//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: Amargosa // Story: FiO: Homebrew // by Starscribe //------------------------------// It was some time after their tour of the city that Ashton finally returned. It had been so long that Violet insisted on making a trip back to spend a few hours with her school friends in Hoofhill. “I’ll be back by dark, promise!” And he had no reason to be worried for her. If anything, she was probably safer than he would be. Emmet waved her goodbye from inside the castle courtyard. No trains for her, just an instant gateway from one place to another. He could probably get them too if he asked. Why didn’t we do that yesterday? Had the train been Ashton’s idea? He’s just so used to playing the game that he’s always playing. The portcullis began to rise, jolting and rattling as it vanished into the stone and Axel’s carriage returned. Arcane Word didn’t walk out so much as fall out, slumping sideways onto the grass. Her armor was gone, and her body wrapped in several layers of bloody bandage. “I’m fine!” she insisted, glaring up at Axel as she tried to rise. The blood was dried, the bandages old. Emmet’s stomach dropped from his chest, and he wanted to look away. It’s not real she can’t die in here it’s just a game. He knew that for himself, since he’d asked to see what happened when you died in Equestria. At least in these parts, death meant waking up in the underworld, and a solemn walk with Princess Luna along one of the underworld’s rivers. Which river depended on how you died, be it Styx, Lethe, Archeron, Phlegethon, or Cocytus. “Why not just die and respawn?” he asked, hurrying over to her and offering his hoof to help her up. “Because I’m Hardcore Ironman, obviously,” she said, as though that meant anything. Her horn glowed slightly as she walked, and her list of badges and achievements appeared. Sure enough, near the top was a bright orange and gold circle and a broken cross. Tiny text floating beside it read “Hardcore Ironman: Active 2 years, 17 days, 3 hours since creation.” She shrugged past him, stumbling towards the building. “I have healing, uh… healing stuff inside. Help me with the door?” He held it open for her, finding himself immensely grateful that his sister had decided to take a trip. Seeing someone she had started to like bleeding all over the carpet was probably not something a child needed in their life. “I thought you were resolving a contract dispute,” he muttered, trailing along after her. “Aren’t the ‘scene’ all honorable and perfect?” “I thought so,” she answered, selecting a downward stairwell. She started to fall, and Emmet caught her by the shoulder, slinging her awkwardly onto his back. Just like so many other pony things he’d been doing, the instinct was all in there. “Hey!” “Just tell me where to go. If you’re badly hurt, then moving as little as possible is the right thing to do.” True, his best friend wasn’t in any danger. He was probably sitting in one of Emmet’s own chairs right now, glaring down at a Ponypad and sipping a Mountain Dew. But still, apparently this account was something he cared about. Or maybe it was just seeing a pony in distress, triggering everything that he would’ve felt for another human not long ago. “Right… there! That door.” Lights came on as they entered, filling the room with an even electrical glow. It seemed more like a chemistry workshop than a hospital, with dozens of bottles all over the walls, in various colors. Ashton pointed up towards a lower shelf. “The pink one there, that’s regrow. If you could… get it onto these wounds, they’ll close, and I should heal in a few in-game days.” There was a large cot in the center of the room, with a few dozen too many straps for Emmet’s liking. He tried not to think of what might’ve happened in it as he deposited Ashton there, and went for the bottles. He had to stand on the edge of a stool to reach up to them, and even then it was difficult. “You’re just playing at your desk, right? Why do you sound so hurt?” “Character… does that,” Arcane wheezed. She rolled onto her back, pointing down towards her legs. “Got stabbed on my underbelly, those brown bandages there. If you get regrow in those before the guts go septic, I… I’d be thrilled.” I wonder if you’d really be feeling the pain if you were in Equestria. Emmet had felt minor pains since he got here, banging his knee against a ledge, or looking up at the sun too quickly, or just the confusion whenever he saw something painted in color. But none of those equated to a stab wound in the guts. At least all the blood and bandages made it easier to ignore how close he would have to get to treat the wound. “So what happened?” he asked, as he went to work. The inside of the Regrow glowed faintly when exposed to the air, and flowed like a thick paste. As soon as it touched Arcane’s body it moved as though it was animated on its own, wedging into the wound and making her tense and twitch with pain. “Cold Iron was a prick,” Arcane hissed. “It was supposed to be an even split of every sale. But he didn’t sell the design, he traded the rights for some real-world property in Korea. How the hell am I supposed to collect on half of that? He said he tried so hard to reach me IRL, except I never heard from him once.” The potion worked