While sitting there against the backside of a tall oriental stone building, watching as bits of rubble and nature slid off him into the small black streams pooling on the ground, he came to a realization. One that had been lingering in his head for a while now, perhaps even longer than he was actually aware. But now, in the crisp fresh air of the morning, as he continued to sit in the shadows, and the tiny streams became rivers, could this breakthrough come to the forefront.
He had no idea what he was doing.
It wasn’t exactly an unknown phrase to him at this point. He had used it on many occasions to describe his situation at the time. Sometimes it was in jest, sometimes in anger, sometimes it wasn’t fully truthful to help absolve him of responsibility. Yes, he used it many times.
But here, he truly meant it, right down to the very syllable. Proper usage, proper context. Because right at this very moment, he absolutely, positively, 100% had no idea what he was doing.
Not that the world surrounding him was offering any favors. It seemed to act in defiance against his whims and wishes purely out of spite alone. Toying with him. It knew no bounds of how far it could go to stoke confusion, and parts of him were starting to ache from its nonstop pestering.
Clearly, it must’ve been too much to ask for a dangling olive branch in these times. Mainly considering there were no olive branches to speak of, or hardly any natural nature for that matter. For the past few hours, he was plunged deep amongst structures of a fantastic build. Manmade marvels that could’ve jumped straight out of the pages of a fairy tale. Nursey rhymes lining the streets, connecting buildings of vibrant purples, golds, and whites. Time eras seemed to blur, as ancient-looking architecture was placed right next to modern designs, at least those he could pinpoint, medieval to midwestern, past to present. All built below the canvas of a hand-painted sky, scrapping over the mountains this hulking mass was carved into as if it sprouted out from the cracks between the plates and grew.
Nope, no olive branches to be found here.
A well-placed opening in the clouds appeared, and a streak of sunlight snaked its way through the buildings and landed on him directly. He squinted and looked back down to the ground. His tail was still twitching slightly between his legs, the little pieces of stone acted as barriers on the cobbled road, seeing the black streams pool over and seep onto the bare face of the rocks. The lights reflected off them like grimy oil.
He sighed. He hated the city.
Chris couldn’t exactly pinpoint the moment when he had lost his senses, nor the moment he finally got them back. Everything came across as distant and extremely fuzzy, the opposite of what he needed to be in times of great uncertainty and personal danger. He needed to be full and solid, acutely aware and extremely close, much his hardened exterior he was forcefully becoming accustomed to. That wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
At the very last moment, he could only recall before total dark the battle on the mountain, fighting against that strange woman, the satyr. He almost couldn’t believe it, even looking back on it. He had thought the whole situation was nothing more than a dream. He still felt that way, not fully convinced of the state of reality. Some of the pain was real, especially on his limbs and sides from the rolling around he did while trying to escape, but others only existed in the mind.
The blue light. All he could see in his mind was the blue light surrounding her. The intensity of it, the sharpness. The sound…it was one he never wished to hear again. Nothing natural could make that noise. It had to be something far more powerful. Magical.
When Chris came back to himself, he arrived with a heavy jolt, as if zapped throughout his entire body by a bolt of lightning. He awoke in a face full of flowers, with petals tickling his nose and mounds of dirt dug between his teeth. At first, his body refused to move, lying dormant on what could be construed as the ground. It took him a few minutes to become aware that he was awake, as ridiculous as it was to remind oneself of such normal instances. But strange was quickly becoming normal, and vice versa.
The ground beneath him was cold, and the space around him was dark, cast in the deep blue of night. Sounds slowly filled his ears, the steady chirps of crickets and faint rustle of leaves circled him. Their volume was natural and unmuffled by any obstruction. Outside. He immediately began to panic, fearing that the fight wasn’t over.
He sprung up and pushed off the ground. He groaned in pain, now feeling the full extent of his body’s soreness, but it was much better than being served up with a sword in your gut.
Once the adrenaline wore off, the rest of his movements were slow and careful, as tingles of life crept up his legs, throughout his chest, and out his limbs. The tips of them were electric, interweaving a live circuit as he stretched his front legs and back. He let out a quiet purr of pleasure feeling the release. Then he froze.
“Wait a minute…are these…fingertips?” He brought them down to get a better look, marveling at how they moved and contracted. His gaze expanded. Hands. Arms. Shoulders and chest. All distinct features of a-
“Human…I’m human again, I’m human again! Yes!” He exclaimed, jumping in the air a little at the revelation, planting down on a hard surface.
Clop.
Then he looked to the rest of himself. A bright glowing stomach. The black exoskeleton. Tail. Hooves. His shoulders slumped. “Well, mostly human, I guess. At least the pieces that matter so I don’t have to stumble around on all fours. I’ll never get used to that.” He did another scan over, just to be sure he wasn’t imagining things, which was a legitimate concern. What he was seeing was real. A coat of chitin, the see-through stomach flashing with each pump of his heart. Even his forearms had small holes dotted towards the bicep.
