I woke up to the taste of dirt in my mouth. Seriously I woke up face-down on the ground. Ok probably should back up here a second. I'm Joshua Starflame, legendary pyromancer and a student at Ravenwood... Least I think I'm still a student, probably was expelled for over 1500 years worth of missed classes. And don't get me started on my name. Don't exactly like it as it's gotten me a bit of grief at the school. I was sent to Equestria by my headmaster Merle Ambrose to try to set up relations with Wizard City but things got out of control. Didn't realize that there was no wizards circle and the spells I used went out of control. To make matters worse they were all fire based spells and this got the attention of the rulers of Equestria. Yeah worst idea ever because they basically have the powers of gods while not being actual deities. I wound up running for my life into one of the forests nearby Ponyville, though at the time Ponyville was a pile of ashes(I blame the Heck Hound), and came into contact with a cockatrice. Didn't exactly realize it until it was waaaaay too late.
I started pushing myself up and off the ground, spitting dirt out of my mouth as I did so. As I managed to get to a sitting position I realized a couple of things. One, the ground around me was charred black. Probably a fire spell of some sort that helped me get free from the petrification, I'd have to get access to a spellbook to see if that's actually possible. Two, this wasn't the forest. As I looked around the new area, things started to shift into mind. This was one of those statue gardens, probably for the castle nearby. Over to the left there was a statue of three fillies all playing together. Then a bit further there was a statue of a pony holding a flag and just behind that... Ok that creature I didn''t know what it was. I could recognize the parts of it, like say the head of a pony, tail of a dragon, even a lion's paw(funnily enough, no human parts). But I didn't know what it was species-wise. It was somewhat easy to see in the moon-light, Equestria tended to have better nighttime lighting than Wizard City or even Marleybone, but even with what I saw I didn't recognize the place. But things must've changed during the time I was petrified. I wouldn't have noticed because I was a giant paperweight.
I started checking around to see what I still had and what I had to find. I knew my spellbook and wand were missing but as for the rest of the stuff. I started looking through the magic backpack that every wizard had to see what was there. Still had my treasure cards, still had most of my clothing inventory. Ooh still had my swiftshadow wings. I decided to keep those off for now just in case I needed an extra escape route. Had a broom as well but I hadn't used it in a while. I'm not actually sure if it was still functional. Now then. It was time to figure out where I was and how I got there. From what I remembered last, Sunbutt had gotten me to run into the forest and her sister was actually lying in wait. Gotta hand it to em, it was clever. From that I guessed they had grabbed my statue and set it up here. But where was "here?" As I started thinking again I heard hoofsteps and realized one simple thing. If this was a statue garden for that castle and a fire spell had been used to unbind me, obviously the guards are going to hear. And if my memory was right, they were going to poke me with their pointy spears. Time to run!
Almost five seconds after I got into hiding further in the statue garden, close to the hedge maze, I heard the hoofsteps enter the garden as well as two male voices.
"Where did that fire come from..." the first one asked.
Fire? Huh guess my magic must've overflowed the instant I was freed. For that matter how'd I get out? No matter I'll figure it out later. Got guards to avoid again.
"Never mind that. Where did one of the statues go?" His partner asked with a trace of panic in his voice
I heard the hoofsteps start moving quickly towards where I was originally and I took this moment to start sneaking behind different statues to try to get away.
"This is bad. This is very bad. We're gonna lose our jobs for this."
"In a way it could be worse right?"
"How?"
"You've heard the rumors right? About some of these statues housing long captured villains? It's a good thing that one isn't true."
Must resist the urge... Must resist the urge to scare the living scheisse out of them.
"Do not scare me like that," I heard the first guard respond. "Come on, whoever took that statue can't have gone far. We know they didn't go past us. You head to the hedge maze. I'll go further in. We'll go a full circuit and regroup back here."
"Got it."