quickly, closing the opening in her coat and leaving a raw, pink-looking patch of skin behind. “And when you pressed, he attacked you?” “No.” Arcane rolled her eyes. “I went to the one he traded with, some newcomer to the scene I’d never heard of. It’s a guild, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. They don’t take kindly to being told that they don’t own the rights to something.” “What about Celestia?” Treating her wasn’t exactly a comfortable process, but at least it lacked the grit and realism of real-world hospitals. There might be parts of Equestria where ponies had to be healed that way, but not here. “Can’t she… make things right?” “Nope.” Arcane shook her head. As upset as she looked, she was already sounding better. “I didn’t do the exchange in her world, so she doesn’t care. It isn’t her job to enforce the arrangements I make outside her domain.” Emmet worked in relative silence for the next few minutes, removing the rest of the bandages and tossing them into an open bin marked with a few simple words in Runescript. When they passed the edge of the bin, they vanished in a puff of smoke that didn’t rise very far into the room before disappearing completely. “Did you need the money?” She twisted around, glaring at him like he’d just spoken another language. “Of course the hell not. What does anypony do with bits here in Equestria? I could have this whole town and castle the same without any work at all, if I asked for it. But it’s the principle of it, Domino. I don’t quite get in for the scarcity shards, it isn’t like that. But bits are something I can control. I worked for them, I sell the spells, I take home the reward. Not some… stupid guild using my discoveries.” “There.” It seemed like right when Emmet finished with the last of Arcane’s wounds did the bottle finally run dry. Because it’s one dose, obviously. “So what do you do now?” “Get even,” she growled. “But… not for a while. For now I have to do some research. See who benefited, how much they stole. Then make things inconvenient enough that they give me what I’m owed. Either that, or I take half of a Seoul apartment away from Cold Iron, without a signed contract and for no real reason. I don’t feel good about that.” She rolled off the cot, catching herself on all fours and immediately starting to wobble. Emmet caught her by the shoulder, and she straightened against him, relying on him to stay standing. “S-sorry. Just fixing your holes doesn’t… heal everything up quite so fast. I’ve lost blood, my stats are probably in the trash right now.” “Your stats,” he repeated. “I can’t tell you how strange that looks from where I’m standing. Someone tried to kill you, and you’re complaining about… whatever stats are.” She shrugged, but didn’t pull away. That was enough for him. “Arcane, this might not be a good time. But with my sister gone, I… I think maybe it is. Can you do magic right now?” “That depends.” She rested a hoof on his shoulder, forcing him to look at her. Those expressions were so alive. Everything about her seemed that way, right down to the dried blood on his hooves. He should really wash that. “What kind of magic do you need? Because I just told you my stats are shot to hell.” “I asked Celestia about changing my, uh… avatar, I guess? My person? It’s just me, so I’m not sure if that word quite fits. Point is, I have permission.” “And you didn’t just have her do it?” All her disappointment seemed wiped away, replaced with sudden interest. Maybe a little more than he was comfortable with. “It’s her system. She can just snap her hooves and… do anything you want. Well… anything she thinks will be satisfying to play. Not always the same thing.” “I didn’t,” he admitted. He looked away, waiting for her to demand to know why.  But Arcane didn’t demand, just grinned wider. “If I have her permission, I won’t have to fight to get you into my sandboxed node. Or… connected with it. There’s not enough room for a human mind in there.” She started walking again, only stumbling for her first few steps.  But as lithe and elegant as she looked, she was still shorter than he was. She wouldn’t have gotten away even before her close brush with death. Besides, he knew where they were going. Up the stairs, and over to the ramp that led to perpetual sunshine. As Arcane climbed it, runes lit up along the edge of the ramp, spelling out who knew what. Arcane Word obviously knew. Seeing all this, hearing her stories of intrigue, almost made him want to be a unicorn himself, and tinker with the fabric of Equestria the way she did. Maybe he would’ve taken that path, except for Violet. She wanted to go flying, and that had to take priority. By the time they reached the doors, a sea of symbols filled the air so thick that he couldn’t look directly at her. The whole castle seemed to hum, shaking a little with it. “Horsefeathers,” Arcane swore, one hoof on the door. “I only started yesterday, I haven’t forwarded the ports on this Cisco swi—and we’re in!” The doors rumbled open. Emmet could feel the boundary even before he saw onto the other side, an intangible threshold between the castle and what lie beyond. His first thought was to an old Minecraft server they’d both been on, when the game was new and modding it was even newer. Chunks of unfinished structure populated