An Earth Pony with little memory is found in a forest. He insists that he's supposed to be human, claiming to be something called a "Venus Adept". The one thing he remembers perfectly is his own name: "Felix".
Waking up with almost no memories, a man quickly discovers that he's not human anymore. Lashing out at the first being he sees—A cyan winged equine with a six-colored mane and tail—he demands to be turned back into a human, claiming to be something called a "Venus Adept". When the pony refuses to comply with his demands, he demonstrates powers that no Earth Pony should have, summoning stone to lash out in anger. He remembers little, but he does remember his own name: "Felix".
Will Felix recover his memories so he can return to wherever he came from? Will recovering his memories even be enough to do so? Or is there more to it than that?
The Golden Sun symbol from the cover art can be found here. All other parts of the cover art were made with Pony Creator and Photoshop. The cover art is a placeholder for the time being until I can get a better cover.
The first sense to return to me was touch, and with it came searing pain. I groaned and cried out, but I had no idea if anyone heard me because I couldn’t even hear myself.
Next came smell, and with it, the scent of charred flesh and ozone.
Then taste, and I started to gag from the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
Hearing came next, and I heard a voice.
“Are you okay? Wait, what a stupid question! Of course you’re not! How bad is it?”
The voice was female, but I couldn’t place it. Jenna? Kay? The names seemed familiar, as if I should know those two women very well, as if they were family, but I was drawing a blank. I just knew the voice didn’t belong to either of them. Too raspy.
Other names sifted into my mind. Mia? Sheba? No. Those were wrong, too. I tried to speak and ask her name, but all that came out was ragged coughs.
I started to get to my feet even though my sight hadn’t returned, but I felt something hard, like a hoof, press down on my back as the voice said, “No. Don’t get up. You’re hurt pretty bad. I’ve already sent for help. Stay put.”
Heedless of the warnings, I focused my mind to tap into my inner well of mental power: Psynergy. Mine stems from Venus, the element of earth, so I can use the spell I needed at that moment: Move.
Though I couldn’t see, I choked out the word “Move,” before guiding the hand I conjured to shove whatever was pinning me down off of me. I crawled forward until I felt a tree, not caring about the yelp of surprise the non-Adept gave when what must’ve seemed like an invisible force pushed whatever animal she was using off of me.
I couldn’t feel my fingers, so I hooked an elbow onto a branch I found and started to pull myself onto two feet. But something was wrong: my legs weren’t bending right! It was as if someone had taken them off and put them back on backwards.
“Hey, you really shouldn’t be doing that,” the voice said, and then my sight finally returned. I looked at my arms and noticed that they were now covered in orange fur. Had I turned into a Beastman? That still wouldn’t explain my legs, though.
Inspecting myself further, I found that my outfit was damaged except for my blue cape, and my entire body was covered in that fur. Even worse, the Sol Blade was missing, as was my armor. Then, I looked at my hands to see why I couldn’t feel my fingers, and immediately wished I hadn’t. My fingers were gone! My hands had been replaced by useless hooves!
Looking down, I confirmed that my legs were now equine-like, and I had hooves there, as well. I even had a brown tail that was kept in a similar style to the ponytail I always kept my hair in.
I wasn’t human anymore. Had I been turned into a Beastman, I could tolerate it. But this? It was too much. My vocal cords began functioning properly again to allow me to scream at the top of my lungs: “BY THE ELEMENTS! WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?”
“Hey! Calm down!” the voice from before demanded. I dropped to all fours since this form was apparently meant to walk that way, and looked at the source of the voice.
It was a four-foot tall blue equine with wings and a vibrant six-colored mane with a tail to match. It had an image of a cloud and a tri-colored lightning bolt on both flanks, but the strangest thing was those eyes. By the elements, those eyes! They were huge!
I backed up a few steps in shock and started to ready myself to tap into my Psynergy again if I needed to before saying, “Who are you? What are you? Did you do this to me? Why can’t I remember almost anything?”
“Hey, mister, cut the drama!” the horse-thing snapped. “You’re injured! I don’t know how you managed to get bruises, burns, electrocution and frostbite at the same time, but you did! I wouldn’t be moving if I were you. Even if you are an Earth Pony!”
“A what?” I exclaimed, backing up a few more steps. This time, the creature advanced, so I shouted, “Stay back if you know what’s good for you! I’m an Adept! I know how to use Psynergy! I may not remember much, but I can still use it!” Feeling inside myself, I breathed a sigh of relief when I found that all nine of my Venus djinn were still with me. “Not only that, but I’m powered up by djinn! Don’t mess with me!”
“Dude, did you hit your head, too?” the creature asked, giving me a weird look. “You sound like a pony who’s had way too much hard cider.”
“I’m not a pony!” I snapped. “I’m a human! And a Venus Adept, at that! Whatever you did to me, monster, undo it, or I’ll use my Psynergy to beat you until you make me human again! I can fix my injuries just fine! Potent Cure!”
Light that only I could see seeped into me, and all of my wounds rapidly healed, startling the creature.
“How’d you do that? You’re an Earth Pony!” it asked, this time fluttering its wings in surprise and taking a step back.
“I’m not supposed to be an equine of any kind!” I snapped. “And as I said before, I know Psynergy! That was a Venus Psynergy spell. Now, turn me back!” I instinctively reached for the Sol Blade, only to remember that it had vanished. “What have you done with the Sol Blade?” I growled. “I need my sword!”
“How should I know where your stupid sword is?” the creature demanded. “I didn’t see any swords around here when I got here, even though your Cutie Mark screams that you’re good with swords. And that you’re connected to the sun somehow.”
“My what Mark?” I asked in confusion.
“Duh! Your Cutie Mark, dummy!” the equine said with a roll of its eyes. “You know! The thing everypony gets on their flanks when they discover their special talent?”
“Huh?” I looked back at my own hindquarters, and lo and behold, a tear in my trousers revealed a depiction of the Sol Blade over a depiction of the miniature sun the Sol Blade had the power to create whenever its power of “Megiddo” activates.
“Fine, so I now have a depiction of Megiddo on my hips,” I said with a snort. “Whatever. Just undo whatever you did to turn me into this, and I’ll be on my way.”
“I didn’t do anything!” the creature snapped. “As soon as help arrives, we’re getting you treated for whatever’s wrong with your head.”
“I have partial amnesia, but I know for a fact that this is not what I’m supposed to look like!” I shot back. “Now, undo this, or I’ll make things hard on you.”
“Hey, cool it,” the creature said. “I’m not sure what happened to you, but I’m sure we can—”
At that moment, I reached my breaking point and focused my mind before roaring “Stone Spire!”
Large sharp stalactites materialized over the annoying creature and pummeled it, leaving behind cuts and bruises.
“Word for the wise,” I said when the equine toppled over, “Don’t anger an Adept unless you really think you have what it takes to beat one. We’re slow to anger because non-Adepts must view us in a positive light, but all of us have limits. You pushed me past mine.” It passed out soon after.
Suddenly, there was a poof sound coupled by magenta light, and another equine materialized near the one that had provoked me. This one had a mulberry coat, both wings and a horn, a purple mane and tail with two stripes: one pink, the other a darker purple, and a “Cutie Mark” (that’s what the blue one said they were called, right?) showing a starburst surrounded by smaller stars. Plus, this one was a little bit taller than the blue one.
“Okay, Rainbow, I’m here to pick up—” the apparently female newcomer cut off when it noticed the condition the blue one was in, then looked to me in shock.
“Did you do this?” it demanded.
“Yes, but I was provoked,” I replied simply. “My equipment is missing, and this one refuses to return me to my proper form. She kept claiming ignorance, but I’m no fool. So I used Psynergy to teach her some manners, even though I’m usually the kind of person who tries to avoid violence.”
“You hurt Rainbow?” it gasped. “We were going to try to help you, but you go and turn out to be a bad pony!” Suddenly, it blinked. “Wait, you said ‘person’! You’re not actually a pony, are you?”
“Finally!” I exclaimed. “Thank the elements, someone finally gets it! No, I’m not a pony, miss. I’m a human. A special kind called an Adept. I am aligned with Venus, the element of earth, so I was able to heal my own injuries and drop some sharp stalactites on your friend there after she pushed me past my limit. Now, with this firmly established, can you please turn me back? If I’m to recover my missing memories, I’d much rather have my hands back and walk on two legs.”
She shook her head apologetically and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I could send you to the human world I know of, but they never mentioned humans called Adepts, so I don’t think you’re from there. So, where are you from?”
I wracked my brain for the answer, but I couldn’t come up with one and shrugged.
“I can’t remember,” I admitted. “I only remember a few things about my past, and those are names I can’t seem to place. Those, how to use my Psynergy, and my own name are pretty much all I remember. Everything else is very fuzzy. Well, I also remember hysterical laughter and falling, but that doesn’t help much, either.”
“Well, what is your name?” she asked.
“My name is Felix,” I replied. “It’s nice to meet you, miss…”
“It’s Twilight Sparkle,” she finished for me. “I’m a princess, but please just call me Twilight. My friend here is Rainbow Dash. It’s nice to meet you, too, Felix.”
“Oh! Right! Your friend! I almost forgot that I knocked her out!” I exclaimed. “This’ll only take a few seconds, I promise. Revive!”
Feathers made of pure light floated down until they landed on the downed equine. Then with a quick flash of a pillar of light, she was brought back to consciousness and her wounds were healed.
As soon as the now-named Rainbow Dash saw me, she growled and stomped towards me. I didn’t budge an inch. I decided to just let her yell at me as much as she needed to, and then I’d apologize for the misunderstanding.
“What’s wrong with you?” she snapped. “Nopony picks a fight with me! You know why? Because they know better! You could’ve shredded my wings with those rocks of yours, and it’d take forever for me to fly again! You’re crazy!”
After she finished, I hung my head in shame. “No, miss,” I replied. “I’m not crazy. I’ve been transformed into something I’m not supposed to be, and I blamed it on you because you were the only living thing I saw after waking up. I lashed out in anger, and that was wrong of me. I’m not supposed to wield my Psynergy in anger. I did so, and I was wrong to do it. Please forgive me for being so reckless.”
Rainbow Dash blinked in surprise at my admission of guilt, and it took her a few seconds to find her voice again.
“Well, if you’re really sorry, I guess I can let it slide,” she replied. “Just don’t pull any more stupid things like that, okay?”
“Understood,” I replied with a nod. “I don’t count healing and reviving you as setting things right, though, so if you need something done that I could help with, let me know, so I can pay off this debt.”
“If you say so,” she said with a roll of her eyes. After noticing Twilight, she asked, “Hey, Twi. How long have you been there?”
“I arrived after he knocked you out,” Twilight responded. “Anyway, I think introductions are in order. Felix, this is Rainbow Dash. Dash, this is Felix. He can’t remember where he’s from, but he knows that he’s not supposed to be a pony.”
“Sorry about getting off on the wrong foot—hoof?—there, Miss Dash,” I apologized. “The desperation from my amnesia must have driven me over the edge.”
“Eh, don’t sweat it,” Rainbow replied with a shrug. “As long as we’re cool now, it’s fine.”
“Thank you,” I said with a grateful nod. “Now, part of me seems to remember that I’m used to travelling, but if it’s not too much to ask, do either of you know of a place where I could stay for the time being? I’m starting to get a little tired,” my body decided to punctuate that remark with a yawn that I tried and failed to stifle, “And I don’t think the money I have on me at the moment will work here, so I wouldn’t be able to afford to stay at an inn.”
“My castle has some guest rooms,” Twilight suggested. “I could let you use one.”
“Thank you,” I said with another grateful nod. “You are too kind. Please, lead the way.”
Twilight nodded, and Rainbow gave me a quick smile before flying away.
We travelled silently through the trees until we arrived on a well-beaten path that led towards a town that tugged at my lost memories, trying to push something to the surface. Thatched roofed houses, a calm and friendly atmosphere that I could feel even though I hadn’t even stepped into town yet… I felt as if I’d been to somewhere like that in the past. Even spent years living in such a place. I tried to tug the memories up, but I just got a headache from the strain and gave up. However, some of the names of people I couldn’t remember seemed to be linked to that other place: Kay, Jenna, Isaac, Garet, Aaron, Kyle, Dora, Mr. and Mrs. Jerra… And that was all that I could place. It still didn’t give me much to go on at all.
“Felix, is something wrong?” Twilight asked suddenly, breaking me out of my thoughts.
“I feel as if I should know a place similar to the town ahead,” I replied. “I tried to put pieces of my shattered memory back together, but there just wasn’t enough for me to remember available.”
“Interesting,” Twilight said with a nod. I could tell that she was filing that information away for later. “Maybe I can help you get your memories back.”
“Well, I’d very much appreciate that,” I told her with a smile. “Getting my memories back is very important, for that could help me to become human again and get back home.”
When we reached the castle after a lot more walking, I was shocked to see it was built partially into a tree. But part of me seemed to remember that I’d seen trees be used for homes before. I ignored that feeling for the time being, for I was just getting too tired.
Once inside, Twilight left me with a servant and told her to show me to a guest room while she took care of some pressing matters.
“Right this way, sir,” the servant said, beckoning for me to follow.
“Please, just call me Felix,” I replied as she led me up a set of stairs. “I really don’t like formality very much.”
“Of course, Felix,” she replied with a smile. “Our own Princess Twilight doesn’t like titles and formalities, either.”
“Well, here we are,” she said after stopping at a door and opening it. “Pull the rope hanging near the bed to summon a servant if you need something.”
“Thank you,” I replied before entering the room and taking in my surroundings. There was a four-poster bed, a connected washroom, dressers… My mind failed to take it all in because my tired brain kept drifting back to the bed and thoughts of sleep. “I’ll be resting for now. Wise One knows I need to.”
The servant nodded and left, and I closed the door, managed to lock it (it’s amazing how much those hooves could function like hands and grip things!), and leaped into bed. I was out like a light in seconds.
I had been separated from my fellow Warriors and my nephew’s party, backed up against the railing of the floating city of the Anemos. A look over my shoulder confirmed my suspicions: beneath the world was a huge void. If I fell, who knew how far I would fall? Looking up, I saw the rocky underside of the disklike planet I called home. We were beneath it, so it had to be daytime on the surface.
Of course, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was trapped in a one-on-one fight with an Adept who was almost a god. In trying to protect Isaac from this fiend obtaining the power of the Mars Star from him, I had fallen into this monster’s trap instead.
“Well, Felix, had enough yet?” the voice of my adversary gloated from above me. “I’ve mastered the powers of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Sol, Luna, and the amount of Mars the Golden Sun still gave me. With three elements, both fundaments and even part of the element I still need under my control, you can’t win! Especially not alone!”
“Alex,” I growled, tightening my grip on the Sol Blade, “I’ll never give up, you inhuman monster! Take this!”
I leaped into the air and smiled as my sword let out a furious howl. “The Sol Blade is lending me its power! Taste the power of Megiddo!”
A miniature sun about twenty feet in diameter materialized in front of me, and I swung the Sol Blade into it, launching the small star at the traitor to the Mercury Clan.
“OOMPH!” Alex grunted as it collided with him and smashed him into the ground. After getting to his feet, he was no longer gloating. His eyes burned with malice.
“Inhuman?” Alex snorted as he walked towards me. “I’d be careful with what I say if I were you, old friend. You know what lies below us? Below the void? At the base of Gaia Falls? An unstable space that could take you to almost any plane of existence! And if the proper Psynergy were applied to you before you fell into it....” Alex rose back into the air and sneered. “Let’s just say that you might become a lot more inhuman than you claim I am. But why take my word for it? Find out for yourself!”
Alex’s body flashed in a myriad of colors as the hum of immensely powerful Psynergy filled the air.
“Iron! Come forth!” I shouted, summoning the named djinni. Iron wasted no time in applying his shielding aura to me, which would cushion any and all blows to a small percentage of their intended force.
“Sorry, Felix, but that won’t help you,” Alex giggled insanely. Suddenly, a blade of air slashed the railing behind me, creating a gap. In the next second, a bolt of energy struck me, and I felt pain in the forms of all four elements: burning, freezing, electrocution, the pummeling of rocks against my flesh, and then a kick from Alex that sent me falling over the edge, into the black abyss below.
“FELIX!” my sister screamed, and the last thing I heard was Alex’s maniacal laughter as I continued to fall in severe pain.
Eventually, the laughter became too far away for me to hear, but I still continued to fall, still in pain. I gripped the Sol Blade tighter than ever, just to remind myself that I was still alive.
After what felt like hours, the agony increased as it felt as if I was being torn apart. The pain was so great, that I passed out, Sol Blade still in hand…
“Alex!” I screamed as my eyes snapped open. Thinking quickly, I noticed a desk with a stack of parchment, a few quills, and an inkwell. I bolted out of bed, almost tripping before I remembered that I walked on four legs now, and figured out how to sit at a desk on four legs before tapping into my Psynergy again.
“Grip!” I commanded, and a hand made out of white energy appeared. I focused to shrink it down, then had the hand gingerly pick up a quill so I could start writing. It felt strange, using a hand that wasn’t my own to write, but at least the hand was still made of my own energy.
I started to jot down details of my dream, but they were quickly slipping away from me. It was like trying to hold water in cupped hands. No one can create a watertight bowl with their hands, so it seeps out between the fingers.
I only got a few notes down before the door burst open (wait, didn’t I lock it?) and Twilight ran inside, gasping for breath.
“Felix! I heard you scream! Is everything okay?”
