“Patel, slow the fuck down,” said Wahlburn. “It’s like five in the morning.”
“Actually,” said Poncho, “it would be two.”
Wahlburn stopped moving and looked at Poncho. “Hey Poncho, remember that one time where I punched you in the face?”
“No. I don’t remember that happening.”
“Because you won’t.”
Poncho flinched and quickly ran around Tyrone to have him between Wahlburn and himself. Wahlburn laughed and continued moving. After an hour of walking through the desert, they stood at the base of the mountains.
“So, do we go up this or start heading around?” asked Clyde as he took out a bottle of water. He took some sips and placed it back in his bag.
“Well, going up the hill is a lot faster than around it,” said Patel. The rest of them groaned again and without haste, began up the narrow trail to the summit of hill. The climb itself wasn’t bad, as they all reached the top in a few minutes. Patel stood atop the hill in the spot as he did some hours ago. He looked over the barren desert and saw the secret military base in the distance. He waited for the others to reach the top to see the view.
“Mayne, this view could be on a postcard or sumthing!” said Tyrone in an excited tone.
“Yeah, if you like a big, flat land of nothing.” Cannon quickly sat down to rest. Wahlburn came up beside him and put his hoof on his head, looking out towards the flat land.
“It’s a good life we live, brother.”
Cannon looked up at him and smiled. He quickly jumped up and stood beside him. “The best, and may it never change.”
“And may it never change us.” The two looked out across the moonlit desert and felt a cool breeze in the air flow their manes. The others began laughing and sat down to rest with them. After a quick five minute rest, they got up and resumed their journey to the portal.
After walking down the slope of the hill, they decided to straight out dash to the base, taking periodic breaks to allow Poncho to catch up. In no time, or actuality in about thirty minutes, the six of them stood in front of the gates to the base. Patel looked around and saw nobody was outside any of the buildings waiting for him.
“This place is empty outside again,” said Patel. He walked over to the guard booth and flipped the switch on to open the gate. As the the gate screeched open, they ran inside and hid behind the nearest building.
“Do we even have to sneak around?” whispered Wahlburn. “Nobody is out here.”
“Sheeeit man,” said Tyrone, “I’m a boss at stealth, just follow me.” Tyrone slowly looked around the corner of the building and dashed to the wall across the path. He raised his hoof in the air to signal the coast was clear. The others crossed over to the other side and waited for Tyrone to advance again. They followed the same pattern of tactics until they reached the hangar where Patel was thrown out of. Patel put his leg out to the secret sensor and the door opened up.
As Patel led them to the room where Arlin’s meeting was, he felt weird. “Where is everyone at?” asked Patel.
“They probably are all scared bitches and ran away,” said Tyrone.
They entered the meeting room and unlike before, it was completely devoid of all of the items it had before. All except, the portal. The portal was on and still the same blueish color it was the last time Patel saw it.
“Is that it?” asked Clyde looking at the portal.
Patel nodded. “Yep.”
“I feel like it’s a trap,” said Poncho.
“No, you think?” said Cannon in his usual sarcastic attitude.
Patel walked up to the monitor beside the portal. Unlike last time, the screen was off and Patel had no idea how to turn it on. The portal continued to glow blue while the others walked up onto the stage and closer to the frame.
“What are we going to do?” asked Wahlburn. “Where are these clones at?”
“I don’t know,” said Patel. “I think our only option is to go inside and blow up the cloning machine.”
“It’s a trap,” said Poncho, “like I’ve been telling you guys....”
“We know it’s a damn trap!” yelled Cannon. “What the fuck do you want us to do? Stand here, touching ourselves trying to figure a way to destroy it?”
Poncho stepped away from him and looked away. They continued to stare at the portal until Patel spoke up again.
“I’m going in.”
“What?” said Clyde. “Don’t be the hero, let me do it.”
“Not happening,” replied Patel. He put his hoof in front of Clyde. “You have something to live for. As for me, I’m just doing this to because of my selfish dream.”
