//------------------------------// // Chapter XVI: Floria, the Wooded World // Story: A Purple Pony Princess's Problems on Planet Popstar // by ANerdWithASwitch //------------------------------// Discord’s living room was, for once, almost entirely silent. The only sounds were the crunching of Discord’s popcorn and the Warp Star’s twinkling coming through the window. Everpony besides Discord was staring slack-jawed at the screen, attempting (and failing) to comprehend what was going on. Eventually, though, somepony had to break the silence. That pony was Starlight. “What the f-” “Ahem!” Applejack cleared her throat. Starlight’s gaze snapped over to her and she gestured to the half-asleep Crusaders. “Sorry,” Starlight amended, “what the hay?” “Sunset’s in space,” Sunburst stated in reply. “That would appear to be the case, does it not?” Discord said as he ran out of popcorn, shrugged, and just took a bite out of the bowl. “Sunset’s in space,” Sunburst repeated. “I do believe that that has been well established, darling,” Rarity responded. “Sunset. Is in. Space,” Sunburst emphasized. “On a star-shaped ship that can accelerate instantly and is going between planets to summon something that can grant any wish. To stop the Sun and Moon from fighting.” “That is an apt summary, yes,” Luna agreed. There was a moment of silence before Sunburst collapsed back into the couch he was sitting on. “Discord,” he asked, “do you have anything stronger than water?” Discord snapped a talon, summoning a bottle of Prench red wine and a wineglass. As Sunburst took them with his telekinesis, Starlight raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you even drink?” “Only on occasion,” Sunburst responded, taking care to prevent the cork from launching across the room when he popped it. “You sure about drinking that, then?” Starlight asked, her nose scrunching up as she caught a whiff of the wine. “That smells pretty strong.” Sunburst poured himself a glass and raised it to his lips. He recoiled a bit at the taste, but took a sip anyway. “Starlight,” he explained, “my sister just broke over a dozen laws of physics in under thirty seconds. If I think about this while sober, I’ll have a panic attack. And probably an aneurysm.” As Sunset and Marx approached the plant-covered planet, the former was forced to admit to herself that “planet” was being a bit generous. The rock looked barely large enough to force itself into a sphere, and yet that didn’t stop its entire northern hemisphere from being absolutely covered in plant life. Its southern half, Sunset realized as they approached, was entirely barren. Once again, Sunset found herself grateful for whatever protective magicks the Warp Star held. Instead of being incinerated upon atmospheric reentry, the air around them barely even got any hotter than room temperature. They were able to descend unhindered until they were just above the treetops, where Sunset leveled out the Warp Star. Scanning the trees below her for any sign of this planet’s Fountain, Sunset opened her mouth. “So, any intel on what this place is?” Marx frowned a bit as he looked around. “Not much. I know it’s called Floria, at least. No one on Popstar knows for certain why only half the planet has vegetation, but it’s speculated that its Fountain of Dreams has something to do with it.” “So the Fountain’s probably at the pole, then,” Sunset concluded. With a thought, she directed the Warp Star northwards. The pair sped along, whisking some leaves from the upper canopy along in their wake. “The whole northern hemisphere is a forest?” she asked. “No oceans or anything?” “Nope!” Marx replied. “That’s part of why everyone thinks that it’s the Fountain.” “So there’s probably not much of a native population, huh?” Sunset figured. “Probably not,” Marx agreed. He seemed to consider it for a second. “Though, I guess some Dees and Doos and other Dreamlanders might’ve made their way up here.” The Warp Star almost stalled completely at Sunset’s surprise, but she got it moving again quickly. “How?” “Well, it’s not too difficult to fly here if you’ve got the means to!” Marx answered. “Especially if you’re teaming up with a Capsule J or J2 or something. It’d still take a few days without a Warp Star, though.” Sunset glanced upward, where Popstar and its dueling satellites were still plainly visible. “I guess everything in this universe is just…closer together than I was expecting.” “What, are planets in your home universe, like, millions of kilometers away, or something?” Marx asked curiously. “Pretty much, yeah,” Sunset confirmed. “I mean, Equestria hasn’t even developed