“Aside from me still having amnesia and not being human?” I snorted. “Yes, everything’s fine. I just had a nightmare that seemed like a memory resurfacing, so I’m trying to take notes on it. The only problem is that the memory of the dream is fading fast, so I have to write down as much as I can as fast as I can.”
“But you aren’t writing,” Twilight said. “Your hooves aren’t moving or gripping anything.”
“Don’t have to,” I replied. “Come closer, and you’ll see.”
Twilight trotted right next to the desk and gasped when she saw how I was writing. Of course, all she could see was the quill. The hand would be invisible to her.
“How are you doing that without a horn?” she asked.
“A horn?” I asked. “Why would I need a horn to grip a quill?”
“Because it takes magic to levitate things, and to use magic, one has to either be a unicorn or an Alicorn!” Twilight exclaimed. “There isn’t even an aura around the quill!”
“I don’t know what you mean by magic, but I’m using Psynergy to hold it,” I explained as I set the quill down with a sigh. I’d run out of things I remembered from the dream. “It’s called Grip. It summons a huge hand that only an Adept can see, which then grabs an object to either pull it towards the Adept or pull the Adept to it. I just managed to make the hand a lot smaller so I could have it write.” I dispelled the hand, motioned for her to move aside, and faced the bed. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
I focused my mind, shouted “Grip!” again, and aimed the hand at one of the bedposts. With just a thought, the hand shot forward, grabbed the post, and I was pulled through the air to the post, right out of the chair.
“That’s amazing!” Twilight exclaimed. “I didn’t see anything there, but I could tell that something was pulling you to the bedpost instead of you launching yourself at it!”
“That, my dear, is Psynergy at work,” I replied happily. “One of the items in my possession allows me to use Grip. It may be a Venus spell, and I am a Venus Adept, but Grip is a kind of spell that must either be inherited, or can only be bestowed by a Psynergy-bestowing object.”
I reached into my bag where I kept my items and fished out the Grip Crystal with a bit of effort, since I still hadn’t grown used to the strange workings of my new hooves. Once I was holding it, I showed it to my host and said, “this is a Grip Crystal. It bestows Grip on any Venus Adept who didn’t inherit the spell, but I have to keep it with me or I’ll lose the ability to use Grip until I have the crystal again.”
“Fascinating,” Twilight breathed as her horn started to glow. I saw the same magenta aura envelop my Grip Crystal, but I pulled my hoof back and placed the crystal back into the bag before shaking my head.
“Please don’t take it without asking, Twilight,” I said with a slight edge of panic in my voice. “Grip is something that I think I’m going to need to use a lot while I’m here, so I need to hang onto it, just in case.”
“Oh.” Twilight’s horn stopped glowing, and she backed up a couple steps before saying, “I’m sorry, Felix. I love to learn new things, and I got carried away.”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” I assured her. “As long as I have it, I’m fine. You apologized, and that’s enough.”
“Thank you,” Twilight replied with a slight blush. “You forgave me so easily. I’m sure that wherever you came from, you were known as a nice person.”
Then it was my turn to blush. “I can’t be sure about that until I get my memories back, but thanks for that, Twilight.” I noticed there was a servant standing in the doorway holding what appeared to be a bundle of blue, green and brown fabric, so I asked, “uh, what’s with the cloth she’s got there?”
“Oh, that?” Twilight smiled before explaining, “A good friend of mine happened to find out about you and decided she had to do something about your tattered clothes you arrived in, so she duplicated them as well as she could without your measurements. She’d like to see you later on so she can make a better replacement for your clothes.”
“I appreciate the offer,” I admitted with a slight shake of my head, “But I could never trouble one of your friends like that. Plus, I’m not sure if they could be transformed into human clothes when I regain my human form. From what I can remember from my dream, I was struck with a powerful Psynergy spell before falling into a void. I think that spell changed my shape when I arrived, along with my outfit.”
“Well, could you at least try them on?” Twilight insisted. “I’m sure that’s not too much to ask, right?”
“I guess not,” I conceded with a sigh. “Just leave them on the dresser, and I’ll get changed.”
They did as I requested, then they left the room, closing the door behind them.
Alone once again, I locked the door and used Grip to assist me with changing. Removing clothes with hooves was a bit tricky, but putting another set on to replace them was just as difficult. I’m sure that it would’ve taken me three times as long without Grip to help me, if not longer.
Once I was finished changing, I found the clothes to be a bit loose, but that was to my liking, for I prefer to wear armor underneath my clothes, anyway. In fact, I found my equipment, also altered in shape to match my new form, on some kind of equine armor stand that I hadn’t noticed before. The Sol Blade was still missing, but everything else was still there: my Warrior’s Helm, my Valkyrie Mail, my Riot Gloves (which now kind of resembled boots), my Ninja Sandals, my Lord Sun’s Ring (which now was more of a bracelet than a ring), and my Mythril Shirt. Everything but the sword was accounted for.
Sighing, I took even more time to remove my clothes again and change into my armor, then put clothes on over the armor. With the armor on, everything fit just right, and though I couldn’t remember much still, the armor made me feel more comfortable. While wearing it, I felt more secure and at ease, as if I knew everything would be all right in the end.
Just as I was about to open the door to leave the room, I heard a voice that cut through my amnesia and forced a name to the surface: “Hey! Felix! When did you forget so much that you forgot you could ask me things?”
The voice belonged to Echo, my first djinni, who was now sitting on the bed.
“Oh, hi, Echo,” I said, turning to smile at one of the few friends I could still remember. “Sorry, I’ve been so stressed out that I forgot I could ask you to fill any holes in my memory. So, is there anything you can tell me?”
“I’ve been looking over your notes, boss, and I hate to admit it, but the nine of us are in the same boat as you," Echo sighed. "That guy who transformed you ended up giving us amnesia, too. Some of us have different remaining memories than the others, though, so with all ten of us, we should be able to piece together some of our past to get us started. For one thing, I recognize some of the names in your notes.”
“You do?” I asked, eyes wide with excitement. “Who?”
“Whoa there, Megiddo Buns, don’t get so excited yet,” Echo cautioned. “I’ll have to talk to the other guys about the other names, but the first two, Jenna and Kay? I know those names as clear as day! Jenna’s your sister, and Kay’s your wife! Don’t let either of them know you forgot them when we get back, okay? I’m sure they’ll both chew you out if they ever find out.”
“Okay, anyone else?” I asked hopefully.
“Sorry, boss, but that’s all I’ve got for you right now,” Echo replied sadly. “Give us some more time, and we should be able to piece together more stuff.”
“Well, thanks anyway, Echo,” I said as the djinni started to glow. “I just know we can piece this together.”
“Just doing my job, Felix!” Echo replied as he turned into a ball of orange light and merged into me. “Don’t forget to call on one of us if you need us!”
“Sure thing,” I replied before returning to the door and opening it.
Twilight was waiting outside the door, but the attendant was gone. In her place was a white mare with a horn and a purple mane and tail, who was staring at me in a way that I found slightly uncomfortable.
“First off, ma’am, I just remembered I’m married, so please don’t stare,” I requested curtly. “Second, how do I look?” I punctuated the question by spinning around once and flourishing my cape.
‘I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know,” the newcomer said. “And as for your outfit, I must say it fits better than I expected without your measurements.”
“Wait, you made it?’ I asked. After she nodded, I bowed formally and said, “Well, it fits me like a glove, thank you, Miss…”
“It’s Rarity, dear,” she replied. “I take it you decided to wear your armor under it? I already noticed you’re wearing your helmet.”
“That I am,” I affirmed with a nod. “I seem to remember always wearing my armor like this. It may seem a bit odd, but it lets me keep my armor mostly hidden to keep opponents off guard.”
Right as Twilight opened her mouth to say something, I felt a huge flare-up of Psynergetic power in the distance and cut her off.
“Pardon my rudeness, but I sense something outside, and I have to go check it out,” I announced. “I sense power like my own at work.”
“But—” Rarity began.
“No time,” I said curtly. “I sense a massive amount of Psynergy, and judging by the way Twilight reacted to my display of it earlier, I’d say Psynergy isn’t normal here, at all.”
‘Still—” Twilight blurted out, but I cut her off again.
“You can come along if you want, but I won’t be stopped from investigating this,” I stated firmly. “I’m the only Adept here, so I’m not going to stand idly by while others get hurt because I failed to act. So, you coming?”
Both ponies nodded, so I wrapped a foreleg around each of them, closed my eyes, focused and shouted, “Retreat!”
In an instant, we were outside the castle, and I held on even tighter, focused my mind on the Teleport Lapis in my bag as well as on the direction of the Psynergy I sensed and roared, “Teleport!”
In another instant, we were back in the forest, but this time, we were in a different spot from where I’d crashed. The new clearing was covered in ashes and littered with the remains of charred trees, but that wasn’t the most unsettling sight: there was a pony on the ground with his foreleg wrapped around a shining sword with an image of Sol on its hilt. But even worse was the purple rock that was sitting next to him. At first, I couldn’t remember where I’d seen anything like it, but after a few seconds, images of innocent creatures turned into rampaging monsters, a forest gone mad, and many other unsettling images related to such stones filled my mind.
“It’s a Psynergy Stone!” I screamed. “Get back! This could get ugly!”
The two mares did as I requested, and before I could even take a step forward, the stallion got to his hooves and lifted the Sol Blade, bellowing like some insane animal.
“What’s wrong with him?” Twilight asked as I dodged a swipe from the rabid pony.
“He’s been hit by a Psynergy Stone,” I replied as I punched the madpony in the face. “Anything that doesn’t have access to Psynergy will gain the ability to use it if they get hit by one, and only sapient beings don’t get driven insane by the huge influx of power.”
“Then how come he’s acting this way?” Rarity demanded as I dodged another swipe from the Sol Blade.
“If I were to guess,” I panted before punching him in the jaw, “Psynergy must be an entirely foreign power to this world, so he’s not fully compatible. The incompatibility must be messing with his head.”
The stallion raised the Sol Blade and leaped into the air in an all-too familiar way of attacking.
“Girls! Get back!” I screamed as a star twenty feet in diameter formed in front of the hovering pony.
“What’s that?” Twilight screamed back as they ran for cover.
“That’s Megiddo!” I shouted. “You don’t want to get hit by it! Trust me!”
The stallion roared like some kind of feral beast and swung the sword into the mini-star, sending it careening towards me.
“Iron! Come forth!” I bellowed, summoning the named djinni.
“Don’t worry, Felix!” Iron assured me before applying his shielding aura to me.
When the star connected, I was able to take the hit thanks to Iron’s protection.
“Odyssey!” I screamed, conjuring four large energy swords to pierce my foe, then one more gigantic one to smash into him, sending him flying.
“Echo! Come forth!” I commanded next, calling forth another djinni.
“I know what to do, Boss!” Echo said before striking my opponent twice.
The deranged pony screamed and lunged for me, but I rolled out of the way before he could slash me with the Sol Blade, so I escaped unscathed.
“Geode! Come forth!” I ordered, bringing out yet another djinni.
“One crushing ball of earth coming up!” Geode announced before ripping a massive sphere out of the surrounding terrain and hurling it at my enemy.
The insane pony screamed with fury and stomped the ground hard, emitting powerful Venus energy and triggering a small earthquake.
My two companions screamed, but I held my ground.
After the tremors stopped, I cried out, “Flower! Come forth!”
“You need patching up?” Flower asked. “No sweat!”
With that, Flower got to work, and waves of healing energy emanated from her small form, enveloping myself and my two companions.
“Nice work, Flower!” I replied. “Now I have everything ready! I’d find some cover, girls! This is gonna get really big, really fast!”
The two mares did as I suggested and hid in a nearby cave, and when I was sure they were well-protected, I cried out at the top of my lungs, “I summon Judgment!”
An angelic knight with a sword and a lion head shield flew down from the sky, fueled by the power of my four standby Venus djinn. After pointing the face of his shield at the ground, the mouth opened up, revealing a cannon, which shot out a small sphere of light. The light hit the ground and created a massive explosion, doing no harm to anything but my opponent, thanks to the way Psynergy works.
My opponent froze in place, dropped the Sol Blade, wobbled for a little bit, then fell over, out cold.
I trotted up to my defeated foe and retrieved my sword, returning it to its rightful place in its sheath. Both mares looked at my foe, then to me, and I smiled to assure them before saying, “He’ll be fine after he wakes up.”
“Well well well!” a haughty voice suddenly echoed out of the sky, “I was hoping that dropping a Psynergy Stone into the void after you would draw you out, Felix. And it looks like it did! How fortunate! I just love it when things come together so easily for me!”
“Felix, do you know the owner of that voice?” Twilight asked as she and Rarity trotted over to me.
“Well, I don’t know if he’d remember me or not,” the voice replied. “After all, he has amnesia. Isn’t that right, Felix? And a good thing, too, for the people of our world don't have that high of an opinion of you.”
“Show yourself!” I demanded.
“I can’t yet, old friend,” the voice taunted. “After all, I still have some loose ends to tie up in our world. My powers are still growing, so I’m not quite ready to cross the barrier between dimensions. Your friends are in my hands now, though, so if I were you, I wouldn’t put any hopes in seeing them again. I’m still extracting the power I need from a certain friend of yours, so I won’t be able to pay you a visit quite yet. But when I do, remember this: I’ve decided that dropping you into the void wasn’t enough. You see, you’re still alive, and I realized that I can’t allow that. You might find a way back and bring reinforcements with you, and that’s just out of the question. So, if you want to have any chance of stopping me, you’d better get your memories back quickly! Otherwise, you won’t have gotten anywhere before I come for you. Farewell for now, Felix!”
“Well, I guess I’d better get started on getting my memory back,” I said, turning to Twilight. “Could you help me out? Whoever that was, he’s going to come here soon, and I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen when he arrives.”
“Of course,” Twilight replied with a nod. “In fact, I’ll get the rest of my friends to help out, too.” Turning to Rarity, she said, “Could you help gather up the others? I’m sure Felix can get back to the castle himself.”
“Of course, darling,” Rarity replied, turning back to wink at me before galloping off while Twilight teleported away with her magic.
I rolled my eyes and grumbled, “I’m a married man. Cut it out,” before focusing on my Teleport Lapis and the castle.
After focusing for a few seconds, I simply said, “Teleport,” and vanished, reappearing in the guest room I was using.
After I focused my powers to release all nine djinn at once, I found all nine of them on the bed, and Echo asked, “What d’you need us for, Boss?”
“We’re getting help to patch up my memories,” I told the assembled djinn. “We’ve got a lot ahead of us, now.”
Half an hour later, my nine djinn and I found ourselves with Twilight, Rarity, Dash, and three other ponies, and we exchanged introductions rather quickly. The pink one, Pinkie Pie, kept mentioning throwing a party for the ten of us, but every time, someone shut her down. There isn’t any point in celebrating arriving somewhere when one would much rather remember where he came from, with an evil force quickly approaching, to boot.
Once all the introductions were over and the yellow one, Fluttershy, stopped trying to hug my djinn, Twilight spoke up.
“So, Felix,” she said, turning to me. “You feel like you should remember everything that you don’t remember, right?”
“Correct,” I said with a nod. “I just know that it’s all still in there, somewhere. But I can’t figure out where.”
“Maybe I could help with that,” Twilight suggested. And before I could even voice whether I approved or not, she touched her horn to my forehead, and it took on that glow again.
After a few seconds, she recoiled as if something had struck her.
“Twi! Ya alright?” the orange one, Applejack, asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Twilight replied, putting a hoof to her forehead. “I found your missing memories, Felix. They’re still in there, but something I couldn’t detect struck me when I tried to mend your memories. There’s something holding them down.”
“Probably Psynergy-based,” I grumbled. “Only an Adept can detect Psynergy, so without another Adept, we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
“So, ya remember anything family-related?” Applejack asked.
“Well, Echo helped me to identify two of the names I had written down,” I replied, holding the sheet of parchment up with the aid of Grip. “Jenna’s my sister, and Kay is apparently my wife.”
“Can you recall anypo—excuse me, anyone else?” Fluttershy asked gently.
“Um…” I scratched my head, then rattled off all the names I could force to the surface, even though it hurt a lot to bring some of them to the surface, Crystal, another Venus djinni, helped out by healing me so I could pull up more names. “Names connected with the town I remember to be like this one—”
“Felix, that town’s Vale, your hometown,” Petra squeaked.
“Oh, well then,” I chuckled awkwardly before continuing, “Well, the names I can remember that are associated with Vale are: Jenna, Kay, my own parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jerra, Aaron, Garet, Isaac, Kyle, Dora, and…” I strained to pull up one more name. I was certain there was at least one more significant name among the names from Vale. “Ah! These two aren’t directly connected to Vale, but I think I met them there: Saturos and Menardi! But they’re from another town, called Prox…”
“Have you ever been to where they’re from?” Twilight asked hopefully. “Maybe there’s more names there!”
“Let’s see…” I muttered. “Prox, Prox… who else was from Prox?”
“Can you remember why you were there?” Pinkie asked excitedly. “Were you making new friends?”
That wasn’t exactly why I had been there, but it pushed my mind enough in the right direction that I suddenly remembered everything about Prox.
