“Anything special I need to know going into this?” Sunset asked. “You said Halfmoon has a moon, right?”
“Well, sort of,” Marx answered. “Halfmoon is called Halfmoon because it’s half moon. The body that everyone there lives on and its moon are around the same size. And on top of that, its moon is weird.”
“So it’s a binary system?” Sunset inquired, before blinking in realization. “Wait, what do you mean by weird?”
Marx tilted his head forward at the light they were approaching. Quickly, that one point of light split into two, allowing them to distinctly see both bodies of the system. One was a solid, terrestrial dwarf planet, a bit smaller than Aquarius. The other was a similar size, but not at all terrestrial. It looked like a giant swarm of gnats, roughly in the shape of a ball.
Interestingly, only the side of the solid planet facing its moon had vegetation on it, similar to Floria’s situation. “Are they tidally locked?” Sunset pondered aloud.
“Maybe?” Marx hesitantly answered. “I don’t really know, though.”
She sighed. “It’s inside of the moon, isn’t it. And its magic is the only thing keeping it from actually collapsing into a single object.”
“That would make sense,” Marx agreed.
“Bet it’s at the center, too,” Sunset grumbled.
Thankfully, it didn’t seem that this would take as much Warp Star manipulation as it had on Hotbeat. Despite appearances from thousands of kilometers away, the individual rocks making up Halfmoon’s moon were rather far apart, at least for the outermost layers. The further inward they got, though, the denser the debris field became.
At the surface, the rocks were kilometers apart, but soon enough they had traveled a few hundred kilometers closer to the center. Here, the rocks were becoming increasingly star-shaped, and were almost glowing. Sunset was certain that the Fountain was at the mass’s center at this point–she doubted that any other magic source could pull off something this physics-defiant.
Curiously, the closer they got to its center, the yellower the rocks got, appearing more and more like a classical five-pointed illustration of a star. It was almost as if the Fountain had constructed around it the appearance of a starfield, which was so dense at this point that Sunset had to carefully maneuver the Warp Star to avoid collisions.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of slow, methodical movement, they breached into an open area. For they were now in a sphere of empty space, completely surrounded by the almost blindingly yellow stars. But right there, no more than fifty meters away from them and spinning lazily on another star-shaped rock, was their prize. Halfmoon’s Fountain of Dreams, not quite in the open but totally accessible to someone with a Warp Star.
Had Sunset not been so relieved by how easy it was–and honestly rather tired out from the hell of a day she’d been having–she would have noticed the trap quite a bit sooner. After all, every other Fountain had been guarded by something, but in her haste to just get a move on and summon Nova already, she launched their Warp Star forward without a second thought.
She certainly noticed when Marx collapsed beside her, though. He was out like a light, going from full wakefulness to completely unconscious in under a second.
She hadn’t the time to dwell on it, however, as the tugging sensation she felt at the base of her horn was completely overwhelming. This was no mere probe like she had felt on Skyhigh–Halfmoon’s Fountain was actively attacking her mind.
And despite her best efforts, it was winning.
She thought that she had mentally prepared herself for further mental attacks. That her experience with psychoturgy, if limited mostly to textbooks, was at least sufficient to defend herself, especially with the power boosts she’d been getting. Evidently, though, the Fountain cared not for her perceived skill or power, and she barely lasted longer than Marx did. Its mental presence smashed through her defenses, allowing it total and unrestricted access to her mind. Naught but a few seconds later, and she, too, was asleep on the Warp Star.
There, in the quietness of space, the Fountain began working its real magic. The interloper’s Mekkaian Warp Star sat still in the emptiness, floating in the void as a lightshow began around them. As one, many of the stars making up the sphere’s edge began properly glowing. Not all of them, of course–some stars remained inert yellow rocks. To any outsider, it might have seemed random.
But that was far from the case. It was an extremely inefficient storage system, of course, but the stars having two states–on and off–was very convenient for the Fountain. Even with it only being able to store one bit per few hundred cubic meters, the dwarf planet-sized computer could still encode nearly a petabyte of information. And it needed that memory for one purpose, handed down to it by its creators:
Test any Dream Wielder that approached it.
“Well that seems like a silly place to take a nap!” Pinkie Pie pointed out.
She was just about the only one who stayed calm enough to do so. Everypony else was either panicking, distracted by the background lighting up like a Hearth’s Warming Tree, or Discord. He was busy stroking his beard while peering at the screen, seemingly deep in thought. “That it is, Miss Pie, that it is…”
“Discord, have you any idea what has happened,” Celestia inquired. “I-” she grit her teeth, “understand that you cannot simply retrieve them, but your input would be…appreciated.”
