//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Trousers and Appletrees 
// Story: My Little Wizzzard: Friendship is Dangerous 
// by cullexoh 
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So yeah, first story in like, ever. Like it or hate it, lemme know what you think by the end, okay?




My Little Wizzzard: Friendship is Dangerous.



Chapter 1: Trousers and Appletrees.

The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn’t sure it was worth all the effort, a perfectly understandable statement given the circumstances involved, for as any person worth their degree from the Unseen University could tell you, when light encounters a strong magical field it loses all sense of urgency, slowing right down to the point it could be compared to syrup flowing languidly onto a stack of pancakes, an apt analogy considering the location of this particular sunrise.

For this was the Discworld, a world that was, as the name implied, flat as a discus, carried through the starry infinity on the backs of four giant elephants, who were themselves perched on the shell of a giant turtle, as most worlds are wont to do at some time in their perception. It was simply a cosmological view that the human brain, or whatever the indigenous life forms call themselves, seem pre-programmed to take until someone can prove it otherwise and survive the experience.

The turtle’s name was Great A’Tuin the Star Turtle, shell frosted with frozen methane, pitted with meteor craters, and scoured with asteroidal dust. Great A’Tuin, with eyes like ancient seas and a brain the size of a continent through which thoughts moved like little glittering glaciers. Great A’Tuin of the great, slow, sad flippers and star-polished carapace laboring through the galactic night under the weight of the Disc. As large as worlds…as old as Time…as patient as a brick.

And while he, or, as it might be, she, will not take a central role in the events that follow, it is still vital to give some mention of his, or her presence, otherwise the tale will be off to a rather confusing start. For one thing, it is the latest effort in the pursuit of establishing Great A’Tuin’s sex that our attention should be drawn to, as it tumbles over the edge of the disk.

The craft was called the Potent Voyager, a sort of Neolithic spaceship built from bronze and pushed over the edge by the astronomer-priests of Krull, which is conveniently situated on the very rim of the world and proves, whatever people say, that there IS such a thing as a free launch. Inside the ship is Twoflower, who holds the honourable distinction of being the Disc’s first tourist and had recently spent some months exploring it and was now rapidly leaving it for reasons that are rather complicated but involve a pressing desire to escape from Krull, which thus far has been one thousand per cent successful, if you excluded the fact he was about to hold the distinction of being the Disc’s LAST tourist.

Still, at the very least, he was getting some brilliant shots for his photo album. Let us instead turn our attention away from the happy little clerk, blissfully snapping pictures of the endless void, towards a small, insignificant speck that was plunging along some two miles above him, dressed in what, on the Disc, passed for a Spacesuit (1).

The man inside the suit was called Rincewind, who six months ago had been a perfectly ordinary failed wizard before he had the misfortune of running into Twoflower at the Broken Drum, Ankh Morpork’s most infamous pub, where he had been employed, at an outrageous salary, as the little clerk’s guide. Since then, he had spent most of the intervening time being shot at, terrorised, chased and hanging from high places with no hope of salvation or, as is now the case, dropping from high places with no hope of salvation. It was therefore quite understandable that he wasn’t admiring the view as he tumbled through space. 

For one thing, his life flashing before his eyes kept getting in the way, a sad side effect of forgetting the most important lesson an astronaut learns before setting foot into space, namely to remember to put your helmet on first.

A lot more could be included now to explain why these two are dropping off the world, and why Twoflower’s Luggage, last seen desperately trying to follow him on hundreds of little legs, is no ordinary suitcase, but that is another story altogether, and it wouldn’t do to go into too much detail at this point. Spoilers and whatnot.

But enough of that; let us return our attentions to Rincewind, whose past life had just reached a rather interesting, and painful, memory of when he was fifteen that he’d never truly forgotten about and doubted he ever would. As always happened at times like this, namely whenever he was about to kick the proverbial bucket, The Spell rose up in his mind.