I shook my head. “That’s not why I was there, but thanks for the nudge, Pinkie. I remember everything about Prox, now.” Clearing my throat, I continued. “Prox was a town near the northern edge of the world I come from. My homeworld is flat, and the edges were crumbling. The people of Prox aren’t fully human, but part dragon, and almost completely immune to the cold, with the exception of Mercury Psynergy used against them. But as the edges continued to crumble, Prox grew colder and colder, eventually growing cold enough to make them actually feel the cold. And there was… some kind of ancient seal that needed breaking for them to save their town from extinction. Saturos and Menardi saved me from… something, then they took me back to Prox with them, where I lived for three years, training to assist them in their quest to save not just their town, but the whole world.”
“Wait, a flat world? How is that even possible?” Twilight asked.
“Where I come from, my world… Weyard! It’s a disc-like planet, even though the other planets in the night sky are round,” I replied. “I think it has something to do with the ancient power that created it, which was sealed, slowly killing Weyard.”
“Your planet is alive?” Twilight gasped. “But, how?”
“I don’t really know,” I replied with a shake of my head. “But back to Prox. I was raised there for three years, honing my skills so I could assist Saturos and Menardi. We were to steal the items required to break that seal from Vale, and use them to break the seal on the power that was the lifeblood of our planet.”
“Wait, ya stole?” Applejack cut in angrily. “Stealin’s wrong! Ya could’ve just asked fer—”
“Prox had already tried asking Vale for them,” I snapped, cutting her off. “The elders of Vale laughed in their faces, not believing a word about the ailing conditions of Weyard near the edges. This forced them to try to steal them, for if they didn’t get the keys, they would die. They had no choice.”
“So, it was either steal them or die, huh?” Dash said. “Sounds really bad.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “We tried to steal them, but we failed to get all four. The fourth ended up in the hands of Isaac and Garet, so we were forced to take my sister and a scholar named Kraden hostage to force them to give us the remaining key in exchange for Jenna and Kraden.
“I can’t remember much else, but I remember that Isaac, Garet, and two more they picked up, Ivan and Mia, actually killed Saturos and Menardi after we broke two of the four seals, and Jenna and Kraden stayed with me because they had learned the truth and were willing to help me.
“I remember some other names.” I added. “Sheba and Piers are two of them. They also joined me. I also remember visiting a forgotten city where Piers was from, where people aged so slowly, it would take thirty years to reach adulthood, the people had grown bored from living for so long without leaving their home in ages, and many of those who appeared elderly had lost track of their own ages.
“I remember little else,” I admitted, “But I do recall that another pair from Prox, Agatio and Karst, tried to force us to move faster in our quest. We were forced to fight them, then Isaac and his group learned the truth as well, and decided to join forces with us to break the final seal and save the world, which we did. But that was thirty years ago. I married Kay—who is Garet’s older sister—shortly afterwards, then I began travelling, only pausing my travels long enough to visit my wife and check up on her in secret. Vale had been destroyed by the release of energy that saved the world, but all of them lived. They relocated to another settlement, but I soon found I was no longer welcome among them, which was why I left. Isaac was hailed as the hero, but I was treated like dirt all because I was the one who stole the keys. I don’t recall the name of the man who threw me into the void, nor why I was fighting him. I can’t pull up anything else.”
“Well, with that much already pulled up, maybe I can help you, now,” Twilight suggested. I nodded hopefully, and she did the same thing as before. “There’s a lot less in its grip, now, so maybe I can pull the rest free—”
Once again, the force struck her, and she shook her head.
“I guess I can’t,” Twilight groaned. “Sorry, Felix, but I think that’s all we can do for you right now.”
Suddenly, an armored pony burst into the room, eyes wide with panic.
“Princess! A red unicorn just entered town and passed out!” the pony gasped. “Nopony knows her, and she has odd pink scales on parts of her body! She mumbled something about ‘Venus energy’ before passing out. A crowd is gathering, and I think she needs help!”
The six mares looked at me, and I said, “We’ll be right back, girls.”
My nine djinn joined into me again, and focusing on what felt like a faint amount of Psynergy in the distance, I channeled my own Psynergy into the Teleport Lapis and said, “Teleport.”
In an instant, I was next to a collapsed unicorn mare who had hexagonal scales on her shoulders, neck, and forelegs. She was wearing a travelling dress, had a blonde mane and tail, a Cutie Mark of a scythe and a flame, and was wearing armor under her clothes, just like I was. She even had a purple circlet on her head, a bracelet resembling a Cleric’s ring, and all of her armor was either purple or black, obviously made from Dark Matter. Finally, she had a large black and red scythe clenched between her teeth. A kind of scythe I’d only seen two Adepts wield: the sisters from Prox: Menardi and Karst.
The gathered crowd stared at me in surprise. Obviously, they wouldn’t expect an Earth Pony to be able to teleport.
“I’ll handle this!” I told them. “I’ve dealt with cases like her before! And don’t mind me popping in and out! I have my ways!”
The crowd slowly dispersed, whispering to each other, and once they all finally left, I used Grip to place the “unicorn” on my back before using the Teleport Lapis to return to the same room I left moments earlier.
As I reappeared with the mare on my back, I said, “I need some space. I’m pretty sure I know what she is and where she’s from.”
“Revive!” I shouted, causing glowing feathers of light to fall on the downed mare, resulting in her groggily opening her red draconic eyes, blinking a few times before shakily getting to her hooves, taking her scythe in her mouth and leaping backwards onto a bookcase, glaring at all of us.
“Who are you?” she growled through clenched teeth. “Where am I? I could’ve sworn I felt Venus energy earlier!”
“Hey lady, calm down!” Dash said, flying right in the scaly unicorn’s face and staring right into her eyes. “We’re not gonna hurt you!”
“I’ve been stuck in this stupid world and this form for five years!” the unnamed unicorn snapped. “I still can’t use magic for anything, but I don’t need to! Rising—”
“Stop!” I shouted, grabbing her attention. “Don’t cast that here!”
“Wait, how did you know what I was about to do?” she asked in shock, her scythe falling out of her mouth but remaining attached to her by some strange force.
“I’m not supposed to be in this world, either,” I told her. “That Venus Psynergy you felt earlier? Probably mine. I had to fight a pony who’d been beaned on the head with a Psynergy stone.”
“So you’re the other Adept I sensed?” the unicorn Adept said as she gingerly hopped back down to the floor. “You have a feeling of great importance around you,” she mused. “Like the Warriors of Vale!”
“Um, I’m from Vale, but I don’t know that term—” I began, but she cut me off as she looked me over.
“Blue cape, brown mane in the exact same ponytail, lots of green…” she gasped before her tone changed to one of reverence, as if she were in the presence of a god. “Is your name… Felix?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Why?”
“It’s you! It’s really you!” she exclaimed while jumping up and down in delight. “By the elements! You’re him! You’re the Felix! My great-grandparents told me all about you! You led the Warriors of Vale! You broke the seal on Alchemy and saved us!” Pausing, she looked at me strangely and asked, “Wait, how’d you get here?”
“My memory’s really fuzzy,” I replied sadly, wishing I could give her a full answer. “I remember falling into a void, hearing wicked laughter, but nothing else. Whatever transformed me gave me amnesia.” I motioned to the six mares who had remained silent that whole time and added, “They’ve been trying to help me recover my memories, but something Psynergy-based is in my head, making retrieving memories difficult and painful.
The Proxian unicorn narrowed her eyes and said, “He did this to you. Alex. He threw me down the fissure north of Mars Lighthouse and hit me with transformative Psynergy, so when I arrived in this world, I turned into what you see now.”
My eyes opened in realization. “That’s right! I was helping my old friends fight Alex! There were others there, but I still can’t remember anything else.”
The red mare huffed and said, “Let me try something, Felix. Compress, come forth!”
A red Mars djinni disconnected from her, then asked in a feminine voice, “What do you need, sugar?”
“That’s Felix,” she replied, pointing to me. “The Felix. He has amnesia, courtesy of Alex. Can you fix that?”
“Dear, I can fix anything that ails!” the dinni said. “Just a moment, Felix, honey. I should have you fixed in no time!”
The Mars djinni flew over me and bathed me in warm, soothing red light, muttering to herself.
“That Alex really did a number on you, y’know that, Felix?” she said as the light got more intense. “It’s wrapped pretty tight, but I can get it out!”
I felt two forces straining against each other in my mind: one warm and soothing, the other dark and painful. Compress was apparently having trouble expelling Alex’s amnesia spell.
“Almost got it!” the djinni announced as I felt the painful force start to lose its grip. “There!” the djinni said, gasping for breath as the pain left and all of my memories came rushing back to me like a flood.
“I remember everything!” I cried out in sheer joy, provoking cheers from the six mares before I enveloped the Mars Adept in a hug.
“Felix is hugging me,” she gasped. “I’m getting a hug from my hero!”
“She reminds me of you when you met Daring Doo,” Twilight said to Dash, who chuckled nervously.
After I released her, the unicorn bowed formally and said, “Felix, please forgive me for not giving you my name earlier. I’m Karen, a Mars Adept from Prox.”
“I’ll explain everything I remembered later,” I told the others before leading Karen out of the room. Once we were alone, I took her aside and started to explain some things to her.
“I was fighting Alex in the City of Anemos a couple days ago,” I told her. “Alex was trying to extract the power of the Mars Star from Isaac, but to protect Isaac, I fell into Alex’s trap in his place, and we fought one on one.”
Karen’s eyes grew incredibly wide at what I just revealed. “You lost to him, didn’t you?”
I nodded somberly. “He knocked me into the void, then fought the rest of my friends, including my nephew’s group.”
“Nephew?” Karen asked, confused.
“Matthew,” I explained. “He’s Isaac’s son.”
“Ah,” Karen replied with a nod. “Do you know the outcome of the battle?”
“Alex found me here and announced that he’d won the battle, and that all of my friends are in his hands, now,” I explained sadly. Then I shook off the sorrow, replacing it with firm resolve. “He wants me dead, though, so as soon as he finishes extracting the power of the Mars Star from Isaac, he’s coming here to destroy me. We have to get back to our world to help the others before he gets here.”
“Do you know how to do that?” Karen asked hopefully.
“I have no idea,” I admitted sadly, my resolve starting to drain.
Suddenly, Twilight and the others burst through the door, and Twilight said, “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, Felix, but there might be a way. There are two Princesses in Canterlot, our capital, who have the power to move the sun and moon. They might be able to help. There’s also Discord, the Spirit of Chaos, who may be able to help you out. If all three try at once, they might be able to get you home. I know we only just met, but if you can stop Alex before he gets here, we’d all be very grateful. We don’t want to have to fight another enemy, especially not one as dangerous as you make him out to be.”
“In short, he almost has the power of a god,” I explained, my resolve returning once again, “And he’s working on obtaining the last piece of power he needs to become that powerful. I’ve fought many powerful foes, even a test created by the Wise One, the closest thing our world has to a god. The thing is, I’ve never fought the Wise One, himself, and if Alex obtains the power he wants, he’ll be even stronger than the Wise One.”
“I’ve been through Canterlot before,” Karen said, placing her scythe on her back, where it just stayed perfectly parallel to the ground, even though gravity should’ve made it fall off. “I actually met Princess Celestia, who was in a magic disguise to blend in among her subjects. We spoke for a bit, and she revealed who she really was to me, because she sensed that I didn’t really ‘feel like a pony’ to her. She said if I need her for something, I could ask her.” Karen sighed before continuing. “Of course, I immediately asked if she could send me home, and she said that I had to meet someone else, first. We could go there right now, for I’m sure Felix is who she was talking about.”
“Um, how would we accomplish that?” Twilight asked. “To teleport a group this large to Canterlot would use a lot of magic!”
“Why not just us two?” Karen asked, tilting her head in confusion.
“Because if I can’t throw you a party, I want to at least see you off!” Pinkie exclaimed.
“Oh. That’s why,” Karen grumbled.
“I think I can solve this,” I announced, already channeling Psynergy into the Teleport Lapis.
“Felix! You have a Teleport Lapis?” Karen asked in awe.
“After the Golden Sun event, Isaac and I agreed that I could keep it,” I replied simply. “Now, since you’re an Adept who is now technically ‘in my party,’ I can Teleport us to any place in this world either of us have been to or can sense strongly enough. That includes non-Adepts who are also with us, but I can only draw from the memories and senses of Adepts.”
“Will you have enough power to teleport all of us?” Twilight asked. By the sound of her voice, she was clearly doubtful.
“Your magic may require more power the larger the group, but Psynergy can Teleport one person or one million people with the same amount of power,” I explained. Her jaw dropped. “I’m serious. I’ve warped eight people and a flying boat with it with the same amount of Psynergy it has cost me each time I used it to travel to individual locations by myself. Now, shall we be going?”
The six mares huddled around us in a tight circle, then I shifted control of the teleportation to Karen. It needed Psynergy from its owner to activate it, but once activated, the control could be passed to another Adept willingly.
Karen nodded to let me know she was ready, then I cried, “Teleport!” and we all vanished.
Chapter 4: It's Never Simple for a Warrior of Vale
As the spell finished, we found ourselves inside a castle of indescribable grandeur made of materials such as marble and gold. There were stained-glass windows depicting great feats made by the six mares accompanying us, and the place just radiated with importance, just like the royal palace of Lemuria did.
“Follow me,” Twilight said, and the rest of us followed her to a throne room, where a white pony who looked almost like a horse sat in a throne, with the same wings and horn Twilight had, also sporting a mane and tail of pastel colors that looked to be made more out of energy than hairs.
“That’s Celestia!” Karen whispered to me. “Kneel to show respect!”
She and I did just that, while Celestia looked us over.
“Ah, Karen,” she said warmly. “You’ve returned. And I see you brought Twilight and her friends with you. And…” Her gaze finally landed on me, and she nodded. “Yes, this is the one I spoke of. Now I can send you home. Luna and Discord will also be required for this, though.”
“Already taken care of, Tia dear!” a goofy-sounding voice said as a navy blue pony similar to Celestia and a creature that looked like a strange amalgamation of animal parts appeared in the room. “I’ve brought Luna, and we can send those two on their way back to their world!”
“Bye!” Pinkie said as the mares stepped back and the two Alicorns and the being I presumed to be Discord surrounded us.
“See ya!” Rainbow Dash said with a wave. “Kick that Alex guy’s butt!”
A hole in spacetime opened above us, crackling with energy, creating a strong wind that disturbed nothing but my attire and Karen’s.
We started to float up towards it, waving farewell to the ponies below, when suddenly, Alex’s voice boomed in the room, sounding as haughty as ever.
“So, you’ve regained your memories, have you, Felix?” his voice asked. “It took you longer than I expected, but I’m still not ready for you. Isaac still has a small sliver of the Mars Star’s power in him and—”
“Felix! Help! Save us!” Jenna’s voice suddenly cut in.
“Jenna!” I exclaimed. “I’m on my way!”
“Shut up, girl!” Alex’s voice snapped. “Anyway, Felix. I’m not ready for you just yet, so I’m going to have to stop you from returning. I must say, the way you’ve decided to return home uses a powerful force, indeed, but though I’m not all-powerful yet, I’m now more powerful than even the Wise One! Sorry, but you’re staying there, old friend.”
Suddenly, the sound of incredibly powerful Psynergy could be heard from the other side of the portal, and even the non-Adepts could hear and feel the intensity of its power.
“What is that pressure? And what is that noise?” the blue Alicorn, who I presumed was the “Luna” Discord spoke of, demanded.
“Oh? You can actually detect my power despite not being Adepts?” Alex chuckled. “Well, I guess I am using a little more than I’ve ever used before, so I guess non-Adepts can detect Psynergy at this intensity. Interesting. Well, then! I shall use this magnitude more often to strike fear into non-Adepts!”
The portal’s spinning started to slow, and Karen and I stopped rising into the air.
“Alex, when I’m human again and I get my hands on you…” Karen snapped, straining to reach the portal with her scythe, which was only inches out of her weapon’s reach.
“Oh? The girl from Prox!” Alex said, sounding genuinely surprised, “So that’s where you ended up, hmm? Seriously, I never expected to find anyone else besides Felix because though I’ve thrown so many Adepts into the void to practice for what I did to Felix, I never expected to find two Adepts in the same dimension because there are practically infinite planes of existence! Who knows? You might get even more lucky and find a Jupiter and Mercury Adept and have a full team! I seriously doubt that, though. Been fun chatting with you, it really has, but I’ve got work to do on finishing up taking the power of Mars from Isaac, so I bid you farewell.”
“The gate’s closing!” I exclaimed as it started to shrink.
“Twilight! Quickly! Aid us!” Luna urged.
Twilight quickly dashed over to join the circle and added her own magic to the mix, causing the gate to resume opening.
“Oh, so you had another, did you?” Alex’s voice chuckled. “Sorry, but that still won’t be enough! You’d need an army of beings with that much power to overwhelm my Psynergy! Have at you, foolish insects!”
Suddenly, bolts of Luna and Sol Psynergy shot out from the portal, striking all four members of the circle, but they held firm.
“Oh, that pain was supposed to just throw you off for a sliver of a second,” Alex’s voice giggled. “And it worked! Goodbye, Felix. I’ll deal with you when I finish with Isaac.”
Suddenly, the gate vanished, and Karen and I fell to the floor, slamming into it hard.
“Jenna…” I whispered as my heart ached. “I heard her. She’s alive, and I was so close to saving her. I’m a failure as an older brother if I can’t protect my sister. Especially when her husband is incapable of helping, either, making me also a failure as a brother in-law.”