For the absolute briefest of moments, Discord actually looked stunned. The moment didn’t last, though, and his usual wide grin crossed his face. “Well, you hear that, everypony?” he snarkily stated. “My input is appreciated! Maybe you girls putting in the effort to reform me was worth it after all!”
“I still maintain that such a point is debatable,” Rarity mentioned.
Discord harrumphed. “Well, the effort Fluttershy put in must have been worth something.”
Fluttershy, who at this point had taken to sitting behind the couch for ease of ducking down below it whenever Sunset’s and Marx’s adventure got intense, poked her head back up at the mention of her name. She let out a startled “Eep!” and stumbled back a bit upon her entire field of vision being taken up by Discord’s snaggletoothed grin.
“Did you hear that, dear Fluttershy?” he said. “Ol’ Celly appreciates my presence!”
“I believe that you may be just the slightest bit too focused on my word choice,” Celestia sighed. “Could you please get to the point?”
“Hold on just a moment,” Discord said, snapping his paw and setting up a tripod camera. Without actually getting up from his seat, he contorted and stretched his body so that he and Celestia were both in the frame. “I need this moment for my scrapbook!”
The solar princess took an exceedingly deep breath to calm herself. “I have had an extremely long day, so if you could cease your inanities and answer my question, I may be able to maintain the composure that I have left.”
“I think you losing composure even further would be hilarious!” Discord very plainly pointed out. “Please, go ahead and do so!”
“Ah think ya might be pokin’ a bear wit’ that one, Discord,” Applejack warned. “She might launch ya through the wall this time.”
Celestia, at this point, was making some rather inequine sounds and her sister had scooted away from her on the couch. “Thank you for the idea, Applejack.”
There was a flash of golden light, and suddenly Discord was rapidly propelled backwards towards his window. Of course, by the nature of his very existence, the window failed to satisfyingly shatter and instead stretched like it was made of rubber. With a boing, it snapped back to its upright position and launched the draconequus back into the room. He curled himself into a sphere and proceeded to ping-pong around the entire area for a solid thirty seconds, his walls and furniture lighting up and ringing like a pinball machine every time the chaos god struck them.
Eventually, he landed right back where he had been standing before, triumphantly grinning and with a seven-segmented neon purple 30,000 appearing above his head. “I think that’s a new high score! Feeling better having let off some steam?”
“A bit,” Celestia admitted.
“Great! Now on to actually addressing the sleeping unicorn on the screen,” Discord finally said, “I have to think it’s some kind of trap or test, like the other Fountains.”
“But why would it just make them pass out?” Rainbow asked. “The others all had something guarding them!”
Discord shrugged. “Maybe it’s trapped them in their own minds? Or in a simulation or something? Whatever it is, I can’t dig through their minds to display it with Void’s barrier in the way.”
Fluttershy cleared her throat.
“Also, I’m told that ponies don’t appreciate me messing about with their brains,” Discord amended.
“So what, we’re just stuck here watching them?” Rainbow groaned. “That’s so boring though!”
Discord pouted as he sat back down. “I know! And they still get to be off on their little adventure, even if this part is in their minds!”
Sunset came to on a grassy hilltop, the warmth of sun beaming down on her. She groaned as she opened her eyes and pushed herself to her hooves. Her head felt like someone was pounding a mallet on the inside of her skull–she was really getting tired of headaches–but she was awake, at least.
“Hey, Sunset!” she heard Marx shout. He was a ways down the hill, apparently having woken up before her. “You’re finally awake!”
She trotted down towards him. “How long was I out?”
Marx waved his foot in a so-so gesture. “Not too much longer than I was. Any idea where the hell we are?”
Sunset glanced around. They were in a grassy field, soft rolling hills stretching as far as the eye could see. The sky was a vibrant blue, wisps of cloud slowly drifting across it. From this angle, the hill she had woken up on seemed almost familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on it.
She winced as her headache flared up. Grumbling, she decided to go for the magical solution. Blood magic wouldn’t fix the problem entirely, but at least it would help abate the symptoms.
Of course, by the nature of this universe apparently never tiring of fucking with her, her spell worked in just about the weirdest way possible. Oh, it took care of her headache, but at the same time a blue rectangle with a gray border popped into existence in the air in front of her. Based on Marx jumping back in surprise, he saw it too.
It seemed like a window of some sort, a two dimensional texture just floating in front of them.
A Windows 95 window, to be specific.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a Windows 95 application window, Sunset supposed. The colors were inverted from the Microsoft product she had used back on Earth–Canterlot High really was just cheap enough to not upgrade their computers for a couple decades. And she wasn’t really familiar with other brands–this might’ve been more similar to Mac for all she knew.
