"How to shoot yourself in the foot, step 1: have a foot."
"First I'll explain a few things then you can ask questions. Until I get too bored. Understood?" I nodded in confirmation at Cosmo’s question.
"Alright, do you know how summoning spells work?" Cosmo asked. "No, I do know more about creating golems." I answered honestly. If I had properly translated the spell then I would have made some research about summonings. Or simply searched for another spell and wouldn't be in this situation.
"I'm simplifying it, but basically it's a teleportation spell. It teleports the summoned being by teleporting it to you, which isn't a problem if they are in the same... hmmm, realm, universe, world or whatever." He said the second part quite dismissively. "How do I put it." He stood there thinking for a minute or two.
"There are an unknown amount of, let's just say worlds. Your home and my home are two different worlds which are not physically connected to each other. You can however open rifts which would allow you to enter a place in between worlds. Some kind of three dimensional plane as you can travel in all directions. Some worlds know about it and give it names. Like the in-between, the upside-down, the nowhere, the void and other such silly titles."
"This three dimensional plane can be used to travel from world to world. What happened is that when you used the spell, you opened one rift in your world and one in my world. However due to a miscast, and some other stuff that I'll explain later, we were both pulled through the rifts meeting in the middle. The middle being this place."
I wanted to speak but he stopped me by lifting his clawed hand up. "The three dimensional plane in between worlds. You can travel in every single direction. You can swim up, fly down, walk north or run west. Explaining how it works would take years and when I say that I'm simplifying it that's an understatement. And in that plane you can find anchors, Waste Piles and other such things. Those names were given by the many people, adventurers and societies that commonly use it."
"Also we are currently on a waste pile and you see the stars up there?" He pointed at the sky. I could see a few stars in the sky. It felt like an unnaturally low amount of stars compared to the Equestrian sky. "Those aren't stars but the location of worlds and a potential entry point to those worlds."
"One final thing before you can ask questions. Those creatures that attacked you are void jumpers. They jump between worlds to acquire food. But they can't travel on their own, they need someone else to travel so that they can follow them and open a rift in their world. Or do specific things that weaken the barrier of that world. So theoretically when you used that spell it allowed them to follow you, or maybe me to this place."
"Now you can ask questions." He said nonchalantly. I took a few minutes to think of what to ask. "What's a waste pile?" It seemed like a good place to start. "So there's tiny holes in all worlds, not literally but it helps me explain it, through which ideas, concepts and sometimes items escape into this three-dimensional plane. Over time all of this ideas and concepts gather in a tiny corner and slowly take a physical appearance."
He waved at the buildings around us. "This causes a proto-planet to appear. All of those concepts and ideas then smash together and create strange cities, biomes and ruins to appear out of nowhere. This also creates living beings. Both animals and sentient beings. Said beings are a mish-mash of all kinds of living beings from dozens, hundreds or even thousands of worlds. In this case creating the aberrations on this waste pile."
"Also this world has clearly reached its end times." He quickly added in a nonchalant manner.
Obviously he had said that on purpose to get my attention and force me to ask more about that. And from the look on his face he clearly knew that I was thinking that. "I'll take the bait, what do you mean with the end times?" I asked reluctantly. He eagerly answered. "The waste piles, alongside the scrappiles and the conglomerations, have a very short lifespan existing from a few hundred thousand years to a few million years at most."
"Because of how they're made they have a very low resistance to outside elements. When they age and become bigger, they also become easier to detect and more attractive to outside influences. Said influences then come here, try to take as much as they can and then leave. All of the death and destruction attract eldritch, apocalyptic, world-ending, abominations which then finish off what's left over and deal massive amounts of damage to the core of said waste- or scrap pile."
I gulped. He had said that without a care in the world. Also the fact that we might be in the middle of said end-times was worrying. He just kept talking. "The proto-planet is so weakened that it collapses on itself and for a few microseconds turns into a blackhole and then implodes. That implosion then creates a new world and voila, you have a big bang."
I had heard about the big bang in school and this basically confirmed that it was real. I stood there thinking about what he had said. So this place was doomed. "Is there anything we can do to prev..." He interrupted me. "There is literally nothing that you can do to prevent this. Also, this is actually natural. This place has to die so a new world can be born. Give a new opportunity for billions of years of evolution. Any other question?"
I didn't like this, but it was better to focus on getting back home. But curiosity got the better of me. "What are scrap piles and conglomerates?" "Scrap Piles are the same waste pile but without any life, not even plants. Conglomerates are just much, much bigger and actively attract concepts and ideas towards themselves. This causes them to grow and die much quicker, rarely reaching half-a-million of years of age. To my knowledge."
"How do you know that?" I asked. The answer became obvious when I remembered how old he was. From the look on his face he knew that I knew that and thus did not answer that question. "Alright, what are you?" I both wanted and did not want to know the answer to that.
"How do I put it..." Cosmo was actually going to answer that, to my surprise. This made me nervous. "Ok, my own world was born in the same ways as yours. Some separate waste-, scrap piles and conglomeration died at one point creating our worlds. Mine was imperfect."
