I
Chapter Five
Sugarcube Corner
“Er.... Help ponies?” Twilight offered.
“Sure,” Aranea shrugged, “Who first?”
“Fluttershy?”
Upon Aranea’s arrival at the small cottage in the woods, she immediately deadpanned, “Another tree house, I should have known.” She shifted her armor a bit, and headed up to the door. The grass crunched beneath her feet and she could hear bushes shake as she approached, even catching a glimpse of a tail as one of the bushes rustled. Nature-friendly was likely an understatement.
“Hello?” she called out, rapping on the door with her knuckles, “Fluttershy? Twilight sent me.” The house remained relatively silent for a few minutes longer until the door finally creeped open, revealing the yellow pegasus mare from the day before. The warrior smiled at her as the she looked up.
“Sorry about what happened when we first met,” the woman said, reaching up and scratching the back of her head. “May be a tad over-reactive.” The pegasus hid behind her mane, before finally muttering something Aranea couldn’t quite catch. Raising an eyebrow, she looked at the mare again.
“It’s fine…” she muttered slightly louder before backing up and letting Aranea enter the cottage properly. The room was full of various kinds of furniture clearly made to suit the plethora of animals already in the house. In one room there was even a bear, though he seemed to be playing poker with a rabbit, not that Fluttershy had noticed.
Aranea raised an eyebrow when a bowl of some kind of salad was slid to the rabbit, the bear clearly disappointed. She turned back to Fluttershy who was making her way towards a door. When she walked, much like the Red Sea, the animals parted so Aranea could follow Fluttershy.
The mare led her outside, past a group of other animals as they moved towards the forest’s edge where a small fence surrounded a few bushes. The small pegasus lifted her wings and hopped over the small fence, and a few seconds after her hooves touched the ground she was ambushed by a group of baby animals.
I’m going to get diabetes from this place, Aranea thought as the rather adorable scene unfolded before her. Fluttershy cooed and hugged each of the baby animals before reaching into the small sack on her shoulder and pulling out a container and a few bottles. She quickly passed them out with her hooves and the baby animals dug in.
“So, you didn’t need my help, as I can see,” Aranea muttered. Fluttershy shook her head and hopped over the fence again, this time walking off towards a small shed. Once again, the building was intertwined with the plants. No longer surprised by this kind of structure, after all she had seen two others, Aranea followed her inside and saw what the small mare had led her to.
A few large buckets and some bags of seed and other varied animal care and plant care materials were scattered across the decent sized shed. “I need some help getting some of this out so I can use it…”
“Sure thing,” Aranea answered, hefting up a large bag of bird seed. “Where would you like it?”
“Inside the house please,” the small mare muttered, eliciting a nod from the warrior in front of her. Aranea grabbed a second bag and moved inside, thankful that the items weren’t as large as what they would have been back home. Probably only three-fourths the size. It took a bit longer, simply due to the amount of materials.
Once most of it was in, Fluttershy began storing birdseed and other foods in her cupboards and pantries, whilst directing Aranea to use the buckets of water, or milk in some cases, to fill some of the animal’s water dishes. Several hours later, simply due to the number of animals across the house and yards, they finally finished and Aranea got everything put back. “When do you do this next?”
The mare shifted, looking uncomfortable, “It depends…”
“Does anyone help you?” Aranea frowned.
“Sometimes Big Mac does,” Fluttershy answered, still not looking the woman in the eyes.
“Well, if he isn’t available next time, or any other, I’m open to helping, just let Twilight know and I’ll be here,” Aranea looked around the house. “I think we can finish quicker next time, maybe leave you some free-time.”
The small mare nodded softly. “Pinkie said to bring you to Sugarcube Corner,” Fluttershy said, hiding her face, “So we should go there now.”
Aranea nodded and put her spear, left at the front door, on her back again before opening the door and letting Fluttershy out first. The sun remained high in the sky until they got to town, when it suddenly dropped out of the sky and the moon rose to replace it. Aranea frowned before shaking her head, Bloody freaking magic, never makes any proper sense.
