Cube Land
Three: Other Side of the Coin
"M—Monster!"
Twilight halted her pacing, looking up from the groove she had dug up from her relentless patrol. She loved Fluttershy dearly, but sometimes it was hard to take her seriously after so many 'pony who cried Timberwolf' incidents.
This time, however, there actually was a monster. And it looked like it was trying to isolate Fluttershy from the rest of them.
"By Celestia!" Twilight exclaimed. "Everypony, monster!"
The ponies—sans Fluttershy—heeded Twilight's call, and formed a protective bulwark, moving to intercept the strange, tall, bipedal monster before it could get to her. To Fluttershy's credit, she stood as still as a statue with only the occasional tremor racking through her body.
Twilight was preparing a spell that would leave naught but a scorch mark upon the ground where the creature stood. Before she could unleash her wrath towards the unfortunate events that led to this point on the monster that was trying to steal away one of her closest friends, it...
...Stopped. The bipedal monster stopped and backed a few steps away. Not far enough to make it any less of a threat, but enough to say I'm not trying to hurt you.
Confused, Twilight slowly let go of the building energy in her horn, and observed this strange creature.
It was tall, much taller than her: it would rival, if not surpass, Princess Celestia in height. The creature was much like everything else in this world—as in, all of its features were square and cubed. From its long legs to the two arms that hung at its sides, even the large head, everything was square-shaped. A short, brown mane coated the top part of its head and fine stubble of hair grew around its chin.
The biped also seemed to be wearing some sort of primitive clothing; pants and a sleeveless shirt, coloured blue and teal respectively. The apparel looked like it had seen better days, as there were rips, scratches, and suspicious stains all along the surface. Two light-blue—and square, obviously—eyes watched Twilight with a curious expression.
"What the hay is that?" asked Applejack, voicing the question that everypony was silently asking.
"I don't know," replied Twilight Sparkle after a quiet length, "but it doesn't seem to be going away."
True to her observation, the tall, somewhat menacing biped simply stood there, unmoving except for its two eyes. Watching. It took Twilight a few more seconds to realize that the creature wasn't just observing, but seemed to be offering something to them, as grasped in one of its hands was... some form of grain?
It somewhat looked like wheat. Or at least, this land's variation of wheat.
"That... thing has a weapon!"
Rarity's frantic statement made Twilight's blood run cold. She looked to where Rarity was pointing her dirt-laden hoof, and sure enough, attached to the creatures side on some sort of harness or belt, was a silvery-grey sword, made yet again out of tiny, interlocking cubes.
What does it want? Twilight asked herself. Why is it offering us wheat, yet it carries such a blatant tool of harm and violence around like it's nothing?
Twilight felt another cold-shiver run down her spine, similar to the one she felt before. It felt like she was being watched. And the feeling wasn't coming from the biped in front of her...
"Maybe it's only trying to protect itself," Twilight thought aloud. "Maybe it's just curious about us, and brought a weapon in case we were hostile."
She wasn't sure who she was trying to convince: her friends or herself.
"But... we would never hurt anypony!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie. After glancing and stroking her chin with a hoof, she added, "Or any weird-tall-bipedal-creature-thing, for that matter!"
"While that might be obvious to a pony, that—" Twilight motioned towards the silent creature with a slight head bob, "—is not a pony."
"That it ain't," confirmed Applejack. "Ah hope your 'maybes' are right, Twilight, 'cause if it ain't friendly, Ah'm goin' to buck it so hard that it'll never, ever mess with us again!"
With that, Applejack took a couple steps forward, her green eyes never leaving the creature's blue ones. She snorted and almost pawed at the ground, but stopped, as the biped might have taken that as an act of aggression.
"Applejack!" hissed Twilight. "What are you doing?!"
Without looking back at Twilight, Applejack replied, with a tone that brooked no argument, "Ah'm goin' to see what it wants."
Making every attempt to not give in to her baser instincts and plant her two front hooves into the damp soil, pivot her body, and buck the aberrant biped all the way to next week, Applejack walked with agonizing slowness towards the cube-creature.
To the creature's credit, it met her gaze readily. Applejack saw many conflicting emotions beneath the creature's calm, collected exterior: worry, excitement, sorrow, curiosity, and many more states of mind that she couldn't name, but Twilight probably could.
Lost in the two windows of the creature's soul, Applejack nearly jumped in surprise when something just seemed to click. She didn't understand what or why, but the creature was looking at her differently now. More wearily.