Now to understand the importance of The Spell, namely why it deserved the two capital letters, it was important to explain a little bit of Rincewind’s backstory. At one point in his life, Rincewind had been a student at the Unseen University, the undisputed Magical Academia on the Disc, or certainly the most well-known, for one reason or other. During his tenure, Rincewind had been generally reckoned by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers. He couldn’t remember any spells, the few he could recall he usually botched up, and smoking (2) made him sick. Had he ever managed to complete his studies, or at least advance in them enough to the point it was CLEAR going any further was a complete waste of time, it was very likely he would’ve been thrown out of Unseen University anyway, had it not been for the incident where he, in a moment of classical, youthful stupidity, had on a dare snuck into the room where The Octavo was chained and opened the damned thing.

Now as many people might have guessed by the capital letters, The Octavo was, quite obviously, no ordinary book. And while there are of course as many famous books of magic as there are stars, such as the necrotelecomnicon, which currently resided in the maximum security wing of the Library of Unseen University as staring at a page can cause a man’s brain to dribble out of his ears (3), or the Tantric Booke of Sexe Magicke, which is kept in a refrigerated cell at the bottom of a vat of crushed ice (4), but such books are all mere pamphlets when compared with the Octavo, which the Creator of the Universe reputedly left behind shortly after completing his work on the Disc. The Eight Spells imprisoned in its Pages had led a secret and complex life of their own, up until the moment that Rincewind had stolen a look at the book one day and one of The Spells had escaped and lodged in his mind.

No-one had ever managed to get to the bottom of how it had happened, then again, none of them had bothered to ask Rincewind how he’d managed to undo all the locks that had sealed the damned thing off before they literally drop-kicked him out the University Gates. In any case, The Spell wasn’t a demanding lodger, it just sat there, like an old toad at the bottom of a pond, watching its host pass life by at a sprint, but whenever Rincewind was feeling really tired or very afraid, the latter more often than not, unsurprisingly, it tried to get itself said.

No-one knew what would happen if one of the Eight Great Spells was said by itself, but the general agreement was that the best place from which to watch the effects would be the next universe. Nevertheless, in his panic-stricken, oxygen deprived state of mind, Rincewind had the feeling that the Spell wanted to keep him alive.

‘Suits me…’ he muttered, his mouth opening, and in that moment, as the precious air he’d been struggling to keep in his lungs rushed out into the cold, lonely void of space, just for a second, he had the strange sensation that he was two people. And this was because, for the merest fraction of a second, he was two people.

They were both called Rincewind.

Not many people talk about The Trousers of Time, mainly because it’s not like the daft bugger ever wears the damned things, which in hindsight was rather fortunate, because if he did it was highly likely that life would be very boring. 

Why the sudden talk of suit bottoms you ask? Well if you think of time as a shape with one entrance and two exits, what automatically comes to mind(5)? In any case, those not blessed with the gift of foresight, or even the rarer gift of hindsight, have no choice but to fall continually into the waistband, not knowing from which leg one may emerge, and it is through such often unconsidered minor decisions that History is made.

Such was the case here, for the moment Rincewind opened his mouth, the Trousers of time opened, and with a breath of Octarine, the Eighth colour in the spectrum that designated magic, found himself hurtling down one leg while the Rincewind that had instead opted to fall back on his old standby of screaming went tumbling down the other leg into a different future.

As it stood, the one who opted to scream would go on to have many adventures on the Disc, where he would be mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things of a hilariously interesting nature to anyone that might be watching from the relative safety of a comfortable armchair by the fire.

For the one who opted to speak the words of the spell, however, a completely different story was about to begin.





The moment the Rincewind opened his eyes, he instantly regretted it, as looking directly into the sun only proved to make his aching head pound all the worse.

“Oooh Bugger…” he muttered, squinting his eyes shut as he reached up to cover his face with one arm, shifting slightly as he felt the familiar, uncomfortable sensation one could only get by suddenly finding themselves hanging upside down from a tree branch.

“What the hell did I get up to last night?” he muttered, idly reaching up, or down as it were, to check if his hat was still in place, only to freeze, his eyes widening in a rictus of terror as the memories began to play back like a slide reel from a horror movie, the failed wizard trembling like one of the many leaves he was surrounded by at the memory of seeing a giant Pachyderm eye glancing at him like some impossible moon.