Tears started to flow from my eyes as I tried to hold back sobs. “Alex… How could you do this? I know you betrayed your own clan to try to get the Golden Sun’s power for yourself, but you never once actually hurt any of us. You used us like pawns, but you never actually hurt us. And now you’ve become so power hungry that no one is safe from you anymore…”
“”I am sorry that we could not return you to your home,” Luna said, lowering her head sadly. “That other voice, that was your sister, was it not?”
“Yes,” I choked out. “She’s married now, and even has a son, but I’ve looked out for her for so long. I made sure the man she married, Isaac, was the perfect man for her. I’ve even kept tabs on my nephew, Matthew. I’ve failed them all.”
“Oh, come now, Felix!” Discord said, placing a paw under my chin to force me to look up and meet his eyes. “You haven’t lost yet, so cheer up! You still have a chance! You can beat him when he comes here!”
I shook my head. “No, by that point, his power will be virtually limitless, and he’ll be virtually immortal,” I sighed before looking down again. “I needed to stop him before he gains that power, and he’ll probably have it by tomorrow.”
Karen had been watching me the whole time, eyes wide in shock from seeing me, her hero, so broken, but she finally had enough and slapped me.
“Felix! Get ahold of yourself!” she snapped. “You’re the true leader of the Warriors of Vale! Isaac may have been given all the credit because of how the Valeans viewed you, but my people, the Proxians, never forgot who really saved the day! You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for! Together, we’ll stop Alex, and we’ll get home!”
Shaking myself, I wiped the tears from my eyes and nodded firmly. “You’re right, Karen,” I replied. “We can do this. And who knows? Maybe more Adepts have ended up in this world!”
Celestia suddenly piped up. “Five years ago, I felt three disturbances that resulted in ponies falling from the sky, but they didn’t really feel like ponies. I’m sure you were one of them, Karen, so there must be two more out there somewhere.”
Then she added, “I shall assist you two in your search for more like yourself. I shall put the guards to work on locating ponies with abilities that seem impossible for a pony, and if any are found, I shall have them be escorted to Ponyville to meet with the two of you so you can check to see if their powers are similar to your own.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” I replied with a bow. Turning to Twilight and the others, I said, “Let’s get back. I think Karen and I need to discuss something with Twilight.”
Right as I started to reach out with my Psynergy for the Teleport Lapis, Discord shook his head. “One of us can send you back, Felix. Don’t strain your reserves.”
“Wait, how did you know I was preparing my Psynergy?” I asked in surprise.
“I felt the feeling of what makes you not feel like a pony increase,” he explained. “Plus, it felt like a much watered-down version of what that Alex was using.”
Celestia and Luna nodded in agreement, and Celestia suddenly lit up her horn, resulting in the eight of us vanishing.
Once back in Ponyville, we split up, with Twilight’s five friends returning home, and Karen and I following her into the castle.
“So, what was it you needed to talk to me about?” Twilight asked once we were alone.
“You noticed how Karen’s scythe always has some part of it sticking to her, right?” I asked. Karen cringed when she heard the question.
“Yes, that is strange,” Twilight replied.
“That’s because it’s cursed,” I said before turning to Karen and adding, “Isn’t it, Karen?”
Karen sighed and nodded. “All of my equipment is crafted from Dark Matter, and anything made from it is cursed so anyone who equips it can’t remove it without the aid of a healer at a sanctum in our world. It makes bathing a pain, but I can manage it. Plus, everything made from it is quite strong.” She paused before continuing, “Anyway, there’s something else that curses do: they sometimes make the wearer or wielder immobile in battle, but I have a Cleric’s Ring, which blocks that. I tried using magic to use my Necro Scythe, and I was able to pick it up for a little bit, completely detaching it from me, but I stink at magic, so I lost my grip very quickly, resulting in me dropping it and it sticking to me again.”
“But, you’re a unicorn!” Twilight exclaimed. “How can magic be so hard for you?”
“It just is,” Karen huffed. “My magic is like another curse, because I can’t do jack squat with it.”
“I can teach you how to use magic,” Twilight suggested. “My Special Talent is magic, so we should be able to get the basics down in no time.”
“If you say so,” Karen sighed before Twilight teleported the three of us to an almost completely empty room with a few books and pillows, but little else.
“Okay, try lifting this book, first,” Twilight said, placing a hoof on a book in front of her.
Karen nodded, squeezed her eyes shut in concentration, and her horn started to take on a red glow, enveloping the book with it, lifting it a few inches off the ground before her horn suddenly winked out and I could sense Mars Psynergy building up in her, instead.
“I don’t get it,” Twilight muttered. “It looked like you had it, but you suddenly didn’t!”
“I think I know what went wrong,” I said before turning to Karen. “Karen, you're using the wrong thing, you switched to Psynergy!”
“Huh?” she gasped, opening her eyes in shock. “When did that happen?”
“I guess magic uses the mind, just like Psynergy does,” I said before looking to Twilight, who nodded in confirmation. “You’re so used to using your mind for Psynergy that when you try to use magic, your instincts reach for Psynergy, instead.”
“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed. “it’s like having multiple kinds of magic that are independent from each other! It’s hard to use both at once, or even one if you’re more accustomed to the other!”
“It’d be easier if I had a means to seal her Psynergy so she could practice the basics of magic,” I sighed, “But Venus has no spells for that, and none of my djinn can do that, either.”
“Luckily, I came prepared!” Karen said cheerfully. “Felix, let’s swap djinn. Sear blocks Psynergy, so use him on me, and I’ll be able to practice magic without my mind being able to jump to Psynergy.”
“Wait, you’re quite resourceful for a Proxian,” I observed before covering my mouth, wishing I hadn’t said that.
“You’re actually right,” Karen giggled. “I’m not as strong as Saturos, Menardi, Agatio and Karst were, but I’ve been told that I’m at least twenty times as clever as all four of them put together ever were!”
“Well, they weren’t very smart, but all of them together times twenty does sound quite intelligent,” I remarked. Normally, Proxian battle Adepts were brutes: mostly muscle and powerful Psynergy, but very little critical thinking. That’s why Saturos and Menardi relied on Alex and I so much to get through the first two Lighthouses. They were completely stumped by even the simplest of puzzles, and Agatio and Karst had to wait for my group to solve Jupiter Lighthouse’s puzzles before they could make it to the aerie themselves.
“Anyway, let’s swap djinn, shall we?” Karen said. “I really need to at least be able to wield my scythe more efficiently. And maybe if I levitate all of my armor off of me to bathe, I can actually get a proper bath for once!”
I nodded, and I gave her Meld in exchange for the Mars djinni, Sear, with an orange ball of light passing from me to her, and a red one passing from her to me.
“Okay, then,” I said before shouting, “Sear, come forth!”
The Mars djinni answered my call and placed a Psynergy seal on Karen.
“Okay, your Psynergy is locked, now,” I told her as she placed Meld on standby to return to being fully Mars-based.
“It should last a few minutes,” Karen replied before turning to Twilight. “Now, in that time, can you teach me how to levitate and manipulate multiple objects? That’s the only magic I care about right now.”
“Okay,” Twilight replied with a nod. “Now, try lifting the book again.”
Karen nodded, then focused again, red energy enveloping her horn, wrapping the book in the same aura, lifting it a few feet off the ground and holding it there.
“Okay, try adding a pillow to the mix without dropping the book,” Twilight instructed.
Karen nodded again, and she grit her teeth before raising the pillow off the ground, only losing her grip on the book for a couple seconds.
“Now, try adding that scythe of yours to the set,” Twilight requested.
“Got it,” Karen replied before the aura enveloped the scythe stuck to her back, lifting it into the air and moving it in front of her.
Suddenly, the seal faded, and Karen started to sweat from trying to stay focused on magic.
“The seal’s gone!” the Mars Adept exclaimed. “It’s getting harder!”
Suddenly, I thought of something incredible and said, “I’ve got an idea: try reaching out to the Psynergy while still reaching out to the magic. This may help your mind separate the two!”
Karen nodded grimly, and the light from her horn started to flicker as I felt her start to be filled with the power of Mars Psynergy.
Suddenly, her horn shone brightly, just like when she was under the seal, but the Psynergy was still in her.
“Try using a Mars spell!” I suggested.
She nodded, then cried, “Cool Aura!”
A refreshing wave of healing energy washed over everyone in the room, and Karen dropped the book and pillow while still keeping her grip on the scythe.
“I did it!” she cheered. “I can do it now!”
Twilight smiled and said, “Well, if you’d like, we could move on to higher levels of magic.”
Karen put a hoof to her chin in thought for a moment before shaking her head. “Nah. I’m good. All I really wanted to do was actually be able to carry my stuff so I could wield my scythe properly and take off all my armor to take a bath. I’ll have to keep levitating all of my stuff the whole time, but I’m sure I can handle it.”
“Okay, then,” Twilight replied, sighing a little in disappointment.
“Later, Felix!” the Mars Adept said as she headed for the door and suddenly returned Meld to me while Sear returned to her. “I’m gonna take a nice, long bath! By the way, if you hear me yelp, it’ll probably be because I lost my grip on a piece of equipment and it beaned me on the head or something while trying to reattach itself to me.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” Twilight muttered before holding the door shut with her magic and speaking firmly to Karen. “If your equipment really acts like that, I’m going to assist you with them while you bathe. I’ll hold onto them until you’re finished. Now, let’s go get you cleaned up.”
Karen sighed but nodded before following Twilight through the door.
Now alone, I looked out the window and saw the sun was setting. After using the Teleport Lapis again, I was back in my guest room, and I could hear Twilight groaning from some kind of strain while Karen was singing happily in the room next door.
I stepped out into the hall to find Twilight levitating all of Karen’s equipment, covered in sweat and straining to keep them in place.
I sighed and said, “Need some help?”
“Yes, please,” Twilight said through clenched teeth. “These things really want to go back to their owner!”
Nodding, I said “Grip,” and the large hand appeared, moving forward and grabbing about half of the equipment out of Twilight’s magic grip and pulling them towards me. I grit my teeth as well when the equipment started fighting back, straining to be released from my spell.
“I’ve had to help with this before,” I told her. “Garet was decked out in a lot of cursed equipment, and whenever we stayed at an inn, him taking a bath was a chore for the rest of us because all of his cursed equipment acted like this. However, there were seven of us to hang onto his stuff, and he wasn’t completely decked out in cursed stuff, unlike Karen. I didn’t even know you could make boots out of Dark Matter.”
“What’s Dark Matter?” Twilight asked, breathing lighter now that she only had to deal with half the load.
“A very strong metal that can be made into incredible equipment,” I replied, straining a little as the cursed equipment continued to resist. “But, it’s also twisted in nature, so anything made from it is automatically cursed. A Cleric’s Ring can null the effects of a curse that make the equipped fighter sometimes immobilized, but it has no effect on making cursed equipment removable. Special powers that only healers in sanctums have enable it to be permanently removed, but really, she likes her equipment, and she’s okay with all this stuff.”
After just sitting there for quite a while, I finally heard the singing stop, and Karen suddenly poked her head out of the room.
“Okay, you can give me my armor back, now,” she said happily. “I haven’t felt this clean in years!”
“Um, shouldn’t we clean the inside of your armor, first?” Twilight asked, now soaked in sweat, as was I.
“Nah, I just use my Mars Psynergy to sterilize them with fire,” Karen replied. “Give me one of them at a time, and I’ll do just that.”
I nodded to Twilight, who floated a set of pony-shaped, but still Proxian-styled black armor over to Karen, who caught it in her own magic. Like all Proxian armor, it left the shoulders bare to expose the spikes and scales for intimidation, and because their arm and shoulder scales were already nearly impenetrable and don’t require armor. It also had the red symbol of their clan, which was an ancient symbol simply meaning “fire”.
Karen channeled a small amount of Mars Psynergy before simply saying, “Flare,” causing a fire to spread through the armor.
The process was repeated for every piece of equipment, and then Karen finally put her travelling dress back on and said, “Ah, much better! I used to have to use rocks to hold down my stuff so I could bathe in rivers and ponds, but I never could find rocks big enough for all of them, so I’d inevitably not be able to fully clean some parts of me, leaving me still a bit smelly.”
“But, why would that bother you so much?” I asked. “Last time I was in Prox, they were still in poverty, resorting to boiling weeds just to have vegetation in their diets. And that was a few years after the Golden Sun event! They were rationing their water so much that they generally didn’t have enough to bathe with!”
“Well, we’ve recovered a lot since then, Felix,” Karen replied, too happy from finally being fully clean for the first time in years to care about the negative implications of my remark. “We’re still not liked very much by the rest of the world, but a few islands, such as Kalt Island, trade with us, and we can afford to not ration our water to that extent anymore.”
“Oh,” I said in surprise. “I guess I should’ve checked in on you more often.”
“All water under the bridge, Felix,” Karen said with a huge smile before trotting away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I nodded to both Karen and Twilight and returned to my room, promptly leaping into bed and drifting off to sleep.
“Felix…” a voice called out to me. “You must prepare swiftly!”
“Wait, who’s there?” I cried out in alarm, looking around, reaching for the Sol Blade at my waist and grabbing it with my hand.
“It’s been thirty long years, and you and I have never actually spoken,” the voice said as a large floating boulder with a single eye and no other features appeared before me. It was the Wise One himself.
“Wait, what must I prepare for?” I asked the near-deity, confused. “I’ll figure out a way to get to Alex and stop him! Maybe we could try the portal again, and I could use the Teleport Lapis to warp into it!”
“It’s too late for that,” the Wise One replied. “Alex will finish draining power from Isaac very soon, and I am no longer strong enough to stop him. His powers now exceed my own, so he could block you from teleporting into the portal.”
“Then what do you expect me to be able to do?” I demanded. “If you can’t beat him, how am I supposed to?”
The Wise One closed his eye and became wrapped in Psynergy, giving off the same feel as Hama and Ivan when they used their powers of precognition, but obviously controlled, unlike theirs.
As suddenly as he began, he stopped, then said, “There are many possible futures that could result from your choices. Your best option is to seek out the other two Adepts the Princess of the Sun mentioned.
“In the futures where you team up with them,” he continued, “You have the greatest chance of defeating Alex. You may even obtain more allies than just those two, as well. The magic flowing in the realm you have been sent to may prove a useful ally, as well. The denizens of that realm, though not capable of Psynergy, have abilities of their own that can prove useful.”
“Wait, how can they prove useful?” I asked, even more confused than before.
“They have powers similar to Psynergy in some ways,” the Wise One explained. “Two of the tribes are much more subtle in their uses of these powers, but I know that you can unlock their inner power.” Suddenly, the Wise One did something unheard of for the guardian of Sol Sanctum: He chuckled, adding, “Besides, though I cannot directly interfere with the actions of mankind, the denizens of that realm don’t exactly count as ‘mankind’, do they?”
My eyes widened as a thought occurred to me. “Wait, you mean that you could…”
“Assist you in unlocking their latent powers, or even make them compatible with Psynergy if absolutely necessary?” the Wise One finished for me, his one eye conveying enough emotion that I could tell he’d be grinning if he had a mouth. “Yes. I cannot directly interfere with the actions of humans, Felix. Your spirit is still human, so I can’t aid you directly. But, since they aren’t human at all, I can assist you through them, if necessary. In fact, I already have. I have placed suggestions in the heads of some of the soldiers searching for the other two Adepts, sending them in the right direction for one of them. You should have another ally very soon.”
“But what about the other?” I inquired.
“The fourth Adept-turned-pony is very far away, well-hidden, and it would be impossible for the soldiers to bring the fourth to you,” the Wise One replied. “You will have to locate them on your own, since I can’t tell you where they are, since both you and they still are human in spirit, and the other doesn’t want to be found at this time, and I must honor their wishes.”
“Is there any more you can tell me?” I asked hopefully.
“There are a few more things I could tell you,” the Wise One said with a nod. “But unfortunately, there is no time for that, as you are about to awaken. Farewell for now, Felix…”
“Wait!” I cried out, stretching a hand out to the Wise One as he faded away.
My eyes snapped open as I immediately woke up. The Wise One himself had appeared to me in a dream, giving me advice. I had to take advantage of this, and quickly.
Galloping out of my room, I stopped only long enough to ask a servant where Karen was staying, then bolted in that direction, pounding on her door once I arrived.
“Karen! Wake up!” I exclaimed. “I have something important to talk to you about!”
“Five more minutes…” the Proxian unicorn’s voice groaned from the other side of the door.
“We don’t have five minutes, Karen!” I snapped, a huge sense of urgency overtaking me. “It’s about how to beat Alex!”
In a matter of seconds, the entire door was engulfed in a red aura and swung open, revealing Karen getting out of bed in a hurry. “Why didn’t you say so?” she demanded. “I’d have gotten right out of bed if I knew it was about that!”
“Sorry,” I apologized before stepping into the room and closing the door behind me. “The Wise One spoke to me in a dream.”
“Wait, the Wise One’s power can go beyond the dimensional barriers?” Karen breathed in amazement.
“Well, Alex was able to speak to us through the portal,” I reminded her, “and before that, he spoke to me across the barrier while I still had amnesia, which was when he declared that throwing me into this world wasn’t enough and that he would personally come here to dispose of me once he finishes draining the Mars Star’s power from Isaac.”
“So, what did the Wise One tell you?” Karen inquired eagerly.
I decided to give her the bad news first to get it over with, especially since the bad news would be pointless if I told her the good news first.
Sighing, I put a hoof on her shoulder and told her, “Alex has grown too powerful for us to return to Weyard in the way we had hoped to,” she gave me a puzzled expression, and I explained further. “I came up with the idea of using the Teleport Lapis to make the short jump into the portal before Alex could close it, but the Wise One informed me that Alex is too strong for that to work. His powers exceeds the Wise One’s now, and he could make us unable to warp into the portal.”