space travel yet, and the furthest people on Earth have gotten is their Moon–four hundred thousand kilometers away.” At Marx’s somewhat shocked look, she continued. “And the closest other planet to Earth was, like, forty million kilometers away on average.” “That sounds a lot like Deep Space, actually,” Marx remarked. “Deep Space?” Sunset inquired. “The space beyond planet Halfmoon,” Marx answered. “We just know that it’s a lot more spread out than Popstar’s system. Some stuff has come from Deep Space, but I don’t think any native Dreamlander has been to Deep Space. Heck, I doubt we’ll run into anyone from Dreamland further out than Mekk-WATCH OUT!” Sunset’s gaze snapped forward, and her eyes promptly widened to the size of dinner plates. The Warp Star, still dead-set on its northward trajectory, had flown them directly into a cloud. A rather stormy one, at that. “Shit!” Sunset swore as she took Warp Star’s mental reigns. Once again thankful for its acceleration-dampening effect, she was able to swerve it just in time to miss a hailstone the size of a softball. The ball of ice whizzed right by her head, missing by only centimeters. Their misfortune wasn’t quite over yet, though. For a brief moment, it felt like every hair on Sunset’s body was standing up completely straight, and she had just barely enough time to protect them from what was to come. In a split second, she had erected a magical–and importantly, conducting–spherical shield around them. It was hasty, and if she had more than a quarter-second’s warning, it would’ve been far better, but it was enough of a Faraneigh cage to protect them from the electrical discharge of an intracloud lightning strike. “We need to get out of here!” Marx shouted over the screaming wind. “Working on it,” Sunset grunted, focusing all her willpower on getting the Warp Star out of the cloud as quickly as possible. Of course, as if the universe had heard them, it decided to choose that moment to strike again. Apparently they had passed over an updraft, because another hailstone, this one the size of a bowling ball, slammed into the Warp Star from below. The hailstone itself ricocheted off and out of sight, but their ride had completely disintegrated into tiny, star-shaped motes of light, which converged around Sunset and seemed to absorb themselves into her horn. With the updraft still strong, Sunset and Marx had the briefest of moments to look at each other in surprise before they started falling. Both started screaming, and Sunset, perhaps instinctually, grabbed ahold of Marx’s left foot. As they descended, she hurriedly lit her horn and, in a panic, started mentally going through every spell she knew that might slow their fall. Self-levitation, cushioning charms, anything. None of it lasted long, in her panicky state, but it resulted in a sort of jerking motion, where they would rapidly slow down for a few seconds before gravity once again took hold. So she could be excused for not noticing when one of those jerks didn’t come from her magic. Instead, it was as if Marx had pulled them upwards a bit. She was a bit more focused on the approaching canopy, anyway. With a crash, the pair slammed into leaves. In the small part of Sunset’s mind that wasn’t preoccupied with keeping them alive, she noticed an oddity in their color. Rather than the vibrant summer greens that they had passed over so far, the leaves were rust red, almost as if it was autumn underneath the cloud. Sunset couldn’t spare much thought on considering that, though. She’d kept her horn lit as they fell, and another cushioning charm reduced her slamming shoulder-first into a branch from potentially fatal to merely painful. The impact slowed them down by quite a bit as well, making the next branch slightly less painful, still. They continued ricocheting down the tree for a slight bit longer, slamming into a few more branches along the way until they finally exited the tree’s crown and fell directly onto a snowdrift. The two of them just laid in the snow, panting, for a few seconds. “Sunset,” Marx eventually said, “next time try not to fly right into a storm.” Sunset rubbed her bruised shoulder and groaned. “Noted.” “You alright?” Marx asked, what sounded like concern tingeing his voice. “I’ll be fine,” Sunset reassured. “At least with all this around I can…ice…it.” She blinked and sat up straight, suddenly realizing that the ground was layered in a soft blanket of snow. “Wasn’t it summer thirty seconds ago?” Indeed, it seemed a wintry storm had overtaken the area around them. Snowflakes drifted downward from the clouds above them, accompanied by the leaves