‘Wait a moment…’ he muttered, fighting back the image for the sake of what little sanity he had left ‘This isn’t right, people don’t just wake up hanging from trees after going off the edge…I’m fairly certain that they don’t wake up at all.’

Certainly a weird thought to have, considering the alternative was falling endlessly through space, slowly dying of oxygen deprivation and explosive decompression, but even if he was a failure at it, Rincewind was still, technically, a Wizard, and when faced with a situation out of the ordinary (that wasn’t immediately life threatening) was wont to do as wizards do and point out its flaws and nit-pick about every little detail until it gave up and either went away or set itself right.

Somewhere, he knew, there had to be a perfectly logical connection. One minute one happens to be dying, having dropped off the rim of the world, there had to be a reason that the next minute would involve waking up upside down in a tree. However, before he could get a proper rant going, the tree he was currently hanging from shook as if struck, the Wizard letting out a squeal of alarm as he fell from his tenuous perch, dropping uncontrollably from branch to branch until he landed on his head in a pile apples, where he lay gasping for breath and wishing he’d been a better person.

“Sorry about that, pard’ner.” A voice called out, a deep, masculine voice that seemed fairly laid back, all things considered, though Rincewind wasn’t about to pass judgement until he could get his hat off, as it had been rammed tight over his eyes during the fall “Didn’ see ya up there.”

“No problem at all...” Rincewind assured him, grunting slightly as he managed to pull his hat off, the world around him returning with an audible pop, allowing him to get a good look at his surroundings for the first time.

He was in a forest, a fact that was blatantly obvious not only from the multitude of trees, but from the decidedly unhealthy smell of fresh air that he was breathing in through his nostrils. This was slightly worrying to Rincewind, who was a city wizard born and raised, and as such felt he had about as much right being in a forest as a fish has owning a bicycle, if not considerably less. Ask him how to navigate a city street, and he’ll happily point out all the areas you’ll want to avoid if you want to keep your coin and ability to breathe without making little whistling noises, but put him in a forest and he was as useless as a chocolate oven, for while he was quite aware, in the same way one knows the sky is blue, that there were various differences among types of tree by which their nearest and dearest could tell them apart, the only thing he knew for certain was that the end without the leaves fitted into the ground.

He remembered something about being able to tell where you were by looking at which side of a tree the moss grew on, and then promptly forgot about it, as these trees seemed to have decided to spite him by refusing to grow a single hint of moss on the smooth trunks; Typical really.

He moved to stand up, intending to give the nearest one a petulant kick, only for his spine to make a sound not unlike a gearbox makes when you forget the clutch, leading to him toppling face first into it, a single apple dropping on his head with a thump “Ow!”

“You okay Pard’ner?” the voice from before asked, as laid back as ever, though Rincewind was relieved to hear a hint of concern for him there somewhere. Concern meant the speaker wasn’t planning something nasty to do to him at the moment.

“Fine…fine…” he assured the speaker, leaning against the trunk as he pushed himself to his feet, grimacing slightly as his back protested whenever he tried to straighten up too far “Just seemed to have put my back out…must’ve been the fall.”

“Eeyup, I’d reckon so…” the speaker noted in agreement “I’d try to keep from movin’ too much jest yet if’n I were you Pard’ner.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that…” Rincewind muttered, dropping onto all fours again, sighing in relief as the pain in his back immediately lessened, “Oh that’s better…”

He trailed off, his eyes widening in horror as he stared at his hands, or rather, the area where his hands USED to peak out from the end of the tattered sleeves of his Wizarding robe. In their place was a pair of brown hooves, hooves, he realised with dawning horror, which were attached to a pair of legs that had taken up residence where his arms had previously called home.

“Oh no…” he whispered, pawing, or hoofing rather, at his face, only to recoil as he found that it had stretched out into a rather prominent snout, and that two pointed, equine ears were peeking out from under the rim of his hat “Oh No-no-no-no-no-!”

“Something the matter Pard’ner?” the voice asked in concern, Rincewind FINALLY turning to look at his companion, only to find himself snout to snout with a large, larger than HIM anyway, red horse with an orange mane. It had two baskets of apples on its back, and a concerned look on its surprisingly expressive face.

