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// A Strange Awakening 
// Story: A role-playing gamer in Celestia's Court 
// by Gsarge9289 
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It happened in the night, at least I figured it must have because I had fallen asleep in my crappy bed that night and woke up on thankfully a soft bed of moss in the middle of a forest with what seemed to be a thick canopy of green over me. Even under normal circumstances, this would be cause for surprise, but I about slipped into unconsciousness when I looked at my hand seeing that it appeared to be a very wrong shade of gray along with my fingernails having gone black. With quite a justifiable amount of surprise, I sat up and looked to my feet which I discovered had just become hooves the same jet black of my fingernails. The revelation of which caused me to let out a rather unmasculine scream of shock and horror.

I was in quite a state looking about the mossy floor under the thicket I had somehow ended up under for a few hours before finally working up the nerve to finally take a full inventory of what had and had not changed in my physiology. I had taken on a much leaner version of what seemed to be my basic body type of square, was thankfully still male by human standards, and seemed to still be my former height of six feet tall. Unfortunately, that was about all  that had remained the same.The front of my face around my nose and mouth had elongated to a muzzle sticking out about three or four inches from where my face had been. A long crystalline horn was growing from the center of my forehead curving up at the last third, the hair that had replaced where I had normally had hair was black, rather long as well as in quite an unkempt state with matching tail, and my aforementioned male body part being  quite different  from it  had been when I had been human.That bit of self-discovery out of the way, I began to take an inventory of the things in my person which consisted of one of  my longer t-shirts, dark black  with an ice-blue version of the Superman's "S'' and a pair of black pajama pants all of which had become rather loose due to my sudden lack of bulk. 

After having spent two hours coming to terms with my changes, I remembered that I was also in an unknown place.Upon leaving the thicket I had kept myself to, I found that the surrounding area  had a rather pleasant temperate forest environment and no hostile flora or fauna that I could recognize or that was behaving as such. I decided I would explore the area surrounding my thicket first so as not to lose track of what seemed to be a safe place. The greater forest around me only had a bit more light than the thicket I had been under, but none of the soft moss as I thanked having hooves as bare feet on this forest's open floor would  have been rather unpleasant.  A very short walk away, and still within sight of my origin point, was a ten foot wide slow moving creek with rather deep but clear water. My mouth suddenly felt very dry, so I decided to take a knee and use my hands as a cup to take a drink.

Thankfully I hadn't become too absorbed enjoying the cool water to not notice a set of ripples in the water coming towards me  against the current. I backed off just in time for what looked like a rocky alligator or freshwater crocodile that had to be  at least a third larger than me to miss snapping  me into its jaws. The force of its weight slamming down on the shoreline shook the ground around my feet enough to make me lose balance. Once I fell on my ass, I watched in horror as the rockodile ran at me. I needed it gone, I was scared, I put up my hand to try and put it between it and the rest of my body wishing I had a spear or anything to stop a charging animal. It opened its mouth wide to take ahold of me as felt a warm sensation wash over the center of my forehead and the rockodile was suddenly stopped by a long, crystalline spike jutting out of the ground the tip burying into what I could only figure to be it's brain as it had  stopped moving, it's eyes looking blank and dead to the world around it. My heart was racing in my chest as I looked over the aftermath of my encounter with the rockodile. 

The spike appeared to be onyx or maybe obsidian, some kind of dark black, glossy stone that had formed a spear from the ground. I had a feeling that strange sensation I had felt and the spike were certainly connected. How had I done that? Was there more I could do? I looked at the spike and thought hard about it going back down into the earth. I felt the warm sensation and noticed a kind of black light aura around the spear as it began to shake very slightly. I backed away quickly before the spike shattered  and the pieces sank into the soil which I noticed was far darker than the forest floor had looked before. I reached down, taking a handful as I took a sniff. It smelt like rich earth or composed soil full of death and decay but good for plants and new life. It was both calming and unnerving at the same time. I put my hand back in the dirt and wondered if other things were under the ground as I felt the now more familiar sensation but this time it flowed down my forehead into my eyes as I "saw" all of the ground surrounding me. Rocks, gems, bone, underground water, and even the footsteps of creatures moving along the ground. It was so much information to take in at once, so I narrowed it down to shallow dirt only about a hundred feet around me. I was amazed that with just a little use, this was becoming much easier to do, but I was starting to feel drained and sleepy. It seemed doing what I was doing left me fatigued with over use so I made my way back to safety of the thicket that I had started in to rest and recover. There was still part of me that thought this had to be a dream and that I was going to wake up in my bed. Another was excited that this could be real. A land of adventure and danger but I had some power of my own to fight back. It was too awesome.