The soft crunch of grass was the only thing accompanying their conversation of silence and was replaced by dirt and gravel once they were all the way in town. The houses remained brightly lit, despite the fact of it being night. Aranea frowned, thinking to herself. Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something important…
She was distracted when loud noises began replacing the silence as they reached the confectionary storefront. Literal confectionery, as the entire store seemed to be a giant cupcake. Aranea winced at the taste of sugar in the air, almost like inhaling the stuff, though not quite as much in volume. She winced at the touch of the door handle, which felt like it too was covered in sugar.
The instant she opened the door, a veritable explosion of streamers and confetti flew out the door and scattered in the winds of the night. Aranea spit a stray streamer out of her mouth and raised an eyebrow at the scene that had unfolded before her. Many ponies were eating cake or other various confectioneries. The room itself was heavily decorated with party supplies. After looking around the room she finally sighed and stepped inside.
Various ponies laughed as a cupcake managed to get shoved straight into Pinkie Pie’s muzzle, leaving her to stare cross-eyed at the mess. With a very illogical swipe of her tongue, which encompassed half her face, she licked it off. “Yummy!” she called out, much to the amusement and laughter of the ponies in the room, and one odd resident off in the corner.
He stood there, watching with a grin on his face. However, his posture slumped as if something were wrong, whether with his back or otherwise. No one had noticed, as he was aptly chatting with anypony who got close enough and bothered to talk to him. The current person was one Twilight Sparkle, who had brought up the topic of the energies she had garnered from her latest analysis of him.
“I have no words for it,” she said, “It’s more powerful than anything we have and could run a town like Ponyville indefinitely.” She seemed rather giddy for a moment, but her face fell, “Yet, despite trying every method I could to harness it, it dissipated like it never existed!”
The man twitched, pain clear in his face momentarily, before he smiled back. “Best to keep trying,” he said, “there’s likely a method you didn’t try for one reason or another.” The unicorn mare frowned momentarily before teleporting a quill and paper into the air in front of her and rapidly writing something with magic before teleporting it away. The man stared at her for a moment, before going silent with a look of deep contemplation on his face. After a few more seconds of silence, Twilight gave him a goodbye and walked off.
“Magic…” the figure said wincing again and clutching his head, before it sated. M-a-g, those letters were important to him, but why? Was it someone with that name? Was it something beginning with those letters? He tried to catch the thoughts again, only to receive another splitting pain in his head, like a wedge was being driven between himself and his own memories. Clutching a nearby stool, he focused again trying to push the wedge out of the way so that he could grasp what those letters meant. Yet, the wedge remained firmly in place. Taking a deep breath and letting the pain fade away, his vision blurred and he sat down against the wall, clutching his pounding head as it echoed with whispers of pain and letters.
“-nbow, it’s just a game!” a white unicorn mare was scolding a very infuriated looking pegasus with a cyan coat. Her mane was striped like a rainbow and she was flying the air, holding something in her hood that she looked ready to throw across the room in her anger.
“Its making me angry, I hate losing!” the same mare yelled back, her hoof leaning back threateningly. A few small foals on the ground were watching the argument with both amused and eager faces. Once the argument these two were having was done, they could play Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey! The small foals let out a cry as the hoof went back and a yay of relief as it lowered, only to let out a cry again as the hoof went back up.
After just a few more moments of this, Rainbow Dash huffed heavily and tossed the tail to the floor, which the first foal scrambled to pick up as a mare approached him with the blindfold. “It’s a stupid game.”
The white-coated mare, Rarity, rolled her eyes and have an aggravated sigh before letting the cyan pegasus be. A tantrum she could throw and be unladylike for all she cared. The simple matter was that Rainbow was being childish. At this point, most, if not everyone, in the room were ignoring the guest of honor, though not intentionally. The said man was gripping his head again, the event had struck a chord in his broken memories, causing something to split through his mind at lightning speed.
Nearly biting through his own tongue as he grinded his teeth in an attempt to not cry out, the memory flashed through his mind and replaced all reality momentarily.
”What do you mean?” The mare said to him as he grabbed the tail so she couldn’t launch it across the room. Rarity, on the other hand, huffed and gave a hoity-toity smile of I-Told-You-So to the cyan pegasus.