that were still in the process of falling. It was like someone had flipped the switch from summer to winter and didn’t give the trees enough time to keep up. Sunset glanced over at Marx, who had gathered up a large snowball to stand on. “Any thoughts?” Marx pursed his lips in thought. “Not really. If I had to guess, I’d say the Fountain’s causing this.” Sunset looked up, and with the last of the trees’ leaves finally falling to the ground, she could get a good look at the sky. The storm stretched from horizon to horizon in all directions, offering very little in terms of determining direction. “Any chance you brought a compass?” Marx snorted. “Even if I did, I don’t think that’d work on a planet this small.” “Damn.” Marx joined her in looking at the sky. His gaze, though, drifted closer to the horizon where, in one direction in particular, the clouds seemed a bit thicker. “How much would you bet that the storm gets worse closer to the Fountain?” Sunset shivered a bit as a chilly wind blew through. Looking in the same direction as him, she narrowed her eyes. “I don’t really gamble,” she answered, “but I’d be willing to put down a grand on you being right.” Celestia placed a hoof over her chest and felt her racing heartbeat. That was far, far too close. “Discord, are you absolutely certain that you cannot protect them?” Discord scoffed and held up his paw, where his thumb was tied to his pinky. “Unless Void lightens up anytime soon, my appendages are tied.” “How convenient,” Rarity muttered. “Ah just wanna mention real quick,” Applejack said, and everypony looked at her. “Did anypony else notice that Marx feller sprout wings?” “Yeah, what’s up with that?” Rainbow asked. “You’d think he’d use them more. Flying’s awesome!” “That’s what Ah wanna know,” Applejack replied. “He put ‘em away ‘fore Sunset could get a look at ‘em. Ah think he’s hidin’ somethin’.” “Those wings did look pretty scary,” Fluttershy whispered. Pinkie gasped. “What if he’s shy about them because they look scary?” Luna glanced at the Element bearers with a raised eyebrow. “Perhaps we should not be so hasty in jumping to conclusions.” “I have to wonder why the seasons jumped around,” Starlight piped up. “That just seems weird, even for magic.” Sunburst just looked at his mostly-empty wineglass, sighed, and filled it back up. It took them around fifteen minutes of traveling before anything interesting happened. The storm, as they predicted, had gotten worse as they traveled north. What was once a simple flurry of snow had become blizzard conditions. Around ten minutes in, Sunset had had to start using a warming charm on herself and Marx, and for the past two minutes she’d had a shield in front of them to protect them from the snow. Then, all at once, it stopped. Entirely without warning, the blizzard cleared and a mass of warmer air hit them. The harsh snow gave way to, if still cloudy, mercifully silent skies. Grateful for the reprieve, Sunset let her warming charm and shield drop. That hadn’t cut too deeply into her mana stores–really, she could keep the charm up indefinitely; the passive draw on her mana was slower than her body could replenish it–but it was still physically tiring. Curiously, along with the weather clearing, the snow on the ground was melting as well. Fast. The temperature couldn’t have been any higher than a warm spring day and she had been trudging through snow up to her barrel, but most of it had already melted, turning the ground into a muddy mess. Marx’s eyes widened as his snowball suddenly became quite unstable, and he was only saved from faceplanting into the mud by Sunset’s quick thinking and telekinesis. “Thanks for that,” Marx said once he was safely standing. Of course, he was light enough that he could stand on top of the mud no problem, the lucky bastard. Sunset was left hock-deep in the stuff. Still though, she shot him a smile. “No problem.” They got moving again, trying to at least stay in the same general direction as they had been going. As they walked, Sunset couldn’t help but stare up in amazement at the trees. Before her very eyes, leaves budded and grew in record time, and within a few minutes, the forest’s canopy had completely recovered. A few cherry blossoms even floated down around them as they trudged forward, Sunset’s hooves making a loud squelch every time she forced them out of the mud. Eventually, they reached a clearing, once again granting them a full view of the sky. The cloud cover was still there, a dark gray covering the entire sky. Further to where Susnet hoped was the north, they were even darker, and she felt a bit of a chilly