Regardless, the real curious thing, besides the mere existence of the window itself, was the displayed information. Sunset Shimmer cast Heal, it read in white text. Sunset Shimmer gained 20 HP.
“Hey, Marx?” Sunset asked. “Am I hallucinating or are you seeing this too?”
“If you’re talking about the floating rectangle, yeah I see it too,” Marx confirmed.
Sunset sighed deeply. “The Fountain put us inside a game, somehow,” she deduced. “Are video games really a thing on Popstar?”
“The hell’s a video game?”
“Well, guess we’re up shit creek without a paddle, then,” Sunset pessimistically concluded. “‘Cause they’re not super popular on Earth, either. I know a bit about them and a tiny bit about coding, but it’s honestly pretty niche.”
“So…what now?” Marx asked. “What do you know about these?”
Sunset shrugged and gestured to the text box. “I mean, I can tell this is probably an RPG from this alone, and if I had to guess, we’re gonna have to ‘beat’ the game to escape.”
“What does that entail?” Marx prodded as the box began to fade out of existence.
Sunset frowned. “Probably beating a final boss, or something.” She groaned. “But that could take hours.”
Marx grinned and jumped up onto her back. “Well, we better get started, then!”
With a simple series of notes, another text box popped up. Marx has joined the party!
Sunset chose a random direction and started walking, glaring at the box that stubbornly remained in the middle distance of her sight. “Well, those are going to get very annoying very quickly.”
“Could you control them consciously?” Marx offered.
“Might as well give it a shot,” Sunset replied. After a moment of concentration, the text box turned into a far more vertical rectangle. This one was adorned with a multitude of options. The ones that Sunset was most interested in, though, were Party, Map, and Inventory.
It wasn’t too dissimilar to how she could control the Warp Stars, Sunset realized. She could simply will the menu into existence and for certain options to be selected. Selecting the Party option brought up a second menu, this one displaying two sprites, one of her and one of Marx. To the side of both images were full red bars, reading 80/80 HP for her and 100/100 HP for Marx. Sunset’s image also had a blue bar beneath it, this one slightly emptied and reading 81/100 MP. Finally, far to the right of both of their health bars were their names and, in small text underneath each of them, (Mage) for Sunset and (Fighter) for Marx.
As they watched, Sunset’s MP bar ticked up to 82/100. Huh, I guess it recharges over time, she reasoned. Curious, she checked if she could interact further with her sprite, which brought up a third menu, which had three connected circles. The center held a large, gray circle containing an image of a wand, to its left was a green circle with a plus sign on it, and on the right was an orange circle stylized to look like a fireball.
This, at least, was something that Sunset vaguely recognized.
“I have a skill tree?”
Sunset was grumbling to herself as she and Marx walked towards the nearest town. The Map option in the menu had had a large glowing icon over a nearby town called Lumbridge, so Sunset guessed that that was where the Fountain wanted them to go. In the meantime, she had looked over both her own and Marx’s skill trees. The results were…less than ideal, in her opinion.
“Why do you get two offensive moves right off the bat?” she disgruntledly muttered.
Marx skipped forward. “No idea! Maybe the Fountain thinks you’re a healer?”
Sunset grumbled a bit. “Please, I know two healing spells. Both of which are extremely basic.”
Before she could argue further, however, a rustling in the tree above them drew their attention. What Sunset had thought had been a particularly bright cluster of leaves suddenly blinked and fell to the ground, the slime-like creature landing on the path in front of them. Immediately, time seemed to freeze. Everything around them faded into the background save for Sunset, Marx, and the creature.
Sunset tried to move, but it seemed that she was stuck completely in place. She couldn’t even talk, and Marx seemed to be in the same boat. The creature had frozen too, at least, as a new text box appeared in front of them.
The text faded away, and a health bar appeared over the slime reading 50/50. Before them was another menu with three options: Fight, Item, and Flee. Finding that she was able to mentally control the menus again, Sunset quickly chose the Fight option, selected her fireball attack, and waited. It seemed like Marx had to choose his own attacks.
After a moment, she started moving again, though outside of her own control. It was almost as if she were just watching herself charge up a spell through her own eyes without any input–it was extremely strange. Still, she launched the fireball at the slime and mentally grinned as it connected, dropping its health by quite a bit.
Sunset Shimmer cast Fireball!
Green Slime took 31 damage!
The slime moved next, squelching its way forward a bit and lobbing a green ball of its own body at them.
Green Slime used Slime Spread!
