Chapter 19: Horsewords
At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Chapter 19: Horsewords
“Well, the important thing is that we have a few days before...it happens,” Celestia stated. “So we have time to gather more information. I met the brother of one of the guests. Tonight I plan to see if he knows anything useful.”
“And I also know that my cloak has some minor abilities to absorb this new type of magic...” Midnight sat back in one of Hope’s chairs, staring at the ceiling. “So that part works. I wish I knew how to circumvent the thing entirely though... A ‘convention’ is just a type of gathering, from what I can tell.”
“A convocation of spirits?” Celestia asked. “That doesn’t sound good at all. I was hoping that this was being done to one pony at a time. That way we could study those that are ahead of you in the queue, perhaps convince them to try out parts of your solution to see which ones work best…”
“Well...at worst, I get my mind erased and get to go on a little romp in the woods. At best, they realize it’s not working on me, and the gods themselves come down to smite me in person.” She looked glumly out the window for a moment, before quickly changing topics. “I think I’m going to try and bring my dinner out here tonight, how does that sound?”
“That sounds fine,” Hope replied. “I’ll invite my neighbor Sorrel, and with any luck his sister Chestnut will show up as well. She should be in Room 238, back at the Inn. Unless of course you were looking for a refuge from the masquerade...”
“The...well...” Midnight looked over to Hope with a bit of worry. “I don’t know how much of it is a masquerade.”
A blue glow lifted Midnight’s record sheet into view, and she began to read from it.
“‘Personal traits: Power hungry and insecure of her own achievements, Midnight Sparkle seeks not only power to control the world around her, but to differentiate herself from a family of more capable and more...’”—she took in a breath and finished—“‘...And more intelligent unicorns. The adventuring path gives her a path to obtain this power.’” She let it go, and the paper fluttered down to the ground, drifting like a fallen leaf.
Hope looked down at the paper. “Somewhere in the vaults of the Inn,” she said patiently. “There is a page with the name ‘Hope Springs’ atop it. Every word that it says is a lie. This is little different—it’s what one would learn from the city gossip. It’s the simple story, the one that takes the mass of contradictions that is a pony and boils it down into something that fits into the adventuring formula: everypony here is damaged, and letting one of them inside will make them better. Shows what they know.” She looked up with a superior smirk.
Midnight laughed as she recovered her record sheet, a wet sound at the edge of tears. “Thank you. I am standing in a metaphorical line though, and I’m not exactly clamoring to get out; more trying to defeat its caretakers to prove that I can. Do you think that... You met my father, right? Do you think he would want to see me again after all this? After I succeed?”
Celestia suddenly blinked several times in quick succession. “After you’ve saved the world? Of course! You’re his daughter, and he’s a normal father—he’d be proud of you for even trying that which the majority of ponies would never even dare to consider.”
Midnight sat a bit taller, and grinned, wiping her eyes dry. “Good. Yes, I think this will work out.”
Celestia nodded. “Yes. We’ll continue to trade what we know all the way until the convention.” She suddenly smiled. “I imagine that you just heard the word, yes? I just said it, and I didn’t hear it. Strangest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“Yes! How did you do that? Say it without being able to say it?” the unicorn asked excitedly. “How did you know which word it was?”
“You showed it to me with the cloak. H-K-A, and a bunch of other letters, at least when transcribed into Equine.”
“Wonderful! I wonder how many other words I can show you...oh, one is especially important, let me give you that one...” She used her magic to take off her cloak, and lifted up the piece of charcoal.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Celestia said with a grin. “Something my sister and I used to do as fillies.” She picked up the magic cloak and draped it over her head, then gestured Midnight towards her. “Try whispering it in my ear while we’re both under the effect of it.”
Scooting up quite close to the disguised alicorn, Midnight whispered from memory: “The player is what they call the spirit, capable of taking over what we are to become an adventurer. They and their Handler create adventures, to gain experience.”
“What...what does player mean in its own terms?” Celestia asked. “Is it a reference to possession, or a slow and steady disintegration?”