“Well, what can we do, then?” Karen whispered, her voice laced with doubt, her whole body shaking from the building despair.
“The Wise One can’t directly interfere with the actions of mankind,” I reminded her. “But that actually contains a couple loopholes: he can still indirectly interfere with the actions of mankind by affecting things instead of people, for one. That’s how he stopped Alex from becoming a god the first time around; by altering the Mars Star. As for the other loophole, ‘mankind’ strictly means humans and those who are still human in spirit, such as Beastmen, or a transformed human, like us.”
“Wait, the ponies never were human to begin with!” Karen exclaimed. “So, he can affect them directly?”
“Yes, but because the Wise One is a benevolent force, he didn’t resort to actually controlling any of the ponies,” I replied with a nod. “He’s already placed suggestions in the minds of some of the guards looking for the other two Adepts Celestia mentioned, to nudge them in the direction of one of them. Since he placed suggestions, they might not head in that direction, but hopefully, they will. He said we’ll have to locate the other by ourselves because apparently, it would be impossible for the guards to bring the fourth Adept to us, and the fourth Adept wishes to remain hidden right now, so the Wise One can’t simply give me their location like he did when he told us that Alex was climbing Mount Aleph while we were at Mars Lighthouse, since Alex apparently didn’t care if anyone knew where he was.” I chuckled before adding, “Given how arrogant Alex is, that’s no surprise to me.”
“So, he could do anything through them to help us?” Karen summarized, and I nodded in confirmation before she continued. “Does this include unlocking the partially-latent powers of the Earth Ponies and Pegasi? I’ve noticed that for all the ‘affinity’ those two tribes are supposed to have, it doesn’t really show that much. I mean, the unicorns have fully visible and effective powers, and yet those two don’t? Something doesn’t seem right about that, to me.”
I nodded again before adding, “Besides fully unlocking their partially dormant abilities, he could even make them compatible with Psynergy, basically turning ponies into Adepts like us if absolutely necessary.”
“So, how long do you think until the third Adept shows up?” Karen inquired of me next.
“He said, ‘very soon’, so a couple days at the most,” I replied, giving my opinion. “They could even arrive today!”
“Well, in that case,” Karen began before suddenly grabbing my ponytail with her newly-mastered telekinesis and started dragging me along. “We had better start preparing to set out to find the fourth!”
“With what money?” I asked before digging in my hooves and snapping, “By the way, I can move myself just fine, thank you!”
“Don’t you have a wallet, Felix?” Karen asked as she released me and we continued to trot side-by-side through the halls.
“Yeah, but it’s full of Weyard’s currency: Coins,” I sighed. “That’s not legal tender here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Karen replied, levitating her own wallet out of a pocket in her dress. “But you’d be surprised at how many ‘Bits’ you can get for a few hundred Coins. Their money is pure gold, sure, but ours contains traces of incredibly rare materials that were placed in them for the sole purpose of preventing counterfeiting, hence why they sparkle instead of shining like normal gold. The ponies will pay handsomely for a few hundred Coins just to get the trace materials after melting them down. I was able to get five thousand Bits out of a measly five hundred Coins. How many Coins are in your wallet, Felix?” She turned her head to look at me, eyes shining in anticipation.
I opened my wallet and looked through the Coin pouches inside, counting all the full ones before individually counting the Coins in the one partially-filled pocket.
“Thirty thousand, five hundred twenty five,” I announced, and Karen’s jaw dropped in amazement.
“That may be paltry in Weyard,” she spoke slowly, “But here, the pony I pawned mine off to paid me ten Bits per Coin, and I only had five hundred. Ten Bits for each of your Coins would be over three hundred thousand! We could live like kings with that kind of money! Never mind shopping and lodging, we could buy an army if we had to! Or even our own palace! Things here aren’t very expensive, so after we pay my friend in Canterlot a visit, we’re going to buy everything we can think of that’ll help!”
“Like herbs, nuts, ginseng and the like?” I asked, since that was pretty much all that was ever available at item shops on Weyard, with the occasional vial, potion, psy crystal, water of life, as well as antidotes, elixirs and sacred feathers.
“Felix, you’re thinking too small!” Karen said before standing on her hind hooves and gesturing with her front legs like some kind of stage performer. “No, here they sell things that are hard to find on Weyard in regular markets! Cookies! Apples! Mint leaves! Peanuts! Bread! Even pepper!” She dropped down to four hooves again and looked at me again. This time, my jaw had dropped. On Weyard, such things were hard to find, but they did amazing things for an Adept. Eating a whole loaf of bread would raise one’s endurance. Eating a cookie would raise an Adept’s Psynergy reserves. Devouring a mint leaf would make an Adept faster. Peanuts made Adepts more resistant to physical blows. Apples increased an Adept’s physical strength. But one of the rarest things in Weyard was the elusive perfect black pepper, not the crudely made pepper used in cooking, but pepper made from the absolute best peppercorns, ground into pieces as small as grains of salt. If an Adept could manage to consume an entire two ounce shaker of it, they’d grow more resistant to the many ailments that enemies could inflict!
“You’re kidding…” I breathed in disbelief, shaking my head. “Those are plentiful here? They sell them as regular food?”
“Yep!” Karen nodded. “Think of the possibilities, Felix! Each of these things only costs a few Bits at the most! We could stock up on a lot of them and binge eat them and become super-powerful!”
“Okay, let’s skip breakfast and get to it!” I said excitedly. “I’m eating three apples for the morning, instead!”
“That’s the spirit, Felix!” Karen cheered, giving me a hearty slap on the back. “To Canterlot we go! Get the Lapis ready, and I’ll point us right to that shop!”
Nodding enthusiastically, I channeled my Psynergy into the Lapis before touching Karen, letting her point us in the right direction before I gleefully cheered, “Teleport!”
With that, we were no longer in Twilight’s castle, but standing outside a shop in Canterlot. The sign read: “En Passant’s Pawn Shop: We buy and sell almost anything!”
“Here we are!” Karen chirped before entering the building first. I followed behind her, but just as I entered, a male voice squealed with excitement.
“Karen! How good to see you again!” the voice said as I stepped next to Karen to see who was talking: He was a white Earth Pony with a plain black mane and tail with a depiction of a pawn on a chessboard serving as his Cutie Mark. “Your strange coins made me a very rich stallion after somepony who works with metals bought them from me! So, what do you have for me today?”
“Actually En Passant, I’d like you to meet my friend, Felix,” Karen said, nudging me forward. “He’s the one who has business with you today.”
“Felix? That’s an odd name,” En Passant mused, “Just as strange as your name, Karen. But, if he’s willing to pawn off something valuable like you were, it doesn’t matter how strange his name is! So, Mr. Felix,” he said, turning to me. “What have you got for me?”
I stepped up to the counter and pulled out my own wallet before showing him the contents.
“M-more of those strange coins?” En Passant exclaimed. “Why, if I could get that metalworker to come back, I’d become even richer! How many are there?”
I counted out all the Coins in one full pouch for him, then showed him that all but one of the pouches that were full had the same amount. After carefully stacking them on the counter, I individually counted out the remaining Coins to him, then announced, “Thirty thousand, five hundred twenty five.”
The stallion’s jaw dropped before he pulled out a scale to weigh them to make sure none were fake, weighing one stack at a time, then weighing the incomplete stack one Coin at a time. Once he was satisfied that they were all the same weight, he nodded emphatically and pulled out a box from beneath the counter, setting it on top and counting out coins of varying sizes before pushing them towards me.
“There you are! Three hundred five thousand, two hundred fifty Bits, Felix!” En Passant stated excitedly. “That pretty much emptied out my cash box, but as soon as I can get that metalworker to return, it’ll be full to bursting, I’m sure! It’s been a pleasure doing business with you! If you find anypony else with more of those coins, be sure to bring them to me! They’re good for my business!”
I nodded, and Karen helped me get the new coins of varying sizes into my wallet before we both waved farewell to En Passant and left the shop.
“Okay, the largest coins are worth ten-thousand Bits,” Karen told me after we ducked into a side street. “The single coin that’s second largest is worth five thousand, then the two that are second smallest in there are worth one hundred each, and the smallest one he gave you is a fifty.”
“So, they vary in value by size?” I asked in confirmation. Karen nodded, and I whispered, “Why didn’t anyone on Weyard think of that? All of our Coins are just worth one, so it makes counting out large amounts of them tedious.”
“No idea,” Karen replied with a shrug. “But there are other sizes you need to be aware of that he didn’t give you: between the five thousand and the one hundred, there’s also a one thousand and a five hundred. And below the fifty, there’s a ten, a five, and a one. They all have different markings, and each one has their value printed on them somewhere, in case you forget.”
“Got it,” I said with a nod. If the money itself had its value on it, I could always look to it if necessary.
“Okay, let’s do some shopping!” Karen cheered.
Feeling a rush of excitement myself, I channeled Psynergy into the Teleport Lapis, focused on Twilight’s castle, and exclaimed, “Teleport!” whisking us away in an instant, materializing in the exact spot we’d teleported away from.
“Let’s get going,” I exclaimed, as giddy as a young Adept who’d just mastered their first Psynergy spell. “There’s shopping to do!”
Karen nodded in agreement, and we galloped through the halls excitedly until we reached the entrance, to find five of Celestia’s guards waiting for us, all Pegasi.
“You’re Sir Felix, correct?” the guard in the middle asked.
“I’m Felix, but please, no formalities,” I replied with an impatient nod. I really wanted to start chowing down on the kind of food an Adept could usually only dream about, or would have to save for just the right moment, no matter how delicious it looked.
“I can tell that you’re in a hurry, Mr. Felix” the guard acknowledged, “But our orders were to bring any strange ponies straight to you and Miss Karen.”
“I keep telling you, I’m just a normal Pegasus!” a male voice declared from behind them. “I’m not weird!”
“That’s not up to you to decide,” the guard snapped, looking over his shoulder at the pony who spoke. “These two will determine that for themselves.”
The guards parted, revealing a purple Pegasus stallion wearing a white tight robe and purple cape combo clearly designed to accentuate his body and make him more attractive to females. He appeared to have armor of his own under it, though, which already wasn’t normal for the ponies of Equestria. His outfit barely exposed a Cutie Mark of a tornado inside a crystal ball. His eyes were green, and his mane and tail were blonde, as well as a little long for a male. He had a quiver of arrows on his back, as well as a bow that appeared to have been crafted from Orihalcon, though I wasn’t quite sure. Finally, he had a metal chain around his neck with a small green stone set into it that seemed kind of familiar.
“Leave him with us,” I told the guards. “We won’t be long.”
The guards nodded and left, leaving us with the stallion, who we dragged to an empty room and set him down in a chair to talk to him.
“Okay,” I began. “First, why do they see you as ‘weird’?”
“They claim I fly funny. That it doesn’t look right,” the Pegasus replied simply, huffing as if to dismiss the very thought that he was strange. “Also, some ponies have reported strange occurrences when I’m around, such as ponies suddenly floating into the air for no reason, my instincts making it look like I know what’ll happen before it happens, those kinds of things. I swear, none of it’s true!” he finished with a grin that seemed more arrogant than helping his case.
“Okay, prove it’s not true,” Karen said. “Show us how you fly. We’ll be the judges.”
“Okay,” the Pegasus replied before the gem in his necklace started to glow and he rose into the air, clearly flapping his wings, but the flapping looked kind of fake. Besides, Karen and I looked at each other and nodded. We had sensed Psynergy. He was clearly casting Hover.
“Okay, that’s all the proof we need,” I replied. “Stop the spell, you can’t fool us.”
“Huh?” the obvious Jupiter Adept said before he suddenly dropped the spell, dropping to the ground with a thud. “What spell? I don’t have magic!”
“Stop playing dumb,” Karen snapped. “You’re a Jupiter Adept. We know because we’re also from Weyard, and we also happen to be Adepts.”
“Wait, you’re Adepts, too?” the Pegasus gasped. “What do you need me for?”
“First, how did you end up here?” I asked, pretty sure of the answer already.
“I fell through the void below Weyard,” he replied. “I’m from the City of Anemos.”
“How did you fall, and why?” I asked next.
The Anemos nervously put a hoof behind his head and chuckled weakly. “Five years ago, I kind of ticked off some guy called Alex by annoying him too much, and he hit me with some kind of Psynergy and threw me into the void.”
“Wait, you made him angry enough to do it?” Karen gasped. “He only did it to me as some kind of ‘test’, and as for Felix, Felix was actually fighting him to try to save Weyard. You just annoyed him enough to throw you over the edge?”
“I play practical jokes,” the Anemos replied weakly. “I have precognition, the power to read minds and all that, but it got boring for me living up there, so I passed the time pranking other people, and then Alex came along, and I just had to try something on him because he was no Anemos. I went a little overboard, and he threw me over the edge while the city was under Weyard.”
“Okay, well, we’re trying to stop Alex,” I explained. “Alex is very close to obtaining godlike powers, and he said that once he has them, he’s coming here to kill me because he still deems me a threat.”
“Okay,” the stallion said with a nod. “Sorry I haven’t introduced myself, yet. My name is Yegelos the twenty-fifth, but just call me Yegelos.”
“You’re descended from the ancient hero of the Anemos?” I asked in surprise. “From the war between Anemos and Shaman?”
“Yep! The very same!” Yegelos said proudly. “I’ve been told I’m just as handsome as he was, and just as strong. But they constantly tell me he was a lot more humble than me, and that I’ve disgraced the name.”
“Well, if you help us beat Alex, maybe you can restore your honor,” Karen suggested.
“Okay, what do we do first?” Yegelos asked, rubbing his hooves together excitedly.
“We’re going shopping!” Karen and I cheered at the same time.
“Huh? Why?” Yegelos asked, confused.
“They sell the kind of food that helps an Adept grow stronger! As regular food!” I exclaimed excitedly. “They’re common here!”
“I know that,” Yegelos huffed. “But what’s so exciting about it?”
“We’re rich, thanks to pawning off our Coins!” Karen squealed. “We can stuff our faces with the stuff, then buy as many as we can carry before searching for the fourth Adept!”
“Wait, there’s one more?” Yegelos asked in shock. “How do you know this?”
“Celestia told us,” I replied simply. “The guards won’t be able to find the fourth one, and even if they did, the Wise One told me they wouldn’t be able to bring them back, anyway.”
Yegelos raised an eyebrow at my mentioning of the Wise One speaking to me, but promptly got off his chair and said, “Lead the way, Felix!”
Nodding, I led our group, now three strong, outside the castle, then turned to the guards who were waiting for us and told them, “Yep, he’s what we were looking for. You can end your search, now. There’s one more, but we already know that it’ll take abilities like ours to actually locate the other. Please give my message to Princess Celestia for me.”
“Understood,” the guard in charge replied. “Let’s move out!” he ordered to the others, and they all flew away without another word.
“Now, to the market!” I announced, getting another excited cheer from Karen, and Yegelos cracked a wide smile. Obviously, our enthusiasm was proving contagious.
At the market, the three of us started looking around, and I split my money between the three of us.
“Okay, we’ll each buy as much as we can of two of the six things we need,” I announced to the other two Adepts. “Try to get ninety of them if you can, then bring them back here so we can spread them out more evenly. You can buy more if you want, but remember that we can only carry so much, so any extras should just be stuff to replace breakfast, since Karen and I haven’t eaten yet to save room for this stuff.”
Yegelos’ stomach growled, and he chuckled weakly before saying, “Yeah, I haven’t eaten yet, either.”
“Okay, gang! Let’s get to it!” Karen cheered. “I’ll find some mint leaves and pepper!”
“I’ll take care of the peanuts and bread,” Yegelos added.
“I guess that leaves me with the cookies and apples,” I said, not at all upset with being left with those two.
“By the way, Felix,” Karen said, tapping me on the shoulder right as I started to trot away, “Prices here aren’t set. You can haggle them down to lower prices.”
My jaw dropped. “Wait, haggling is legal here?” I gasped. “In every place on Weyard, haggling is illegal!”
“I know, but Equestria’s not on Weyard,” Karen said with a wink. “Try it. Haggling Is actually pretty fun! But stores don’t allow haggling. Just the markets.”
“Got it,” I replied with a nod before spotting a stand selling apples, with none other than Applejack manning it. Is “manning” even the right word in Equestria? I never did find that one out.
Trotting up to the orange mare, Applejack spotted me and said, “Hey, Felix! Ya here ta buy some apples?”
“I sure am,” I said, trying to contain my excitement and failing.
“What’s so excitin’ ‘bout buyin’ apples?” she asked, looking at me strangely.
“Apples are rare in the world I come from,” I admitted with a sigh. “I usually only found them in treasure chests, and I only ever saw two apple trees in all my travels, each with only a single apple.”
“Sounds rough,” Applejack replied with a nod. “Well, here, apples are plentiful! Mah family’s even got our own orchard!”
My eyes grew to the size of dinner plates at what she said. “A-an orchard?” I breathed in disbelief, “Well, then, I’ve got to buy them right now!”
“What kind do ya fancy?” the mare asked, and I gave her a confused look.
“There’s more than one kind of apple?” I asked in confusion. “All the apples I ever found were the same.”
“Ya poor thing!” the farm mare exclaimed. “Ya don’ know what yah’ve been missin’ out on!”
