Vrrar
Opsola Tairais - Luh Ir
“Father Time - Part One”
The galaxy was in full view in the night sky. I lay there, looking upward to it, in awe at the wonders of what God had created. It had been two days spent in this strange world, trying to adapt to my conditions and wondering if what I was experiencing was real. I had come to the conclusion through the climactic battle previously that I had not, in fact, gone insane. I had yet to decipher whether this revelation bode good or ill, but I had once again found the spark of faith in me and had silently prayed for the will of my Creator to be done. I was feeling considerably better than before, knowing that whatever lay ahead now had been placed on the shoulders of something far greater and more capable than myself.
Despite this, my mind continued to drift to the events I had endured. What had become of me to turn into a monster blinded by rage? I recalled briefly a story told by my father about how when I had become so angry when I was four, I had ran after my sister with a knife. This had sparked his never ending tutoring of me gaining control of my emotions. He constantly hammered it in to me that I was fully capable of harming someone else, even killing them. This fact, of course, had led me to wisely heed his words and I eventually tampered my anger. It had cost me dearly during my school years, always being the one to be punched and kicked for the amusement of others, but I always tried my best to stay away from fighting. In fact, I never recalled a time when I did fight. My father was the greatest mentor I could have and my respect for him conquered my natural desire to defend myself.
Eventually, of course, he encouraged me to do so. Still, I resisted, always fearing that one fact of what I could possibly do.
Now, however, I felt nothing but shame. I had allowed myself to go beyond the limits of my control. The memory of my father was strong in me, I briefly recalling many conversations we had talked about, but the only comfort was the fact I didn’t see him looking down at me in disappointment. Rather, as I gazed to the stars above, I felt something else. I felt like, despite what my mind wanted to tell me, I had done something I needed to do. I kept wanting to chide myself, to make myself believe that by unleashing the pent up anger from many years of pain and death, I had somehow dishonored the memory of my deceased father. Yet, like the comforting embrace of a mother to a child, I kept feeling a great warmth fill me that seemed to tell me otherwise. I had done right by allowing myself to let go, to release my anger at the right time. I had allowed my frustration and rage to come out for a rightful cause, not one meant to harm another for no reason.
I silently whispered thanks to my Creator for this comfort, adding a ‘thank you’ to my father for all he had taught me. He had been a good father, a good teacher. It was only right, I thought to myself, that I should question my actions. In that way, I could improve. Realizing now that I was capable of feats of strength not even I dreamed of, I knew now that I would have to control it. The brief skirmish with Havok had been a victory for me in taking control of my actions. Still, I had almost lost it, so I would have to meditate and gain a complete understanding of what I could do. I had done it before during my youth, I could do it again.
“Thank you Dad,” I whispered to the stars.
Any doubt left in my mind lifted. I could do this, I had to do it and I would. God allowed me a great struggle in my youth and only now did I connected only the smallest of dots to the situation I was thinking on now. I had chosen the path of avoiding harming others, at the cost of my own health. Now, with these strange new enemies around and new faces I had to acquaint myself with, that strength I had hidden for so many years would definitely need to come to play. It could not, it would not, be used wrongfully. I had conquered my disability then, I would conquer my new strength now. I smiled, opening my eyes to the full view of what my mind assumed was the Milky Way. I felt the faith I had once held strongly rekindling inside me. I knew this would prove to be my rock and foundation.
I heard a rustling beside me, my thoughts drifting away as I heard the soft clop of hooves against the ground. My head turned, the night having cast its wonderful shadow over everything, only the adjustment of my eyesight allowing me the briefest of glimpses to the shape of a pony. “Doctor Whooves?” I asked in a whisper.
“Aye,” came the response. Then, in a flash of light that momentarily lit up the Doctors form, the campfire rekindled. Flames erupted, soft popping sounds emanating as it started to once again consume its wooden fuel source. I saw Whooves look to me, “It seems we are at a crossroads my dear chap.”
I sat up slowly, trying to cross my legs at first, but failing and allowing them to spread. I used my tail to push myself off the ground. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that a decision needs to be made by someone in our new party of wayward souls,” the Doctor responded. “That someone is not me, nor the dragon, nor the Emperor. That only leaves you.”
My mind attempted to rationalize what he was trying to say, failing miserably. “I don’t understand,” I said.
“Come now,” the Doctor said, “do you really think someone like you has any business in a place like this?”
My eyes widened. “Well... No” I responded, my voice faint. Whooves nodded slowly, “Then you also know that with you being here, you’ve changed everything.” His expression grew dark, his eyes boring into mine. “I know who you are, Travis. I know where you come from. I know that everything happening to Equestria now is all because of you.”