a sparse, rocky expanse, with huge pillars of various sizes like something he might’ve seen in Monument Valley. They were building interiors, not connected in any meaningful way. Much of what was beyond didn’t even pretend to follow Equestrian style, but used objects that looked—unfinished. There was a movie theater set right into the rock, with seats each identical. There was a row of firearms ripped out of some FPS or another, looking so simplistic that his eyes rejected them, and he instantly knew they were unreal. “Don’t say a word,” Arcane called, sliding past him and shutting the doors with a kick. As she did, they vanished completely, leaving only an empty doorway. “I was in the middle of a dozen different projects before I… took a break from the game.” Emmet turned, feeling a faint panic rising in his chest. Was he cut off from Equestria in here? He raised a hoof, and found a bracelet wrapped around it, one that hadn’t been there before. It was plain white elastic, matching his own coat perfectly. A black outline of Celestia’s cutie mark was embroidered there, always within reach. I guess that’s her way of telling me I shouldn’t be afraid. No matter what Arcane has in here, I can get back. “What is all this?” Emmet reached out, trying to take a crude rendition of some modern weapon or another. His hoof passed right through, and the outline fuzzed briefly. He pulled it back, eyes wide with surprise. Nothing in Equestria had ever done that before. “You’ve seen my server, right? The one I used to keep under the folding table?” At his nod, she continued. “Well, I didn’t build it myself. I got it used from Hofvarpnir. It’s nonhuman hardware, nonhuman software. Making this place was the only way to make the hardware do what I wanted. It’s an ASIC, but for simulating instead of matrix multiplication or mining bitcoin.” “Okay,” he answered. “I just won’t ask you about it, and you don’t have to tell me what that means.” Arcane gestured forward again, towards a pile of shelves and mirrors some distance away. “That’s how I’d make comprehensive changes to an avatar, either mine or someone else’s. Since we have Celestia’s permission, this should be simple.” It’s all for you, Violet. We’ll be able to fly together.  “What did you want to change, exactly? Everything, I guess. That boring black and white color-scheme… at least you’re not black and red. And are you sure about everything else?” “I’m pretty sure I want to be a pegasus,” he said. “Or a bat, I guess. But the one bat I knew was just waking up when the sun was going down, and that doesn’t seem good. I don’t think I could take very good care of my sister if I had to sleep during the day.” “Technically you don’t have to sleep at all,” Arcane interrupted. “It’s one of the things Celestia tried to use to convince me. I could crunch for a few weeks if I wanted and never get stressed out or need to stop what I was doing. I think ponies only sleep when they want to.” “I think it must be… maybe because Violet’s so young? She sleeps every night, just like back home.” But now that he mentioned it, there was no way he did the same. He’d spent far too many days staring up at the sky at night, or reading pony books after she had fallen asleep. He hadn’t even thought to wonder until now. The closer they came to the pile of boxes and mirrors, the more obvious it was just what they were really looking at. It was an outdoor wardrobe and changing area, with a patch of fancy wooden floor and a raised pedestal with mirrors from different angles. A little further away the cupboards and closets were thoroughly packed with clothes, pony accessories and outfits that would’ve fit perfectly in Wintercrest outside without any trouble.  “Just climb up there and we can get started,” she said, her voice sounding suddenly eager with anticipation. “This is gonna be fun. Probably for me more than you, but…” She sat down on her haunches abruptly, as though this was the matrix, and someone had pulled the jack out of her neck. Emmet took a few steps away, and didn’t comply with her instructions. You almost had me, Ashton. Why do you always do something weird? One of the three mirrors fuzzed, then changed. Suddenly it was a screen, shining out through what clearly wasn’t a Ponypad camera from the fuzz around the lines. It showed the interior of his little sister’s old bedroom—well, what had been her bedroom. The only sign of her presence now was the white paint on the walls. The furniture was gone, replaced with a desk stolen from one room and a few other accessories he’d never seen at all. His friend sat at the computer chair, looking not quite the way he remembered. His face was gaunt, and there were circles under his eyes. Almost as though Arcane Word’s lingering injuries had translated out into the real world. The window was open, and somewhere far beyond he could hear a police siren, and a helicopter flying around towards… somewhere. As the image settled there, Arcane Word vanished in a flash of magic, no different from any other unicorn teleport. Except that Emmet knew it wasn’t, the proof was right in front of him. Had the sky over his hometown always been so gray? Or maybe that was just Equestria’s strange modifications working again. He approached the mirror cautiously, staring out at Ashton. At