gust of wind come from that direction. Clearly, there was another storm rolling in. “Well, Sunset, I think that’s where we need to go,” Marx said. Sunset grimaced a bit. “I hope we’re right about this. The weather’s only gonna get worse, and I want to get off this rock as soon as possible.” “Oh come on, Sunny Shim!” Marx jovially said, skipping forward. “We just walked through a blizzard! How bad could it really get?” Twenty minutes later, it had gotten worse. Far, far, worse. Gale-force winds buffeted the pair in their attempts to move forward. The rain was coming down so hard that Sunset could barely see further than half a meter ahead of her. In combination, it had forced her to put another shield up; rain moving at dozens of kilometers per hour hurt. Additionally, as if that wasn’t enough, there was a flash of lightning and an uncomfortably close crash of thunder every few seconds. At least the rain had washed away the mud. And apparently this was far from uncommon, as it seemed that all of the surrounding topsoil had been washed away by the torrential downpours. Sunset wasn’t quite sure how the trees were still standing–or how they’d even grown in the first place–but that wasn’t all that important to her at the moment. “You just had to tempt fate, huh?” Sunset attempted to shout over the howling wind. Marx couldn’t even hear her. Sunset rolled her eyes and kept moving, but only made it a few more steps before her vision went white. The deafening roar of thunder washed over her, and she collapsed to the ground in pain. The lightning hadn’t struck her, thankfully, but it was still close enough that she’d essentially been flashbanged. It took her a precious few seconds to recover her vision enough that she could look around. She was still blinking spots out of her eyes and had an incessant ringing in her ears, but it was enough sensory input for her to realize the danger she and Marx were in. Just to their left was what was left of a tree that the lightning must have struck. The trunk had split in twain and caught ablaze. Even with the rain pelting it, the winds were feeding it so much oxygen it was able to stay alight. And it was falling, too–right for them. “Oh fuck!” Sunset swore, but it sounded muffled, even to her. “Marx, move!” Her shout, predictably, was useless. Marx was still blinking rapidly and had been deafened by the thunder as well. The flaming remains of the massive tree trunk was bearing down on them, so they really didn’t have time to recover. Sunset grit her teeth and made a split-second decision. Just before the tree could land on them, she lit her horn and dove forward, grabbing Marx in her forehooves. The pair vanished in a flash of aquamarine light. Milliseconds later, they reappeared safely out of the tree’s way, and the flaming log hit the ground with a crash neither of them could hear. Panting, Sunset looked over at Marx, who was–thankfully–very much still alive. His vision seemed to have recovered, at least, since he was staring at the log with a flabbergasted expression. The pair sat there for a few minutes as their hearing recovered, Sunset’s shield sparing them from the worst of the rain. Eventually, Sunset spoke. “That was way too close,” she shouted. Her voice still sounded distorted, but evidently it had been long enough that they could hear each other, because Marx nodded. “Thanks again,” he shouted back, the wind still forcing them to raise their voices. Sunset smiled. “No problem.” With a grunt, she pushed herself to her hooves. “We should get moving!” “Do you have an idea of what direction to go?” Marx asked. Sunset’s smile evolved into a grin. “We’re close enough that I can feel it at this point!” She pointed in the general direction they had been going. “Whatever’s over there is putting out a massive magical field. If it’s not the Fountain, I’ll eat my hat!” Marx raised an eyebrow. “Do you even have a hat?” Sunset waved a hoof dismissively as she got moving. “Eh, it’s a figure of spee-WHOA!” Her forehoof that was still on the ground suddenly slipped out from under her, sending her tumbling down onto her side. Questioningly, she looked at what she’d stepped on. “What the…ice?” A large raindrop hit the ground just in front of them, freezing nearly instantly. Sunset’s eyes widened. “Shit!” Rapidly lighting her horn, she began preparing the most powerful warming spell she knew. “What’s wrong?” Marx inquired. His answer came from the log that had nearly crushed them only moments ago. All at once, the crackling of its flames went silent as frost began to coat the wood. The leaves of the surrounding trees didn’t even