“You’re a horse!” Rincewind yelped, or was it whinnied? He’d certainly never heard a horse make a yelping noise before “No, wait horses don’t talk, that’d be ridiculous, what would horses need to talk for…”

“Ah’m a pony, not a horse.” The red stallion countered, a tad reproachfully, though it, HE, continued to eye Rincewind with the same look of detached concern one uses when facing someone with mental problems “And why wouldn’t I be able to talk? Yer talkin’ sure enough.”

“But that’s different! I’M not supposed to be a horse…pony!” he amended quickly at the red Stallion’s frown, as even in his unhinged state, he knew better than to insult something that looked like it could carry a knight in full plate armour without breaking a sweat.

“That must’a been one heck of a nasty fall you had there…” the Red pony muttered, quirking a brow at the panicking wizard before looking up at the apple tree he’d just vacated “How’d you get up there anyways?”

“Hell if I know…” Rincewind muttered with complete honesty, though internally he sent a glare towards the section of his mind where The Spell lurked, scowling as it gave the mental equivalent of looking the other way and whistling sheepishly “Magic I suspect.”

“Ah,” the pony noted, nodding his head as if all the answers had fallen into place with that one sentence “Yer one of them there Magicians are you? I should’a guessed from the hat.”

“The correct term is WIZARD, thank you.” Rincewind replied testily, not for the first time, as it was a common misconception that people confused the two. The difference between a Magician and a Wizard however, was that while a Magician could pull a rabbit out of a hat, a Wizard could turn you INTO the hat, though they’d have a hell of  time convincing a rabbit to get into the damn thing afterwards.

“Meant no offence Mister Wizard.” The stallion assured him, his tone respectful, a rarity for Rincewind to be sure “Name’s Big Macintosh. You got a name, Mister Wizard?”

“Rincewind, and don’t call me Mister, just Rincewind will do.” The Wizard muttered, knowing first hand that people treating him respectfully was simply asking for trouble.

“Rincewind huh?” the aptly named Big Macintosh muttered, as if tasting the name “Sure enough, sounds like a Wizarding name ter me.”

“Er…really?” Rincewind wondered, eyeing the larger Stallion to see if he was having him on, only to see nothing but complete honesty in that big red face.

“Mind you, we don’t get many magic users round these parts.” Big Macintosh admitted, the straw in his mouth shifting from one side of his mouth to the other “Plenty a unicorns, no mistake, but most of ‘em don’t use magic much save fer menial chores or whatever their special talent is.”

“Did you say Unicorns?” Rincewind repeated sharply, stiffening slightly, eyeing the woods around them fearfully for a flash of white in between the leaves. For while Rincewind was a City Wizard, and had, until entering into Twoflower’s employ, considered the countryside to be something that happened to other people, that didn’t mean he didn’t know the old legends. ANY wizard worth his pointy hat quickly learned to be wary of anything eldritch in nature, and it didn’t get more eldritch than the deranged mounts of the Lords and Ladies.

“Eeyup.” Big Macintosh confirmed with his laid back tone “Not many of ‘em mind you, n’ the only one I can think of with any REAL talent for magic is Miss Rarity, an’ all she uses it fer is ta find the gems she uses fer her dressmaking.”

“I’m sorry? Dressmaking?” Rincewind repeated, blinking at the red stallion in confusion. Understandable really, as none of the old tales about unicorns mentioned anything about tailoring.

“Eeyup, she run’s th’ Carousel Boutique…fanciest tailor shop in all Ponyville.” Big Macintosh confirmed, nodding his head behind him, towards a path that lead down the line of trees towards what appeared to be a humble looking village “That’s where ye are if’n yer wonderin’. Ta be more precise, yer in mah family’s Apple Orchard at Sweet Apple Acres, just outside’a Ponyville proper.”

“I see…” Rincewind mumbled, the Wizard having surpassed panic, overshot terror completely, and was currently floating along in the soft tranquil waters of calm “I’m guessing from the name that everyone ELSE in town is of the…Equine persuasion?”