Sunset Shimmer took 5 damage!
Sunset Shimmer was slowed!
Marx took 4 damage!
Marx was slowed!
As confusing as the entire situation was, at least it looked like it would be over as soon as Marx moved, as he rushed forward and rammed the slime with a spinning kick.
Marx used Spin Kick!
Green Slime took 29 damage!
Green Slime was defeated!
Green Slime dropped Green Slime Core!
Green Slime dropped 38G!
Sunset Shimmer gained 20XP!
Marx gained 20XP!
And just like that, the surreal experience was over as Sunset and Marx regained full control of their bodies and were back on the path, sans the slime. The former pursed her lips and looked around. “That was the strangest experience of my life,” Sunset claimed.
Marx shivered a bit. “Yeah, mine too.”
Trotting over to where the slime was, Sunset picked up the core it had dropped. Immediately, it vanished, and she presumed that she would be able to access it from her inventory if she needed it later. Looking back up, she saw a figure running towards them and promptly had to do a double take.
It was a human.
The figure didn’t exactly speak as they approached. Instead, they opened their mouth and a text box appeared before them once again. “Ho, travelers!” it read, “good work dispatching that Slime!”
Now that they were closer, Sunset could clearly see that the figure was holding a sword. His dialogue was quickly replaced with more text as she analyzed the situation. “I am Galberk, a guardsman of Lumbridge. You may be tired after your battle–here, take these!”
You gained Health Potion x3!
You gained Mana Potion x3!
Sunset found herself unable to verbally reply, much as she wanted to. Instead, she felt locked into only a few possible ways to answer Galberk. “Lumbridge?” she eventually asked.
Galberk pointed with his sword. “‘Tis a town just a few more minutes down this path. It was a great resting area for weary travelers, but recently we have been under siege by the Great Dragon’s forces.”
Now this sounded like final boss material. And for once, this game’s arbitrary limitations actually lined up with what Sunset wanted to say. “Great Dragon?”
Galberk changed where he was pointing, thrusting his sword in the direction of a massive mountain that Sunset somehow hadn’t noticed before. Clouds swirled around the top of it and smoke drifted from a cave near the summit. “The Great Dragon showed up a few months back and has been terrorizing our villages ever since. Try as we might, we cannot be rid of him.” Resting the tip of his sword back on the ground, he continued. “Ah, but that should be of no concern to you. Thanks to us guardsmen, you’ll find good food and a place to rest in Lumbridge for as long as you need!”
At that, he shut up and the text box disappeared. Galberk was now unmoving, staring unblinkingly into the middle distance. Somewhat cautiously, Sunset and Marx glanced at each other. “So…you think this Great Dragon is the final boss you mentioned?” Marx asked.
Sunset sighed. “Probably. Let’s just get into town and see if there’s a quick way through to end this.”
Unfortunately, there was not.
According to the motel operator they spoke to while looking for somewhere to base their operations for the time being, the mountain was surrounded by a giant barrier. It could be broken, but only if one were to travel to four locations around the countryside to disable the barrier manually, and no one had been brave enough to try it.
Sunset could absolutely tell that the game was railroading them at this point. One could clear the “quest objectives” in any order, but all four would have to be completed before they could dispel the barrier and access the final boss.
It was incredibly annoying, but she and Marx decided to just suck it up and go for it. The first goal they decided to work towards was a castle to the southeast that had been surrounded by a perpetual thunderstorm, and they set out as soon as they could.
The journey was long and grueling and–Sunset found–quite boring. It was mostly just random encounter after random encounter, the vast majority of which were easily-dispatched slimes. They did encounter a few Blue Slimes, which had double the HP and were quite a bit stronger than their green counterparts, but the most interesting thing that happened on their way to the castle was figuring out how leveling up worked.
Every time either of them leveled up, they would gain “skill points,” which they could then spend on unlocking more of their skill trees. It was tedious and yet another annoyance, but by the time they made their way to the castle gates they had an appreciable set of skills under their belts.
Sunset had added a lightning spell to her repertoire, along with making her fire spells bigger and better and improving her healing to also be able to target Marx. She’d also picked up a status spell, being able to now inflict poisons upon her enemies. Marx, on the other hand, had gained quite a few new footboxing moves and one particular move that made him nearly impossible to actually hit.
At least leveling up also provided general permanent buffs as well–Sunset was now sitting pretty with 98 total HP and Marx at 113. They’d found the crafting menu as well, which was quite helpful for maintaining Sunset’s MP; she’d been burning through it with every spell cast, but both slime core items could be crafted into those nifty little mana potions.