I risked peeking out from behind the statue where I was currently at to see the armored form of one of the pegasi go into the hedge maze. The other turned around to head back to the entrance, I'm guessing to start from there and make sure that nopony went past him. Well nopony probably would've been able to get around him. But what about a wizard who delights in sneaking past foes on the streets of the spiral? Yeah this wasn't my best idea especially considering I still didn't have my wand or my spellbook.
I continued moving behind the statues getting closer and closer to the guard who had started moving his way around the garden, carefully checking each statue. Somehow I made it past him and got to the entrance of the garden and one of the ways into the castle. As I was about to enter, my nose started itching.
"No not now! Not Murphy's Law again!" I thought. This would not be the first time this had happened but it probably would be the most disastrous. I pushed open the door slightly to squeeze through it... and wound up letting loose a loud sneeze. It got the guard's attention that's for certain and it got me in a lot of trouble again.
"Hey! Who's there!" the guard's voice called out and as per the usual, I decided to ignore stealth and pushed open the door to make a beeline out of there not caring if I was actually seen. Then it hit me. If this was where the two princesses moved me, maybe my wand and spellbook were here. I had to find them before I left. I took a hard left down one of the hallways, trying to gain extra time to think where they would be. Course if I ran into another pony I could always ask... Right? Oh I crack myself up sometimes. I took another right and skidded straight to a halt. I just had an idea. Now where was the library...
"Nope. Nada. Seriously where is it?" I flipped through some of the books tossing them behind me as I searched for my spellbook. I'd been doing this for the past fifteen minutes but I still had no luck. "Fine then. Didn't wanna go this route but I guess I gotta do this." With that, I snapped my fingers and started focusing. I didn't wait long as one of the books instantly caught fire; a little locating method I'd planted should I ever lose it. "There you are." I said as I walked over there to pick it up. At my touch the fire dissipated and I was able to pick it up without much difficulty. The problem? Well the fire was spreading and it was going to the other books quickly. Knew I forgot to set something in that spell. I scratched my head sheepishly, only able to say one thing. "Oops."
I turned around and started walking towards the door only to see that it was open. Standing there was a lavender unicorn with a violet and pink mane, oh and she appeared to be in shock. Not at me though, her gaze was fixed directly on the books.
"Er. Twi?" a female southern voice called out, "Ya mind lettin' us through?"
"Ooh ooh! Maybe she's in shock because there's a huuuuge fire burning all the books!" a high-pitched voice responded.
"Yeah right! She's probably just in awe of all the books again like usual." a third snarky voice said.
I turned around again and started tiptoeing towards the window when I heard a newer female voice this time. It started out menacing then changed to... confused?
"You... Wait.. what are you?" she asked. Well if she'd never seen a human before this might be a chance for some fun. I whirled around and gave a mocking bow before saying, "I am a human. Wizard Joshua, Legendary pyromancer." I straightened up with a smirk then started backing away again. Didn't use my last name because, as I stated, I didn't exactly like it. I started seeing the mental cogs turning. It looked like she was putting the pieces together. I began backing up slowly as I felt I might need to run. Very very soon. Almost ten seconds after she began thinking, I saw a snap in her facial features as she finally guessed it.
"You...." she growled, her horn beginning to light up with magic.
"Aw come on..." I felt a fight coming on that I really didn't want to do.
"You set the archives on fire!?"
"It was an accident!" I protested, "Can't we just settle this over a pint?" I reached into the backpack quickly and pulled out a small piece of furniture that I'd never set in my house, a mug.
"Why you...." at that she began firing the magic at me, taking the form of lasers. A few grazed me and one connected with my right arm causing me to yelp with pain and also drop the mug. I'd been hit there before with more durable projectiles, namely arrows(seriously those things stick for awhile and hurt), but these were a lot more painful. Think having three arrows in the same shot for the price of one and you get the picture. I narrowed my eyes; if she was out for blood, time for the real fun to start.
