” replied the witch girl before shoving her hand into my chest, ‘What the fuck you psycho bitch!’ I mentally screamed, seeing her pull a heart shaped chunk of flesh from my body. Looking where she had shoved her hand I could see a clean heart shaped hole through my chest, the psycho still had that blank look on her face as my vision began to swim and my head thumped back onto the grass.

---

1250 Years Ago:

Not five minutes ago did a miniature indigo horse run away from me screaming, and now I’m surrounded by the things. All around me little horse-things of all colours and sizes stood glaring at me, garden hoes and stones at the ready. ‘Some of them have beards and moustaches, how the hell can a horse grow a beard or a moustache?!’ I thought, a little freaked out at the sight. “враг?” asked a male mini-horse stepping forward from the crowd, grey moustache on its snout, knitted wool scarf around his neck and wearing an old shirt. ‘Okay he asked me a question, but how do I answer him?’ I wondered, chalking all of this up to a seriously messed up dream.

“враг, да и́ли нет?” asked the stallion glaring a little harder at me, ‘Da, Nyet? Oh he’s speaking Russian!’ I realised, “враг!” yelled lil’ miss indigo, derailing my train of thought. “Da.” I answered, deciding to wing it, which turned out to be a mistake seeing as all the horses gasped and started backing away from me. “уходи́ть!” boomed the stallion in front of me, glaring at me like I was the devil incarnate. “Look, I think I might have said the wrong thing there...” I apologized as I walked up to him; arms held out in a non-threatening way. “уходи́ть!” he yelled, spittle flying and holding a hoe to my face. “I’m trying to say I made a mistake!” I yelled back, getting more than a little annoyed. That’s when the first stone hit.

There’s nothing quite as sobering as pain; when that first stone hit me I realized something, that something was that this was no dream. I actually was in mini-horse Russia and I actually was in danger; my heart began beating as fast as it could, sweat coated my body and I was seconds away from hyperventilating. With stone after stone hitting me I could see the angry stallion swing his hoe at me yelling “уходи́ть!” one last time. With everything happening so quickly around me, the stones, the screaming, and this not being some weird horse dream I just snapped.

I launched my fist and decked Mr. Mustache so hard his horse head literally bounced when it hit the ground, the horses started screaming “Чудо́вище!” over and over again while throwing more stones at my head and that’s when something magical happened; with everything that had happened I was seeing red and ready to smash some horse skulls in. Without realizing it something in the air had begun flowing into my body, giving me strength as I swiped at the air in front of me.

Fire swept from my swipe in an arc, burning through the stones and multi-hued horses in front of me while I screamed “I don’t speak Russian!” at the top of my lungs, too into my fury to see the unspeakable act I had just committed. Turning my palm towards me I stared at it, my blood still boiling I sent arcs of burning fire into and onto the cottages around me before running from the small village, adrenaline pushing me as I ran going much faster than I ever could before.

---

Two weeks had passed since I came to this place, after running a while I had come across a cave and decided to wait things out there. Once the adrenaline had faded I realized what I had done; I had killed living creatures, sentient creatures. Their burning shapes breaking apart and turning to ash in the hellish fires I made haunted my dreams and their screams my thoughts. To fight this I trained; after apparently becoming the character I was dressed as I had also gotten his powers, so to make sure I didn’t lose control like I did in the village I worked myself into the ground trying to get some kind of control over the powers I now possessed.

Breathing and throwing fire came easily enough, but absorbing whatever it was that fuelled my fire magic from the air didn’t; it was like trying to take a breath using only your skin. Putting that on the back burner for a while I worked on seeing if I had any of Forge Scale’s other abilities, Forge Scale being the character I had dressed as. After a couple of days of practice I found that I did have more abilities, but by far the coolest to me was being able to spew molten metal from anywhere on my body and shape it, if I had enough food and water in me that is. Found out you can’t make something from nothing and had to go looking for food and clean water.

