"But wait." Back looked up from her writing. "If you had an Internet, then… your civilization was… on the level of us pegasi?"
David knew the truth, that they had moved past the pegasi in some ways, still, that wouldn't help anyone involved, ultimately. "About there. We love our electronic devices just as much."
Joy barked out a brief little laugh. "And that's why you got right to fixing my computers without even an instruction book."
"This checks out with Charlie insisting Bridlewood was ‘primitive’.” Gloomy opined. “Honestly, I think unicorns kind of gave up, after we lost magic.”
Back was suddenly in Gloomy's small face, walking backwards to do so. "Hey, I get you. We pegasi? We were so put out, not being able to fly and all."
"Ha ha…" Joypad smiled nervously. "Yeah… We sure missed…" Nothing came to her head right away. "Stuff…"
Gloomy hip bumped Joy in a rare show of friendly affection. :”Earth ponies never gave up, and they never lied to themselves. They kept believing until one pony believing was enough. That was what it took, what you built is even better than magic,”
Back flew in a sudden loop, landing right back to walking with the others. "Earth ponies, represent! So, back to humans. They got magic?"
"Nope."
Joy perked an ear at that curt denial. "No magic?"
"Not a drop." David shrugged softly. "Only stories of it."
“That statement is untrue.” The grey unicorn paused and cocked her head to the side. “Stories ARE magic.”
David chuckled softly. "Well, then I am a grand wizard." It didn't help that his new horn glowed at the promise, a thing he noticed. "Huh… Going to have to figure out how to use that."
Back Story shook her head. "Not that kind of magic, though I am very interested in those sorceries. So no big flashy magic, alright. But you had smarts." She tapped at her head as she went along. "And you made stuff, lots of stuff!"
“But having stuff wasn’t enough, was it?” Gloomy flashed a near venomous smile. “You wanted more… That’s why you're here, isn’t it?”
"It's what I write about, more often than not. Fantasy, modern or not, where magic was a thing." He spread his hands out, walking with one hoof in front of the other in a precise line. "An escape from a reality where the rules were unforgiving."
Back extended her tongue faintly. "Spoken like someone who hasn't had to deal with magic, as if it doesn't have rules." She spread one of her wings. "These things have more rules than I want to deal with half the time and I'm still figuring them out!"
“I am beginning to understand you, Mister David,” Gloomy’s voice returned to its usual monotone. “In the same way I am understanding him. You don’t even know what you can do yet.”
"Now, when I was a kid." He held a hand down low to where his head once reached. "I used to do magic, at least I convinced myself I did. Never managed a glow, which I really desperately wanted, something that couldn't be thrown out as coincidence, but I did a ton of things that could be called coincidence, so many…"
Joy angled a little closer. "Like what?"
"Bikes that go faster, or shield the user from harm? General wards from bad luck, inviting good, that sort of thing… I once knocked a man over by glaring at him from a window, not my finest moment, and I conjured the spirit of my dog to growl at someone that turned out to be an enemy, but I didn't know that yet."
Back blinked slowly. "You're kidding. But you don't have magic, so… Well, you didn't. Now you have a horn."
In the corner of Gloomies' vision, an earth pony stallion the color of dirt and turmoil paced maniacally. His motions were deliberate, but his eyes betrayed a certain mania. Both Joy Pad and Back Story continued walking casually, passing the interloper without notice.
“Tell him you can see me.” The dirt colored stallion with her doll’s voice smirked. “I already know he can see me. The magic is still coming…”
“Mister David?” Gloomies ears laid back in worry. “Can you see that?”
He had been thinking of other things, just for some new thing to drop in. "Uh…" Still, maybe it matched what he was thinking. He flipped through the spellbook in his mind, the spellbook he always had, but rarely had use for. "Second." He willed it to do so, and it opened to a page with sparkly motes on it. "And…" He tried to invigorate the page, to cast it by channeling his energy. His horn went bright with newly given magic and he cast a spell, glitterdust, to make the invisible thing at least tangible to the others.
“You could ask.” The dirt colored nopony smirked, instantly in plain sight of all. “Now I’m covered in glitter.”
Joy jumped away from David and the stranger. "Woah!? Where did you come from?"
Back was too busy clapping. "Oh, you did a magic! Good job… You conjured a pony?"
"Covered in glitter. So, hey?" David considered the brown horse. "Welcome to the party?"
The dirty pony was instantly stroking Back’s mane glitching from one spot to another, “You think he called me here. That is genuinely funny.””
Back quirked an ear to the side when she was touched. "Hey, don't know you that well." She danced back, wings fluttering nervously. "So what's your name, and how did you get here if not for human unicorn magic?"
"I'll echo that question."
"Make it three," called Joypad.
"An excellent question!” The nopony smiled brightly, gesturing at the unicorn in the party.. “The short answer is she called me.”
“The long answer involves lots of exposition, Nopony wants that.” The stallion smiled, “You see she happened to come into an artifact that concerns us. Where is the doll?”
David pointed, though the finger waggled aimlessly. "Your guess is as good as any of ours." He looked distracted, thoughts wandering elsewhere. "Why?"