I looked through the all the different sizes, shapes and colors of apples, my mouth watering and my mind still straining to wrap itself around the concept that apples had variety.
“I don’t know the names of any of them, but my companions and I need at least ninety of them for our upcoming trip,” I explained. “We’ll need a few extra to cover breakfast, so I’d like to buy ninety-nine apples, all chosen at random.”
“That’s a lotta apples,” Applejack said with a whistle. “That’ll be…” she thought for a moment and said, “two hundred Bits.”
I started to reach for my wallet to just give her the named price, but then I remembered what Karen told me.
“Karen told me that unlike in my world, haggling is legal,” I said with a smile. “I’ve always wanted to tell a store owner that their price is too high and demand a lower one, so here goes!” I cleared my throat and said, “Two hundred for ninety nine? That’s robbery! Surely you could go lower… say, one a piece?”
“Ninety nine Bits fer ninety nine apples?” Applejack shot back, a smile on her own face. It seemed she had decided to show me how haggling was really done. “Nothin’ doin’ Sugarcube! A hundred eighty!”
Getting into the feel of the “game”, I chuckled and shook my head. “Still too high. No dice. How about…” I closed my own eyes in thought and thought of another number. I felt it still had to be lower than the one I had in mind, for it seemed that it might go on for a little longer. “One hundred eleven?”
Applejack actually went slack jawed for a second. Obviously, she thought such a number was an incredibly odd one for me to throw out of nowhere, but I had my plans. I knew mathematics beyond simple counting, adding and subtracting, and it was paying off for me, here.
After regaining her composure, Applejack chuckled and shook her head. “That’s a weird number, Sugarcube, but Ah can’t give away this many apples fer that low. Yer mind games won’t work on meh! A hundred seventy! An’ Ah ain’t goin’ much lower than that!”
Doing some more calculations, I came to my next number. “Still too high for my tastes,” I chuckled with a shake of my head. “How about one hundred twenty four?”
Applejack still seemed oblivious to the number I was shooting for, but to take her even more off guard, I took advantage of glimpsing some silver and copper coins being exchanged out of the corner of my eye, and before she could fire back a new number, I asked, “What are those silver and copper coins?”
Applejack stopped in the middle of formulating her comeback and had to sidetrack to explain.
“Those ain’t Bits, Sugarcube,” she replied. “Those’re Jangles. Twenty of em to a Bit. The copper ones are worth one, an’ the silver ones are worth five or ten, depending on size.”
“Thank you,” I said with a nod. “So, back to the matter at hoof,” I still felt awkward using their jargon. “One twenty four. Do we have a deal or not?”
Applejack blinked, remembering what she was doing, but forgot where she left off. “Still no good, Sugarcube,” she laughed. “Ah’ll need more than that. A hundred fifty-five, an’ that’s final!”
“Really?” I asked doubtfuly, taking on a devious grin. This was really fun! Applejack was starting to sweat a little. Clearly, I was proving more formidable than she’d expected from a mere novice. “I’m sure you can go a little lower, can’t you? Would one hundred thirty six Bits and two Jangles work for you?”
This took Applejack even more by surprise, knocking her mind off-balance and giving me a new opening. “Well, Ah guess Ah could lower it a smidge. A hundred fifty two an’ ten Jangles. Ah’m stayin’ firm this time, though. Take it or leave it, Sugarcube!”
I almost had her. I was so close. The amount I felt they were worth given how common they were compared to their scarcity in Weyard drove me to push a little further.
“I think we’re close to an agreement, here,” I replied. “My final offer is one hundred forty eight Bits and ten Jangles.” The difference between our final stances was only four Bits. The real question was, would she lower it by such a tiny amount and give me the amount I was shooting for?
“Well, if it’s only four Bits lower, Ah don’ see why not,” Applejack conceded. “A hundred forty eight an’ ten it is. Yah’ve got yerself a deal, Felix.”
Roars of victory sounded inside my head, but I kept a calm demeanor. and fished out a coin for one hundred and the one coin for fifty.
“Do you have change for this?” I asked.
She nodded and gave me a bag full of randomly selected apples as well as a gold coin worth one Bit, and a silver ten Jangle coin.
“A pleasure doing business with you!” I called over my shoulder as I dragged the bag away.
“Same ta ya!” Applejack called back. “Yer a natural!”
When none of the ponies were looking, I whispered, “Grip,” and the hand appeared, this time to pick up the bag of apples and set it on my back. It was heavy, but I’d dealt with much more strenuous stuff than carrying a bag of ninety nine apples on my back. The heavy bag was nothing in comparison to getting hit by the Doom Dragon’s Djinn Storm, followed immediately by its Cruel Ruin, which brought me to within an inch of my life multiple times in that fateful battle.
In the distance, I noticed a bakery shaped like… a gingerbread house? Shaking my head, I slowly trotted towards it, meeting up with Yegelos along the way, who was also headed there, a bag of peanuts on his back.
”So, how’d you do on the apples?” Yegelos asked.
“Ninety nine for One forty eight and ten,” I replied.
Yegelos whistled, obviously impressed.
“I was able to get ninety-nine peanuts down to five Jangles a piece,” Yegelos replied. “But that’s only because the ponies don’t truly understand the worth of a peanut.”
“Remember, for a non-Adept, peanuts are just food,” I reminded Yegelos. “It’s the stuff that makes us Adepts that reacts differently and allows certain foods to do amazing things for us.”
“True enough,” he acknowledged with a nod. “So, you off to the bakery, too, eh?”
“Yep,” I replied simply. “I need to get us those cookies.”
“And I need that bread,” Yegelos added. “Too bad the bakery won’t allow haggling. I just hope the price isn’t too high.”
We trotted in silence for the rest of the way there, silently entering the bakery to find, of all ponies, Pinkie Pie was at the counter.
“Hi Felix!” she chirped before she noticed Yegelos. “Another new pony! Are you with Felix? Can I please throw you a party? Felix wouldn’t let me throw him one because he thinks being a hero is more important than having fun.”
Yegelos just stared, wide-eyed, shaking his head over and over while slowly backing up.
Swiftly coming to his aid, I gently pulled him back to my side and placed a hoof on his shoulder to calm him down.
“This is Yegelos,” I told the pink mare. “He’s with me as well, but we don’t have time for a party because we’re busy stocking up on supplies for a journey we’ll be taking later today.”
Yegelos blinked several times before returning to reality. “Oh! Right!” he exclaimed. “I need ninety nine loaves of bread. Thanks to Felix, i can pay for all of that, and more.”
“Bread?” Pinkie asked, surprised. “Why something that plain? Why not cupcakes or muffins or cake or—”
“Pinkie…” I said sternly. “It’s an Adept thing. It’s not about enjoying it. It’s about what it can do for us that it can’t for others.”
Pinkie sighed with disappointment before heading to the kitchen in the room behind the counter.
A few seconds later, she returned with a huge bag of bread loaves.
“There’s your bread,” she said, obviously not pleased with his choice. “That’ll be a hundred ninety eight bits.”
Yegelos nodded and gave her the money before I helped him get the large bag on his back, right on top of the bag of peanuts.
Yegelos stepped aside, and I trotted up to the counter and said, “As for me, I’m here for cookies. Same number as the bread, though.”
Her eyes lit up when I mentioned something that was actually a treat, and started listing all the different kinds of cookies to choose from, but I put a hoof in her mouth and said, “Just put together a variety box. We’re in kind of a hurry.”
She nodded, pulled out a huge to go box, and started selecting cookies from the display at random, placing them neatly in the box before finally announcing, “That’s one Bit per cookie, so it’s ninety nine.”
I nodded and gave her the closest coin I could to that amount, which was a five hundred.
“You do have change for that, right?” I asked as she stared at the coin.
“Yep! Just never seen anything bigger than a hundred before!” she replied. “Just a sec!”
In the blink of an eye, she gave me my change along with the box of cookies, and Yegelos helped me to balance it on my back before we slowly left the bakery and gradually made our way back to the center of the market, where Karen was waiting for us.
Without a word to each other, we set the packages on the ground, opened them, then took three of each item for ourselves. All I had to say was, “Let’s dig in!” and all three of us started chowing down in plain view of everyone. Not that we cared. These elusive foods were plentiful here, and with each one I ate, I felt myself grow a little stronger.
Right as Karen, Yegelos and I finished eating and started dividing the remaining food into sets of thirty to fit into our bags, the clouds in the sky suddenly started to merge together of their own accord, turning dark and sinister and whipping up powerful winds.
The clouds parted in the center to reveal an image of Alex in the sky, with the seven other Warriors and my nephew’s party laying on the ground behind him, bound by chains of pure Psynergy.
“Ah, hello there, Felix!” Alex’s voice boomed, echoing through all of Ponyville and catching the attention of all of the town’s residents. “I just wanted to let you bear witness to my attainment of absolute power! With this last bit of power, I’ll be so powerful, I could grind the Wise One himself into dust! By the way, you look absolutely ridiculous in that form. As does everyone there, actually. My, a world of equines? Why, without hands or Psynergy, how could they possibly ever hope to build a civilization like what existed in Weyard’s Golden Age?”
“Alex, I’ve made friends here, and I won’t allow you to insult them like that!” I roared in anger.
“Oh, hush,” Alex replied with his signature smug grin. “Now, pay attention, Felix!”
“Felix…” Isaac choked out as Alex picked him up and threw him onto the ground in plain view of the viewing window. “Don’t give up! You’re the real hero! Not me!”
“Oh, shut up!” Alex said before kicking Isaac in the ribs and filling himself with immense amounts of Psynergy. So much that it could be felt and heard even by non-Adepts.
“You know where all the Psynergy Vortexes came from?” Alex sneered. “I created them! And I will use another one for one last time, to finish what I’ve been doing for the past few days!”
A black and purple vortex materialized in front of Alex, who forced it into Isaac’s chest, causing my old friend to scream in agony.
Suddenly, the Vortex rose out of Isaac’s chest, colored red. It floated over to Alex, who drained the Mars Star’s energy from the Vortex and dispelled it, cackling insanely.
“At last! I have it!”” Alex laughed. “Eternal life, and limitless power! This time, the Wise One couldn’t stop me! I’ve done it! Now to—”
He cut off at the sound of powerful Psynergy smashing down a metal door in the background, followed by a female cry of, “Alex! We’ll destroy you!”
“What’s this?” Alex said quizzaciously, “Two last heroes have come to try to stop me? Well! A Sol Adept and a Luna Adept! I’d flee right now, if I were you. I’m all-powerful, now.”
“You assisted the High Empyror!” the female voice snapped, drawing closer. “You’re his right-hand man, and when I drag your battered, beaten, barely-living body back with me to Tuaparang, I’ll show him I mean business and free my people from life as nothing but a nation-sized army!”
“I did work for him for a time, yes,” Alex replied as a fully-armored pink-skinned woman wearing a black dress with a diamond pattern, as well as sporting twin demon-like horns stepped into view, with a golden-furred wolf Beastman next to her, wearing light armor, a tattered cloak, and wielding a pair of razor-sharp claws that practically shone with a light of their own.
“Then your defeat still has meaning,” the Tuaparang woman stated as she lifted a mace from off her back. “We’ll destroy you!”
The Beastman gasped and pointed, drawing the woman’s attention. “It’s Queen Sveta!” he breathed in disbelief before turning to snarl at Alex. “The Queen of my people is being held captive by you, huh? For such an act, I’ll tear you apart!”
“Fine then,” Alex chuckled. “I’ll indulge you with a battle.” Turning back to look through the viewing window, he said, “Observe how powerful I’ve become, Felix! The Fundaments are even mightier than the Elements! And yet, these two will still just take a minute or two to get rid of!”
“Terror, come forth!” the woman shouted, calling forth a kind of djinni I’d never seen before. It was black and purple, had yellow eyes, and a crescent-shaped tail.
“On it!” the djinni chirped in a strangely gravelly voice before summoning a black fog that managed to seal Alex’s Psynergy.
“You brat!” Alex snapped. “You’ll soon see that Psynergy isn’t my only power! Take this!”
Alex retaliated with a punch that sent the Luna Adept crashing into a wall.
“Penta!” the Sol Adept cried before shouting, “Purge, come forth!”
A white djinni with yellow eyes and a sunburst-shaped tail materialized and cried with a heroic-sounding voice, “He’s going down!”
The djinni unleashed a powerful beam of pure light, knocking Alex back an inch.
“Well, you’re a smidge stronger than I gave you credit for,” Alex chuckled. “But the damage I’ve taken is meaningless when my life is endless!”
“Prison, come forth!” The Luna Adept, apparently named “Penta”, commanded, and another Luna djinni appeared.
“Stop him in place? My pleasure!” the female djinni said with a voice as equally-gravelly as the previous male one had. Suddenly, a cage of darkness surrounded Alex until it bound itself to him, locking him in place.
“You insects!” Alex growled as he was unable to act and the Sol Adept stepped up.
“Get him, Fangrick!” Penta cheered.
“No sweat!” the now-named Sol Adept replied before shouting, “Photon, come forth!”
Another Sol djinni materialized, and with a feminine voice that was equally as heroic as Purge’s was said, “This’ll be a cinch!” before launching a barrage of powerful light particles at Alex, causing him to cringe slightly.
“We’re making progress!” Penta cheered before shouting, “Plague, come forth!”
Another Luna djinni appeared, and with a gravelly male voice said, “Hey, Alex! Don’t get too attached to that power! You’re gonna lose some right now!”
A filthy fog enshrouded Alex, and he suddenly wasn’t as confident. Even from the other side of the window, I could tell his offensive Elemental and Fundamental powers were weakened.
“You dare weaken my power?” Alex roared, no longer enjoying himself. “You’ll pay for your insolence! Alchemy Storm!”
Rays of multicolored light shot out from Alex’s hands and pummeled the pair of Adepts, but they held firm, badly wounded, but still standing.
“Life, come forth!” Fangrick shouted, calling forth another Sol djinni.
“Oh my, you two look really hurt!” the djinni said with concern. “Here, let me fix that!”
With a wave of pure white light, the djinni healed most of their injuries and disappeared.
“We’re getting there!” Penta shouted, nodding to her teammate before shouting, “Savage! Come forth!”
At the command, another Luna djinni appeared before enveloping Penta in black energy. She then leaped into the air and struck Alex in the face four times, extremely hard.
“I’ll do you in yet, maggots!” Alex growled. “Punish!”
Alex became engulfed in black energy himself, then struck Fangrick hard, smashing him into the ground after sending him flying.
“Nice shot,” the Sol Adept groaned as he got to his feet. “It’s too bad for you that we’re just about ready. Aura, come forth!”
Another Sol djinni appeared, applying a shield of invincibility to Fangrick.
“No attack can hurt me with that up!” Fangrick howled with delight. “We’ve got you now, Alex!”
The two nodded to each other, and Penta cried at the top of her lungs, “I summon Jormungandr!”
A massive wicked-looking snake burst through the ground and eyed Alex for a few seconds before biting him over and over, then finished by throwing him to the ground and firing a beam of black energy at the wicked Adept before burrowing back underground.
“You really think you have me cornered?” Alex chuckled with a shake of his head. “Not even close, children. You see, I’m a god now. And you can’t kill a god. Dispel All!”
A wave of emptiness flowed through the area on the other side of the window, erasing all changes to status in any way, shape or form.
“My shield!” Fangrick gasped in horror.
“Yes, you thought you could hide behind it and heal yourself, didn’t you, little pup?” Alex sneered. “Unfortunately for you, my powers have an answer to every possible situation.”
“We have to hit hard and fast!” Fangrick exclaimed. “If he knocks me out, revive me with a Water of Life! We can do this! I summon Odin!”
A massive bearded humanoid with a missing eye descended from the heavens, carrying a golden staff. He raised the staff over his head, then brought it back to the ground, creating shockwaves of pure light that pummeled Alex over and over before the being returned to the heavens.
“Oh, it looks like using all those djinn made you slower than me,” Alex taunted. “Well that’s just too bad. Djinn Storm!”
The terrible wave of red energy that I had had to deal with a few times before and still haunted my nightmares washed over them, draining all of their djinn, rendering them almost powerless.
“Umbra Nova!” Penta cried out frantically, causing a massive explosion of dark energy to occur right where Alex was standing, but he didn’t even bat an eye.
The two Adepts looked at each other in panic before Fangrick screamed, “Luminous Cannon!” causing a sphere of white light to rise into the air, pummeling Alex with a beam of searing white light firing from the sphere, but Alex was still unfazed.
Alex stepped forward, his haughty demeanor restored, sneering at the now-cowering Adepts. They had fought valiantly, but it hadn’t been enough. As one would expect from such a sinister Adept, Alex had just been toying with them the whole time.
“I let you get the upper hand on me for a while so that your utter despair before your defeat would be all the more enjoyable,” Alex chuckled. “You never stood a chance. You really should’ve ran when I gave you the chance. Now you will never see anyone you love or care about again. I won’t kill you. I’ll just isolate you in worlds where no one knows you, you’ll be treated like freaks, and will be outcasts forever. Farewell. Alchemy Storm!”
The multicolored light pummeled the duo again, but this time, they didn’t have the power to resist it and were thrown back into a wall, passing out from the impact.
“Oh, Felix!” Alex chuckled as he held up the unconscious forms of the downed Adepts. “These two are going to the void, just like you did! But don’t think for a second that I’ll allow you to encounter them! I’ve found the perfect worlds to send these two to, so I should be able to control where they end up this time! You will never gain their help. Oh, and remember this: I’m coming for you, very soon!”