After a couple of outings to the village nearby and setting the odd cottage on fire I had a nice little hoard; when you stay up all night pondering on something bad you did you tend to shift the blame off of yourself, which is what I had done. ‘They asked me questions in a language I don’t understand, they were screaming at me and they tried to attack me! I had every right to do what I did.’ I thought to myself in an “It’s their fault not mine.” Kind of way, and after a while I believed it to be the truth.

Having gotten a good grasp of my abilities and limitations I turned to face the mouth of the cave and the city I could see off in the distance, a cocky grin on my face. “I hope you little horse bastards and your thrice damned friendship based economy are ready for a skull buggering.” I began, eyes glinting. “Because I just dumped all of my skill points into the Anti-Pone branch of my skill tree.”

Five hours and a half destroyed Equestrian city later I was turned to stone by the Elements of Harmony and their bearers at the time; Princesses Celestia and Luna, after which my stone ass was dragged to their fledgling statue garden where I sat for two and a half centuries before being carted off to the new castle in Canterlot.

---

Everfree Forest - Present Day:

Waking up again every part of me felt... fine? Sitting up as quickly as I could I put pressure on my ribs and gave my leg a once over; my broken ribs had somehow been fixed and my leg healed. ‘But how? I can’t absorb enough magic energy to heal those wounds... The witch!’ I thought, turning my head left and right trying to see if I could find the psycho. “Oh goodness, you’re awake!” squealed a voice, turning to look at the speaker I found a scaled purple belly staring at me from the river. “Up here.” Sang the voice, masculine but trying to sound feminine, failing to suppress a sigh of annoyance I looked up and was greeted by the sight of a purple river serpent with a styled mane and moustache.

“Oh I am so glad you’re ok after you took such a fall!” chirped the serpent holding his hands to his chest, “I’m fine thanks, have you seen another creature that kind of looks like me?” I asked dismissively, still looking for that Meryl girl. “Besides you and I, nopony else has come here since you crawled out of the river.” Answered the serpent sounding a little confused as I still looked for any sign of Miss Surgeon Simulator. ‘Just great, another figment messing with my head.’ I thought, realizing she might have been another part of Forge Scale’s psychological issues ‘But I didn’t write her into his story...’

“How are you feeling..?” began the serpent, with an inquisitive tone lingering at the end of his question. “Feeling a little freaked out but it’s nothing I can’t handle, name’s Forge Scale and you are?” I muttered, rubbing at the nape of my scaled neck. “I, my dear friend am Steven Magnet and I believe being ‘freaked out’ is normal for somepony who fell from the sky, now isn’t it?” chuckled Steven while rubbing a claw at his scaled chest. “So Steve how long was I out?” I asked with a bit of a grin.

Clucking his tongue at how I addressed him the river serpent took a look at the sky before turning back to me, “Judging by where the sun is, I’d say about four hours or so.” Stated Steven sounding a little unsure.

And so Mr. Face met Mr. Palm and vice versa.

Author's Note:

I have no idea how Russian sentence structure works but here's the translation of the words I had to look up and copy.
Translation:
Чудо́вище - Monster
враг - Enemy
да - Yes
и́ли - Or
нет - No
уходи́ть - Leave

Comments

[SeventhBrony]

nice filler update waiting for more

[IkioStar]

....You need to work on sentence structure...pronto.

[Unicornluv4]

4056281 Sentence structure, punctuation and layout have always been difficult for me. I'll try working on it and thanks for the advice.

[IkioStar]

4056747 It's mainly sentence structure and layout so far. Perhaps you might find it worth your while if you request an editor from the editor's group. I've forgotten their proper name, but 'The Equestrian Critic's Society' should be able to provide you with a link.

[WindigogoGadget]

“враг, да и́ли нет?” asked the stallion glaring a little harder at me, ‘Da, Nyet? Oh he’s speaking Russian!’ I realised, “враг!” yelled lil’ miss indigo, derailing my train of thought. “Da.” I answered, deciding to wing it, which turned out to be a mistake seeing as all the horses gasped and started backing away from me. “уходи́ть!” boomed the stallion in front of me, glaring at me like I was the devil incarnate./quote]

mfw the MC didn't play S.T.A.L.K.E.R and doesn't know what Vrag means