“I’m sorry!” I said quickly, “I didn’t mean for any of this!” The calmness I once felt before I now left me, in its place a fear striking into my core. I had guessed previously that my presence here had an impact on events, this proving true when I encountered the changelings. Had I caused all of thi-
“Yes you did,” Whooves said, his voice grim. He somehow had read my mind. “I had come here after my change, Travis. This was supposed to be my afterlife, my land of milk and honey. Instead, through the reckless imaginings of an inferior mind, my world was turned upside down.”
I watched as he stood on his hooves, approaching me slowly. His head was lowered, his lips a scowl, baring some of his teeth. This was completely unlike the Doctor I knew, or thought I knew. In my brief instant of fright, I felt myself crawl back involuntarily. My gaze shifted around me for a moment, seeing the large dragon and the warrior emperor still asleep on the other side of the campfire. I wanted to shout, to alert them, but something caught in my throat. It came out in a gasp, I looked back to see Whooves nearly on top of me, my jaw trembling at the expression of pure hatred on his face.
“You turn to your gods and your beliefs,” the Doctor continued, spitting his words, “You make yourself believe you’ve done right by what you were taught. You humans are all the same, always picking away the pieces of the universe with your imagination, then when everything comes tumbling down around you, you make excuses to feel better!” He stomped his forehoof against the ground, pressing his head against my own. My snout was pressed down by the ridge of his snout, his eyes glaring into my own. There was a fire in them, something akin to hatred. “And now, I’m going to show you everything!”
“Doctor, wai-!”
I couldn’t even finish my sentence, my words cut off as his forehoof slammed into the side of my skull and pressed my head down against the ground. “Witness the destruction you’ve wrought!” he proclaimed, my body forced into an awkward pose with a mixture of pain and twitching, my eyes were flooded with swirls of colors. I felt my body briefly spasm, then I felt weightless. My consciousness was dragged out of my mind, into the swirling vortex of colors and thrown deep in the shades of purple and red. I tried screaming, tried anything, but only the intense feeling of falling welcomed me. I felt a great pressure against myself, trying my best to close my eyes but never truly recognizing how. Then the swirling stopped, my vision forced to look at a world much like earth.
This earth, however, was far different. Only half was lit by the lone sun in the distance, but from what I could see a large continent I had never seen before spanned across most of the surface that the light revealed. For the first brief moments of my glimpse at this foreign world, I felt peace. I felt like this was as things should be. My vision drifted to the corner of the world, the light creating a wonderful array of midnight colorations across the atmosphere as the dark side embraced the barrier. Slowly, the form of a planetoid rose, half of its surface lit by the same sun. It reminded me much of Earth's moon, though this one seemed..off. I could feel dismay as I recognized what was different. Across its surface, jagged lines of molten red began to erupt and tear the moon to pieces. As the breaking form of the lunar body rose higher above its mother world, its pieces began falling towards it.
The perfect world below turned into hellfire. Across its surface, large chunks of the moon impacted far faster than naturally possible. The dark side of the world lit up with eruptions of crust and magma caused by the impacts. The light side fared no better, becoming consumed by the oncoming wave of armageddon. In a flash, the planet began ripping itself apart. The entire surface of the world erupted in a greenish hellfire, consuming the red hues of magma and flames on the surface. In a quick flash of the same color, the entire world imploded on itself, and for a brief instant all was quiet. Then, with a flash of intense light that blinded me temporarily, I watched in horror as the anomaly of rock and debris exploded outward into the cosmos.
In its place sat a single, large chunk of earth. I could clearly see a green light, very bright, emanating from its surface.
“That was you!” the Doctors voice called out to me accusingly. “You did this! You’ve doomed this world! You’ve doomed all reality to the Queen of Nightmares!”
I felt my body once more, the involuntarily shaking of my limbs and chest as I sobbed heavily. The Doctors hoof had left my face, he stood over me as I looked up to him through watery eyes. I was a mess beneath him, my faith shattered and my resolve destroyed all through a single vision of death and destruction. Everything I had built up to make me strong in my previous thoughts, to make me believe that I was something more than a hateful beast of destruction, had been proven wrong. My tears blurred my vision completely as I felt a hand, a human hand, grip my reptilian one. “But it doesn’t have to be this way,” the Doctor said softly, caring to me.
The hand became my anchor was it pulled me to my feet, another wiping a cloth across my eyes as my sobbing subsided. “I-It doesn’t?” I asked, stuttering my words before I gasped. Before me, I saw David Tennant, the real incarnation of the Tenth Doctor. He had his trademark blue, two-piece four-buttoned suit on with the red tie. His air was a mess, as usual, and I noticed that one hand was firmly gripping my own where he had pulled me to my feet. The other was just now lowering with a white cloth, replacing it in his pocket. He slowly released his grip on my hand, and I released mine. “Y-you’re...” I tried to begin, but words failed me.