They would’ve made her life a hell of a lot easier if those actually existed outside of this game world, but she digressed. Right now they had a castle to storm.
Sunset glanced up at the gates and the stormy skies above them. As overdone as she felt rain had been on this adventure, this really just felt like a mockery of it. The raindrops were just textures that vanished before they even reached them, and the clouds themselves were a static texture that didn’t even fully obscure the unmoving noontime sun.
“So, we just go in, figure out how to disable this section of the barrier, and move on?” Marx clarified.
“And that’ll probably involve a boss fight,” Sunset added. “Plus whatever puzzles or enemies are in there already.”
Marx grinned his usual grin. “Let’s get started, then!”
The two crossed into the castle, and their worlds immediately went black for a few seconds. Before either could truly start to panic, though, their bodies strutted forward into a grand stone entry hall, similarly to how they moved without their input in battles. They regained control only a few moments later, however, and Sunset took the opportunity to look around.
The room they were in had two levels, a staircase on either side leading to the upper indoor balcony. Directly in front of them was a locked door, and directly above that on the upper level was a far larger, equally as locked door. If Sunset wagered a guess, she’d peg that as the doorway leading to their goal. On either side of the staircases were two entirely unlocked doors, and from the ceiling a giant chandelier was hung.
“Left or right?” Marx asked.
Sunset shrugged. “Well, going left didn’t really help last time we had a choice like this. Wanna take the right path?”
“Good enough for me!” Marx agreed, and the pair made their way to the right door.
Two stairwells, seven fights with skeletons, and a whole lot of walking later, and Sunset surmised that they really should’ve gone left. The right path was a maze filled with dead ends and traps, and by this point they were on the third floor of the castle but no closer to finding the key that they needed. At this rate Sunset was suspecting that this maze really was entirely pointless, but as they rounded a corner just after getting out of a fight with two skeletons, something caught her eye.
“Hey, Marx?” she called. “You might want to take a look at this.”
Marx curiously joined her in staring at the corner of the wall. By all means, it was mostly a standard outer corner; the walls were perpendicular to each other and they were on the exterior angle.
Or, at least, they would have been perpendicular had their textures actually met.
Instead, the exact corner of the wall was entirely a stormy gray, revealing the skybox through the improperly placed geometry. What was best about it, though, was that it gave Sunset an idea.
Video games were rather niche on Earth, at least ever since the home console market crashed in 1983, but PCs had brought a bit of a resurgence to the medium in the last couple of decades. Speedrunning was at least large enough that Sunset had stumbled across a few when she had been absorbing as much of Earth’s culture as she could, and there was usually one constant among them: clips.
That last fight had gotten her enough XP to level up again, finally getting her HP up to triple digits–a cool 102–but more importantly it had netted her more skill points. The next spell she had been looking at unlocking was a gravity spell. In battle it would have had very little use, only affecting flying enemies, but outside of battle it could also be used to either strengthen or diminish the effects of gravity to, say, make a jump one ordinarily could not. Like down a floor and into a currently inaccessible area after clipping through a wall.
“I mean, this is weird,” Marx said, “but uh, how exactly does this help us?”
Grinning, Sunset pulled up her skill tree and unlocked the spell she was after. “Well, for one thing, the room we’ve been trying to get to should be below us and a bit forward directly through the corner, so if I aim right we can skip right to the boss!”
Marx blinked and looked between the gap in the corner and Sunset a few times. “I’m sorry, but how exactly are we supposed to fit through that?”
“Like this.”
Sunset Shimmer cast Gravity Manipulation!
The effects of gravity were reduced for 1 minute!
Sunset proceeded to run right at the corner, slam into it, and bounce off.
Marx snickered. “Yeah, sure, you got through that real well.”
Sunset rolled her eyes as she picked herself up and dusted herself off. “I just had the positioning off, give me a moment.”
Repositioning herself, she charged the corner again. This time, she successfully clipped through and jumped for where she expected the boss to be. Looking down, she searched for the room she was looking for as she began to slowly fall. Fortunately, the walls and ceilings were only textured on one side, so she could see right into the boss room. There were two static figures inside, both humanoid. One was a short being dressed in classic witches’ garb and wielding a staff, while the other was a much taller and broader creature holding a massive sword and clad entirely in thick plate armor.
Unfortunately, it seemed like Sunset wasn’t going to make it. Her spontaneous jump was just a few decimeters short, and she desperately reached out with her hoof to try just about anything to get in. A few moments later, she felt like her hoof impacted something, even though it seemed to just be resting on open air. Her world went completely black again for a couple seconds, and then she and Marx were suddenly warped into the room.
