//------------------------------// // 1.7 - Escape // Story: Ponies, Portals, and Physics: A Practical Study on Unscheduled Interplanetary Excursion // by superpurple //------------------------------// While I wanted nothing more than to immediately get to work on my escape—I was beyond tired of waiting around and literally itching to get out this damned room—what’s-her-face’s point was a valid one. It was best to wait until a time when there wasn’t anyone around to hear me working on breaking out, or in the halls to spot me afterward. A few more hours sitting around was well worth the increased chance of getting this right. Waiting had an additional benefit, in the form of the moonlight pouring in through the external window. As the night progressed, the moon rose up above the tree tops and high into the clear sky. Still nearly full, it provided ample light to work by. Which was good, because it was going to be enough of a hassle as it was to precisely manipulate tools using my new avian hands without the added headache of needing to hold a flashlight to see anything at all. So, again, I waited. This time for the sounds of activity in the building to slowly die down. It wasn’t until well past midnight that the only sounds were the creaks and groans of the structure—hopefully signaling that all the occupants had gone to bed and that it was time to get to work. The first step of opening the door was getting the horizontal beam on its front out of the way so I could access the lock. The beam was held in place by a dozen or so nails along its length, which probably would have been enough to stop someone who only had hooves at their disposal. But I was no mere pony, I had the advantage of opposable thumbs! Well… that, and modern steel tools. Okay, so it might have been just the tools that gave me the advantage.1 ---------- 1But thumbs are still required to use the tools, so I’ll still count it as a win. Thumbs: 1. Ponies: 0. ---------- Unfolding my multitool into a pair of pliers and flipping open my knife, I got to work on prying the first nail out of the wood. Just pulling it out with the pliers was out of the question—the nails were too solidly seated for me to get anywhere doing that. And without a claw hammer, I had to get creative. First, I used the knife to dig out a small amount of wood around the head of the nail—just enough so the pliers could fit underneath. Then I stuck the pliers under the head at a shallow angle, like a lever. The blade of the knife laid flat beneath pliers acted as a fulcrum and distributed pressure across the relatively soft wood. The final step was applying a swift-yet-heavy blow to the raised handles of the pliers—using the heaviest textbook I had as an improvised hammer. While effective, it was a painfully slow process. Each strike levered the nail out no more than a millimeter at a time and the positions of the tools had to be constantly re-adjusted as they slipped around. Eventually, the nail was loose enough to be pulled out the rest of the way. After setting the nail aside, I got to work on the next one. And the next one. The process repeated a dozen more times with the other fasteners. When there were only two nails left on the very end of the beam, I abandoned the precision approach and elected to simply bash it into submission with the book—careful to not make too much unnecessary noise. A final wrench at the beam tore it clean off and I was free to access the keyhole it had been concealing. Using a flashlight, I peered into the internals of the mechanism. Now, I was no expert on locks or lock picking. I wouldn’t even consider myself a hobbyist with much practical experience on the subject. What I did have, however, was a vast trove of theoretical knowledge acquired after spending several hours watching YouTube videos and reading Wikipedia articles at 3 AM instead of studying for exams the next morning. And using that knowledge, I could say with some semblance of confidence that the lock before me looked a lot like a like that-type-of-lock-that-I-didn’t-know-the-name-of-that-has-the-things-that2… well, it was one of the ones that could probably be opened relatively easily with a suitable skeleton key. ---------- 2Look, I specifically said that I wasn’t studying at the time. Besides, the fact that it’s called a “warded lock” is an irrelevant detail for practical applications. ---------- And though I didn’t have a skeleton key on hand, I did have a pair of saddlebags filled with years of accumulated junk. From within the depths of the bags, I retrieved a handful of heavy-duty paper clips. Then using the pliers, I straightened them out and tightly twisted pairs of them together into strands. Then those strands were twisted into strands that were thicker still. Repeating the process once more, I had a length of coiled steel that was about as big as a pencil and just barely flexible enough that I could bend it into shape with some effort. In this case, the shape I went for was that of an ‘L’, with a small loop on the other end to use as a handle. Skeleton-key-shaped bit of metal in hand, I went at the lock. I would like to say that my crafting skills were so impressive that the lock just clicked open on the first attempt. Sadly, reality didn’t give a