"How?" I subconsciously blurted that out. "I am repeating myself, but I am simplifying this and that is a big understatement. I'm going to use a comparison to explain that one. Let's say you're producing waterproof jackets, but one of them has a hole in them through which water comes in. And that water is pure energy. My world had a massive leak at its creation which allowed an unbelievable amount of energy which then allowed my kind to be created."
"And What you see here..." He pointed at himself, two pairs of arms appeared and then quickly disappeared. "...is not my real body. My real body is unbelievably big. My body is a source of gravity. There are actual celestial bodies going around my real body. This actually makes the whole being summoned more annoying." He gave me a few seconds to let that sink in. "If my real body was here, you would be very dead."
"Like, there is no way to actually describe my size. The number is actually mind blowing. When I met other living species, I could not believe how tiny they were. And that's all because of a leak in the barriers of my world."
"This also affects us mentally, meaning that the first millions years of my species are very murky. This led to my species not having a name. We never gave usself a name. You call yourself a pony, I have nothing to call myself. Even my name Cosmo wasn't given to me by my life givers, it was just some dude that saw me and decided to call me Cosmo. And I found that entertaining."
"Wow." I mumbled. "So, you don't actually don't know what you are?" This caused Cosmo to stop to think for a few seconds. "That is surprisingly accurate. Because of the ways worlds are created, means that there are many similarities between worlds. But I have never, in my very long life, seen anything even remotely similar to my kind"
I found this to be slightly sad. This might also explain how he behaved. "Yo..."
"I'm bored. I've already answered a whole bunch of your questions and this is quite boring. So now why don't you try getting back home, because it's only a matter of time before this world blows up. Which is only a matter of time." He interrupted me with a featureless smile on his featureless face.
Celestia-damnit any time he becomes relatable, or even nice, he then proceeds to completely switch his behavior in the most unpleasant way.
"HEY!" I heard someone shout. I turned my head towards the sound. Multiple aberrations were exiting a building opposite of my location and had seen me. I turned towards Cosmo. For some reason.
He was gone. Again.
I genuinely was not surprised by that.
"Oh, it's you. I should have guessed by the description." One of the aberrations said. It had six spindly legs and a pony-like head. Fred! I almost had not recognised him. Mainly due to his featureless face and that all of them had the same color palet. The fact that he was now wearing a grayish uniform like all the other aberrations made it even harder.
"What are you doing here? And why are you wearing those clothes?" I asked, trying to get attention away from me. "I joined the UIN because the stadium is gone and they're fighting against those things. And because I joined them, I have to obey their orders." The other aberrations stared at him.
"Not that I'm ungrateful, cause you were going to help me but then you got interrupted before you could do that speech thing, but I have orders to kill or possibly capture you. And in the case of capture I'd be allowed to pet you fluffy ears. Or the one that remains." I did not appreciate the reminder to my ear that it had been ripped off. "Maybe you could say you did not see me and let me go?" I asked with a shit-eating grin on my face.
He shrugged, the others just stared at me angrily. "I would like to, but they wouldn't allow it." He pointed at the two dozen aberrations alongside it. "Yes." "Indeed." "Définitely." "Without a doubt." They all said in confirmation. And then they pointed all of their guns at my me. "Sorry." Fred sheepishly shrugged.
"Also I'm actually really curious about how fluffy that ear of yours actually is. No hard feelings?" He tried to get closer in a non-threatening way. My mind raced trying to find a way out of this situation. But like a bad joke, things just got worse.
Fred blew up. Out of nowhere. From the inside. I and the aberrations closest to him all ended up covered in blood and viscera. Hihihihihi Some of the aberrations ran away in panic due to the very sudden and unexpected explosion. The others stared in utter confusion at me and the spot where Fred used to be. Dead and gone
"Magic is really dangerous." And unexpected An abeartions said, before they all tried to shoot me. However all the blood and viscera covering me were powering the amulet by a lot. The light it now produced was almost blinding. This made it hard for them to aim at me. It also made it hard for me to see.
So after trying to puke again because of the heavy smell and taste of blood in my nose and mouth and failing ,because I hadn't eaten in a while and already puked multiple times, I ran away from the aberrations. Killkillkill It was extremely hard not to trip over something as I had to squint my eyes due to the blinding light. On your left
I don't know why but I moved to the right. I could feel something clipping against my left legs. I had no idea what it was but I had a feeling that hitting it would be unpleasant. I then tripped over an aberration. I landed snout first against its face. I saw it was wearing dark glasses and had an equine-like head. Without thinking I ripped the glasses off and put them on. This immediately helped, as it dulled the light a bit and helped me see in front of me.
I quickly looked around. Therreeeee I saw the rift, what might be a way home. I was covered in blood and guts and being hunted. dangerously high bpm My heart was trying to climb up my throat, my breathing was heavy, my body felt unnaturally cold and tears were flowing down my face. I could feel myself becoming paller by the second. I could feel pieces of flesh, that were definitely not mine, inside my mouth.
So I ran towards my only hope of getting home.