With a cackle, Alex created a hole in the floor of his location that led straight down to the abyss, cast transformative Psynergy on them, then dropped them in.
“If only there were a way to make them end up here!” I cried out. “We could use help from Fundamental Adepts!”
“Good luck with that one, Felix,” Alex said right before Discord suddenly materialized in Ponyville and looked up at the window in the sky.
“I think I can manage that for you, Felix!” the Draconequus said before flying right through the viewing window and appearing in Alex’s location.
“What are you?” Alex demanded. “Stop this at once!”
“I’m a friend Felix made in the world you sent him to,” Discord replied. “I have something to do though, so I’ll be right back.” Discord snapped his fingers, then disappeared.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Alex roared before channeling so much Psynergy that he looked like he was made of pure energy. “You’re not getting them there, you… thing!”
Suddenly, Discord reappeared in front of Alex and said. “I just did. You made them end up far away from where I wanted them to be, but they’re still in my world now. Anyway, I think Felix’s friends here would like to get out of here, so, if you don’t mind…”
“Actually, I do mind!” Alex snapped.
“Sucks to be you, then!” Discord chuckled before snapping his fingers again and causing the imprisoned Adepts to warp somewhere else.
“Goodbye, now!” Discord said before diving through the window again and returning to the pony world.
“This will not go unpunished, Felix!” Alex seethed. “You die, right now!”
Suddenly, the window shattered, and Alex himself was hovering in the sky above us, glaring at me, his very presence sending the townsponies into a panic.
Applejack came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. “S-Sugarcube, is that…?” She trailed off, the fear imminent in her voice stopping her from finishing her question.
I nodded grimly before giving her the answer she obviously didn’t want to hear. “Yes, that’s Alex. He’s here.” Turning to my companions, I shouted, “We have to flee! We can’t fight him here!”
“Why not?” Yegelos asked, tilting his head in confusion.
“Because he’ll destroy the whole town just to kill me!” I replied. “I won’t put innocents in danger to fight him!”
After we madly stuffed our items into our bags, the other two Adepts held onto me as I channeled Psynergy into my Teleport Lapis and screamed, “TELEPORT!”
Alex dove for me, but right before he could grab me, the three of us vanished, rematerializing in Canterlot, immediately bolting for the castle to alert the Princesses.
We galloped through the streets, headed straight for the castle, intent on one thing: the Princesses needed to be alerted immediately that Alex had arrived.
Ponies gasped as we barreled right through them, no time to stop to apologize. I could sense Alex’s immense power from the vicinity of Ponyville, and I could feel it steadily growing closer.
“He’s chasing us!” Karen shrieked as she felt the power approaching, too. “Felix! We have to go faster!” However, she stopped, getting Yegelos and I to stop as well out of confusion.
“I thought we needed to go faster!” Yegelos snapped. “Why’d you stop?”
“I have a djinni who can help us!” the Proxian explained quickly. “Nitro, come forth!”
A Mars djinni appeared and said, “One supercharge coming right up!” His energy-bestowing waves of heat washed over us, and I suddenly felt as energetic as if I’d eaten an entire pound of sugar.
“Thanks, Nitro!” Karen said before the djinni nodded and vanished. “Let’s get to it, guys! Move it!”
Yegelos and I nodded, then resumed running, moving far faster than we had been moving before.
We passed right by the guards at the entrance in the blink of an eye, then ran along the path to the throne room Twilight had shown us before, bursting into the throne room, interrupting some kind of meeting between Celestia and a stallion who had been droning about something that apparently made the Princess very glad to see us and gain an excuse to get the stallion to shut up.
“Sorry, Chancellor, but I feel these three have something important to say,” Celestia said before turning to us with a smile.
Unfortunately, we were going to have to shatter her good mood. “Alex is here!” I shouted frantically. “You need to do whatever you can to keep him away from any populated areas! He’s gained so much power that anypony who even looks at him funny runs the risk of him turning them into red paste in the blink of an eye!”
“Oh dear,” Celestia said aloud, not even trying to hide her concern. “What are you going to do, Felix?”
“We’re going to try to draw him to any location without civilization,” I replied. “He’s after me, so the most important thing is for us to make sure he knows where we’re headed, but not let him get close enough to engage us until we’ve located the fourth Adept and are in a place where he can’t harm any non-Adepts.”
“Then you’d best get moving,” Celestia urged. “Find the fourth quickly, please. Our fates all lie with you, it seems.”
“We will,” I assured her. “Just make sure nopony confronts him. He is far too powerful for any living thing to stand a chance against him alone, and even before he gained more power the first time, he was still powerful enough to decimate an entire battalion of the best soldiers in Weyard. Even the best of the best of your Royal Guards would stand no chance against him.”
“Understood,” Celestia replied nervously. “I’ll get the word out. Now, please, lead him away from here!”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I replied before doing an about-face and leading my two companions out of the castle, still as fast as before. However, upon arriving outside, Alex was waiting for us, hovering twenty feet in the air.
“Trying to run away, Felix?” Alex chuckled wickedly. “I thought you were braver than that. Well, I have you now, so let’s see you three accomplish what fifteen Adepts could not!”
“Felix! Yegelos! Run!” Karen ordered. “I’ll hold him off! Dragonform!”
To our great surprise, Karen became enveloped in flames, hiding her from view. A second later, the flames died out, and a Flame Dragon like the creatures Agatio and Karst had been turned into in Mars Lighthouse over thirty years ago was in her place.
“What are you doing?” the Flame Dragon snapped in Karen’s voice. “I told you to flee! I’ll follow later! Hurry! Move!”
Yegelos and I needed no further encouragement, and we ran straight for the entrance to the city as the sounds of Karen’s battle with Alex could be heard behind us.
“What do we do now?” Yegelos asked worriedly. “She’s going to get herself killed!”
“I believe in her,” I replied. “She’ll get away. But first, we need to get out of here!”
At that moment, a stray blast of Psynergy struck the ground near us, revealing a tunnel below the street level.
“We’re in luck for once!” I exclaimed, utterly shocked that fate was actually being nice to me for a change. “Quick! Let’s get down there! That system has to have an exit somewhere!”
“But we could get lost in there!” Yegelos shot back, shaking his head. “And it’s dark!”
“Would you rather stay up here and get killed by Alex?” I deadpanned.
“I’ll take the dark tunnels over dying!” Yegelos replied, quickly changing his mind. "Let's go!" he cried with surprising enthusiasm, jumping into the hole before I did the same.
“Okay, we’ve gotta get moving,” I urged as I started to run. “Follow me!”
“How in the name of the elements are you going to find a way out of here?” Yegelos huffed as he reluctantly followed me. We ran into what seemed to be an underground hub of tunnels, a half-dozen openings branching off in all directions. “This place looks like a maze!”
“I’ve been traveling mostly alone for thirty years,” I replied as I paused at a corner. “Just feel the flow of air and follow it to its source. That’ll generally get you to the other side of a cave.”
“What do you mean, ‘generally’?” Yegelos demanded as I figured out that the air was coming from the right and ran in that direction.
“Well, sometimes, there’s something else producing the airflow, like a heat vent or some large creature’s breath,” I replied casually, ignoring the look of horror on Yegelos’ face. “But don’t worry, I highly doubt the ponies would build a city on top of a cave system where some giant hostile creature lives.”
Yegelos’ look of terror faded, and we continued to follow the air currents backward. It was hard to see, but I had an idea.
“Yegelos?” I said, getting his attention as we took a left turn at an intersection. “Do you know Reveal?”
“Yeah,” He said with a confused nod. “Why?”
“Touch me with a part of your body, preferably a wing or something like that, then cast Reveal,” I explained. “When we get out of the Revealed area, recast it. Repeat this until we get outside.”
“Okay…” Yegelos replied with a shrug before getting closer to me, touching a wing to my back and saying, “Reveal.”
In an instant, the spell was cast, and a large area around us became perfectly visible, even though the area of the spell was only visible to us in shades of gray. Anything Psynergy could be used on to manipulate the environment would’ve remained in color, but there wasn’t anything of the sort. All living things that were at least capable of thought would also remain in color, but that happened to just be the two of us.
“Oh, I didn’t know it could do that,” Yegelos whispered as we continued forward, now perfectly capable of seeing, though almost everything was now monochromatic. “I thought the power to see the unseeable would be useless here.”
“Its normal applications most likely won’t prove needed,” I admitted. “But while I was with the Warriors of Vale, we found other uses to make it much less mundane and more useful. This being the main one.”
As we reached a corner leading to the right, we left the affected area, and the spell winked out. Yegelos cast it again, once again granting us sight.
“The flow of air’s getting stronger,” I announced after we ran down an inclined tunnel. “We should be close to getting out of here.”
“Good,” Yegelos sighed with relief. “I want to see colors again.”
I was about to remind him that I was still in color but just shook my head instead.
The air continued to grow stronger as we progressed until we could actually hear it, not just feel it.
“Just a little farther,” I urged.
Yegelos nodded, appearing to be a bit tired, but determined to get outside all the same.
“We’ve got to get a pegasus to teach you how to properly fly,” I remarked as the tunnels started to get brighter and we no longer required Reveal to see. “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t tire out as fast.”
“Maybe after we find the fourth Adept,” Yegelos said with a tired nod. “Finding them takes first priority. I definitely want to be able to fly without Hover for when we take on Alex, but we have no time right now.”
“Fair enough,” I replied, also nodding. “Now, let’s get out of these caves once and for all!”
With one final burst of speed, we made it to the exit, at the base of the mountain. The closest thing to us was what appeared to be a set of minecart tracks, but they were mostly outside, extending farther than we could see.
“Why would anyone have a minecart travel so far from a mineable location?” I asked, hoping Yegelos would have an answer since he’d been here for about five years.
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I spent a lot of time in the cloud cities of this place, so your guess is as good as mine.”
Giving up for the time being on learning the purpose of the tracks, we simply crossed them and found ourselves at the bank of a river. With both of us being armored, swimming it was out of the question. I didn’t know how to swim as a quadruped, anyway, so I started to look around, hoping for a bridge or some other way to cross.
“There,” Yegelos said, pointing at a line of rocks sticking out of the river. “We can cross there.”
Nodding, I trotted towards the rocks, gauged the distance I’d have to jump to the first one, and hopped onto it.
Had I still been human, keeping my balance would’ve been easy. However, since I now had to try to plant four legs on the small platform instead of two, things were more difficult. After a bit of wobbling, I repeated the process and made it to the next rock, Yegelos now on the rock behind me, using his wings to keep balance.
After five rocks, I made it to the other side, and Yegelos joined me. There was a town close by, with a sign that read “Fillydelphia” near the road that actually led into it. But instead of heading for the town, we waited.
“Are you sure Karen’s alright?” Yegelos asked nervously. “I mean, this is Alex we’re talking about! He’s practically a god now! How is she supposed to even escape—”
“Hey, guys!” Karen’s voice called out to us from the road. We turned to see her in unicorn form again, waving a hoof at us. “I managed to get away by wrapping him in delusion long enough for him to lose track of me! C’mon! We’re safe for the time being, so let’s check out this town! It’ll be a while before he finds us!”
Yegelos just stared at her in disbelief, unable to think of anything to say, but I smiled as we trotted up to her and said, “Great job, Karen! You shook him off our trail! By the time he locates us again, I’m sure we’ll have finished checking this place out.”
I looked up to see the sun moving towards the horizon and added, “We’re burning daylight! Let’s find someplace to rest, then check out the town tomorrow.”
The others nodded to let me know that they agreed, and we stepped into the town of Fillydelphia to find a place to stay the night.
Upon entering the city, we were met with a city filled with buildings that towered over us. The city itself was like a maze to the three of us, long rows of buildings acting like walls to obscure our view of any street other than the one we were on.
“Well, this is different,” I said nervously. “I think we’re going to need a map for this.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” Karen said with a shake of her head. “We need a place to stay, and I think that building will do nicely.” She pointed a hoof at a building with a sign with a word I’d never seen before written on it: “hotel”.
“Aren’t we looking for an inn?” I reminded her. “That’s no inn.”
“A hotel is a more advanced inn,” Yegelos said with a roll of his eyes. “Well, in a way, at least. Remember, the two of us have been here for five years, so we’ve learned some things about this world. Come on, let’s go.”
“How was I supposed to know what a ‘hotel’ was?” I snapped as we entered the building. “You didn’t tell me that it was a type of inn!”
“I said it would do nicely,” Karen said patiently. “Really, Felix? You’re supposed to be really clever. How didn’t you figure it out from what I said?”
I sighed and shook my head, disappointed with myself. “I guess getting here and away from Alex took its toll on me,” I groaned.
“Well, that’s what a night of sleeping here should fix,” Karen said with a slight yawn. “I’ll rent us a room for the night, and we’ll be set.”
“Sounds good to me,” Yegelos said with a yawn of his own. “I could really use some sleep. Running from Alex took a lot out of me.”
Karen returned after a few seconds with a key in her magic grip. “Okay guys, I’ve got our room key,” she announced. “Follow me. Our room’s number nineteen.”
Nodding tiredly, Yegelos and I followed her through the hallways. I was too tired to express amazement at these “hotels” being able to fit so many rooms, unlike Weyard’s inns, which generally have two or three rooms, but occasionally have up to six in very large cities, or only one in really small backwater towns.
We reached a door with the number 19 depicted in metal numerals attached to it, and Karen put the key in the lock before turning it and pushing the door open.
I immediately gasped when I saw the interior. It was almost as nice as the guest room I’d had back at Twilight’s castle! There were four beds, an attached washroom, a small kitchen, a table to eat at, a sofa, and a pull cord with a sign attached to it that read “ring for room service”.
“Uh, guys?” I asked. “What’s ‘room service’?”
Karen’s hoof met her face, and Yegelos reacted the same way.
“Right, keep forgetting you’ve only been here for a few days,” Karen muttered before speaking up. “Room service is like calling servants, but they’re more accurately hotel staff,” she explained. “The most common thing room service is used for is bringing a meal to a hotel room, but it has a few other uses.”
I nodded tiredly, then yawned before climbing into a bed and bidding the others goodnight since I couldn’t stay awake a moment longer.
After a night of troubled sleep, I awoke to the smell of eggs and pancakes, bolting out of bed and quickly making my way over to the table, where Karen and Yegelos were already eating.
“Morning, Felix!” Karen chirped. Yegelos simply grunted, seeing as he was currently chewing.
“Good morning, you two,” I replied before taking a seat and piling an empty plate with eggs and pancakes. “So, where are we going today? We gotta leave town, but which direction?”
“I felt something to the northeast,” Yegelos announced after swallowing. "Felt like very high-grade Mercury Psynergy. It was only a short burst, but I’m certain I felt it.”
“So, after we finish eating, we’re checking out and leaving, right?” I asked my companions.
They both nodded.
“There’s no time to waste,” Karen admitted with a sigh. “I wish we could take in the sights of Fillydelphia, but we can’t. Alex might locate us at any time.”
"Very well,” I replied. “Let’s hurry.”
After cleaning up, Karen returned our room key as we checked out, immediately leaving for the street outside. Yegelos grabbed a folded up map of the city so we could make our way to the northeast as quickly as possible. After charting a route that passed right through the city’s dragon district, we set out.
“I really wish we could take in the sights,” I sighed. “But we have to get as much distance between us and Alex as possible. I can feel his immense power moving again. He’s moving to the south of Canterlot, I think. What’s he scheming this time?”
“I just hope we don’t have to find out,” Yegelos grumbled as we entered the dragon district. Dragons of all kinds were milling about, and the architecture reminded me of Tonfon, the capital of Sana.
Some dragons stopped to glance at us, some even waved, but the majority of them went about their daily lives, not giving us much thought, if any. However, quite a few did a double-take when they noticed Karen’s scales.
“I don’t like being around most dragons,” Karen grumbled as a hatchling pointed at her and started talking excitedly to two dragons who appeared to be her parents. “At least the ones of this world. Spike was fine because he already knew what an Adept was, thanks to you, but most dragons in this world who notice me stare. I’ve even been asked if I’m a half-breed.” The irritation in her voice was quite noticeable when she gave that last statement. “I’d cast Dragonform to try and fit in, but then I’d become huge!”
Before I or Yegelos could respond, the skies suddenly darkened, black clouds forming and covering the whole area, blocking out the sun as strong winds began to howl.
“You can’t hide from me so easily, Felix!” Alex’s haughty voice suddenly boomed from above, sounding like thunder. “And now I’ve got a small army at my command! I’m growing tired of you running away, so just face me like a man already!”
We were nearing the northeast corner of the city, so we bolted, heading for the shoreline only a few miles ahead.
With a flash, Alex appeared before us, still as smug as ever, surrounded by humanoid canine creatures giving off the feel of Psynergy and sporting completely bloodthirsty expressions.
“Face me now, Felix,” Alex chuckled. “Or my new Diamond Dog friends will tear you apart! I dropped Psynergy stones on this entire pack, and now they’re little more than feral beasts! But I can still command them. Now, fight me or be destroyed by them!”
“No way, Alex,” I growled. “Guys! Let’s get out of here!”
“You asked for it!” Alex roared as we began to flee. “After them!”
Alex’s emanating levels of power grew as we could hear the unmistakeable sound of extremely powerful Psynergy. The blackened clouds moved to cover the entire open area, churning faster and faster as it began to rain heavily, the forming twister also pelting us with hail.