“It’s okay to be childish,” he said, though he felt his voice sounded oddly off and different. Almost as if he was speaking into a terribly old microphone that was hooked up to an even older computer. He gave Rarity a look, “But it’s almost important to be mature.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow before shaking her head and nodding. “Maturity is very important in order to be a proper lady,” she nodded at the man with her head, “or gentleman.”
“I don’t like being stuck up,” Rainbow said, “I’m too awesome for that.”
The man groaned before handing the tail to a small child, “Rainbow, you’re already a bit stuck up with how much you call yourself awesome, but maturity is different. You can act like a kid, but you can’t react like someone who lacks that kind of life experience.”
Rainbow Dash made and O face whilst Rarity looked rather miffed at his words, though she nodded begrudgingly, “Quite right, Magnus.”
Magnus winced again, and then let out a chattering gasp, “My...name…” He whispered it to himself, feeling proud, happy, and oddly sad for having remembered this. Yet, his memories showed something similar to what he had witnessed earlier, though the end result was different without him. Something urged him to say the same things to both mares, but he stopped himself as he stood up and winced, the same white coated mare calling out to him from across the room.
“Are you alright, dear?” she asked politely.
“I’m-” Magnus fell to his knees as another fiery whip of pain cascaded through his mind, reigniting earlier pains and causing the young man to let out a voiceless cry of pain as his vision swam and he dropped to his knees. Darkness whirled through his vision and the room lurched and shifted, the ponies moving with it.
When he finally recovered, the room looked oddly different with subtle changes mostly throughout, yet something major stood out primarily. It was a young woman, in dark colored armor and a weapon on her back, standing at a table nearby. Much like looking in a mirror, their faces mimicked the other’s shock.
“Who the hell are you?” The woman gaped. Magnus winced in pain, though the tendrils of darkness in his vision had already started receding rapidly. Shakily getting to his feet Magnus let out a heavy breath, the headache receding from the forefront of his mind. He rubbed his forehead with his palm and finally looked at the woman, all bleariness having vanished from his mind.
“I’m,” a cough and a small spike of pain, “Magnus, at your service.”
“Aranea,” the woman answered, “How did you get here?”
“I’m not sure,” Magnus answered, looking around the eerily similar room. Everything was so similar, but so slightly different it was disorienting to him. The man reached out for the chair that had been closest to him, so eerily similar, yet it was clearly made of a different wood. “What did it look like when I got here?”
“To be fair, I was very shocked,” the woman shifted, biting her lip, “but it looked like a silhouette made of swirling darkness just kind of shifted into the room.” A pony nearby nodded and a few foals were hiding behind parents or, in one case, three of them were huddled underneath a table. Adorable as they were, Magnus was too distracted to notice the scene itself and directed his attention back at Aranea.
“Swirling darkness?” Magnus asked, flinching as a whip of fiery pain struck his mind again, “I...I remember such a thing, the Ren’orsa-ca…” He whispered, memories of what he had once been, of consuming worlds just like this one in raging hunger. A small amount of bile rose to his mouth, leaving a horrid taste in his mouth as he shook it off. “I mean you all no harm,” he said, “I only wish to return...home?”
Aranea’s face fell, and she gulped before giving a heavy sigh. “You and me both,” she said, her hand clenching in a fist. Turning around, she looked around the room rapidly, clearly searching for someone. “Is Twilight still here?”
“No ma’am!” one of the small ponies called out, “She left awhile ago.”
“Very well,” Aranea said, grabbing Magnus’s sleeve and pulling him towards the door. She pushed it open and left the ponies to party whilst pulling Magnus firmly out the door. It shut behind her and Magnus raised an eyebrow.
“You do not need to drag me, I will follow,” he said, standing still as Aranea looked down at her own hand gripping his sleeve. She eyed him for a moment before releasing and pulling her spear forth from her back. She nodded to him and they began walking, with her slightly ahead.
“Sorry about that, force of habit,” she said, not even looking back towards him as she spoke.