least this time he could think of it as Ashton explicitly, and not merge his memories of this human with the mare he’d been spending time with. “That’s wild, Ashton. That you can… do this…” “Not really.” He reached down, and sure enough there was a soda in his hand. “Talking to your relatives who emigrated already is common—you don’t need to go through half the trouble I did to make that work. It’s an intended feature. Where you’re standing is the impressive thing.” “You drinking Coke is the impressive thing. Out of a glass bottle? What did you do with my best friend?” Ashton glanced down, then looked away, a little self-consciously. “Pepsi shut down about… two months ago? Not too long after you left. Coke doesn’t use plastic bottles anymore. You have to turn in the…” He trailed off, then tossed it aside. “Whatever. World ending one day at a time, you remember that.” Pepsi shut down? How could the world already be so far gone? Of course Emmet hadn’t drank any of that stuff himself, but now that it was gone… even an unimportant part of the world was something he could never get back. “I always thought that people would carry on after I left, you know? You didn’t really need me, but Violet did, so…” “I guess everybody thinks that,” Ashton said. He had a laptop in front of him, and several vertical text windows open at once, skimming rapidly between them. “I’ve got access, like I thought. Damn, this is… I was so wrong about how you work.” Emmet tensed, marching up to the edge of the mirror and glaring up at him. “I didn’t say you could start! We’re probably just going to switch me over to be a pegasus and be done. I don’t know why you have… whatever you have.” “It’s a good thing I don’t have to understand any of this to change your avatar,” he said, snapping the laptop lid closed and picking up a tablet from the desk. This one looked brand new—a Ponypad, with the plastic case removed and a thin ribbon running away from it. Probably towards the server, though Emmet didn’t have a good view to confirm what he saw. “That is not what I want to hear.” Without Arcane Word here to disarm him, it was harder to remember why he’d been willing to go along with such insane plans in the first place. Celestia could’ve fixed him with a snap. But his chosen surgeon started the operation by proclaiming his unfamiliarity with anatomy. “Relax.” He put out one hand towards the camera. “Look, I know you don’t understand. I can’t mess with your head. Celestia would probably kill me if I tried something like that with one of her ponies.” He chuckled while he said it, but his eyes didn’t look away from the screen. There was real fear there, only haphazardly concealed. “Anyway, climb up. It’s like putting off immunizations, just got to take the shots and move on. It hurts less if you get it over with. This won’t hurt at all, but…” Emmet sighed and climbed up. Arcane better be happy I played along for this. “Fine. So I want to be a pegasus. And… I guess maybe I didn’t give my avatar the full consideration it deserved. It was just a way to talk to my sister back then. I would’ve made none if I could’ve. But the system doesn’t let you.” “And you were upset with my choices,” Ashton muttered. Yet he was distracted, barely listening. He bent over the tablet, and in his tiny human eyes Emmet could make out a novel’s worth of scrolling text. Was all computer stuff so boring? You gave her your eyes. “Pegasus,” he said, tapping the tablet with both fingers. Emmet felt a brief flash of heat, and a momentary wave of disorientation. He wavered on the pedestal, but managed to stay standing. Barely. And Ashton was right, it didn’t hurt. He couldn’t have put words to quite what he was experiencing, but pain wasn’t right. The moment passed. He looked up, to one of the still-working mirrors. There were wings at his side. He twitched, and his mind expanded, pulsing into new spaces like a slime mold given a new petri-dish to grow in. He moved, and his body responded—the wing lifted. It was the color-blindness all over again, with hundreds of individual feathers assaulting his brain with the precise pressure on them, their angle and twist. Emmet dropped to one knee, eyes momentarily glazing over. “That was not supposed to happen,” Ashton muttered. “Shit, I fried him. Maybe if I…” Emmet opened his mouth to stop him, but he was too late. The world lost focus again. This time was much worse. He was falling up, yanked and stretched towards something he couldn’t see. His wings vanished, and a strange heat melted outwards from his core. Emmet had no idea how long it had taken, but eventually the sensation faded. He groaned, sat up, and stared up at the mirror. Well, maybe not he anymore. The mare staring back at him could’ve been Arcane’s own sister, with a similar creamy coat. Instead of a rose-colored mane, hers was pastel green, but otherwise… “Ashton!” His voice was different. How was it so smooth all of a sudden, so high? “Ashton, you’re going to fix this right now!” He looked up again, and his expression went suddenly unreadable. “Well buck me. And we’re in my stable of new NPCs for Wintercrest. You’re my younger sister, Spellbound.” “No, I’m not.” Emmet hopped off the pedestal, sticking right up to the mirror and trying to shove right through it. But the glass