We were suddenly cut off by a group of four Diamond Dogs—one red, one orange, one purple, and one blue—who raised their pickaxes and charged for us, howling like mad.
I cast Grip and used the hand to wield the Sol Blade as my companions lifted their own weapons, and we rushed to fight back.
“Thunder Mine!” Yegelos roared before a large crackling sphere of purple electricity engulfed the orange Dog, resulting in it howling in pain, but not defeating it.
“Rising Dragon!” Karen screamed, causing a plume of fire in the shape of a serpentine dragon to erupt from the ground under the blue Diamond Dog, ensnaring the beast in its fiery jaws, lifting the combatant fifty feet in the air, then vanished, dropping them back to the ground. The combination of Psynergy and the fall dealt heavy damage, producing whimpers from our foe, but they weren’t defeated, either.
I charged for the purple Dog, Sol Blade raised in my Psynergetic grip. The weapon let out a furious howl, and I leaped into the air as the miniature star of Megiddo began to form. The Psynergetic hand swung the Blade into the star, launching it at my target, who howled in agony as it connected, leaving my foe panting heavily, barely able to remain standing.
The Dogs fought back, though, each one using an Elemental physical attack matching their color, leaving the three of us injured as well. However, the enemy was weakened, so we repeated our previous assault, bringing down all but the red Dog, who we hadn’t attacked yet.
The red Dog attacked by engulfing their pickaxe in flames and swinging it at me, knocking me clean off my hooves in spite of my attempt to block the attack.
But before my assailant could attempt to press the advantage, Yegelos attacked with his bow, the weapon letting out a howl of its own and launching a flurry of lightning bolts.
Karen kept up the pressure as my adversary fell back, swinging with her scythe, which let out a howl of its own before creating multiple images of a fiery cloaked figure with a scythe. All the images struck at once, with Karen following suit, throwing the red Dog back further, giving me an opening of my own.
I roared “Odyssey!”, summoning the large swords from back when I fought to retrieve the Sol Blade, four large blades piercing my target, then a fifth giant one crashed into them, shattering the other four swords and throwing them back even further.
The last Dog fell to the ground, out cold, and we continued to flee, spotting a hidden cave along the coast.
“Let’s hide in there!” I suggested. The other two nodded in agreement, so we quickly ducked behind a ridge and fled for the cave, ducking inside without being seen.
“Okay, Felix, I think we’ll be safe here,” Karen said as she set her scythe on her back. “This cave should provide us with shelter.”
“I want to get away from those blasted Diamond Dogs as much as you two do,” Yegelos cut in, “But what about Alex? How are we going to get home if we don’t defeat him?”
“Our first priority was getting out of that hurricane he caused,” I countered. “We’ll go after him again when it’s dry.”
“No, your first priority is finding some other place to get out of the storm,” a female voice with a Lemurian-style accent growled from deeper in the cave. “Leave now, or I’ll chase you out myself!” The three of us turned and gasped at the sight of an Alicorn mare with a light blue coat and a mane and tail in a darker shade of blue. Her gold eyes were narrowed to slits, and she had adopted a fighting stance. She wore a powder blue sailing dress, wore armor under it, wore a lightweight helmet that seemed specifically designed for females, and her Cutie Mark depicted a compass on a tidal wave.
“Who are you?” I asked, taking half a step forward. “Can we talk this over?”
“No, we can’t,” she snapped. “And my name is confidential! I won’t tell you! Leave, or I’ll remove you myself!”
“Why are you so hostile?” I asked, still holding my ground.
“I’m not answering your questions!” the Alicorn shouted. “Since you haven't left yet, take this! Diamond Berg!”
I gasped in surprise as her body glowed and hummed with the unmistakable signs of an Adept casting a Psynergy spell, followed a second later by a massive block of ice falling on top of me. The next second, she’d grabbed an axe off the floor with her teeth and started hacking away at the block of ice I was pinned under, leaving dents in my armor and gashes in my clothes.
“Felix!” Karen yelled before taking a deep breath and channeling enough Psynergy to flash white before shouting, “Dragonform!”
The next moment, a yellow-orange Flame Dragon barrelled into my assailant, and the pony who was obviously the fourth Adept was thrown against the wall of the cave.
“You alright?” Karen asked as she picked up the block of ice with her dragon form’s arms and threw it against the other wall, shattering it.
“I’m fine,” I replied after dusting myself off. “Looks like we’ll have to knock some sense into this one, though.”
“No kidding,” Yegelos replied with a nod. “She seems ready to kill.”
After shouting “Grip!”, I picked up the Sol Blade with the conjured hand and willed it to raise over my head. In the next second, a furious howl filled the air, and the hand swung the blade into the star that materialized in front of it, sending it hurtling towards the transformed Mercury Adept.
“Ahhhhh!” the Alicorn/Adept screamed as the star connected, slamming her into the wall again.
However, that wasn’t enough to keep her down.
“So, you’re going to fight back, are you?” she snapped. “Well, I’m not going down! Take this! Megacool!”
Massive icy spikes burst through the ground beneath the three of us, throwing us into the air. Yegelos and I crashed back down, but Karen surprised our adversary by flapping her dragon wings and touching down lightly.
“Wait, I thought there were three ponies! Why are there suddenly two ponies and a dragon?” the Alicorn gasped while looking around in confusion.
“Maybe this will answer your question!” Karen roared. “Rising Dragon!”
The Alicorn gasped in disbelief as a column of fire ending in a dragon head shape rose out of the ground and slammed her into the ceiling.
“That was Psynergy!” the Alicorn groaned as she got back to her hooves. “You’re Adepts! Why are you in this world?”
“We could ask you the same question,” I began as Karen returned to her unicorn form, “but you’ll probably give us the same answer I’m about to give you: an incredibly powerful Mercury Adept named Alex threw each of us into the void beneath Weyard after using transformative Psynergy on us. I trust you ran afoul of him, too?”
“I did,” the Mercury Adept replied with a nod. “I’m Maya, a Lemurian sailor. Alex threw me and my ship over Gaia Falls after hitting me with a blast of powerful Psynergy, which turned me into a pony. My ship also was damaged upon arrival, so I’ve been hiding out in this cave for five years while trying to obtain the means to repair it without drawing attention to myself.”
“What’s wrong with being seen?” I asked, voicing my confusion, which Karen and Yegelos appeared to share, at least if their expressions were any indication.
“Take one good look at my appearance and ask that again,” Maya huffed. “It shouldn’t be that hard to see.”
I was still confused, but Karen and Yegelos seemed to understand within seconds.
“Of course,” the Proxian said with a nod. “You’d stick out like a sore thumb, what with being an Alicorn and all.”
“Exactly,” Maya grumbled. “If one more pony calls me a ‘Princess’, I think I’ll lose it! I am not royalty! I am in no way related to King Hydros!”
“Well, Alex is here,” I told the Lemurian. “He’s more powerful than the Wise One now, and he wants me dead. I’m Felix, a friend of Piers.”
“Felix, hmm?” Maya said thoughtfully. “If you’re that Felix, I’m more than eager to assist you in any way I can. The codgers of the Senate may despise you, but everyone else in Lemuria loves you and your friends. In fact, thanks to you, the people of Lemuria have Conservato and his fellow Senators cowed into letting King Hydros walk all over them. They fear the very masses they claim to represent. They know that the threat of an all-out riot looms over them at all times, so they don’t dare question the King thanks to his renewed popularity with the people. It’s thanks to the changes you and your friends brought to us that forced the Senate to lift the ban on Lemurians leaving Lemuria.”
“Well, Alex is right outside the cave, and we need to escape somehow,” Yegelos informed her. “We need to combine our strengths to beat him, and with all four of us, we have a chance. But we’re in a pretty bad position at the moment.”
“Say no more!” the Mercury Adept said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Thanks to some local shipwrights, my ship is finally seaworthy again! We’ll just sail out of here, using Alex’s own storm as cover!”
“Piers actually taught me how to sail, and I don’t think—” I tried to cut in, but Maya cut me off, her eyes saying she really knew what she was talking about, here.
“I have a Cloak Ball, dummy,” the Lemurian giggled. “There should be enough darkness caused by the storm for us to Cloak the ship into the darkness. As long as the light level is low enough, we should be able to become invisible and make our getaway.”
“Wow, convenient,” I said with a whistle. How much longer would this strange streak of good luck last? I had no idea, but I intended to take advantage of it as much as I could. “Lead the way!”
“It’s farther in,” Maya said before gripping her axe with her teeth and dragging it along.
“You can’t use your magic worth a darn, either?” Karen asked, getting the Lemurian to pause and drop her axe to the ground with a clatter.
“Actually, yes,” Maya groaned. “I have wings and a horn, but I can use neither effectively. I can’t fly, and I can’t use magic at all.”
“Well, though Yegelos can fly, he does so by using a Hover Jade to ‘cheat’,” I told our new companion, drawing a groan of embarrassment from the Anemos. “And Karen only recently figured out how to use magic. We can’t help you with the flight issue just yet, but maybe we could help you get the hang of basic-level magic before we go.”
“I’m ready and willing to learn,” Maya replied with a salute. “Please instruct me on what I must do.”
“Karen, if you would do the honors,” I suggested, eliciting a nod from the Mars Adept.
“Of course,” she said with a smile before turning to face her new student. “Now, first off, magic uses the mind, just like Psynergy does. This is where the problem originates. You’ve been using Psynergy your whole life, so your mind automatically reaches for Psynergy, even if you try to do something as simple as lifting that axe of yours.”
“So, how are we supposed to fix that?” Maya inquired curiously.
“I’m going to seal your Psynergy, first,” Karen explained. “With no Psynergy to get in the way, you’ll be able to get a proper feel for magic.”
“Actually, can I do it?” Yegelos requested. “I’d like to help.”
“Can any of your Djinn seal Psynergy?” Karen shot back, seemingly doubtful that the answer would be “yes”.
“Don’t need any,” Yegelos countered smugly. “I know Bind.”
“In that case, go right ahead,” Karen sighed. “Bind can last longer than a Djinni’s seal can, anyway.”
Yegelos rubbed his forehooves together excitedly for a couple seconds before channeling Psynergy and crying, “Bind!”
Jupiter Psynergy quickly enveloped Maya, forming a temporary seal on her Psynergy.
“Okay, while the seal’s in place, focus your mind on two things,” Karen instructed, “Your horn and the axe’s handle. Try to lift the axe with your mind, and as long as you focus on the mental motions, the magic should do the rest.”
Maya nodded, grit her teeth, and her horn suddenly shone with a brilliant gold aura, which quickly enveloped the axe's handle, as well.
The axe rose off the ground, and with a few adjustments, it was being held at an angle resembling how a human would’ve held it.
“Good,” Karen said, nodding in approval. “Now, try lifting a few other things while still holding the axe. Let’s see how well you can do before the seal wears off.”
With another nod, Maya extended the aura to encompass pebbles, spent firewood, and a few crystals littering the ground. All floated into the air, and Maya smiled as she managed to manipulate every object in her magical grip, making them seem to dance and whirl about each other in midair.
Her smile vanished as I sensed Mercury Psynergy start to build in her. The seal had faded, and her horn was flickering as beads of sweat formed on her brow.
“Now, for the final step,” Karen announced. “Now that you know what magic feels like, reach out to both your Psynergy and the magic at the same time. It helped me separate the two in my mind, and it should work for you, too.”
With another nod, Maya shut her eyes, more sweat starting to form as she struggled with the concept. Her horn almost winked out, but then it shone even brighter than before, the dazzling golden light bathing the chamber in its warm glow.
The Psynergy was also there, and Maya gave a wider smile than the one from before.
“Now, try casting a Psynergy spell!” Karen suggested. “Let’s see if you can do it!”
Nodding enthusiastically, Maya cried, “Pure Wish!”. The Mercury spell washed over the four of us, healing all of our injuries and leaving us good as new.
Dropping everything but her axe, Maya motioned for us to follow her. “Follow me! The ship’s this way!”
We galloped through the cave system, following Maya along a path dimly lit by torches. The path was long, but just as I was about to ask how much further we had to go, we came to a large chamber housing a ship with neither sails nor oars, let alone any visible means of locomotion. The dragon head design on the bow of the ship clearly marked it as a Lemurian vessel.
The boat bobbed slightly in the water of the chamber, which was open to the sea beyond. We could hear the howling of the wind, and flashes of lightning would replace the dim lighting with a perfect view of everything for a split second at regular intervals.
“There he is,” Maya gushed as she led the way to a plank of wood leading from the rocky outcropping we were on to her ship. “My personal ship. The first new Lemurian ship in over a thousand years. Like any Lemurian ship, we’ll have to go to the engine room, first, but after we get him up and running, I’ll show you what he can really do! Sure, Captain Piers’ ship can fly with the help of a Hover Jade, but mine has his own tricks!”
“‘He’?” Karen repeated, sounding quite confused. “Why do you call your ship a ‘he’?”
“All the old tales portrayed a ship’s captain as if he were married to his ship!” Maya swooned. “I love the old tales, and I felt I just had to act the same! Since the old captains were all men, of course they referred to their ships as female! But I, being a woman—at the time, at least—chose to refer to my ship as a male! So, I’d appreciate it if you honored that and never call him a 'her'. It may be awkward to you, but he and I have been through so much together.”
“Understood,” I said with a nod. “Now, let’s get below. Piers’ ship had been locked before we powered it up, but monsters managed to get inside in spite of that, somehow.”
“Better safe than sorry, I guess,” Maya replied with a nod of her own. “Now, come on! Let’s get him moving!”
After Maya raised the black crystal orb required for the use of a Lemurian ship, the door to the interior opened, allowing us access to the ship’s interior. Thankfully, there was nothing to get in our way to the engine room, and after Maya inserted the orb into the engine, the ship powered up without incident.
“Now, it’s time we got out of here!” Maya declared after we returned to the deck and gripped the wheel with both front hooves, channeling a small amount of Psynergy to allow her to control her ship. “My beloved, it’s finally time for you and me to set sail again!”
The ship slowly began to move, inching its way out of the cave bit by bit, finally exiting into the stormy sea outside.
Maya channeled a little more Psynergy before crying “Cloak!” As the spell took hold, the ship, as well as all four of us on board, appeared to melt into the shadows, wrapped in a faint veil of Psynergetic light that only the most observant of Adepts would notice if we had been stationary. With the extremely choppy seas tossing Maya’s ship about, however, even the most observant Adept would be likely to overlook us entirely.
“So, where to, Felix?” Maya asked as we put more distance between us and the coast. “My beloved can sail anywhere you wish!”
“How about east, towards Zebrica?” Yegelos suggested. “I’ve never been there, but I’m certain it’s far enough away from here to give us time to prepare a little more.”
Though I had no knowledge of this planet’s geography, I nodded in agreement, bringing a smile to Maya’s face.
“To Zebrica it is, then!” she declared. “Everyone, we’re off!”
“FELIX, I KNOW YOU’RE HERE SOMEWHERE!” Alex’s voice boomed. “YOU CAN’T HIDE FOREVER!”
“That’s what he thinks,” Maya giggled. “By the time he stops searching the area for us, we’ll be long gone.”
Just then, my streak of good luck ran out. A stray lightning bolt hit the boat, and though it did no damage to the vessel, the sudden jolt broke Maya’s concentration enough to dispel the Psynergy keeping us hidden.
In an instant, Alex had warped right in front of the vessel, grinning wickedly as he floated effortlessly in the air.
“Thought you could get away by boat, Felix?” the Mercury Clan traitor scoffed, shaking his head in disappointment. “When did you become such a coward? Well, whatever. It’s too late for you now! DIE!”
Alex’s body flashed a myriad of colors as the hum of insanely-powerful Psynergy filled the air.
“What do we do now?” Karen shrieked in pure terror. “He’s got us cornered!”
“Not yet, he doesn’t!” Maya declared as she began channeling so much Psynergy that her entire body turned a solid blue. “Everyone! Channel as much Psynergy as I am, then focus it all into the cannon mounted above the cabin!”
We followed her lead, and I chanced a glance at the roof of the cabin. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before, but a massive cannon was perched above it. In fact, cannons lined both sides of the ship, and I hadn’t noticed a single one up until that moment!
My body turned a solid orange as Yegelos' turned a solid purple and Karen's turned a solid red. Following Maya’s directions, we forced as much Psynergy into the cannon as we could muster, and just as Alex opened his mouth to cast whatever terrifying spell he intended to use, Maya roared, “Open fire!”
The cannon launched a massive sphere of multicolored Psynergy at the godlike Adept, which struck him square in the chest, sending him flying until he was out of sight. The storm cleared, and the four of us collapsed to the deck, mentally exhausted from using that much Psynergy in one attack.
“See?” Maya panted. “We got rid of him.”
“I don’t think we hurt him, though,” I replied, feeling just as winded as Maya sounded.
“The impact probably threw him thousands of miles away,” Yegelos groaned. “That was a lot of Psynergy. At least he won’t be back anytime soon.”
“But if that didn’t even scratch him,” Karen groaned, gasping for breath, “that doesn’t bode well for our upcoming confrontation with him at all.”
“Everyone, I think we should rest in the cabin to get our Psynergetic strength back,” Maya suggested. “A quick nap will do us all a world of good. We can head for Zebrica after we wake up. I can’t move the ship while completely tapped, after all.”
We all nodded wordlessly in agreement before groggily following Maya into the cabin. Each of us picked out a bed, then we all quickly fell asleep. Hopefully, Alex wouldn’t return before we woke up.