“Quite alright,” he answered, going quiet himself. Unlike the ponies, this woman spawned no memories lingering in his mind and left him rather stable. It was pleasant, but still so very strange that a world like this could have changed so. Yet, evidence permeated the area. Some houses had different colors than he remembered seeing in his Ponyville, while others looked exactly the same. Incredibly disorienting.
Aranea nodded and they slowed to a halt as the entered the square for City Hall. “Something doesn’t feel right,” Aranea muttered before she began quickly moving towards the building in question. The night remained quiet and, oddly enough, no sounds came from anywhere at all. Uncomfortable, unnatural silence.
“I agree,” Magnus muttered, “It’s...off.”
Aranea had already reached city hall and was poking around it, looking inside the windows. The building was completely dark and no signs of movements were evidenced in it, or in the square surrounding it. Yet, despite the lack of explanation, silence permeated the air and a tension, thick enough to slice apart with a butter knife it seemed, was nearly palpable as she looked around wildly, only to freeze.
“Son of a-” a painfully loud and ripping explosion blew Magnus across the square, straight into the woman herself. Thankfully, he rolled right off of her as they fell and their ears buzzed from the deafening change in noise. Magnus winced and began trying to clear his ears with a finger while Aranea seemed quite perfectly fine as she rose to her feet, spear at the ready. Another explosion, though farther away than the first, went off at the other end of the square, from where they had come.
A large metal creature, an axe wielded in hand, had arisen from literal nowhere. Silver and black adorned its armor and its face glowed with an eerie light as the two floating creatures around it bobbed lazily. Aranea cursed loudly, enough for Magnus to hear.
“A demon,” she hissed and raised her spear up. “Can you fight?” She looked at Magnus quickly before directing her attention back to the metal beast before her, shifting and walking lazily, though it would soon notice them, however dark it was.
Magnus opened his mouth and frowned, “I am not sure… I do not have any weapons on myself.”
“Fuck,” the woman hissed before sitting down and reaching into a bag. Lifting up a bundle of bottles, though their contents varied in color and seemed to emanate an odd glow. She finally pulled out a couple of tufts of something. “If you see me getting too injured, start by using these,” she held up the jars, “and if you run out, start using the feathers.”
Magnus nodded shakily and watched as the woman turned and leapt skyward before spiraling down, straight onto the metallic beast’s head. It shifted back and the two bobbing creatures glowed brightly, only for her to land on the ground and roll back. After a certain distance, they stopped and she rushed forward again, batting them back towards the beast, nearly causing it to trip over them.
She began a dance of sorts, where the creatures would glow, and the demon would swing its axe, only for her to dodge back properly and the creatures to stop. Finally, after naught but a few more strikes, one of them exploded and the axe caught her by surprise, sending her skywards. He tossed up one of the darker vials and she glowed green briefly before shifting herself and driving her spear straight into the other and causing an explosion that stumbled the metallic beast and left it open to rapid strikes from her.
Leaping backwards as the axe swung towards her, she cursed again loudly before rolling underneath the next swing and striking straight for the demon’s knee joints. It switched tactics and swung straight down, though Aranea managed to use her spear and glance the blow off to the side. She crunched straight to the ground from the blow and Magnus immediately used another vial, this time of a brighter assortment and Aranea again glowed briefly.
The demon made yet another swing and this time she used the weight of the blow to her advantage and struck wildly at it the instant the blow missed. Several jabs to the knee caused it to fall to the ground, unable to stand any longer. Its attacks, however, were not impaired as such and it swung with just as much vigor. Once again, she used it to her advantage.
Letting the blow strike her spear, it flung her skywards and she disappeared into the darkness momentarily. Yet, mere seconds later, her spinning figure reappeared and slammed into the beast with a large amount of force.
A blast emanated from the spear itself and drove the beast to the ground, letting her force her weapon through its helmet. Immediately, the being began to drip in darkness and fade out of sight. Huffing from the effort, she nodded at Magnus as he lifted another another vial she was briefly covered in green light a third time.
“I knew I forgot something important,” Aranea said as she moved towards Magnus. She waved him towards her and opened her bag, letting his drop the items inside. She immediately began walking briskly, “And it’s even more imperative I talk to Twilight now.”