The last thing Crescent Talon remembered was the blinding light and then, well, a ton of pain being delivered at terminal velocity, he was basically unconscious before even hitting the wall, so first he winced at the pain that he felt on his head, it wasn’t migraine level exactly, but the second thing he did was wince due to the lights and how much they were increasing the first thing, AKA, lights made head hurt.
He couldn’t quite remember what exactly had happened, but his head was throbbing something fierce, but when he tried to put a hand… a talon over his face to rub his sides, he was incapable of rising an arm; quickly blinking away the small spots over his eyes he found himself tied up by slightly glowing golden chains that circled all over his body, basically turning him into a binded mummy.
Quickly looking around himself, Talon was slightly less worried when he saw his friend Blue looking at an odd sphere in the floor, it looked burned out, but that wasn’t that important right now, he just needed some answers right now.
“Ah, can you please explain to me why I am like this?” Whatever Blue was thinking about was soon dispelled when heard the voice, before putting his eye son his old friend, but instead of trotting up to Crescent to help him he only had a look on his eyes that the gryphon recognized after more than a decade of knowing each other, it was the looks Blue always had when he had to give bad news.
“Yeah, I… Princess Celestia and the others thought that it would be a good idea to keep you like that until… until I give you the news,” Blue was looking at everything except at Crescent, so the gryphon knew well that this would not be good.
“Oh god, are we banned?” He had been quickly dispatched by Celestia, that was true, so they had failed their jobs as guards on this trial test, but really, it wasn’t their fault that they found out a boss at this point, they had met some rather obnoxious NPCs before wanting to get inside, but the Princess was something else in terms of power.
“Well, it has something to do with that, hey, Crescent, ah… can you do me a favor? Can you activate your status screen? I think you can reach it,” it was obvious Blue was trying to take as long as he could to explain exactly what was the reason for him to be in chains, but he thankfully had enough movement range on his arms to do that, now if only could Blue help him out of those same chains that would be great.
At the moment one of his claws touched the bracelet on his wrist, a screen appeared, not in front of him, but from another sphere not too far away from where Blue was sitting, this made Crescent curious and then began to turn on and off the screen and the situation just made something in his stomach drop.
“Blue… what the fuck is going on?”
“Yeah, ah… we had that thing in our heads, it transmitted that screen from inside to make it seem like a status screen just to fool us,” while Blue was a very chill guy, the look of complete seriousness and almost contrite was not something he had seen many times in his life, hell, that voice he only used in the most serious of cases, like when he told Crescent that his parents were getting a divorce, or when he broke out with his girlfriend since High School.
“You… you are not saying this thing is fake right? I mean, this is pure VR, crazy things like that can happen, look, we just need to Log Out and find out what is goin-”
“NO! Crescent, do not try that, okay? Look, I already tried to log out, this is what happens,” hs friend pointed at the identical sphere at his side, but that one was completely burned, his confused looks must have been pretty obvious because Blue filled the blanks “that option only makes this stupid thing overload, the Princess explained the principle behind it… basically someone tampered with them and whenever someone tries the log out option they get a fatal shock.”
“Well… fuck,” Crescent simply said before relaxing, that was not the kind of thing he was expecting but… it made sense really, he already had some doubts about what they were doing, but this was the last piece he needed to get that theory and turn it into reality “we got isekai’ed to Equestria, i did not see that coming.”
“Ah, buddy… you are taking this strangely well.”
“Oh no, this is still just the culture shock. You wait till I’ve settled down into the situation and found my bearings. Then I’ll start panicking.”
“Nice, Hitchhiker’s, but really, you are taking it better than I did.”
“Really? How did you react?”
“Gilda had to slap me out of my babbling, it was that bad… so what now?”
“Now? We find the assholes that did this to us and then we kick their collective asses, just get me out of these chains okay?”
As both friends got up they went deeper into the mansion, it was their first time visiting the second floor, usually they just stayed on the ground floor due to the people in charge telling them that the other floor was still in development, well, what a great feeling it was to realize that it all had been a lie. They were looking at things in a new way, slightly overwhelmed at the whole situation.
After a few minutes not knowing where to go, they quickly followed the noise, finding two gryphon guards knocked out in front of two big doors, neither recognized them as ‘beta testers’ so, probably mercenaries? Anyways, they both went into the room. They both then stood in confusion at what they found.
In the middle of the children’s room was Princess Celestia and a very young gryphon chick playing patty cakes?
“Hello, are you my new guards? My old ones took a nap, they must have been very tired,” the chick had white and pink feathers, and the slight slip on the little chick’s speech only made her more adorable in the eyes of both friends.
“Is she like the princess of this place?”
“No, she is Princess, I’m Gloria, daddy and mommy are the… the… is a big word, but cannot remember,” she put a claw over her mouth trying to remember what the grown ups called her parents.
“Miss Gloria’s father is the Seneschal of Griffonstone, apparently that information was omitted in your debrief,” the older pony with glasses said, scaring both friends as he seemed to have come out of nowhere.
“Geez, dude, wear a bell or something, you almost gave me a heart attack,” poor Crescent put a claw over his chest due to the surprise, but unlike him, his friend simply walked up to the alicorn and bowed as best he could.
“Princess Celestia, I… I’m ready to tell you everything that we know about what is going on, please, if you can help the others, I fear we are all caught in one big trap.”
“Go ahead, while you may not be my subject, I will gladly give you my help, so tell me, who is behind this,” and Blue then began to talk, about how the unicorn and the gryphon landed in this world.