See, with my spellbook I could now start casting real spells but any bonuses that would've been given with my wand wouldn't appear until I retrieved it. I opened it up and flipped to the page with one of my spells that I'd trained awhile back. funnily enough I'd failed to train any Ice spells so I couldn't douse the blaze, no Storm spells either. Wait check that, I do have one and it's one of the treasure cards. I rolled to the side trying to dodge a laser, it grazed my side, and quickly held out my hand. A gold card descended into it and I looked at it. "Tower shield, not what I wanted." I drew the sigil for Ice in the air in front of me and touched the card to it. In a flash of light-blue light, the card vanished and a white shield appeared around me.
"What?!" the lavender unicorn had stopped, "What was that magic?"
"You think I'll tell you after you attempted to kill me?" I responded harshly as I held out my hand for the second time for another gold card to descend into it. Each time I did this, I gave up usage of one of my spells in my deck to cast one of the treasure card spells. But it would all reset once I had a chance to rest.
"You started a fire! That is not cool!" the voice that I'd initially called snarky rang out again and this time I was able to see the voice's owner. A cyan pegasus with a mane of rainbow. Heck she even had a cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt on her flank. Come to think of it, I'd never asked why the ponies had those marks in the first place but when you're chased around you really aren't able to ask this.
"If there were any other way of recovering my spellbook I would've done so. Rest assured I never actively attempt to start fi- OOF" I was cut off as the pegasus slammed right into me with near mach speeds. The shield shattered and I felt the protective energies weaken the blow. As I flew back I touched the ground and flipped to land neatly on my feet and skid to a halt.
"What? How is that thing still standing?" I heard the pegasus's voice cry out. She probably never guessed that the shield may have, oh I don't know, shielded me from part of the blow? Nevertheless, that hurt. Probably would be bruised later. Well better than actually being knocked out with every bone in my body shattered. Actually that has happened before. Very painful.
My turn now. With an edge to my voice I said, "Ok that's it. Ladies it's time to learn a very important lesson." I quickly looked around to see if any other ponies had entered the burning room. Seeing no other entrants, not even the other voices I'd heard before, I turned back to the two who looked ready to charge again. "When you mess with fire..." I flipped up one of the non-creature spells I enjoyed using, Meteor strike, "you're gonna get burned." I drew the sigil for fire magic in the air and slammed the card into it again. This time a silvery aura appeared around me and I felt the spell's magic exponentially increase.
"Huh? Whaddya mean by tha-"
"Rainbow get down!"
Right as the lavender unicorn tackled the pegasus to the ground, four meteors crashed into the archives. None actually hit the two ponies, instead it created a giant hole in the wall that I leaped out of. As I fell I activated the Swiftshadow wings and started flying away silently. I loved the fact that I could do that here because back home I'd never been able to, a magic field blocked you from flying higher than about a story high when you had the wings. As I got further away from the castle, I heard an inarticulate scream of rage as that unicorn realized that the creature who burned the books had just hoodwinked her.
"Now then. How to get home when there's no world door," I started musing then thought of something, "Wait... What was the treasure card I drew?" I took a moment to look at it and flinched, holding back an expletive, settling for grumbling instead. It was the card that actually could've stopped that blaze, Tempest.
As my irritated mumbling continued I didn't notice how fast I was going nor where I was headed. My mind was on other matters until I heard an alarm clock noise in my ear. I felt my face pale as I remembered a few things:
1. These wings were timed upon activation.
2. I first used them to actually get to the forest where I wound up running into the cockatrice and they must've been suspended along with me.
3. That time had just run out.
I took a chance to look on my back and saw nothing there. Apparently cartoon physics were alive and well in this world because as I saw this I instantly looked down and saw a forest below me(looked familiar). Before falling I looked straight ahead and muttered, "God my luck sucks," and wound up falling into the forest, screaming like a little girl the whole way down.
worldsfamousphotos.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/budist_monk_on_fire.jpg
for fuck
4391509
Oh, well that certainly isn't very nice is it?