“It’s...” Midnight had to do her best to remember the context of the pamphlets. “It’s another pony. But not a pony. A person. The player is another being who...steps side by side with the adventurer, in spirit. They live in another world entirely; our world is the subject of their fascination.”
Celestia shook her head. “That’s all very useful, but I’m interested in attitude. Player is one of the most used words in those pamphlets I imagine, yes?”
Midnight nodded. “It is. Some of the pamphlets were even written for the player to read, as opposed to us ponies. I was lucky enough to get them by mistake. The player-targeted pamphlets were…” Her eyes went wide. “They were written for a much younger audience than the pony pamphlets. I think...I think the players are just foals! A colt or filly, who is being told a story, and we are all the actors in this story. For them it is a grand adventure. That’s why they don’t care about the death and such. They are innocent in it all, but they enjoy the experience, and so the story goes on. They have no knowledge or desire to hurt their adventurer. That’s why they use a synonym for...a participant in a game.”
“A game?” Celestia asked incredulously. “A game?! Is that all we are to them, pieces on a vast game board?”
Midnight, wide eyed as she pieced things together, nodded quickly. “Imagine if you didn’t know, Hope. Imagine...if you were playing chess, and somewhere far away an army was bound by your actions? They don’t know! Nowhere in the player-directed pamphlets did they talk about retirement, old age, the Adventurer’s life...that’s why I was frozen when those other adventurers were around! I wasn’t on the game board!” She despaired. “Oh, Hope this is...”
“I can work with this!” Celestia said, a manic grin across her face. “These aren’t conquerors, or predators, or plain old sadists. These are children, and children can be led. Sure, they might resist, especially since there’s a whole class of individuals we still know nothing about who will certainly act against our efforts. But now we know that at least one party in this arrangement is open to change!”
“But the gods!” Midnight exclaimed. “There was something...it was only a brief mention, but there was a sentence I didn’t understand... ‘Your Pony Handler will often act as your god or goddess, and approve any requested divine intervention.’ I thought that it was a...that the Handler would pretend to be the god but what if that’s their role in the game?”
“Yes,” said Celestia. “In any game, you have to have somebody who enforces the rules. When I was with Soul Cleaver and his party, they would have conversations with F...”—she stopped herself in time before uttering the attention-grabbing name—“...with their god. And from their reactions, She answered them back, although I couldn’t hear it. She must have been their Pony Ha… OK, I missed the second word. Say it again.”
“PH,” said Midnight. “That was the abbreviation.”
“Alright, the PH,” said Celestia.
“Wait...did it seriously just try and censor a two word abbreviation?” Midnight dropped the cloak. “Say...’Pony Harvest’. Then abbreviate it.”
“‘Pony Harvest’, and ‘P.H.’ But that wasn’t the pair of letters you said. You said ‘X’ and ‘D’. X.D. I can say that just fine.”
Midnight’s eyes went crossed for a second, before she shook her head. “Right. I’m hearing both languages so I’m acting as a translator without meaning to. And the alien word for ‘pony’ starts with an ‘X’, which is just plain wrong. But I’ve got this.” She put the cloak back up. “So, the PH is also the god.”
“Right,” agreed Celestia. “Now the next question is this: Are those god names, the ones we can’t say out loud without them staring at us, are those their actual names, or do they have griffonish names like the players do? A name like ‘Ellen’.”
Midnight had to think on that for a bit. “I...don’t know. But all the names in the player documents were Griffonish, from the authors to the players. I even saw ‘Ellen’ once. Assuming that the authors doubled as PH’s, the one I saw the most was Mary Jo Powell.”
Celestia pulled her head out of the cloak, her eyes narrowed. “Mary Jo Powell,” she said to the roof of her room. “I don’t know who you are, but know this: we will save Equestria from your evil machinations!”
Midnight glanced around her. “I for one am particularly glad of the fact that her name doesn’t have lightning bolts attached to it. I wonder if that means that you are higher level than her.”