have time to turn red before they were coated in ice and began to plummet to the ground, too heavy for the branches to keep up. Marx began to shiver, but Sunset’s spell activated before either could take any serious damage from the exposure. Nearly instantly, a sphere of warmer air had surrounded the two of them. It wasn’t spectacularly warm, only around the same temperature as a chilly autumn day. But given that another tree had just exploded as its cells froze, Sunset was happy with anything above freezing. Surrounding their bubble of habitable air was one of her shields, calibrated such that it was kept exceedingly hot. Enough so that the freezing rain couldn’t actually freeze on it, and slid off towards the ground. “We need to move. Now,” Sunset stressed. “No complaints from me,” Marx said. “Lead the way.” Sunset led them for another few hundred meters through the frozen forest, following the draw of the Fountain’s magic. Unlike Popstar’s Fountain, which had given off a feeling of serenity and peace, Floria’s Fountain felt wild and free. She supposed it made sense. After all, if the Fountain really was what made the northern hemisphere habitable, it had to bring nature’s destructive side with it. Sunset smiled to herself in amusement. “Nature giveth, and nature taketh away,” she muttered. “What was that?” Marx asked. “Just a quote,” Sunset said. “Well, a bastardized one, but it felt topical.” A few more seconds passed in silence before she broke it again. “We’re close. Probably only a couple dozen meters away.” Visibility was still too low to know for sure, but she felt certain of it. That wild magic was so strong she felt like she could smell it. Strong enough that a tree could apparently sprout up from the ground right in front of them. Both Sunset and Marx stopped short, and then backed up when the tree sprouted eyes and a mouth. “What the hell?” Sunset asked. The tree was massive, and looked like it was probably an oak, if Sunset’s limited knowledge of dendrology was enough to identify it. It had lost its leaves to the weather, just like the other trees in the forest, but Sunset didn’t exactly feel like underestimating something at this rate. Its expression seemed rather angry, and based on its size it was probably several centuries old.  Marx grinned and tilted his head a bit. “Hey, do you know a Whispy Woods?” “Who in the world is Whispy Woods?” a voice bellowed from behind them. Sunset and Marx whipped around to see that a second tree with a face had sprouted from the ground, somehow completely unnoticed until now. At Sunset giving Marx a confused look, he approximated as much of a shrug as he could without arms. “It was worth a shot.” “Trespassers!” the first tree shouted. “You have one chance to turn around and abandon this sacred ground!” Sunset felt her blood boil. Much as she was loath to underestimate anything, she still couldn’t help but feel that there was just about zero chance she was going to be stopped by a couple of trees. “Yeah, we kinda need the Fountain for something, so if you’d just let us pass we’ll be on our w-” “Then perish,” the tree interrupted. Immediately, a sharpened root shot out from the ground and headed straight for Sunset’s bubble. She and Marx both dived to avoid it, but wound up trying to dodge in different directions. The bubble stayed centered on Sunset, forcing Marx to bounce off the interior shield and land on Sunset’s back. “Well, they don’t seem happy,” Marx noted. Sunset didn’t respond, instead grunting as she quickly ran to the side to avoid the two Gordos the trees had dropped from their upper branches. “Can’t you hit them with a flamethrower or something?” Marx asked once they had a bit of down time. “I’m a bit focused on making sure we don’t freeze to death,” Sunset said. She dodged another root. “If I drop concentration on the shield, we’ll last seconds at best. Any ideas?” Marx hummed in thought for a moment. “What if you make the shield itself super hot and let it get hit?” “If you care to boil alive, sure!” “But if you time it right?” Sunset jumped over a wave of extremely cold air that one of the trees had breathed at her. She spun around and, catching sight of another attacking root, grit her teeth. “Only one way to find out!” Just before the root struck home, her horn’s corona flared so bright Marx had to look away. The shield reached hundreds of degrees in mere moments, instantly igniting the offending root. The defense couldn’t last, of course. If she kept up that sort of temperature for too long it would absolutely kill both her and Marx. But it was survivable for a few seconds, long enough