But his head. His head stayed a horse, feeling his ears perched high and an out-of-focus muzzle in the corner of crossed eyes. The horn implanted in his forehead parting long greasy hair, with one strand in particular hanging in front of his right eye. He was still a freak, but now a more manageable freak. “Eh, I’d still consider it a win, at the very least a half point in my favor.” He nodded a little and looked up, “So, where have I been dragged to now?”
This was no motel parking lot, that’s for sure. Even in the dark, he could make out a few shapes in the glow of the flickering street lamps, placed in curving rows and cutting abruptly at corners. Rows of hedges line the beaten dirt walkways twisting out into black nothingness. These were not natural, their straight edges and defined curves were the results of labored upkeep. This was a courtyard. Flags of pink and red hung limply from tall poles, occasionally twitching to life with the passing breeze.
The street lamps also fell on more than the spruced-up shrubbery, but these strange large masses that were outlined in faded bulbs. Even if he really couldn’t tell what they were, he knew he could sense another strange presence. Eyes.
He peered around quietly, keeping his body low and still. There was more than just the feeling of someone watching him. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from, but they were definitely nearby. Regret. Panic. Fear. In the inactivity of the night, these murmurs rang out like loud shrieks. A beg for mercy. A bloody murder.
His hoof connected with something.
It was stone. Pieces of stone. Chunks of stone. Just like those of the snowy mountain. He trailed the mess behind him back to a tall thick pedestal it had spilled over from. He noticed how it clumped near the base, yet was spread out wide and traveled out in a fan pattern. Carved from the base, poised high on a tip was the shape of a hollowed-out broken hoof, lunging forward in its angle. He looked down at his legs. The was stone stuck between the holes.
There were two other intact figures, one of a mythological centaur, the other…
A little girl, about a decade younger than him, with a pair of wings and rolled up curls, clutching her face in terror. While the centaur was turned away in cowardice, the child had refused to look away, unable to move by the force of what she witnessed. The curve of her spine, the fingers digging into the cheeks underneath. No one of that age should make that expression. The glow within him pulsed faster, brightening her figure and giving him a full look at her eyes.
Chris stared directly into the statue's eyes. They stared back. They were staring back. A high-piercing scream.
“What the hell?”
The ground started to shake, and the heavy pounding of hooves drew near. Shouts rode along with them, and they were coming fast. Chris snapped back into focus, and decided to race towards the hedges, which he could now see were cut into several intricate designs, such as shapes and other large figures. He figured these lights would eventually lead him to an exit. Just as he slipped out of view, the stampede of hooves rushed like a wave, their shouts were loud and clear.
“Secure the gardens, I want a guard at every exit! We can’t let them escape!”
But he managed to escape. Sure, it was a long grueling process, and he’d be picking twigs out of every part of his body for who knows how long, but a escape is an escape all the same.
He stood himself against the wall with his arm, having now slithered behind a grouping of residential buildings, there were even some trash cans and such in the back. This wasn’t so easy, as the acid built up in his legs had been gnawing through the bone and muscle. They shook from the brittleness. The sweat ran down his muzzle in quick straight paths, and lapped over each other as they dripped onto the ground.
By now, the warm streaks of the sky were beginning to fade out into the mid-morning blue. Partly cloudy, low humidity, comfortably warm. The kind of day fit for the weekend, not so much for the week, and especially not before the hump. A comfortable morning. A docile environment.
Something sharp dug into his neck, making him stand upright with the pain. He glanced to his left to see a piece of green armor strapped to his shoulder, burnt and twisted into jagged edges. Most of this scrap was on his body when he woke up. He bit into the strap and tore it off, and slowly examined the metal in his hand before chucking it off to the side with a frustrated snort. It bounced and scrapped off the cobble as it faded into the dark.
“I…was supposed to die back there,” He said, staring up to the sky again. Clouds clumped together to relieve him from the rays. “That woman, that thing, she was gonna gut me right then and there on those mountains. Probably bury me, too. Bury me deep, no one would know, no one would ever know.”
The broken hoof of the statue came back to him. The stone ring on his leg cut just above where it had broken off. He looked back down at it and began to wonder. No way, that’d be an insane-downright insane thing to do. Not even the most psychotic of torture methods would pull something like that.
“I wasn’t even dead yet, were they that eager to put me away?” He growled under his breath, “…Hmph, guess you went and jumped the gun on that one. You won’t get rid of me that easily, not for one second.”
Suddenly, there was a large abrupt noise from above, as if the canvas sky were being torn in two by angry hands. It was a continuous whining roar coming fast in intensity, a sound similar to…fighter jets? He turned to the sound, just in time to see what looked like winged figures soaring in a uniform triangle shadow against the sun. As soon as they arrived, they were gone a second later, only leaving him with the noise. Indeed, it wasn’t an unusual sound to him, as many a major sporting pregame ceremony was alight in standard affairs with national nods. He always enjoyed seeing it. Maybe it was because of the flair. Maybe it was conditioning.
“Oh my, did you see that?”
A voice.
“Considering how close they were when they buzzed us, how could I not?”