Celestia pulled the cloak over them once again. “You did it again. What is it that I have a higher number of than her?”
“Levels. Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this,” Midnight promised. “So the experience thing? It’s a numerical value given as a reward for the things adventurers do, which they can then exchange for goods and services. However, if they let them accumulate, they gain levels. These levels make you incrementally more powerful, until...well, the pamphlets implied that enough levels could turn an adventurer into a god or goddess of their own. Several of them were mentioned by name in the literature—the Bees, and Moldy Cane, for example.”
Celestia thought carefully about this. “That could be metaphorically as well as literally true. In one sense, success as a player may lead to becoming a PH. On another hoof, a means of retirement offered as an incentive to players. And what could be more rewarding to a child than to be offered up as a permanent role model to future generations of players?” Celestia looked off into the distance. “And if those pamphlets mentioned the names of actual players...how many generations have been playing this game?”
“Second Edition,” said Midnight. “It was all over the covers. Sort of a ‘new and improved’ gimmick.”
Celestia furrowed her brows as she considered this. “Eighty five years, and only two ‘editions’. Maybe they are gods...bored gods with nothing better to do than to meddle in the affairs of mortals?”
“Gods with money?” asked Midnight. “I swear that some of those pamphlets had ‘suggested retail price’ written on the back, with some sort of decimal currency. Everything was ‘copyrighted’ by Horsewords Incorporated. ‘Worldwide Rights Reserved’. They had a ‘trademarked’ symbol of a mare’s head with a flowing...with your head.”
Celestia groaned. “A game being made by a world-spanning capitalistic corporation, that has already probably made millions of bits...off of my face!”
“And you haven’t made a speck!” Midnight observed lightly.
“We’re doomed.”
Midnight grinned. “What, you’ve never faced off against an evil business before?”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “I had previously considered large corporate entities to be works of fiction, like the possibility of a functioning democracy. I’ll have to come up with something novel to counteract it.”
Midnight smirked. “Well, regardless of all that, here’s one thing that I know, after reading over all that info. The adventurer is supposed to be like a character in a book, that’s why they act so different, so exaggerated in their behavior. So...if I suddenly start laughing maniacally or dramatically planning the downfall of my father’s city, it’s probably not actually me.” Midnight was still very much learning to utilize gallows humor.
Celestia looked Midnight in the eye. “Look, I want you to know this right now. We’re in this to the end. I don’t care what happens, I am going to stand by you, and I will get you back to your family when this all is done. With those purple eyes looking back at them, not whatever pair your player will give you. Understand?”
“Ugh...my eyes will change?” Midnight stuck her tongue out before laughing, putting the oddly romantic cloak down. “Tease her for it, if I get possessed, okay?”
“Okay,” Celestia said with an uncertain smile.
Hope escorted Midnight to the entrance of the stable. “Oh!” the earth pony exclaimed with a start. “There was that one pony who Firebelle learned everything she knew about the Inn from...Bernie. Yes, Bernie was his name. You might want to talk to him. He was…” The mare’s eyes drifted upwards as she tried to recall one detail out of the doomed pony’s rants. “Booth Number 9. Yes, that was where she said he could be found.”
“I will make sure to talk to him,” Midnight said. She held out a hoof. “Well...see you in a few hours?”
“Al—hold on, what’s that?”
Gathered in front of the entrance of the Inn were seven different wagons, all connected to each other with ropes. Ponies were climbing up into the wagons with great reluctance, their eyes locked on the front door.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Silver in a low but authoritative voice. “Go back home. The Inn does not welcome your kind here.” He watched until the first cart began to leave, then turned and re-entered the Inn.
Hope waved to one of several burly ponies in red tuxedos who were apparently there in case of trouble. “What happened?” she asked.
The bouncer jerked her head upward. “Celestia worshippers,” he said with a snort. “When will they ever learn?”
“Ah,” Hope said awkwardly, then managed to recover. “Well, they are notoriously bad learners,” she said with a grin as she turned to return to the stable.