“So, you defeated my puppet,” the witch said as they walked in from where the (still closed) door was. “No matter, your journey ends here.”
The other figure raised their sword. “The Great Dragon sends his regards.”
Immediately, they were launched into a proper fight, the background distorting and their health bars appearing.
Kalinya, the Witch of Blackridge Castle and Vantu, the Knight of Blackridge Castle attack!
Looking at her options, Sunset took stock of the fight. She and Marx at least had full health and she was at 100 MP–leveling up had healed her and Marx barely ever got hit by anything–but Kalinya had 250 HP and Vantu was sitting all the way up at 400. It looked like they would have to whittle them down until they could actually defeat them. Considering for a moment, Sunset made her selection.
Kalinya cast Embolden!
Vantu’s attack increased!
Sunset Shimmer cast Lightning Barrage!
Vantu took 137 damage!
Vantu was paralyzed!
Marx used Sneak Strike!
Kalinya took 103 damage!
Marx’s evasion increased!
Vantu used Heavy Strike!
Sunset Shimmer took 58 damage!
At that, the turn ended, and Sunset was suddenly very concerned. She had absolutely no idea if she would legitimately straight-up die if she ran out of HP, but it wasn’t something she was willing to chance. Resolving herself to just using healing items until Marx could whittle down the enemies’ health, she selected her choice.
Kalinya cast Imprison!
Sunset Shimmer was immobilized!
Sunset Shimmer is immobilized and cannot move!
Marx used Sneak Strike!
Kalinya took 101 damage!
Marx’s evasion increased!
Vantu is paralyzed and cannot move!
If Sunset was capable of it at the time, she would’ve let out a sigh of relief. She didn’t expect the enemy to just be able to entirely immobilize her, but at least the paralysis status effect kicked in at just the right time and Marx would hopefully take down Kalinya this turn.
Kalinya cast Deflect!
Sunset Shimmer used Health Potion!
Sunset Shimmer gained 58 HP!
Marx used Sneak Strike!
Kalinya deflected the attack!
Vantu took 47 damage!
Marx’s evasion increased!
Vantu used Heavy Strike!
Vantu’s attack missed!
Just like that, the two of them suddenly had the advantage. Sure, Kalinya could deflect Marx’s attacks, it seemed, but Marx would just take her out if she ever stopped. And she would have to eventually, assuming that their enemies actually used MP like Sunset did.
Kalinya cast Deflect!
Kalinya’s cast failed!
Sunset Shimmer used Lightning Barrage!
Vantu took 134 damage!
Marx used Armor Breaker!
Vantu took 82 damage!
Vantu was defeated!
Vantu dropped Knight’s Scimitar
Vantu dropped 593 G!
Kalinya became enraged!
Kalinya’s attack increased!
Kalinya’s speed increased!
Kalinya’s defense decreased!
Kalinya’s resistance decreased!
Sunset mentally grinned to herself. One more turn and they definitely had this in the bag.
Kalinya cast Firestorm!
Sunset Shimmer took 39 damage!
Marx took 102 damage!
Sunset Shimmer cast Fireball+!
Kalinya took 46 damage!
Kalinya was defeated!
Kalinya dropped Witchwood Staff!
Kalinya dropped 648 G!
Sunset Shimmer gained 340 XP!
Sunset Shimmer reached Level 7!
Marx gained 340 XP!
Marx reached Level 6!
The battle over, Sunset and Marx once again regained control over their bodies. Both of them sighed in relief as Sunset pulled up the skill trees to see where to spend their skill points. Neither expected that last attack to be that powerful, but at least they survived. “Ooh,” Marx said, looking at the menu. “That one looks good.”
“Style Kick?” Sunset asked. The move seemed like a fairly standard kick with similar damage to Sneak Strike and a similar effect–this one decreased the opponent’s accuracy instead of increasing one’s own evasion, though. “Man, you really just can’t get hit, huh.”
“Nope!” Marx happily replied. “Hey, maybe I’ll get to try it out on that thing!”
Ahead of them, a door leading out of the room had opened, revealing a glowing blue node of some sort sticking out of the ground. Well, that’s one hell of a quest objective, Sunset mentally noted. As they trotted into the room (which contained nothing but what they presumed to be whatever was keeping the barrier up), Sunset shrugged. “Why the hell not.” She selected the option, and Marx's skill points decreased as the spell was unlocked.
Marx grinned and launched forward, a few sparkles around his feet appearing as he traveled. He almost flew through the air, impacting the barrier node only a few moments later.
As soon as he did, the world froze.