Only a pony-length separated Applejack and the strange biped. With a small amount of hesitation, the creature raised one arm from its lowered position and seemed to offer the otherworldly grain to her, doing so in a slow and controlled motion.
Watching with bated breath, Twilight swallowed nervously. The tension between Applejack and the creature was thick, like a melted popsicle on a hot summer day. Twilight was sure that Applejack didn't notice, but both her and the biped were taut as springs: both would've reacted to the slightest irregular motion in each other's movements.
Twilight heaved a sigh of relief when Applejack managed to grab the wheat-like grain without incident. The farm pony backed away slowly, keeping her eyes on the biped the whole time while she returned to the rest of the ponies.
Spitting out the grain with an unladylike ptooey loud enough to make Rarity cringe, Applejack told Twilight and the others about what she had learned from the staring contest.
By the end of it, Twilight was left with more questions than she started with. Most of them began with 'why'. Choking back all of her questions for the time being, she tried to formulate a plan while the blocky Sun slowly set behind her.
Time was running out. Even Pinkie was looking around nervously.
"Uhh, girls? We really don't want to be outside at night," she emphasized, making a point to look over her shoulder to check that nothing was there.
"I know, I know," snapped Twilight, a little harsher than she intended. "But where are we going to go? Rainbow Dash hasn't come back yet, that bipedal creature is still staring at us, and soon it'll be too dark to do anything!"
"Umm... T—Twilight?" asked Fluttershy, her voice barely more than a whisper.
"Not now, Fluttershy: I'm trying to think."
"I'm pretty sure this is important..."
"Fine. What is it?"
"Creature! Sword! Sharp!"
Whirling around, Twilight saw the biped standing straight up, its shoulders no longer hunched over, holding onto the sharp instrument of death with one meaty hand. Taking an unintentional step back, she raced through questions in a flurry of neural synapses.
Why did it equip its weapon?! Is it angry at us?!
...Was it because we didn't say thank you?!
Twilight stopped her mental train-wreck-waiting-to-happen when she saw the dark outline of another creature approach the first.
The newcomer was tall, almost the same height as the original, but that was where any semblance of similarities ended. A shifting cloud in the sky revealed—with one of the last rays of sunlight that this day would see—the creature's details.
The monster's details.
It was a uniform sickly, forest green colour, and seemed to be covered in a series of protective scales that looked strikingly similar to leaves. It had no upper limbs. Where the biped had arms, bulky shoulders, and a head attached to the torso via a neck, the monster was solely in possession of an elongated, thin torso with its head located at the top. Two eyes, almost entirely black save for a small red dot in the center that acted as a sort of pupil, stared ferociously at the biped. The monster's expression was equally terrifying; its mouth was locked in an almost perfect representation of frown, slightly open as if silently screaming. Twilight couldn't see a nose or any form of ears on it.
Four short, stubby legs propelled it forward—they seemed to branch off the bottom of the centre column of the monster, attached to the side like a spider's leg.
Cold, quiet fear seeped into Twilight. Where the biped was tall—and still somewhat scary, she reminded herself—this newcomer was something straight out of a horror story.
Like one of the master martial artists that featured prominently in some of the comics that Rainbow Dash enjoyed, the biped spun around in a deadly arc—sword extended—and sliced a deep incision into the green, creeping monster's overlarge torso. Twilight thought that would've been the end of it.
Instead, seemingly unharmed, the monster hissed. Like a snake. Twilight blinked, and found herself thrust into an old memory.
As a studious filly, Twilight rarely ventured outside, choosing instead to stay within the nice, cozy confines of her imagination and the pre-determined worlds created by others. Part of the reason for her withdrawal into books and literature was caused by a simple, yet powerful event that stayed with her.
One day, as young Twilight was making one of her infrequent ventures outside—to sign out books at the Canterlot library, no less—she happened to take a wrong turn, engrossed in her book as she was. Twilight only realized that she was somewhere she didn't recognize when the smooth, cobbled stone beneath her hooves changed into soft, padded grass.
Blinking owlishly and stowing away her book, Twilight turned in a slow circle, marvelling at the garden she wandered into. Bushes and trees, vines and hedges made up the majority of the plant life there. Entranced with her new surroundings, it took a rustling of grass near one of her hooves to break Twilight out of her reverie.
