//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Sunset Expedition // by MysteryMan97 //------------------------------// Expedition Log: Cycle 52 Figured I should write down something like this eventually. This world has a completely different set of plants and animals, and although I’m not an expert at cataloguing or anything like that I should at least write down my notes. Plants: ● There are a great many mushrooms and berries in these forests, and although it’s annoying to keep checking to see if they’re safe to eat they are pretty tasty, especially compared to the bland or outright bad flavors of some of the food plants here ● Ferns are very common, and in such massively different sizes and shapes than back home ● Beyond that, even though they are different in size, color, and shape, most plants seem familiar enough to me. Animals: This is where it gets weird ● There aren’t any mammals. It took me weeks to confirm, but unless there’s something I’m missing this world is populated by reptiles and amphibians, and bugs, and it’s bizarre. ● One species I found is this weird salamander reptile thing, it walks on four legs like a pony, but it’s about as dumb as a regular animal, and it seems really lazy really. The only time I’ve felt threatened by one was when I got near its young, and they can be really threatening. They have these massive pinchers that sweep out in front of their mouth, and when they start waving them at you it’s clear that they mean business. ● Then there’s my “friend” the finned reptile from across the river, bigger than a pony, scaly, fin along its back that is taller than it is, ugly. Not much else to say. ● There’s some species of crab that lives in the grasslands near here, they just kind of live in the tall grass (which is weird, crabs back home live in water) and one of them gave me a nasty cut on my leg when I didn’t realize that the weird overgrown mound wasn’t a rock while walking by it. Thankfully, I’ve gotten used to checking ahead as I walk, because I once ran into one with pinchers large enough to take off my leg if I didn’t avoid it. Thankfully, they don’t seem to move that often, so I’ve cleared the tall grass from my camp, the area around the portal, and I’m starting to expand the cleared area down to Starswirl’s river so I don’t get paranoid walking for water anymore. ● There are also giant velvet worms here. I learned about them when a pack, yes a pack of worms I am not joking, tried to jump me and spray me with webbing. It was really annoying, and I do my best to avoid those things whenever I can, but the crafty little bugs are hard to spot in the dim light in the woods. On the bright side, I’ve gotten good at getting webbing out of my fur, mane, and tail. Expedition Log: Cycle 60 This is it. Ten percent of the way there (I think). I’ve seen all sorts of amazing things, and learned so many things, but none of it will mean anything if I don’t get back to Equestria and tell somepony. When I left, I wanted more than anything to prove that I was worthy of being a princess, just like Celestia. It seemed so simple, tame an alien world, come back with a new understanding of magic and nature, show everypony how amazing I was and finally get the respect I deserve, but I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last two moons, and it’s made me realize that I was a self-centered idiot. I had a good life there, studying magic under the ruler of Equestria, classmates that were amazed at my skill, a warm bed, running water, and all the magic I could use… I threw it all away for this dream, and now I feel like I’m living a nightmare. I want to write Princess Celestia, I want to apologize and beg for her to save me, but on the other hoof, I know that even if I could get a message to her, if I do that I will never have what I gave up. I betrayed her, disobeyed a direct order, and if I come crying back to her… my life will never be the same. I’ve probably already been expelled, my things shipped back to my family… I can’t do it. Staying here is hard, but I’ve gotten used to it. If I go back now, if I pry open the portal and crawl through begging for forgiveness, I won’t be going back as the hero who tamed an alien world, I’ll be the wayward student who ran away and can never be trusted. Like it or not, I have to stay here, I have to succeed, or I’ll have given up everything for nothing. This planet hasn’t killed me, and it isn’t going to. Every cycle I stay here I get stronger, my body growing more used to acting without magic and my spells more efficient at using what power I do have. I also learn more about the world around me. The hardest part is over, from now on it’s a question of endurance, of if I have the strength of will to use what I know to survive, and I know that I do. When this mess is over, I’ll walk back into Equestria as a hero, and then maybe this whole mess will be worth it. Expedition Log: Cycle 92 I’m surprised by how easy it was to get used to life without a clock. Even though there are no obvious days or the like, I have a schedule, and it’s almost relaxing to keep to it. First, I