Only for a couple of seconds, though, before time resumed and a soft golden glow appeared over the entire floor, small particles floating up around them. “That…was weird,” Marx noted, looking at where the barrier node used to be. The object was just entirely gone, with not even an animation for its destruction. But in turn, the entire world almost felt slower.
Sunset frowned. “Hey, would you mind trying that move again?” she asked. “Just on a wall or something; I want to test something.”
“Eh, sure, why not?” Marx answered, using Style Kick once again.
This time, the freeze was much faster, right as he used the kick. Again time froze for a few seconds before everything resumed and Marx hit the wall. “What even was that?” he asked.
Sunset frowned. “I think we’ve managed to actually lag the game,” she explained her hypothesis. “It’s trying to load too many particles at once.”
“And is that a bad thing?” Marx asked.
Sunset frowned even deeper, the gears in her head churning. “Maybe not. Whatever the Fountain is doing to keep us in here, it has to keep the game running, right?”
“That would make sense,” Marx replied. “You’re the expert here.”
“Not by any stretch of the word,” Sunset countered, “but I know enough. I’d bet that the Fountain has contingencies in place to save whoever it puts in here in the event of a crash, so if we force one…”
“You know what, I’m not even going to pretend I know what that means and just go along with whatever plan you have.”
Sunset pulled up the menu again–which also took a bit of time to properly load–and selected her choice for her skill points: a spell that amplified all other party members’ moves. Casting it, she looked back at Marx. “Alright, try it again.”
Another Style Kick, and another lag spike. This time the world stayed frozen for a solid six seconds. They tried again, and this time it felt like the whole thing was starting to come apart.
“On- --re ti-e!” Sunset exclaimed as much as she could with the sledgehammer they were taking to the framerate.
Marx performed another Style Kick, and this time their desired result came to pass. After upwards of thirty, extremely anxiety-inducing seconds of the world being frozen, Sunset’s vision went white.
FountainGame.exe terminated with error code 04: OutOfMemoryException
“Got any skips, Pinkie?”
“Nope! Go fish, Dashie!”
“You know, when I suggested that we play cards to pass the time, I was expecting something a bit more…oh, how shall I put this,” Rarity said, looking down at the absurd collection of cards in her hoof, “...refined? Like Bridge, or maybe Poker.”
“Ta be fair, yer the one who asked Discord for a deck of cards,” Applejack replied with her classic raised eyebrow. “Ah’m not quite sure what you expected. Oh, and Ah’m biddin’ three, by the way.”
Rarity tutted a bit and narrowed her eyebrows at her hoof as she tried to parse what she was supposed to even do when her queen of hearts spontaneously grew arms and legs, jumped out of her hoof, and started demanding her head on a platter, but fortunately for her the absurd game was cut short. Starlight’s sudden cry of “They’re awake!” distracted everypony else.
Discord sprang out of a lump of charcoal he’d turned himself into earlier, sending the substance just about everywhere as he retook his space on the couch. “Oh goody! I was getting tired of seeing just how much I could tweak fundamental constants before atoms destabilized!”
Everypony scooted a little bit away from him.
He rolled his eyes. “I’m kidding. I was counting how many Carbon-12 atoms are in twelve grams of the stuff.” He waved his paw dismissively. “Besides, I figured out my limits on completely breaking physics a long time ago.”
“That, um, doesn’t really make ponies feel any more secure,” Fluttershy pointed out quietly.
Discord blinked in surprise, but before he could reply Sunburst’s groan cut him off. He’d fallen asleep (and nearly fallen onto Starlight), though the latter’s loud announcement woke him up rather quickly. He brought a hoof up to his temple to massage it. “By Celestia’s starry mane, I should not have drank that much,” he muttered as he gratefully accepted the glass of water that Discord quietly snapped in.
Celestia herself raised an eyebrow at him at the expression, but her attention was quickly drawn to the screen. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “but the previous Fountains tended not to glow, correct?”
That snapped everypony’s attentions there as well. “Well now,” Discord grinned, “this might just get interesting!”
“Well, I’m glad your hunch was right!” Marx said as he and Sunset awoke, still on their Mekkaian Warp Star.
Sunset yawned. “Yep, glad to see we’re still in one piece.” She looked forward, narrowing her eyes at the increasing glow the Fountain was giving off. Its magic somehow felt angry, which was a feat in and of itself by Sunset's standards. Slowly, she backed them off a bit. “But something tells me that we weren’t supposed to do that.”