“What’s that?” asked Wahlburn.
“It’s nothing,” said Patel. “It’s not important anymore...” He lined himself up with the portal. He looked at it and then faced his friends. “If I’m not back in five, you know what happened.”
The others saluted him while Tyrone began to cry. “Shit man, you best not die in there, you feel me!”
Patel smiled and nodded to his request. He turned back around and faced the portal once again. He stood still for a second or two to collect his thoughts, then bolted at it. As he was able to run into it, he closed his eyes. Next thing he knew, he ran into the wall behind it.
“Ow,” said Patel rubbing his head. “What the fuck was that?” He got back up and stood in the portal. Nothing happened. “Is it broken?”
Clyde walked up to the portal and reached out his hoof to touch Patel. He smacked him in the face and stepped into the swirling blue glow. Confused, he looked at Patel. “What did you do to it?”
“Me? I didn’t do shit!” Patel and Clyde started doing random ideas inside the portal to see if it would trigger off. They tried jumping in it, jumping into it, and even sitting down. Tired of watching his friends look like idiots, Tyrone stepped inside. Soon, Wahlburn and Cannon joined the fray while Poncho looked from a couple feet away.
“We have five of us in here and this thing still won’t work?” asked Patel in disbelief. “Is this just a fake one or what the hell?”
Poncho walked up to the portal. “Maybe you need six ponies to make it work. Six is always the go-to number in this country.” Poncho laughed and stepped in the portal. As soon as he made contact, the portal began whirling and making a humming noise. Scared, they are tried jumping out of it, but the room around them was sucked up in a blue light.
Confused on what was occurring, Patel looked around. He noticed he was alone, moving forward at extreme speed, stranded in a neverending blue tunnel. He tried to stop his motion, but there was no way to do it. Due to the intense velocity, Patel began to close his eyes, waiting for everything to be over with. As he finally rested his eyes in pitch darkness, the world seemed to stop. He felt a huge force power into his head.
I see you returned, and this time, brought friends. We told you not to come back. I can’t believe you actually walked through the portal, though, knowing it was a trap. I’ll be seeing you soon...
Patel awoke in an unfamiliar location to him. He looked around and noticed he was in a bed in a poorly lit room, the source being a lone candle. He also noticed, that his friends were around the room, also in beds. He rubbed his head and got up.
He slowly and quietly walked around the room trying to figure out where they were. Since the room was so dim, Patel could hardly make out any of the pictures or portraits on the wall. As he was walking around, he heard Clyde getting up.
“Clyde, do you know where we are?” asked Patel.
Clyde looked around and shook his head. “I’ve never seen this room before in my life. Do you know?”
“No.” Patel turned around and saw the door in the near corner of the room. He walked towards it and tried to open it. It was locked. “Gah!” exclaimed Patel in a softer tone so he would awake his sleeping friends, “of course it’s locked.”
“Oh no!” yelled Clyde as he began to panic. He quickly fell out of the bed and searched under it, on top of it, and in the covers. After failing, he sat down and looked at the ground.
“What the hell is your problem?” asked Patel.
“My necklace,” said Clyde sadly, “I can’t find it anywhere.” He laid his head down on the bed and frowned.
Patel rolled his eyes and sighed. “Calm down. There had to be a perfectly clear reason why you don’t have it.” Patel looked around the room. “Tell you the truth, we don’t have any of our stuff we brought with us.” Clyde lifted up his head as he was about to say something, but the door busted open and in the doorway was a large stallion.
“Hello friends,” said the stallion in a voice in a deep voice, “glad you’re alive.” The pony had a brown coat color to match his brown, sullen eyes. His long mane was of a charcoal color. He was wearing some leather armor and he had a sword and bow strapped to his back. The lower part of his face was covered in a cloth. The most noticeable feature he had was the long scar going down through his right eye.