wake up and have a small breakfast of water and some root plants (there are a few different species, but the ones I like the most are a sort of miniature purple carrot, which I’ve called Purple Carrots because creativity is hard). Then I spend some time checking on my enchantments, cutting points onto sticks and adding them to my fence, and just doing general maintenance work around the camp. When I run out of chores, I have a couple of fruits and some water for lunch, and then it’s time for the real work. I’ve got a lean-to where I keep magical ingredients, reagents, and a few pots with some very basic potions, and I spend a few hours (I think) a cycle studying magic and experimenting with new techniques and ingredients. Sometimes I only do potion work, sometimes I go through my spellbooks and look to see if I can reduce the power requirements of spells without making them useless, and sometimes I poke and prod at the portal. While I don’t want to go back as a failure, having it open even a little would flood the area near here with magic, and then I would be able to go from surviving to thriving. With more magic, I could teleport around, build wards strong enough to keep any predators out, and even start thinking about actual expeditions instead of just sliding into a routine until I go home. I’m not probing it hard enough to risk breaking the mirror, but I’m not just sitting around and waiting. Expedition Log: Cycle 111 I’ve fallen into a pattern, hard. Cycle after cycle of the same routine is starting to take its toll on me. I had dreams when I came through, ambitions, and here I am stuck in a rut and just doing what I can to survive while a whole unexplored world is right there. I don’t want to just sit around and do experiments in my camp for the rest of my time here, I want to explore! So, I made a decision. I’m packing up the tent, securing what I can, and heading east, up Starswirl’s River. I don’t know what I’ll find out there, and that’s half the reason I’m going. I’ll leave this journal behind if I never come back so the next pony to go through the portal will know what happened to me, but hopefully I’ll be back soon to right again Expedition Log: Cycle 131 I learned more about this world in that one trip than I have since my first days in this world. I began my hike easily enough, just following the river to the east, away from the setting sun, but after a couple cycles of walking, it started to get very cold. After the eighth cycle of walking the sun was so far down I could barely see, and the air was barely above freezing, and just as I was getting ready to turn around and head back, I saw something amazing: Starswirl’s River starts at a massive ice wall stretching as far as I could see, a massive barrier blocking anypony who wants to go further to the east. I think I finally understand this world now. Half the world is in permanent daylight, and half is in permanent night, and the area I’m in, the area the portal is in, is in the small gap between them. The farther from the sun, the colder it gets, which is why there are massive glaciers everywhere, and I’d bet anything that if I walked towards the sun it would just keep getting hotter, a massive desert across half the planet. Anyways, runoff from the glaciers feeds the river, which feeds the big river which… I guess goes to a big ocean or something? It’s a lot saltier than most rivers, I think that’s my next expedition once I get stuck in a rut again. All-in-all, this was a pretty productive excursion. I might not have found any ancient ruins or magical vortexes or anything like that, but I learned more about this world and got out of my camp for a while, and when I made it back the wards and fence had kept any animals that might have messed with my stuff out of the camp, so all-in-all I’ll say that was a good trip. Expedition Log: Cycle 150 A quarter of the way there. Maybe. Honestly with how often I stayed up for 20 hours straight, slept for 8, and then did it again back in Canterlot I might be at least 50 days closer than I think at this point, all that time has caused me to feel a bit… introspective. The more I think about why I’m here, the more of my own mistakes I’m forced to acknowledge. I came here looking to get out from Celestia’s shadow, to carve my own path in life and maybe even ascend like Cadance did, but lately, I think I’ve figured something out. Cadence didn’t want to ascend when she did, and I’ll bet anything that when Celestia ascended, she didn’t either. Cadence ascended by using her love to defeat an evil, and she became Princess of love, which means that if I ever want to ascend, I need to perform a great feat of magic while embodying a concept the way she did. I don’t know why I thought I would ascend just by exploring an alien world. However, even if I don’t ascend after this, my time here has changed my life, and when I get back I will put everything I have into making a more stable portal to link this place to Equestria. I might not get to ascend from it, but hey, going down in history for opening up a whole new world is a nice consolation prize.