Multiple voices.
“They ought to be careful with their speed, or they might end up shattering some poor pony’s windows without realizing it.”
These were distinctly of a human tongue, albeit with slight accents. These were soon paired with the hollow rhythmic tap of hooves on stone. Between the situation from the courtyard last night to echoes ringing out throughout the streets, he was confused on just where this new location was-well-located. Was it a gimmick for tourists? A lack of resources? Perhaps it was the preferred mode of transport for one traditional reason or another, he’d been to several small towns where daily rounds were made perched atop the saddle. He got the inkling they were more intelligent, especially when he found himself weeping at the pump watching a number go up a few digits more then the day before, and the day before that.
He hobbled himself over to a small clearing between the buildings and peered around the corner, using an angle to keep his horn out of sight. Though awkward, he still got a decent view of the sidewalk proper.
“Hey, wait a minute, those are members of the royal guard, about two-no, three of them!”
“Then who’re they flying with? That looks like a normal pony to me.”
He didn’t shout. He didn’t scream. He only stared in shocked silence.
Horse people. Pony people. Unicorns, pegasi, and normal headed ones, sprayed in vibrant furs and lavish upper crust attire from a century or two past. Magical mortals of the mind, a far-flung species from the imagination going about their now very real lives. Acting none the wiser to the sheer impossibility of their own existence.
He slinked away from the edge and returned to the shadow of the building. His eyes trailed off and began staring off into a corner of no real importance. His body began to shake a little.
This must be her world, the one for the satyr of the night. Somehow being similar, yet separate to the one that he had left not mere hours ago. He knew it now, their little plan was complete. He was gone.
Gone. Tired. Hungry. Stupid.
Exiled.
The corner now gained within itself new importance. To keep him connected to his fleeting sanity.
Deep in his stomach, an empty pain stirred, like a great chasm had collapsed into his body. An abyss, waiting agape and wide for something warm, the longing for some forgotten desire, which seemed to elude him for what felt like years at this point. He wrapped his arms around his chest and closed his eyes.
“You…will not…hold me here…” He whispered to himself, “Whoever you are, whatever you’re planning, it won’t succeed. It won’t…I refuse to let it.” He gripped tighter, feeling his nails dig into the chitin. Bits of warm fluids seeped around his fingers, while his body still shook. Something must be done, no action like this can go ignored, thinking it can go on without any form of impunity.
Then came a long silence from him. Waiting patiently, he listened as the city streets began to stir, and the scraping shuffle of hooves started to overlap one another. A wave of words filled the air, shifting from a register of polite curiosity to a deeper concern with every pass and glance to the sky. He imagined they stopped and pointed, like the citizens of a silver-age superhero.
“…I recognize that coat, it’s Princess Twilight. I wonder what she’s doing in Canterlot this morning?”
“…Did you hear it? She told me it sounded like something crashing in the night…”
“…Wonderful, I wonder what existential threat wants to wipe us off the face of Equestria this time…”
“…No worries, honey, whatever it is, I’m sure the Elements are handling it…”
The Elements? Chris thought to himself, his ears twitching with every word, like the knobs on a radio picking up a channel. He could remember in parts of the conflict that subject was mentioned, mainly in one of her boasts before trying to cut him down. Stating how they had a hand-or hoof rather-in solidifying his current predicament.
Twilight…Princess Twilight…Sparkle…
His mind filled the blank on its own. Why this word, he wasn’t too sure, but it came to him with an exceptionally nasty venom. It might’ve been something he subconsciously picked up during his blackout. The past few months were often filled with strange visions in the night. Sights of large destructive battle, fire and magics dancing around to the tune of whispered voices. He kept them to himself, chalking them up to his long hours of games and little hours of sleep that’d become a debilitating routine. It’s happened throughout his life, but the sheer volume recently had him concerned.
Perhaps, rightfully so.
“Twilight Sparkle, that sounds pretty closely tied to the moon if you ask me...” He said, heaving himself off the wall. “Well then, if I’m not supposed to be Chris Greene, then just who am I supposed to be, your highness?”
While this entity didn’t answer, the void was filled with more voices continuing to chime in the choir of city cacophony. Of course, many of them unrelated and of little to no use, but a few were a bit more…informative.
“…Could you see if they were heading to the train station…”
“…When’s the first to Ponyville…”
“…Need to hurry, they could ramp up security and we’re gonna miss it!”
“…Out of all days, it just had to be today, ugh…”
Chris looked back to the sky defiantly, and a sly smile curled on his muzzle. He walked over to where he threw the broken shoulder plate, and used it’s sharpened point to cut at the straps of the rest of the armor. He picked up the plates and dropped them in a nearby can. He stepped back and admired the rest of his body, rubbing a hand down the smooth surface and swished his tail across his backside.
“Hmm, why don’t we find out…together?”
He turned to the direction the formation was flying towards, determining just how many buildings and streets could be between him and this station. With a swift trot, he cut through the brisk air, and skinny dipped back into the depths of the shadows.