“This dude looks badass!” yelled Wahlburn. Patel looked around and saw that all of them were sitting up in their beds, while Clyde still had his head on his.
“Thank you kindly young gent,” said the stallion. He walked in the room and stood in the middle of it. “Do you gents know where you are?”
“No,” said Patel. “Could you tell us where the hell we are?”
“Ah. I can do that.” The stallion looked at each one of them and pulled out a pipe. After uncovering his mouth by pulling down the cloth, he placed the pipe in his mouth and walked up to the candle in the room. He picked up the candle and lit the pipe. After a few puffs and blows, he returned the candle to its original position. “My name is Skarlin, and welcome to Ciyelor.”
“Ciyelor?” asked Poncho. “Isn’t that some sort of snack brand?”
“No,” said Skarlin in his low voice. “It’s the name of this world Arlin made.”
“Arlin!” yelled Patel, “he’s in charge of this doing this?”
Skarlin nodded. “I’ll explain everything: in the beginning, there was only Arlin. Arlin, and seeing how you already know his name, created clones of himself to build an army. I won’t explain that any more, but as he was creating his army, he realized not every clone had the same dream as him.”
“Some tried to rebel?” asked Patel.
“Aye they did,” said Skarlin before enjoying his pipe again. He stood there in silence as the others looked at each other.
“So, uh,” began Tyrone, “did they get killed or something? Did they get their ass beat?”
Skarlin looked at them gravely. “No, they were put in here.” The group looked at each other again, this time in shock. “Arlin wasn’t dumb, as much as that pains me to say. He knew what he was doing. He paid attention to all of the clones idea about his dream.”
“One day, Arlin saw that there were more clones being made that didn’t share his way of life than those that did. He figured he had to get rid of them somehow, someway that wouldn’t cause any suspicion to the others. So, he got on his computer and began designing a world.”
“He named this world Ciyelor, why? I have no idea. He probably got it from a random name generator or something. Ciyelor is just like your average fantasy game world, swords and bows are the basic types of weapons here. He also wanted to make sure this world wouldn't ever crash and always be stabilized so he banned all guns and explosions from existence.”
“What!” yelled Wahlburn, “that’s lame!”
“Then why didn’t you break out of here yet?” asked Patel. “Couldn’t you have just left after realizing what happened?”
Skarlin laughed. “The problem was nobody here thought of this place as a prison until it was too late.”
“What do you mean?” asked Patel.
“A day after Arlin created Ciyelor, he activated his plan. He gathered all of us clones in the main hangar and told them about a new training program he made that once you step in the portal, you would be taken there. Instead of asking for volunteers, he split the clones into two teams.”
“Oh,” said Cannon, “let me guess, one team was the clones that sided with Arlin.”
“The others were against, exactly.” Skarlin looked up at the ceiling. “Obviously, he told the ones against him that they were the lucky ones to be chosen for the training program. We never thought we were actually the unlucky ones. We all quickly went inside, waiting for the program to start.”
“The portal spawned us in an open field. Thinking Arlin would come and talk to us, we lined up in two rows. Instead of Arlin coming to meet us, another clone did, Jarlin.”
“Jarlin?” asked everyone in shock except Clyde.
“Aye. Jarlin. The ruler of this land. Hoof picked by Arlin himself.”
“What’s so special about him?” asked Poncho. “Is he a lot more feared or smarter than Arlin?”
“No,” said Skarlin in his really deep voice again. He tapped on his pipe and looked at Poncho and the others to examine them closely. “Jarlin is one of the only unicorn clones Arlin has on his side. Now that I think about it, he might be the only unicorn on his side.”
“A unicorn? Isn’t Arlin an Earth pony though? How was he able to make a unicorn clone?” questioned Patel.
“One of his great-great-great ancestors was a unicorn, and even though all of the line after was Earth, there’s still that small chance.”
“So is this Jarlin guy an extreme evil ruler or something?” asked Cannon rubbing his chin. “You seem to despise him, but you haven’t given any explaination why.”