Celestia wondered for a moment how the pony had gotten away with saying her name out loud. Then she considered the context, and imagined a bunch of nebulous ponies of enormous size, looking down from the clouds. “Did I hear somepony say ‘Celestia’?” one of them asked the other. “A-yup!” the other replied. “And look what he’s doing: smiting Celestia worshipers in our name.” “Oh,” the first god replied. “Carry on then.”
# # #
Midnight walked back into the Inn. The place was much busier than it had been when she had arrived. Mr. Silver now had several ponies to assist him in checking in ponies, and a few of the bouncers stuck around to act as bellhops and hopefully earn some extra bits.
In the common room, a grand buffet had been set out, and nearly a dozen ponies were eating lunch. A peculiar scent caught Midnight’s nose and, following it, she saw a small cart off to the side being frequented by a couple of griffons: one white with black highlights and the other tan with gray highlights. Midnight could only guess at what manner of bright pink meat the two were picking at—it wasn’t one of her areas of expertise.
Scrunching her nose in mild distaste, she shrugged and turned back towards the side wall, figuring she should speak with at least the one adventurer before getting her dinner and taking it out to Hope. She walked along the line of booths, and sought out number 9. It was one of the few with its door wide open. It was also emitting a steady cloud of tobacco smoke.
Midnight knocked politely on the wooden wall of the booth. “Hello?” she asked, not quite sure what she saw through the billowing expanse of grayness.
With a couple of quick flaps, the gray pegasus inside the gray cloud emptied the small chamber of smoke, and put out his cigar. “Well, hello, young mare! How can I be of service?” He was sitting comfortably on a cushioned bench at one side of a large table, both of which were constructed of black oak wood. The table was strewn with numerous books and papers, all of which were littered with notes in a spider-like script. Several pots of ink surrounded him, and a stray feather matching his coloration was slotted into his wingfeathers to act as a pen.
Without asking permission, Midnight walked briskly in and sat opposite of his chair. “I bring news of Firebelle, and I would ask that you not pry into my role in the events. Is that acceptable, Bernie?” she asked softly, leaning back and not touching the papers.
The pegasus dropped any pretense of jollity and leaned forward, staring deep into Midnight’s eyes. “I tend to find that the dead are quite trustworthy,” he told her in a deep voice. “You are nearly dead, so I will trust you, and I will ask no questions. Tell me of my grand-niece, and call me Mr. Lore. ‘Bernie’ is reserved for my kin, and those who claim my friendship.”
Midnight frowned. “Alright, Mr. Lore. I came here of my own volition, with no pretense and no attempt to lie. I just want you to know what happened.” She quickly explained the circumstances of Firebelle’s injury, petrifaction, and what came after, careful to refer to herself and Hope in the third pony as she did so. “She has a new name now,” she concluded, “and there are rumors to the effect that she may have changed herself into a dragon. You may ask me questions, just not...not about my place in that particular story, if possible. I’d rather not admit to much of it.”
The pegasus showed no perceptible reaction to the grisly story he had just been told, instead leaning back and chewing on the end of his feather pen. “Did she have her sheet on her in the hospital?” he finally asked.
“She did, and it was part of the reason for her acceptance into the place,” Midnight admitted.
“Good,” he said, nodding. “If she had been taken over without a sheet, that would make her a rogue, and I would be forced to look into that. As it is…” Mr. Lore sighed deeply, finally allowing some emotion to show. “Little Belle can finally fly.” He shook his head sadly. “I hoped...well, never mind what this ancient stallion was hoping. I thank you for your tale, and pray that you may be matched with a player who is deserving of you.”
“Out of pure curiosity and absolutely nothing else, have you ever heard of a player not fully controlling their adventurer?” Midnight asked conspicuously, still lounging, relaxed on the bench.