He is new, is he not? So give him a chance, even a little one. Okay?
Good day.
4391521
Mm. Perhaps I was a little harsh.
Still... calling his OC Joshua Starflame...
It hurts, man.
It hurts my soul.
4391538 Understandable, I know it lacks subtlety and makes his character seem like a gary stu from the offset, however he is brand new and fresh to the website, and he seems to be lacking a pre-reader or editor to make him aware of his mistakes. I know someone who is a renown author on this website must look upon the other plebeians as nothing more as jockeys attempting to follow in your footsteps, but not everyone can be as good as thee 'Parasprite' So go a little easy on him. Even just a small amount, maybe give constructive criticism instead of something that made me bawl my eyes out when I was in youth (The burning monk)
Good day.
4391591
I know that I will never understand your pain, because of my privilege, but please, accept as heartfelt an apology as my white self can possibly put forth for unknowingly posting one of your triggers. I'm literally crying as I type this message. There are tears actually sliding down my cheeks. It's like a perfect storm of tears. I'm going to drown in it. Like I'm drowning in my guilt. My personal darkness. My suffering. It is my cross to bear.
Anyway, to the author: I'm sorry that I let my 1000+ follower privilege get in the way of your success. I'm going to go cut myself now.
Liking the story so far, looking forward for the next chapter
4391497 actually i've never heard of that story. it's actually the name i gave my wizard on the game wizard101 a few years ago. and as for the plot... honestly I seriously have no idea of the story you're talking about. If you could link me to it that'd be nice because it would help me see where I could fix things.
4391538 To be very honest, I didn't know the name had any sort of repute. As it is, I started playing wizard101 back when I was younger and I gave my wizard that name(this is long before I joined the brony fandom or started reading any sort of novels.). The character in the story is based off of the wizard I created then but with a bit more personality(least I attempted to give him one.). After all, the wizards in the actual game are pretty much mary sue's or gary stu's. I kid you not. I'll work on going back and making things a bit more readable once I get more experience though.
4391633 Not exactly what I was hoping for. Regardless, vain apology is still an apology, and therefore shall constitute as something akin to 'success'. You are a talented author, that much needs to be said. But is it not a waste of your valuable time to parade around the fics of such (And I mean no offence to the author of this *Ahem* fiction.) lesser authors? Hmm? I have intel from several reliable sources that you allow these thoughts of yours about the latest fictions to wander free in a Skype chat where many wholeheartedly agree with you. But why? Why do such things? Does insecurity plague your thoughts? You'd never expect the author of such deep and moving works such as 'Gloomy every day' to be likeā¦ this. I'm wrought with both surprise disappointment, something which I most certainly didn't want to feel when talking about such an author. Shame.
4391760
Writing guide
Editor's group
Writer's group
Thesaurus
Mary Sue litmus test
There's a lot of useful stuff in those links.
4392166
4392414
Thanks, both of you, for those links. They should come in handy for getting this story better. As it is I fully admit it needs fixing in its current state and any help towards that goal is appreciated.
HAHAHA I love it. I have a question what lvl fire wizard is he?
4874990 When last I left off on W101, I was level 64. He's based primarily off of my wizard in the game so that's what he is. He probably gained a couple levels during the first few days in Equestria what with having to catch and get rid of his own creatures though.
4875018 ok nice he's strong is that your only wizard in game? me i have a death wizard he's lvl 70 and his name is wolfnighthunter.
Seems pretty good. I know a bit about wizard 101, but not much. My brother played it and I watched a bit.
4875399 I have a death wizard who won't be appearing in this story, mainly because he's only in wizard city still because I'm focusing on my fire one.
4877372 ok well if you need help on wizard101 just message me and lets see what i can do
Fix your wording and punctuation.
I like the idea but I was kind of upset right away with it when I read that there wouldn't be any magic circles.