The Doctor smiled, “Yes. I’m the Doctor, the real Doctor. I don’t really like doing all this bipedal walking in a quadruped world.” He smirked, “Might scare the locals, right?”
I surprised myself by chuckling. “Yeah,” I said, “Kind of makes sense.” Then something dawned on me. “Is that wh-” I was stopped when the Doctor raised a finger, waving it. “Ah-ah-ah! Mustn't reveal too much just yet,” he said. “I’ve already, probably, maybe, slightly, quite possibly said and did too much, so let’s try not go down that path shall we?”
I simply nodded, feeling the rogue emotions from before diminishing inside me. The Doctor smiled in return. “Good,” he then motioned around him, “Now about all this hubbub, hmm? Quite the problem we have ourselves in don’t we?”
“I guess so,” I responded, looking around. I gazed at the sleeping Lazarus and Havok momentarily, looking back to the Doctor. “Kind of shocked me my mind came to life. Really shocked me to be here, too.”
“Right,” the Doctor said, clasping his hands as he looked unsure for a second, “About that, right? You see, what I said earlier was true. I kinda sorta, maybe lied a teensy weensy bit when I said that only humanity does this sort of thing, but hey! You guys really imagine some really, really, really weird stuff that kinda, somehow gets forced into the timestream.” He looked at me, his expression dead serious. Noticing my surprised expression, he continued with a smile. “Anyway, so as I was saying, things happen and sometimes ones imagination may see into another world. It just so happens yours did, but-” he quickly raised a hand to silence me before I could speak “-something went wrong with yours.
“You see, sometimes, when a universe loves another universe, they tend to get very...mmm, what's the word? Sensual?” He placed a finger on his chin, looking up briefly before quickly reverting back to look at me. “Anyway, things happen and momma and pappa universe create a baby universe. Well, sometimes, this baby universe spawns some general demonic horde that somehow appears in every reality I’ve visited, and generally the outcome can either be good or bad. Normally bad. In this case, very bad, but not as bad as bad wolf. I think that was the baddest of the bad.”
Oh my God, this man was worse than Pinkie Pie. I was simply dumbstruck at his explanation by this point. I helplessly listened as he continued on with his banter.
“Anyway, as I was saying, this world spawned some really nasty hordes that were apparently defeated by the magic of love! Ahh, so romantic-” he briefly cringed “-but also so cliche. Never seen a demonic horde defeated by love, first time for everything I suppose! Like I was saying...” He then blinked, looking around him. “I keep losing my train of thought. Anywho, this event somehow managed to shoot this demonic horde across the multiverse, right into the world you somehow peered into and BAM, here we are! No, wait, here we aren’t. There’s something else....”
I watched as the Doctor began to pace back and forth. My eyes simply followed, my mind too far gone by this point to even attempt to register or even rationalize anything he had said. I knew from watching Doctor Who this was something I was supposed to expect, but the Doctor never went on an unending banter of talking unless something was really amiss. Then again, in the state of this world as it was now, things could very well be amiss. I mean, heck, changelings eating flesh? Yeah, that counts.
“Ah!” the Doctor turned on his heel, looking at me again. “I remembered. Your world, that world you wrote about and all that? What was its name?”
“Anagonia?” I answered, unsure.
“Right, Anagonia!” he snapped his fingers as he smiled widely, “That world, and everything in it, wasn’t really something you created. You see, it’s like-” I then raised my hand, watching as the Doctor fell silent and raised an eyebrow. I took a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “Listen, Mr. Who, or Whooves, whichever. I really, really don’t follow you. I mean, I understood parts of that, but you have to help me out here.”
“Oh,” the Doctor responded, standing straight as he crossed one arm to an elbow, his finger briefly tapping his chin. “What don’t you understand?”
“Almost all of it,” I said watching as his expression turned to surprise, I quickly added, “though it did make some sort of sense. Listen, what does Anagonia have to do with any of this? I mean I thought this world up when I was fourteen. It’s just....something from an overactive imagination!”
“Yes and overactive imaginations tend to break the barriers of reality,” the Doctor quickly stated, then he pointed a finger at me. “You, somehow, broke that barrier. I don’t know how, but you did. You also implanted a piece of yourself in that world. That piece of you drastically altered the natural course of history for Anagonia forever. You named it-”
We then turned our heads as the dragon grumbled. His head was slowly rising from being curled on the other side of his form. When I looked back to the Doctor, he was Time Turner again. “Wha-Ho-” I started.
“Not enough time!” Whooves seethed silently through clenched teeth. Before I could ask more, he quickly rose himself up, swiftly delivering a punch to the side of my head with his forehoof.
I was out before I hit the ground.