wouldn’t yield, he couldn’t reach out into the real world and strangle him. “I’m Emmet and I did not sign up to become somepony else.” He shivered, closing his eyes against the wave of strange sensations assaulting his mind. “I can feel it, Ashton. I can feel everything and I really don’t want to.” Ashton’s expression swirled into something Emmet couldn’t quite read. Probably more confusion created by the body he didn’t understand, and didn’t want to have. I should’ve just let Celestia do this. Ashton set the tablet down, grinning into the mirror. “I guess I should’ve realized you would. You’re in there for reals, so you would… experience everything.” He sighed. “Sure you don’t want to try her for awhile? I sort of imagined Spellbound as the superego to my id, keeping me from going too off the rails. You’re basically already playing her.” “Great.” Emmet stomped one hoof. “Now make it go away. I don’t want to be a mare.” It wasn’t just the voice. There were enough mirrors to know the change was complete. He could ignore the physical sensations for a while, but… “Right. We just have to cycle through the templates I was toying with, and we’ll get to the new one I just saved.” “Wait, what—” The world dropped out from under Emmet again. Suddenly he was falling, the world rushing up to meet him. He wasn’t dazed for nearly as long this time—though part of that might be that there were no new organs to worry about. When he finally settled into one shape, he was… tiny.  It wasn’t just size. It felt like his thoughts were tiny too. He was uncomfortable and afraid and didn’t want to be here. Ashton was supposed to fix something, but what was it again? He whimpered, looking up at the mirrors. He didn’t look right. He had stripes, and Arcane’s pink for his mane. He didn’t look that way! If Violet were here, she probably would’ve been almost as tall as he was, that wouldn’t be fair at all! “Ashy, why am I… why are you bigger?” “I’m not,” he answered. He wasn’t looking at Emmet much, but down at something flat in his hands with lots of words. But he didn’t sound afraid, and that was a little better. If Ashton was afraid, that meant he should be too. If Ashton thought this was okay, then… “That confirms my theory. My spell isn’t—” and it got harder to understand from there. Emmet’s eyes glazed over, and he turned away. It really had been some time since he saw Violet, he should fix that. Besides, she’d be more fun to play with than a weird animal on a screen that was also somehow his friend. He dropped to the ground again, overwhelmed with pressure. His body stretched and expanded, releasing the pressure around his thoughts. Disaster averted. God help me if I’d wandered back into Equestria like… He rose, wings opening by reflex. That sensation didn’t overwhelm him again, since he’d felt it so clearly the first time. But as things settled back into place, he saw something light blue extending out in front of his face, ending in a sharp point. “Buck, I thought I was fixed this time.” “Oh good.” Ashton was pressed right up against the screen now—a different screen, which meant the mirror showed only the side of his face. He pulled back, turning to the camera. “I guess playing my lovechild with the Zebrica ambassador isn’t for you either.” “What?” Emmet’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. At least he was a he again this time. He returned to the mirrors, staring at the face of a half-pony, half-bird creature. Taller than a pony, but not quite as overwhelmingly large as the single griffon he’d met so far. “Ashton, how many more of these are there?” “A… few.” He blushed, taking the tablet in both hands. In that instant, Emmet felt a strange double-vision, as though he were looking at both Arcane Word and Ashton simultaneously. They were the same person, somehow. Impossibly. “Look, think of the positives! You’d never get to try being a hippogriff otherwise! There are people who would kill for a preview of season two’s characters. Yet here you are, uh… demoing them? I don’t really know.” Emmet glared stubbornly back at his friend. Maybe this was the pony he’d been spending time with—or maybe Arcane Word really had been him all along. But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about this. “I have no idea what that means. I guess you’re talking about the stories you make up for Wintercrest?” He extended one claw, flexing it. It sent pins-and-needles up and down his leg, and momentarily it almost felt like he had an arm again. Was he on hands-and-knees?  He tried to stand up, and flopped uselessly to one side. He climbed back a moment later, banishing the strange sensation as best he could. “I want to be a pegasus, that’s all. I don’t need to be younger, or older, or female, or…” “I know that now!” Ashton didn’t look back at the camera, his eyes intently focused on the tablet. “But now that we’re cycled, I don’t know how to get your old avatar back except by going all the way back around to the front of the list, where he’s saved.” “Great.” Emmet sat down on his haunches, wings folding to his sides. “Exactly how many more of these do I have to go through?” “Uh…” Ashton’s voice dropped to a squeak. “Seventeen.” Before Emmet could start swearing at him, Ashton pushed the button again. It was a long afternoon after that.