Mr. Lore smiled and sat up straight, adjusting his spectacles with one wing. “There are a variety of conditions that may cause pony and adventurer to separate: septic toxemia, complete bodily inversion, lycanthropy, and acute boredom, to name four off the top of my head. The prescribed treatment required from all other members of the party is ‘kill it with fire’.” He smiled sinisterly. “It’s a technical term.”
“Interesting, interesting...has anypony ever captured a player’s power, without showing outwardly that they are not the player, or is that impossible?”
“Well…” he drawled, leaning back and deftly playing with his unlit cigar with his wingfeathers. “I’ve never heard anything for certain, but the Inn ends up having to cover up some scandal or another every ten years or so, always in the wake of a convention.” He scowled. “Amateurs. Amateurs and bunglers, with no respect for the rules, any one of them, just out to win some kind of grudging respect from their kind...from Her. If it weren’t for M.J., this entire planet would have fallen to pieces decades ago.”
Midnight guessed that “M.J.” was this “Mary Jo Powell” person. “Really, so M.J. is keeping it all together? So...what would happen if she or a player couldn’t touch a pony, couldn’t control them?”
Midnight had leaned forward, her hocks gripping the edge of the table, eager to know more.
“Chaos...pandemonium…” the pegasus whispered. “Ah, I remember one time, when I’d barely be myself for ten minutes in a day. It seemed like the whole thing would have to be shut down, that the Inn would have to be moved north, or maybe...cancellation…” He shook his head to shake his fear away and glared over at the unicorn. “And what business is it to you, eh? Are you a revolutionary? A Forsakenist? Perhaps even an Ellenist? You’ll find no refuge in those feeble defenses, filly. They’ve all tried to sway the Great M.J., and all have failed.”
Midnight smiled, and slowly rose to her hooves. “No, good sir. It’s far worse.” She moved to the door and looked back to whisper her answer:
“I’m a scientist.”
# # #
Midnight emerged from the booth, feeling triumphant if not as enlightened as she was hoping for. Out in the hall, the remains of lunch were being quickly cleared away. A couple of earth ponies were marking out the boundaries of a jousting run: the two amused griffons, wearing armor, were waiting next to a pair of saddles. It soon became apparent that the goal of this variant of Joust was to unseat a pony riding each griffon with padded lances.
Thoroughly uninterested, Midnight turned and made her way along the entrances of the other booths.
“Hold on, hold on, tell me that again,” she overheard one pony telling another from within Booth #5.
Thinking to herself that one can’t have a proper sample of the local population without multiple data points, Midnight skulked her way up to the outside of the booth to listen in.
“Electrum is proof against dragons—I swear to Howard that it’s true!”
“Horse hockey!” the first pony exclaimed, rather coinciding with Midnight’s own views. “How could you even get a workable weapon out of the material? And aren’t electrum coins part of most dragons’ hoards?”
Overcome by her curiosity, Midnight poked her head into the open doorway. “Well, coins are different from other forms of a metal,” the dark blue unicorn speculated to the two shocked mares within. “Are you talking about, like...enchanted electrum? Or electrum charged with a battery? I had a mare tell me to do that once: coat it in copper, so...can I sit down here? Thanks.” Now seated next to a very confused pony, she waited for answers that she was sure were on their way.
“I...well, it’s elemental electrum, of course. The kind that falls from the sun.” The speaker—who was right next to Midnight—was a young copper-colored unicorn with an unusually small horn. She had a silvery, nearly white mane and tail, and dark orange eyes.
“Where do you get these ideas?” the other mare—the one across from Midnight—asked. “Do the weird dream Breezies visit you at night?” This one was a pegasus, snow white in color, with a light tan mane and bright yellow eyes.
“I...well...only some of them,” the unicorn blustered. “But it’s said that the gods deliver true dreams from their horns of narwhal ivory.”
“Well, hold on,” Midnight said, looking to the ceiling as she thought out loud. “So pure electrum...it mixes with other metals really easily, and non-metals too...like copper and tin—our coins are tinned electrum—so...if electrum was mixed directly with carbon instead of a metal—though it’d have to be extraordinarily hot—that could make it a great conduit for magic of all sorts! Not that it’s been done before—just a theory—but I love theories! Hello, my name is Midnight Sparkle, and I would like to be your friend.” She held her hooves out to the other two ponies.