shit about what I liked. What followed was several minutes of wrestling with the lock mechanism—accompanied by a perfectly reasonable amount3 of cursing under my breath—while I motivated the antique mechanism progressively towards the ‘unlocked’ position. ---------- 3A metric fuck-ton. ---------- When I was pretty sure the lock had fought all it could and would go further, I gave the door a tentative push—which still did nothing at all. I let out a heavy sigh. Damn. I guess it was too much to hope that I wouldn’t also need to use the handle on the outside. Whatever, that was a comparatively simple problem to solve. With the help of my trusty reach-extending ruler and some fussing about with my arm stuck through the window, I found the door handle and pushed down on it. To my immense relief, it moved under the pressure. There was a quiet click from the latch and the door jerked outward under my weight. I pulled my arm out of the window and took a step back to observe the results. I blinked. “Huh… That actually worked… Neat!” I was honestly a little surprised, but I was not about to complain. A smug grin made its way to my face and I started to chuckle. “Hehehe. Haha. Ha!” I hopped up on two legs so I could flip off the door with both hands simultaneously while dancing around it. “Haha! Fuck you, door. You thought you could hold me? You were wrong! You’ve got nothing on ohshit—” My victory dance was cut short as my foot caught on one of the saddlebags’ straps and I plunged forward. I only barely managed to catch myself and prevent my beak from getting bruised against the floor for the second time. Or would that have been the third? Fourth? Either way, I took it as a sign that that was probably enough celebrating. Step one done. Time for the next part: getting the fuck out of here. I got back up and retrieved my ‘key’ from the door, putting it into my jacket pocket along with the other tools. Though a bit mangled after its fight with the lock, it might come in handy later. I tossed everything else I’d used into my bags and threw them onto my back, adjusting their position over my wings before buckling the straps around my chest to hold everything in place. Hopefully it would be enough to keep the damned wings from slipping out and dragging around like useless slabs of meat while I tried to sneak around. I gave the room one last look-over to see if I missed anything. I hadn’t, so I turned and trotted out of the prison that had held me for over a day and into the dimly lit hall… but not before giving the door the bird one last time. A little more celebrating couldn’t hurt, it was good for morale. Now that I was free of that room, I just had to find the one the mirror portal was in. I paused mid-step. How the hell was I supposed to go about doing that? Going around checking every door in the manor sounded like a great way to maximize my chances of getting caught. And while I didn’t know exactly how big this place was, I got the impression that it wasn’t small. Which probably meant a lot of rooms to check. It’s not like I could just ask for directions… Damnit. I probably should have at least tried to get some more information from my earlier accomplice. Maybe I could have found a way to ask about where they’d found me without sounding suspicious, or crazy. But it was too late for that now. “Shit.” I hissed. “Uhhh…” What did I know about the room that could narrow down the search? I thoughtfully stroked my beard—er, beak. I knew the room had been dark. Pitch black. Couldn’t see shit levels of darkness. So definitely no windows, which probably meant no exterior walls. Maybe located centrally within the building? Also, the ground was cold when I’d landed—even through my thick fur and feathers, the heat had been sucked from my side. Most floorings wouldn’t do that. A floor made of concrete, or stone—much like the one I currently stood on—however, would. The kinds of floorings you’d find in a basement or other ground-level rooms. So I was looking for a junk-filled storage room in a basement with no windows, probably central in the building. I eyed the two doors across the hall from my cell suspiciously. Maybe I’d get lucky and it’d turn out my captors had been extraordinarily lazy and didn’t feel like dragging my fuzzy ass farther than across the hall? I carefully approached the closest door and gently put my ear to the surface. There probably wasn’t anyone in it—even with my attempts to keep quiet breaking out, someone this close would have noticed. Still, it didn’t hurt to be safe. After a minute of hearing nothing, I tried the handle—which, thankfully, was unlocked. Slowly pulling the door open, I peered into the interior. It was a room nearly identical to the one I’d just left, although furnished as a modest bedroom that clearly hadn’t been used in a while. I quietly closed the door and moved to the next door down the hall, listening and waiting like before. The room was dark, with no windows to admit the moonlight, and in the small lit area around the doorway, I could see assorted boxes and barrels. Quickly, I fumbled through my pockets for my flashlight and clicked it on, illuminating the room with a cone of white light. I let out a disappointed sigh and my head sagged. It was a storage room