Something rushed past them, one of the large, star-shaped rocks just missing slamming into them. It came to rest between them and the Fountain, and was soon joined by many of its brethren. Fortunately, it seemed that they all were avoiding the Warp Star, but it resulted in a thick, fairly solid sphere surrounding the Fountain and preventing entry. It was far from the entire moon condensed down to the one sphere, but it seemed that every rock within a few kilometers had been brought together for the Fountain’s protection.
The entire assemblage gave out a low rumble as it began flashing. From behind the sphere rose first a great, purple, reptilian head, followed by two giant front claws and the creature’s blue wings. Sunset couldn’t see its back, but could see the dragon’s massive tail fade into existence, wrapping around the bottom of the sphere of stars.
The Great Dragon let go of the sphere, took flight, and let out an ear-splitting roar.
“Okay so maybe cheating the system wasn’t the best idea,” Sunset admitted.
Power coalesced in the dragon’s maw, forming several new star-shaped projectiles–these far brighter than the moon’s constituent rocks–that it shot at them. Both Sunset and Marx let out a surprised yelp and the former mentally yanked the Warp Star down and out of the way of the attack. The dragon followed up with a rush forward and managed to nick the side of the Warp Star with its claws, shattering the vehicle and sending Sunset and Marx sprawling onto the new surface surrounding the Fountain.
The dragon whirled around and roared again, lashing at them with its tail. It failed to connect though, as Sunset generated a massive shield for it to slam into. The appendage ricocheted off of the magical barrier, actually forcing the massive creature to stagger back and narrow its eyes. It might’ve caught them off-guard, but by now Sunset had a plan.
Her grin split her face as her horn grew ever brighter. At this point, she’d absorbed seven different Warp Stars. She realistically had no idea exactly what that entailed, sure, but what she did know was that it was keeping her feeling on top of the world, like she could even take on an alicorn and win.
The dragon prepared another attack, but Sunset really didn’t care about the specifics of it at this point. As much as the Fountain had presumably created the Great Dragon, it was powering her just as much, too. And outside of the game world it had created, this fight was on their terms.
Before the dragon could release its attack–more star-shaped projectiles–Sunset teleported directly behind it. In an explosion of aquamarine light, the creature was forced downwards towards the Fountain at absurd speeds as Sunset hit it physically with a magic-enhanced punch. Even with as much power as she could feel the Fountain allowing her to draw from, she figured that the Fountain would have made its creation fire-resistant, so she avoided her favorite spells.
But she was far from done. Another teleport, and this time she struck it in the face. A third teleport forced it left, away from where Marx was standing on the surface. A final, fourth teleport and Sunset was back behind the Great Dragon, this time hitting it with a massive, Fountain-powered Naught’s Bell Explosion.
It never really stood a chance.
The construct slammed down into the sphere of star-shaped rocks, shattering most of them and blasting away a significant proportion of the protecting sphere on impact. Without whatever computer the Fountain used, it flickered out of existence as Sunset levitated herself back onto the surface next to Marx. She was panting a bit from the exertion, but her wide smile still crossed her face.
Marx didn’t say anything for a few seconds, only staring at the hole she’d excavated in the shield using the dragon. When he did speak, he only had one response.
“Holy shit.”
Sunset tossed her mane. “Feels good to be back in business. Those in-game spells were so limiting.”
“Yeah, I can…see that,” Marx replied, his voice almost seeming deadened. He shook it off extremely quickly, though. “Welp, we’ve got a Warp Star to grab!”
“Last one, right?” Sunset clarified as she trotted towards the hole, Marx close behind her. “How do we even summon Nova, anyway?”
They jumped down towards the Fountain. “Well, the legends all say something of the order of ‘When the Summoning Stars are gathered’ or the like,” Marx said. “I’d really guess that it would have something to do with you, since you’ve been absorbing the things.”
Sunset considered that as she reached up to touch the Star Rod. Halfmoon’s Warp Star was, similar to Floria’s, green, though a far lighter shade. Unlike the forest planet’s, this Warp Star was far lighter, almost akin to silicon computer chips Sunset had seen back on Earth.
That was another thing. The Fountain may have let them keep their natural forms, but all of the NPCs in that game world had been human. Its creators had to have known about the species, and Sunset’s mind began churning with ideas. Perhaps this was in the same universe as Earth.
She frowned as she and Marx boarded the Warp Star. No, that probably wasn’t it–the physics were just too different for that to be right. Perhaps then, this universe had its own version of Earth?
She shook her head and snorted. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway. She hadn’t seen or heard of any humans on Popstar, so trying to find if this universe’s Earth had a mirror back to Equestria would be a fool’s errand anyway.
Before her thoughts could continue further, though, their Warp Star suddenly moved without her input. With naught but a moment to notice that, they vanished.