“Buh...what?” asked the unicorn, who looked like she had just drowned under the weight of the concepts presented to her, something she looked utterly unused to.
The pegasus laughed, amused to see the other pony flummoxed. “I like the way you think!” she exclaimed, grasping Midnight’s hoof and shaking it in a complex maneuver that Midnight had never encountered before. “I’m Winter Harvest. Me and Copper Plate here came over from Frigid Falls.”
“Well it is wonderful to meet you both. You two are looking to become grand adventurers here?” she asked, still holding a hoof out to the unicorn.
Copper blushed and meekly hoofbumped it.
“Yeah, that’s the nature of the game, and we intend to play!” Winter exclaimed.
“Well that’s pretty unambitious, just to play the game by its nature,” said Midnight slyly. “What if you could play the game, with an...advantage?” She casually examined her hoof, brushing it against the seat.
Copper leaned towards Winter, a broad smile upon her face. Winter frowned, and pushed the other pony back into her seat, and pulled a rusty scythe up into view from where it was resting on the seat beside her. “Now look here, Miss,” she said coldly. “Just because we’re a couple of farmers doesn’t mean that we’re rubes. We’re here to play, fair and square. And we haven’t the bits to waste on some sort of guaranteed survival doohickey, because we know full well there ain’t one.”
“There ain’t?” asked Copper, disappointed.
“If there was one, we would have heard by now,” Winter told her firmly. “We’re sticking with the plan: make as much money as adventurers as possible to send home to Ma, and leave it to the gods to decide if we get to go home and help spend it.”
Midnight nodded sagely. “You’re right. There’s no guarantee of survival. I’m not going to pretend there is. What I am interested in, as a scientist, is magic and science, and how they interact with this process of becoming an adventurer.” She carefully took her cloak off, and laid it out on the table metal side up, faking a decent blush. “I...I decorated this myself, but that’s not what is important. The metal...it’s aluminum coated in copper and then that coated over in a special mix of chemicals that makes it so dark. It absorbs harmful magic. It’s untested, but I swear that at the worst it will cause a pony no physical harm to wear it. I know that I may not survive being an adventurer, so...I’d like more than one pony to have one, see if it helps while adventuring, and any that survive may pass on the method used to make it.” She leaned forward, and earnestly she asked, “If I make another one and show you that they are safe, would you wear it as an adventurer?”
“For...for free?” asked Winter, gingerly reaching out a hoof to feel the cloak. “This isn’t some kind of scam?”
“Well, this one is special to me, it was the first made and of course I want to hold onto it...my best friend helped me decorate it.” She smiled, and brushed a hoof across the smooth surface with its runes. “But making the metal isn’t that hard. I could do it in a day with the supplies I still have, two, maybe three more sheets, stick them under some cloaks...I’d prefer not to go telling everyone since I can’t make a hundred of them though.”
“Ah, it’s alright, I don’t really know any of those other ponies anyway,” Winter Harvest said with a nervous little laugh. “Look, we’re interested, believe me. And, if it turns out you can only spare one of those things, then let my sister have it, alright?” She gestured towards Copper’s record sheet. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen smaller numbers than the ones on her sheet.” She laughed, trying to cover up her worry. “Thank you, Ma’am, thank you.” She grabbed Midnight’s hoof for another heartfelt shake. “You’ve got to be the first honest pony we’ve met since Prairie Crossroads.”
“Well,” Midnight said. “I do consider you two my newest friends. I don’t have many friends, but I want to fix that...” She returned the hoofshake with a genuine chuckle. “I hope that they will help you, and I hope we can keep in touch after all this. I’ll probably be seeing you both over the next few days, since I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay!” Copper exclaimed. “We’ll be seeing you!”
There was the sound of a sudden crash outside the booth.