of sorts, yes, but not the one I was looking for. This one was nearly empty, with nowhere near the same amount of clutter I remembered from the night before. “Well, fuck.” I guess I wasn't lucky after all. I shut the door behind me before marching down the hall and cautiously ascending the wooden stairs. Looks like I get to go wandering through the manor after all, searching for another wing like this one. The staircase opened into another hallway, this one much more lavishly decorated than the bare stone I’d been surrounded by all day. An ornamental carpet ran the length of the hall and paintings of landscapes and portraits of unimpressed-looking unicorns hung on the walls. Moonlight poured in through a few evenly-spaced windows, filling the hall with a pale blue glow. Trying my best to be stealthy, I crept down the hall. I didn’t want to alert anyone to my presence or wake them up. I kept to the shadows—avoiding the pools of moonlight where I could and dashing swiftly through them when I couldn’t. Thankfully, the carpet cushioned my footfalls and prevented the hall from being filled with the sound of talons clacking on wood. It may have been just a little bit too quiet, however. Every rattle of my bags or creak of the floorboards was like a gunshot—causing me to panic and hide behind the nearest potted plant or piece of furniture while my heart rate and breathing returned to normal. Checking doors turned the panic up to eleven. I spent a solid five minutes standing in front of a door, holding my breath, listening, and dreading I’d be discovered the second I opened it… only for it to be a broom closet. After a linen closet, an unnecessarily huge dining room, and another broom closet, my concerns were somewhat dulled. I prowled up to the next door, briefly put my ear to the surface and almost casually opened the door into what turned out to be a kitchen. The door swung out of the way and my breath hitched at the sight of a yellow-coated pony stallion standing not five feet in front of me, his head rummaging about in a cabinet. His ears flicked and his head shot up. He stared right at me, eyes wide, with a half-eaten carrot hanging out of his mouth. We both froze. I was, understandably, panicking to high-heaven. This is it. This is how I end in the express shipment crate to Nowheresville, without any tools or allies. GG no re. Thanks for playing. Except… that wasn’t happening. The pony before me wasn’t calling out for help or moving to take me down. We both just stood there, eyes locked, neither making a sound. He looked just as shocked as I was, if not more-so. Actually, the look on his face might’ve been closer to the ‘terrified’ end of the spectrum than ‘surprised’. Which actually made some sense: from his point of view, I was a large—probably pissed off—predator who had just broken out of containment and cornered him in the middle of the night. And that was something I might be able to use. I put on the least disturbing grin I could manage with a beak. Well, maybe not the least disturbing. A little crazy would help my case. For a long while, he did nothing. Then he untensed ever so slightly. He slowly held up a hoof—which was clutching another carrot—and offered it out to me. I accepted it with a small nod. I bit the end off and chewed, then quietly said, “Say, do you know which way it is to the room I was found in?” He seemed to consider for a moment, munching on his carrot thoughtfully. Then he shrugged, sat back on his haunches, and motioned with a forehoof back the way I came, turned the ninety-degrees, and pointed again. I repeated the instructions back to him: “Down the hall that way, then turn left?” He nodded and mimed opening a door followed by going down steps. “Door at the end leads to stairs. Got it.” I nodded my thanks and left, closing the door behind me. Hopefully, he’d be more concerned with not getting in the way of the irritable griffon than he was with potentially being employee of the month. Sure enough, following the instructions led me to a door at the end of a hall which opened into a stairwell so dark I couldn’t see further than four steps down. Since I was rather fond of having a non-broken neck, I got out my flashlight, turning it on and holding it in my beak before descending. Sadly, sometimes just planning for a problem isn’t enough to prevent it. Not three steps into my descent, the flashlight started to slide out of my jaw. I paused, lifting a hand to readjust it—which was one of the worst things I could have done at the time. My balance was already iffy at best going down the stairs head first on all fours, and almost immediately after lifting my hand I lost it entirely. “Bawk!