“Eeyup.” Big Macintosh nodded, his gaze one of utmost concern as he glanced down at the smaller pony “Listen, you want me to show you the way? We can stop by Nurse Red Heart’s clinic if yer not feelin’ right…”

“If it’s not too much trouble, yes…” Rincewind agreed, smiling pleasantly as his eyes rolled up into his skull, the poni-fied wizard passing out in a dead faint at the foot of the tree he’d recently vacated.





Big Macintosh blinked, eyeing the smaller stallion warily, nudging him with his hoof to see if he was alright. When no response came, he sighed and shook his head, peering up at the tree he’d bucked him out of with an intrigued expression in his green eyes.

“Big Macintosh?” a voice called out, the stallion looking up to see a small orange filly trotting towards him, two baskets of apples adorning her flanks, much like his own, albeit smaller for obvious reasons. Unlike Big Macintosh, who simply let his mane flow free in a slapdash manner, this pony had opted to tie hers back in a, for lack of a better word, ponytail, the rest hidden beneath a rather fetching brown Stetson hat that only seemed to accentuate the white, freckle-like markings on her face “There y'are, ah just finished my part a’ the gatherin’ fer the day, what about you?”

“Good timing Applejack.” Big Macintosh greeted, the stallion drawing the filly’s attention to the unconscious form of Rincewind, who was still smiling happily even as he lay on the ground “Ran into a mighty strange situation.”

“Oh mah gosh!” the filly, Applejack, exclaimed, trotting up to the recumbent wizard-turned-pony and prodding him with one gentle hoof “What happened to him? Looks like he took a right blow to the noggin!”

“Eeyup, fell outta a tree.” Big Macintosh admitted, nodding his head to the offending flora in question, only to shrug offhandedly “Didn’t say how he got up there, but reckons it was a spell gone wrong.”

“He does look like one of em magic-types don’t he?” Applejack admitted, eyeing the pony’s tattered, sequined robes carefully “Wonder where he’s from? I don’t think I’d miss someone dressed like THIS walkin’ around these parts…he tell you anything?”

“Just that his name’s Rincewind and he’s supposedly a Wizard.” Big Macintosh admitted, nodding his head at his sister’s look of shock “I know, shocked me too.”

“Land sakes!” Applejack exclaimed, her eyes wide with the implications “If that’s true, then that means he must be from Canterlot! Maybe he’s the Court Wizard or something!”

“Could be…” Big Macintosh muttered, neither denying it or confirming it as he stepped forward, using his teeth to grab the scruff of Rincewind’s robe and hoist the smaller pony up onto his broad shoulders, a little surprised at how light he actually was.

‘Shucks, even Applebloom weighs more’n this!’ he muttered, eyeing the unconscious pony with concern as Applejack helped fix him to her brother’s back properly ‘When was the last time he had a decent meal?’

“In any case,” he spoke up, once Applejack stepped back from her work “he hit his head pretty hard fallin’ outta that tree, and standin’ around chattin’ about it isn’t doin’ him a lick a good.”

“Yer right,” Applejack agreed, her expression turning serious as she helped fix Rincewind to her brother’s back “I’ll run on ahead and alert Nurse Red Heart that you’re on the way. You take it easy on them there roads and meet me at the clinic, okay?”

“Eeyup.” Big Macintosh agreed, watching as his younger sibling took off at a gallop before setting off himself at a fast yet gentle trot, not quite a canter, so as not to disturb the recumbent form of his passenger, who was muttering off things about shrimp and millenniums under his breath.





I'll just leave off there for now. Sucky i know, cliffhangers are the enemy and all, but hay, what can a first time brony writer do?

Also, for those of you wondering what the little asterisks are for, here ya go.

1 - Imagine a diving suit designed by men who had never seen the sea.
2 - something 99% of the University’s residents enjoyed in varying degrees for reasons that ranged from 'everyone else is doing it' to 'purely medicinal'.
3 - It is unknown whether the book has the same effect on women, since none are allowed in the Library.
4 - And may only be accessed by wizards who are over eighty and, if at all possible, dead.
5 - Get your mind out of the gutter you pervert.