“Ooh!” Copper exclaimed. “Who won? Who won?”
Winter Harvest leaned over to look outside. “Torn Deck,” she told her sister. “Now pay up!”
Copper pouted. “Aw...lost again.” She dug through a pouch to slide a couple of copper coins over to Winter.
Midnight shook her head in wonderment, before standing. “I’m off to meet another adventurer or two, then I’m getting my dinner. It was wonderful to meet you both!”
“Goodbye!” the two sisters said in chorus, waving a hoof each.
# # #
“Nice ponies, very nice, new friends and everything,” Midnight said to herself as she walked around, looking for more adventurers who looked available for conversation.
The winners of the jousting tournament, Torn Deck and the black-and-white griffon, were accepting congratulations from a small crowd of ponies. A couple of annoyed ponies in white frocks were attempting to sweep the floors around them. A nearby sign announced that dinner would be served in another hour.
Not seeing much to engage with here, Midnight reluctantly went upstairs. As she expected, most of the doors were closed, a few even having “Do Not Disturb” placards hanging from the doorknobs. However, the door right next to Midnight’s was ajar, and a light was visible shining from around the edges.
Remembering that this was the room of the mare she was to invite to dinner, Midnight walked over and knocked on the door frame. There was a pause of a few seconds while it sounded like a couple of books were being moved, before the door was fully opened.
The earth pony mare on the other side was a light orange in color, with a blond mane and large green eyes. She looked to be the same age as Hope appeared to be, and roughly the same height. A brown peasant cap rested upon her head. “‘Llo,” the mare said, looking up at Midnight.
“Hi, my name is Midnight, I’m your...neighbor I suppose. I’m trying to meet more adventurers, but if you’re busy, I could always stop by another time...”
All Midnight had to do was pretend she was speaking to her little brother, and it became remarkably easy to tone down her abrasive personality.
“No, s’alright,” the earth pony said, holding out a hoof. “Ches’utt.” She stopped and frowned at herself. “Chestnut,” she repeated, clearly sounding out the syllables.
Nodding eagerly, Midnight shook the offered hoof.
“My friend, err...servant, I guess, Hope—her room’s next door to that of your brother Sorrel, and I was going to head down there to the other building for dinner—any chance you two could join us? It’s less crowded over there.”
Chestnut grinned. “Tha’d be nau...nice,” she said, a look of self-annoyance flitting across her features. “Sorrel’s the talker, tho.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything, I suppose...I’ll see you in an hour or two?”
Chestnut quietly nodded her head.
“Great! Thank you. I’ll see you in a bit, Chestnut!”
With that, Midnight headed into her own room, to study her pamphlets and have a moment or two alone.
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Well... now we know who has the pencil. (Or another from a similar source...)
Talking under the cloak works, nice.
Horsewords Incorporated, hahaha! That's more meta than I was expecting, even for this story.
So, the 'gods' will ignore the use of Celestia if it's said in the right context? That sounds like something that can be exploited.
I have to wonder if anyone, even the people at Horsewords know what is really going on. The players don't really if they are kids, and the pony handlers might not either if they are former players. Maybe Mary Jo Powell does?
*fist-pump*
It'd be pretty funny if Celestia heard everything said in her name, but couldn't actually doing anything about it/for them.
Oh, god...I have this horrible sinking feeling that Chestnut's difficulty speaking is going to be used, later, as a way for Midnight to recognize she's been taken over...
"Fewmint"?
5160567
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "fewmint" the medieval word for dragon droppings? I tried to look it up on Google right now, with absolutely no luck.
I'm curious McPoodle, have you ever read MogWorld before?
Oh dear god you're crossing over BoAPW with Javelin. In the most absurd, meta way possible.
I mean, I suspected as much from the instant I saw the RPG jokes start up, but wow.
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Me: "Javelin"? No, you're thinking of "Masquerade". I may have deep plans, but not that deep. Unless you mean the whole series, in which case no, I didn't think of that ploy until that particular story.
Ecks dee