—scraww—squawk… fuck…” I tumbled down the stairs and came to a stop in a heap on the stone floor at the bottom. The flashlight came bouncing along after me and clattered against another door. Hopefully that hadn’t been too loud. I climbed back up onto all fours, dusted myself off, and then took the time to find a place around my jacket collar where I could tuck the flashlight so it pointed forward without moving. Probably should’ve done that earlier. I tried the door handle, then cursed under my breath when it refused to budge. Looks like I get to play master burglar again. I pulled out my skeleton-key and silently thanked whoever had overseen the installation of such terrible locks in this building. In nearly half the time it’d taken for the lock on my cell, I was done and opening the door. The beam from my light washed over ceiling-high stacks of crates, barrels, boxes, and more. It didn’t look like the random junk I thought it had been. More like a sample of things that had been cherry-picked from a shipping warehouse. Crates and boxes were marked with several different written scripts, most of them unreadable. Some were opened, the contents ranging from unidentifiable sacks to gold-plate ornaments. Interesting as all that was, I was only looking for one thing, and I just about cried with joy when I spotted it: half-hidden under a tipped-over stack of boxes was an ornamental mirror. I bounded over to it, jumping over smaller boxes in the way. Up close, I saw that the mirror was huge, nearly twice my height, with wing and talon motifs etched around the frame. I had to steady my shaking hand as I raised it up and slowly brought it towards the mirror surface—just like I had immediately after the crash. I held my breath as my hand and its reflection slowly approached one another. And then the talons went clack against the surface. “What.” I tried again, pressing my hand flat against the glass and giving it a little push. Nope, still solid. A little tap-tap with a talon? Nothing. The mirror remained aggressively tangible. “Okay. No need to worry. Of course it wouldn’t be that simple.” I took several deep breaths. “Let’s see… magical portal, how to do this? Uh… Abracadabra?” Poke. Clack. Nope. “Open sesame.” Clack. “Alohomora?” Clack. “Fuck.” Clack. “Goddamnit!” I vigorously slapped the mirror with both hands, hit it with a fist, and several other forms of manual encouragement. Nothing worked. Why didn’t it work? Am I doing it wrong? What am I doing wrong? Is it broken? Or maybe you just made up all the stuff about the portal. I sequestered that treacherous part of my brain into a corner where it wouldn’t interrupt. “Nope nope nope. Shut up brain. Not helping!” I stepped back and began walking in a tight circle. Don’t panic. Remember step one: no panicking allowed. No panicking, just thinking. But not too much thinking either. That was bad too. My eyes crossed. “Uhhh…” Is this even the right room? Was I even here before? It looks about like how I remembered, but maybe I’m just remembering things wrong. Maybe the carrot dude gave me the wrong instructions. Yeah, that’s probably it. Why would he help me? He was just trying to misdirect me, but I had seen through it! Yeah, I’ve just got the wrong room is all. I turned and walked to the door. I just have to keep looking until I find another basement with a big— My back foot stepped on something loose and slipped out from under me. I fell, smashing my knee on the floor and rolling onto my side. “Fffffff…” I wheezed, cradling my knee. What stupid piece of junk dared trip me? I fumbled around on the floor, grabbed the offending item, prepared to chuck it across the room—but then stopped. The item in question was a bicycle headlight, minus the mounting. Almost like it had been knocked off the handlebars in some kind of accident and deposited here along with the rider. I clicked the button, turning the light on and off. It still worked. And then I panicked. “Shit fuck shit fuck shit shit shit FUCK!” I scrambled back to the mirror and pounded on it with both fists. “Why won’t you work! Aaarrrrghhh!” I clutched my head, talons digging at my skull, and slumped against the side of the mirror. The treacherous part of my mind I’d been suppressing took this opportunity to break free and come to the foreground: Cut the shit, Garrett. It’s not going to do anything. It’s clearly just a goddamn mirror. You fucking know that. You knew that. Any idea to the contrary was just a bullshit delusion you thought up so you could believe you had even half a clue about what the fuck was happening. Well guess what? You don’t know. But pretending you do and continuing this nonsense here isn’t going to help any further. What little plan there was is now completely and utterly fucked. It’s time to make a new one. Preferably one based on actual evidence instead of hopeful wishing. I steadied my breathing. “Okay. Okay. So… Planning, with facts. We got out of the cell, which is good. But Graywall was pissed before. He’s gonna be even more pissed now. We still need to leave, just not this way. Front door. Gotta leave the building. Run. Get away.” I marched towards the exit, trying my best to appear to the world much more confident than I actually was. Clack. Clunk. Clack. Clunk. Clack. Clunk. I looked down at my left hand and the headlight that was still clutched in it. Cool your shit, Garrett. This is not the time to lose it. You can do that later. “Right, right, right,” I muttered, putting the headlight into my jacket pocket. Then I gave myself a look-over for anything else I might’ve missed while flipping the fuck out. Nothing. Good. I climbed back up the stairs and started retracing my steps, trying to factor in the directions I’d been given to get from my cell to the exit. At this point, I was less concerned with getting around stealthily