“That’s an easy one young warrior,” said Skarlin. “It’s because, unless Jarlin dies, we are stuck in here forever.” The room gasped as Skarlin nodded in sorrow.
“So you’re being force to stay in this “world” forever until the ruler dies, all because you don’t want to join Arlin’s quest!” Wahlburn stood up. “I’m not staying here either, I’ll help kill Jarlin. He will stay dead right?”
“Aye. If you die in here, you die. It’s as simple as that. This isn’t no virtual reality thing, you’re just in a place not on the map.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Tyrone getting up. “Let’s kill this douche and go home!”
“It’s not that easy,” said Skarlin, telling him to sit down. “You aren’t trained enough to even think about attacking him.”
“Why’s that?” said Tyrone. “Does he have a bunch of thugs to protect him at some castle, high above the land?”
“No, it’s the complete opposite really. Jarlin has no castle nor any bodyguards. It’s just him in a lone tower atop the plateau. You could attack him with a hundred ponies and he would still be victorious.”
“His magic?” asked Patel.
“Yes,” said Skarlin. “Except, it’s not the magic you are probably used to in Equestria.”
“What do you mean?”
“Instead of spells that control the basic elements like fire, ice, or whatever. He uses magic solely to ward himself from other magical attacks and manipulate one’s mind. He gets into it and uses your thoughts against you.”
“What?” said the group, except Clyde again, in unison.
“He’s always known how to do that, that’s his special talent. He can pierce through anyone’s mind when they are least expecting it and start talking to them and messing with them emotionally. If you’re not carefully, he can break you down so bad, you’ll want to kill yourself.”
The group looked around nervously. “Wait a minute,” said Patel. “Was he the voice I heard in my head when I first got kicked out of the hangar and right before I woke up here?”
Skarlin nodded. “I have no doubt that was him. The only reason why he can’t do anything to us now is because this building is protected with a ward.”
“So you do have unicorns here,” said Poncho.
“We do, but there’s only a few. There isn’t enough to force him to overpower him though.” Skarlin got up and turned towards the door. “Well, I think it’s time for you six to get equipped. It’s training time.”
“Training?” asked Tyrone. “We finally about to kick some ass?”
“If that’s what learning about your combat preference is called now, then yes.” Skarlin laughed and opened the door. “Your new equipment is waiting.”
“Wait,” said Clyde. The others looked at him as they forgot he was in the room with them the whole time. “Where’s our other items at? I items we had when we jumped in the portal?”
Skarlin looked at the ground. “I don’t know, my guess is that they will be returned to you if you return to the real world.” Clyde looked at the ground sadly.
“Enough of this,” said Wahlburn. “Let’s do this!” He quickly ran out of the room as the others followed him. Tyrone went over to Clyde and dragged him with him. As the two entered the room, they were quickly overwhelmed at the amount of weapons and armor just laying around.
The room was split into two sides, one weapons and the other armor. The different types of weapons were scattered on the table or either being supported on the wall. Most of the heavy weapons, such as great swords and halberds were hooked on the wall. The smaller and medium sized melee weapons, such as swords and axes, were on the tables or in the pile under it. Patel and the others scanned through the weapons to begin thinking their choice, then quickly looked at the armor.
The armor section wasn’t as cluttered as their weapons counterpart, as it only had two different sets: leather or steel. Attached to each armor set, was a pair of horseshoes that enabled the use of weapons and bows with hooves instead of the mouth. These made it easier, and to some, more fun to fight. Wahlburn quickly picked up the steel set, with a matching helmet, and began putting it on as Tyrone and Clyde took the leather without saying anything. Poncho, Cannon, and Patel, mentally debated against themselves deciding what to pick. After debate, all three picked leather as well, having Wahlburn the only heavy guy of the six.
They went back to the weapons side and began intense thinking. Patel picked up a sturdy longbow with steel-tipped arrows. “We should try to all pick different things to cover more ground in battle, if battle ever does happen.”