“Because something is pulling my strings.” The stallion was suddenly a blue skinned human. “For whatever reason, that doll has narration. And Mr. Sunshine wants it. Honestly, I would rather be enjoying magic being back, and being able to move about. You seem like a nice… unicorn filly? I swear I am not stalking you on purpose….”
Mister Sunshine? That was a term David knew. "Oh." But what could he do about it? He flipped through the book that suddenly had meaning. He could cast spells, real spells! He edged towards his mare companions, away from the brown pony.
Suddenly a pony again, the creature heaved a heavy sigh, “Really? You’re just going to throw spells at me? I’m using my nice words. I even tried to keep the background ponies out of it. I’m being really nice, for me.”
“I don’t know where Charlie is,” the gray filly confessed, “the Text sent him away because we abused our power.”
“See, like that, such a polite little filly.” The pony ran a hoof across her withers drawing a shudder from Gloomy. “But I know how the ragdoll works. And. So. Do. You. I’ve dealt with the writing between the walls myself. He wouldn’t have taken a deal with such a cute filly if she wasn’t going to keep him. So He’ll be there when you get where you told him you wanted to go. There’s no reason we have to be adversaries. And since Mr. Glitterpants is going to make me subtly tailing you complicated…”
"What? No. That'd be dumb." David had the book open in his mind to the spell. "Casting a spell on you would be stupid. You might resist it. You might resist all magic. Also that'd be rude. If you knew me at, like, all, you'd know I hate conflict." Which is why the spell he selected didn't target the stranger at all, instead himself and the mares that didn't resist his presence. They vanished with a cork-like noise and descending sparkles in the space.
The dirty nopony smirked. “I’ve been trying to arrange this meeting for a long time now. I know you can still see and hear me by the way.”
Not that there was any reply, just an empty clearing and a brown pony occupying it.
“You’re not even going to hear what I’m asking for?” The pony sneered at the empty space. “That’s just rude. I am being very reasonable here.”
The grass began to break down into the word “grass”. The thing that looked like a pony spoke. “You are not in a mood to be reasonable. I get it. Who’s gonna start the fight?”
“Oh wait, they just left,” the pony noted and shrugged, “Well that was always another option…”
It was only after they left that the group reappeared, David unlocking the two mares he had captured, mouth over Back Story and arm around Joypad, hand slapped over Gloomy. Holding that pose for so long was, perhaps, too much, and he flopped backwards. "Guh," he let out in the highlight of eloquence.
“Mr. David…” Gloomy shuffled her little hooves. “What was that? What just happened?”
Joy turned to their fallen half-human. "Gonna echo that. Congrats on the whole… magic thing, but…?"
“You cast a spell.” Gloomy accused the satyr. “Not just brute force magic, an actual spell.”
"Couldn't tell you how, exactly… But I have a spell book in here." He tapped at his head. "Normally not full of do-real-world-stuff that I can actually do, but… It's not like it's written… It's a name, in the end." David looked about as lost as anyone else. "Either way, we're not safe here, so let's go?"
“Tell me the truth, Mr. David…” Gloomy glanced nervously across the area. “We just escaped from something, didn’t we? It is okay to be afraid. Because I should be?”
"Was I hiding it?" He rapped his knuckles on the floating disc, commanding its obedience. "Because I wasn't trying. Let's get a move on."
“If I had Charlie… if I was still big… We could have taken him.” Gloomy asserted with a petulant pout.
Back marched alongside the disc, behind David. "What is this, a video game?"
"That's my line," angrily huffed out Joypad. "But, really, is this a video game? I didn't grind nearly enough for a boss fight."
“Mr. David?” Gloomy asked sheepishly, gazing at the former human with saucer-eyes. “Who was that? I’ve seen him in my dreams before… Charlie tries to pretend it’s nothing, but it has his voice. I can trust you to tell the truth, right?”
David set a hand on his head. "That is a friendly reminder that another thing is watching me right now."
"Speaking of watching you." Back moved to his side, eyeing him. "If you have magic, well, use it. Can you get us to Zephyr?"
"Even if I could." He looked to the glowing hint of the city on the horizon. "That'd be leaving Gloomy behind. Where do you want to be again?"
“I don’t think I knew enough when I made the deal to really know where. I only wanted to go up.” Gloomy looked up the mountain with determination. “I thought I was gonna make it last time, but we rolled back down. Where I want to be is up there.”
"That is vague." David scratched at his thick beard as they went. "So would you even be upset if I could do it, which I can't say I can? I mean skipping to Zephyr."
“There.” Gloomy raised a little hoof indistinctly to the top of the mountain. “Can you magic us right there?”
"I can't at this moment say I can't." Which was not the same. He flipped through his mental book. "This is a lot easier…" He remembered his last journey to Equestria. It involved runic learning of the 'unicorn magical alphabet' and a lot of learning before he could do more than weakly lift something, which he still hadn't done.
He'd skipped right over grabbing things and went to the good stuff. Was that cheating? Would that bite him on the back end? Was he playing with fire? He had none of those answers! Teleport. A spell with a simple name, but infinite possibilities. "I can try?"
Joy shied back half a step. "That does not sound confident, Mister Just Got This Horn."
"I trust our strange alien wizard." Back Story was hopping along, wings flapping with each step. "Bet the worst is nothing happens and we keep walking."
Gloomy grinned ear to ear. “Do it.”