than I was with just getting out—if someone was going to hear me, they’d already had several prime opportunities to do just that. One of the windows caught my eye as I strode past. Or rather, what I saw through it. Specifically, the still-snow-covered yard. Then I looked at my bare hands and feet. And back at the snow. Snow that I was planning on running out into. Yeah, no. That wasn’t going to happen. Not without proper gear. It might be nearly melted, and I was used to the cold, and I was pretty sure my ass-half might have evolved to survive the arctic, but going into the snow barefoot was just something you didn’t do. And since I doubted any of these closets held griffon-shaped personal protective equipment, I had to improvise… again. I dropped down on one knee and grabbed the hem of my bedsheet toga. Using my knife, I cut off four strips of fabric, each a couple inches wide and several feet long. I then wrapped each of the strips around my paws, claws, and the scaley, not-feathered parts of my forearms. A quick inspection of myself confirmed that, with the exception of my beak, every part of me that wasn’t covered with fur or feathers was wrapped in fabric, with extra layers on my hands and feet. The look-over did reveal another problem, however, in the form of the bright red fabric of my jacket. I rolled my eyes. Of course. Couldn’t have kept my camouflage hunting jacket in my bags. No, I have to have the high-visibility red one with me when I need to escape into the night, stealthily, with possible pursuers, on an alien planet of unknown hostility. There might be something I could do about it. I removed my bags and my jacket, undid the parts of the toga fore of my waist, replaced the jacket and the bags—after wrangling my wings back into place—and finally drew the sheet back overtop of everything, tying it in the front. Giving a satisfied nod at my improvised winter camo, I resumed my escape. Without too much trouble, I managed to follow the directions to the main hall. After briefly checking that no one was watching, I crept up to the large double door and pulled it open, and slinked through to the outside. I stood on the front doorstep of the manor, with a grand garden laid out before me. Well-kept trees and hedges that still held the last remnants of winter covered the area out to the distant forest edge. A cobblestone path led from the front step, through the middle of the garden, to a road that cut away into the woods. As I took in the scene, a gust of chill night air struck me, sending a shiver down my spine and forcing me to take a step back. I wasn’t the only thing affected by the wind though—the still-open door behind got caught in the flow and was pulled shut violently. …Right on the end of my tail. Before I could stop it, a shrill, “KAWW!” left my throat and threatened to wake the whole manor. I immediately clamped my hands around my beak to stifle any further sounds and fell to the cold doorstep as a result. With almost animalistic fervor, I kicked at the door that was clamped down on my tail—the repeated strikes leaving deep claw marks in the wood until it moved enough for my tail to slip free. The door swung closed with a deep thud. For a long while, I laid on the ground, tears in eyes, beak clamped shut, cradling my throbbing tail and gritting at the pain that was at least an order of magnitude worse than any other injury I’d received in the past.4 ---------- 4A list that includes, but is not limited to: multiple counts of fingers caught in doors or under hammers, a broken arm, more solder burns than I can count, and accidentally shooting my hand with a nail gun. ---------- Jesus. Fucking. Christ. What the hell, nature? There was absolutely no reason that needed to hurt as much as it did. Even if it was broken—shit. Was it broken? I had no clue. I didn’t know how tails work. I couldn’t move it but that wasn’t fucking new at all. All I knew was that it hurt like hell. I got out my knife and cut another strip off the poor bedsheet. Then I grabbed a handful of snow from a nearby snowbank, gingerly packed it around the injured spot of my tail, and wrapped it up with the fabric. I let out a relieved sigh as the cold from the improvised ice pack worked its way through the thick fur and soothed the searing nerves beneath. With the near-crippling tail pain dealt with for the moment, I needed to move. I’d spent far too long standing—and laying—on the doorstep when I was supposed to be getting far away from here. It’s just… I’m out and free, but now what? Where the hell do I go from here? My only plan on getting home had just crashed and burned along with anything else I thought I knew. Well, not everything. One thing was still certain: Graywall was going to be beyond pissed when he found out I’d escaped, and I really didn’t want to be around when that happened. While I didn’t know specifically what to do next, I knew that staying here was not a good idea. The road from the manor ran downhill, so I could see the path it cut through the treetops. Off in the distance, maybe a few miles out, was a cluster of rooftops barely visible above the trees. A town? It was as good a destination as any, because it wasn’t here. So I started walking, away from the manor and into the unknown.