Curious and unafraid, Twilight bent her knees and lowered herself to get a closer look at the ground. Looking back up at her with cold, black eyes was a common Garter snake, its tongue flicking upwards and nearly hitting Twilight's muzzle. Twilight had never seen a snake before. She had read about them, of course, and seen pictures in anatomy books, but she had never seen one in the flesh.
Without a second thought, Twilight picked up the snake in her levitation's embrace, holding it above her head like she would a stack of books. Almost immediately, the snake began to struggle and squirm, wiggling around like...
Well, like a snake.
Startled by the reptile's jerky movements, Twilight lost her concentration, causing the poor Garter snake to fall directly onto the studious filly's head. The snake—already having an unpleasant day, only made worse by the pony—did the only thing it could.
It hissed.
It hissed like it never had before, calling upon the ancient snake deities to imbue its hiss with the power to scare, startle, and instil fear.
As if a cold, somewhat slimy creature dropping onto your head wasn't enough to terrify the poor filly, the menacing hiss spewed directly into Twilight's ear certainly was. Shrieking at the top of her lungs, Twilight bolted out of the garden and didn't let up her pace until she was safely locked within her room. She never wanted to lay her eyes on a snake again.
Feeling the same way that she did all those years ago from the monster's hiss, Twilight tensed her muscles, her body already preparing to turn tail, flee, and run, run, run. It was an unknown factor, something that she couldn't prepare for, couldn't plan for. The biped couldn't hurt it, and it would only keep coming. For them.
For her.
No! Twilight screamed inwardly, forcing her trembling muscles to not spring into action and her hooves to remain rooted. I will not abandon my friends, no matter what! Together, we can overcome anything!
Just as Twilight regained control of her faculties, she bore witness to the biped lunging forward with a speed that seemed improbable for something so big and cleanly slicing the green monster's head off. The body remained upright for a few seconds before falling over on its side, stubby legs twitching. The head had flown in the opposite direction to Twilight.
Twilight looked side-to-side, and took notice of her friend's astonished expressions that probably mirrored her own.
The creature left standing flicked its sword, causing a few droplets of the monster's ichor to rain down, splashing onto the ground only a few steps from them. Twilight swore she saw smoke rise from where the globules landed on the sodden grass.
She looked back up at the creature, and saw something flicker within its deep, blue eyes. Whatever it was, the biped seemed to have decided something. Placing the sword in its other hand—from right to left—the creature pointed at the ponies, lingering on Twilight, and made two sharp beckoning motions with its meaty appendage. Almost as if it wanted them to follow...
Surprising everypony present, the biped left without another motion or a spoken word, jogging away with more than a little haste in its step.
Twilight was the first to break the painful silence that follow the biped's departure.
"Was it just me, or does it seem like that... it wants us to follow it?" questioned Twilight, hoping to Celestia that she hadn't imagined the beckoning.
"It's not just you, Twi: Ah'm pretty sure that it wants us to follow it," replied Applejack. "The only thing is... why? Why does it want us to follow?"
"Maybe it's offering us shelter!" exclaimed Pinkie, bouncing up and down in excitement. "I bet it has a nice, cozy house with a fireplace and—"
"Honestly, Pinkie, do you really think something like that has a home that is on par with our standards?" asked Rarity.
In a flurry of feathery wings, Rainbow Dash dove from the sky and landed beside them, eliciting a surprised yelp from Fluttershy, who was about to offer her own opinion. "Is everypony all right?" Dash panted. "That... thing didn't hurt anypony, did it? 'Cause if it did, I'm gonna—"
"We're fine, Rainbow," interrupted Applejack. Adjusting the brim of her Stetson, as it was knocked off-centre by Rainbow Dash's landing, she continued. "In fact, we were just discussin' whether we should follow the creature or not."
"Wait, what? Why?!"
"Because the bipedal creature wants us to follow it... for some reason," explained Twilight. "Rainbow, did you find any sort of cave or other type of shelter for us to spend the night?"
Rainbow Dash sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck with a foreleg. "No..." she admitted. "But I saw this weird pit-thing that had some light coming from it. We could try there."
"Where?"
Dash pointed a wing over the small rise that the biped had hurried away over. "That way."
"That settles it then," Twilight decided. "If that biped is friendly and has a nicer place to stay than your pit, Dash, then we'll spend the night there. Does everypony agree?"
Everypony nodded their assent. Rarity took longer than anypony else to make her decision, but she eventually agreed.
Taking a collective deep breath, Twilight and company climbed up and over the protrusion of dirt, following in the biped's prints as the Sun fully set and the monsters came out to play.