“It will,” said Skarlin. “We may all fight for the same goal in this land, but Jarlin knows how to conjure up beings to fight for him?”
“Really?” asked Patel, “what’s the damn point of fighting if he just revives them back up?”
“Don’t you get it?” replied Wahlburn. “It’s open season! If they want to keep getting back up, that’s fine by me. I’ll kill them fifty times if they’d like.” He laughed and picked up the steel greatsword on the wall. He slung it on his shoulder and walked up beside Skarlin. “I’m ready.”
Patel joined him and flipped up his hood that was attached to the leather armor set. “Yo T,” said Patel. “Pick some daggers and be stealthy since you are so good at it.”
Tyrone smiled. “Shit man, you know me. I can sneak in and out like nothing happened.” Tyrone picked up a pair of steel daggers and walked up to the others.
Clyde looked around for a weapon and noticed the small blade of a rapier at the bottom of the pile under the table. As he looked at it, a faint blue glow shined through the pile. Curious, and after pushing some useless swords and axes off of it, he stood their with a shocked on his face. The rapier blade itself was fine and seemed newly made, but on the base of the rapier, the pommel itself, was the light blue diamond-shaped gem on Clyde’s necklace Rarity gave to him before they left for coming here. He quickly picked the rapier up and the gem flashed blue again.
“Maybe it’s destiny after all,” said Clyde as he turned his hoof around to get accustomed to the blade. He looked for another one, but couldn’t find one in enough condition that was usable. He looked across the table and saw a small, silver parrying dagger. He smiled and put it in his sleeve for future use.
“A rapier?“ asked Patel when Clyde walked over to them. “You sure you want to use some flimsy sword?”
“It’s not about damage, it’s about the strikes,” replied Clyde. “Rapiers are elegant and fast. Besides, I’m kind of obliged to it.” Clyde lifted up the rapier to show Patel the pommel. Patel shook his head as Clyde laughed.
“Looks like you found your necklace,” said Patel while rolling his eyes. Clyde patted him on the back and smiled.
Poncho and Cannon looked through the remaining items available to them. Cannon opened his mouth wide as he found a trident with a rope. He remembered the enjoyment of using one when Clyde and him battled in Charles's arena years ago. He also took a small knife to go with his trident. He walked back to the others as Poncho stood there still thinking of a weapon.
He glanced over to the daggers and thought the sais would be cool. Next, he saw the zweihander and thought he would look like a total hero with that on his back. He ultimately decided that the zweihander would be cooler so he picked it up and walked over to the others.
“We all good?” asked Skarlin. The group nodded and Skarlin walked away to the other side of the room. He opened the door and bright light flooded the room.
The room that Skarlin just opened to was a big hall. In the middle of it was a long table with plenty of seats that stretched the whole way down it. There were plenty of ponies, or in this case Arlin clones, walking around and talking to each other.
“Welcome to our guild hall thing we got going on,” said Skarlin. “This is where most of us stay because this side of town is having disputes with the other side.”
“So there’s a conflict going on in this world, but Jarlin doesn’t even care?” said Cannon in shock. “What a dick!”
Skarlin nodded. “It’s not even conflict really, the other side is just mad at us for not sharing some apples, that’s all. Well, tomorrow we should start training, enjoy yourself around here and have as much as you want to eat. I’ll get you in a few hours so we can begin.”
Poncho gave a victory hoof pump and ran towards the table. The others followed him while Patel stayed back.
“Wait. Why do you care about us so much? Why are you helping?”
Skarlin looked at him and took out his pipe. He placed it in his mouth and looked up at the ceiling, just like before. “It’s because...it’s because, I believe we have a shot of getting out of here, and seeing how you are prisoners of Arlin’s scheme, I know you’ll find a way to defeat Jarlin and him both.” Skarlin gave a small bow, and walked away from Patel, leaving him to wonder.