for her to shut off the excess heat and let the extreme cold bleed it off. The burned tree audibly hissed and drew back its attack. “You dare?” it bellowed. What must have been at least a dozen Gordos fell from the trees’ branches, and Sunset prepared herself to try and dodge again, but the universe seemed to be in her favor, finally. With a rumble of distant thunder, the temperature rapidly increased again. The freezing rain stopped sticking to the ground, becoming something more akin to an early spring downpour. The extreme heat from earlier had already melted most of the ice in the area, which only helped heat up the atmosphere around them even more. Comfortable that they wouldn’t immediately get hypothermia, Sunset let her warming spell drop and grinned. Now that she was freer with her magic, she could afford to let loose a bit. Every single Gordo that the trees had launched found themselves caught in Sunset’s telekinesis. With a shout, she chucked them back at the trees, where the Gordos embedded themselves in their trunks. They cried out in pain, but Sunset’s attention was elsewhere. Particularly, at the rapidly-budding leaves on the trees’ branches. She wasn’t sure what attack they’d have lined up, but she wasn’t about the find out. Grinning like a shark, she felt her cutie mark magic activate and uttered a single word. “Burn.” Rarity was rather glad that she’d asked Pinkie to find the Crusaders somewhere to sleep a few minutes ago. The action was clearly not safe for foals to view, even if Scootaloo would have found it “awesome,” she was sure. She really should talk to Scootaloo’s aunts about that tendency, Rarity supposed. Regardless, though, the foals’ tiredness spared them and Pinkie from the horrors on-screen. Rarity felt slightly ill watching it, as the clearly sapient trees went up in flames and screamed in pain. Applejack looked to be on the verge of weeping for the oaks, Fluttershy had hid behind her mane and was silently sobbing, and even Rainbow Dash had lost some of her enthusiasm. Hay, even Discord seemed disconcerted. The worst of it, Rarity thought, was Sunset’s expression. She was grinning like a pyromaniac through the entire thing. And Rarity could see that Princess Celestia was taking it the hardest. The usually regal mare had physically slumped into the couch. Her mane spilled around her head as she looked down at the ground. Rarity didn’t like to presume–especially when it came to royalty–but she had to think that the princess was mourning the loss of her mentorship over her former student. The only ponies with differing reactions were Starlight, who seemed mildly disturbed but understanding, Sunburst, who was watching the screen with a deadened–though perhaps slightly sad–gaze, and Princess Luna, whose reaction was…interesting. The Princess of the Night hummed in thought. “It seems that Miss Shimmer kept to her earlier declaration,” she eventually said. “She kept them alive.” Everypony’s attention snapped to her. “The…the trees are okay?” Fluttershy shakily asked. “Well, okay is probably a stretch,” Starlight said, “but look at where she burned them. It was all places that they’ll be able to recover from.” Sunburst wordlessly nodded. “You have a…keen eye, Miss Glimmer,” Luna forced out, as if she was rather unhappy to give Starlight a compliment. Celestia, meanwhile, seemed to be recovering from her shock, letting out a relieved exhale. “And,” Discord cut in, “they’re right next to the Fountain of Dreams! They can heal themselves as soon as Shim Sham and Karl are gone!” “Okay, I get your other nicknames,” Rainbow said, “but why Karl?” Discord grinned and simply did not answer. Floria’s Fountain of Dreams, much like Popstar’s, was in a clearing. It was a smaller clearing than the Rainbow Resort, of course, but one that stretched all the way up to the sky. The clouds came to an abrupt stop at the edge of a cylinder centered on the Fountain, allowing Sunset and Marx an unobstructed view all the way to space. The Fountain itself was of the exact same design as Popstar’s, but felt extraordinarily different. Popstar’s Fountain was soothing, but Floria’s…Sunset wasn’t quite sure. In the storm, it felt wild, as if trying to break free from some sort of restraint. But here, in what must have been the eye of the storm, it felt completely quiet. Silent, but very, very powerful. Sunset once again felt the Fountain rejuvenate her mana stores as she reached up to touch the Star Rod. Another flash of light, and a new Warp Star, this one a different color, formed. The pair hopped on, wordlessly nodded to each other, and shot off into space.