//------------------------------// // Exploration // Story: The life and times of Xante, Baron of the Frozen Wastelands, First among Liches, Lord of the Dead, and Fabulous Rainbow Magic User. // by Ssendam the Masked //------------------------------// When I woke up, it was to the familiar sensation of not wanting to get up. Still, physical conditioning was important. Time for yoga. One of these days, I was going to forget. But my physical conditioning ensured that I was always flexible and lithe. Really helped, freaking heroes out with some yoga poses, along with stripping. First things first, a mat. Fortunately, my cloak doubled as an excellent mat. I stripped to my underwear to allow my lithe, supple, rotting body the fresh air it needed to ensure that my chakra was flowing through me. To start the day off, I stretched and did some pre-exercise warm-up, to ensure that my bones and muscles were in good condition. Then, I started stretching my joints and going through some rather complicated positions to ensure that I was as flexible as I ever had been. I was just putting my leg behind my head when I heard Auric Fulcrum come in. "Xante, you up?" The human turned pony stared at me for a while, rather confused. I grinned at him. "Morning!" Auric rolled his eyes. He'd been rolling them a lot it seems. "Anyway, I've thought of a place where you and I can go on tour. It's quiet, relatively anyways, and the sight of a biped won't be such a shock to them. You up for it?" I was always up for exploring new places. Then, I thought of a good idea. I quirked my eyebrow and put my legs behind my head. "Sure. Hang on, is your assistant still around? I want to mess with her a bit." It wouldn't really be me that messed around, it would be him as soon as she discovered that humans could actually move like that. It was harmless enough. Auric shook his head. "She's in Canterlot today, reporting results from the... few experiments I've been doing. When she gets back, she'll be attempting to entertain and answer our other guest." I could understand that. I nodded, my legs now back in their normal positions. "Right-o. So, is there anything I should know about this place? I'm guessing that it's not Ponyville. I'm already there, in a manner of speaking." Auric shook his head. "Yeah, Ponyville and quiet don't exactly belong in the same sentence. It's the town I built, full of Adepts." So, people who used this mysterious Psyenergy, eh? How interesting... "And ponies who don't like miss Sunbutt." Miss Sunbutt... I smiled. That must mean Celestia. Nice to hear that she's a constant, even if she's a horse like the others. I hmmed, thinking about it. "Sounds good to me. I've always liked exploring new places- when you have eternity ahead of you, you quickly learn to take pleasure in travelling." That was one reason why I liked this place so much- it was completely different from anything I'd ever experienced in a very long life. My joints needed a bit of a pop, and I let them do so. Loudly. Auric winced a bit at that, but I was busy getting dressed. With rainbow circles surrounding my hands, I pulled my clothing towards me and dressed. I was ready for anything. "So let us move." Auric pinned a list he'd been holding onto the door, looking at it. "Let's just hope that she reads it and doesn't question it too badly..." With that, he knocked on the door. "Ground floor, please." He opened it and ushered me through. I was already making several mental notes to never have sentient doors in my castle ever. They seemed to me to be too much work. Better to have non-sentient ones, like our ancestors had. We walked outside, and I was immensely impressed by the sheer scale of the wall. Ten feet tall and five feet thick, this wall looked more at place surrounding a castle, not a tower. Auric grinned at me. "So tell me, what do you notice about the wall?" That put me on edge. I quickly activated a scanning spell, and saw... well, it was incredible. I grinned widely and turned to him. "Enought anti-magic wards to blockade an entire prison." I noticed that one ward on the door wasn't as efficient as its brethren. "I'll give you a bit of advice on that ward on the door- needs a slight tweak, and it'll be twice as efficient." Auric squinted at the aforementioned ward. "Huh. Interesting, I'll mark it and me and Measured and I'll look over it later. We sorta patched this system together to keep... well, anything we didn't want to get in." He opened the gate quickly and glanced around, then beckoned me forwards. "Quickly, afore they notice I'm leaving." I stepped outside, and the first thing I noticed was that there wasn't any real difference, apart from a bit of scale. "Well, I see no noticeable differences. Asides from everything being a bit-" It was then a sharp impact, approximately going at the speed of sound from what I believed impacted with my back, driving me into the dirt. My frail, moulding body slowly started to break. A surprisingly heavy object on my back finally halted, right on top of my prone form. "Ow." Auric facehooved, I think that's the most appropriate word for this situation. “Girls. Why. Are you. Here.” So there were children on top of me? Impossible, no normal children move that fast. One of them spoke up. “Oh, hey mister Auric! We haven’t seen you around town lately!” Another one chimed in, this one with a much scratchier voice. “Yeah, and when we asked, all the grown-up ponies say ‘you’ll understand when you’re older,’ and won’t tell us anything!” A third, in some sort of country accent, was the final one on top of me. “So, we decided to come over ourselves! Oh, and bring you some sweets from Sugar Cube Corner!” Well, that sounds nice for those three. “I think I sat on them," the first one grumbled. I winced a bit, but decided to ask them to get off me gently. “Um, if it isn’t too much bother, would you mind getting off? My old and decaying body has sort of split in two, and I would very much like to reconstitute myself, if that’s alright with you three.” They looked down and spotted me. For a slight moment, they were still. Then, they started screaming and flailing. The white one even started setting fire to things. I wasn't really concerned when I started to catch fire. "Ow. Ow. Ow-" It was then that I realised that one fire was heading towards my sleeve and I panicked. "-that’s not supposed to burn!" Another part of my sleeve came dangerously close to fire. I tried to blow the fire away. "Neither is that!" Then, my main, pulpy body got dangerously close to the fire as well. "Ah! Mind the robe! Don’t burn that don’t burn that don’t burn that! It’s too fabulous to burn!” It was then that I heard Auric say something. "SEAL!" And like that, the fires winked out. That was a real relief. He looked at me. “Doing better?” I nodded distractedly. “I’ve had worse, but this robe- Oh, this robe is simply RUINED! I paid good money for this spidersilk, I even found some wood-elves and paid them so much! You don’t get dirt out of spidersilk, it’s hand wash only!” It was a shame. I'd been pressed into the dust quite a lot, and now there were large dirt stains all in my robe. Spidersilk was extremely hard to get stains out of. Auric shook his head. “You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to. We’ll go over it later. I have a trio to wrangle.” Ah yes, the Trio. It was the white one who made the fires, right? I watched her reaction and frowned a bit. Instinctual magic use on that level is always bad. “Did...I do that?” Auric nodded. "Welcome to the Adept club Sweetie. We'll figure out something resembling a lesson plan later. For now, ...I think you three should run back to town and try not to set anything on fire. I don’t know how long the seal will last.” I noticed the emphasis. Words of power, never mess with them. With a slight bit of focus, I recalled my pieces with a flare of magic. “Before you leave, I want to give you a little something… I think I have it here…” I like kids. And it was genuinely an accident, no real malice on their part. Let's see, I bought a packet of jelly babies or similar on the train, but I never ate them... ah, there it is. “Alright, I’ll forget about it one time, but don’t run over me again, okay?” I proffered it to them and their eyes widened. Auric watched me with suspicion. Fair enough. “These are the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They caused explosions and calamity when an Adept wasn’t a part of their number. Giving them anything is like asking, no, daring the universe to smite you.” I shook my head and smiled. Kids will be kids. I think I might have been a bit like them when I was their age. “It’s just candy. I’m paying them not to run into me. If they do… well, then I’ll have to tell their parents or next-of-kin or something.” Auric rubbed his chin. “Oooh, I might just have to do...that…” he then remembered something and sighed. "One day, that is." He then turned to the three adorable little foals and cocked an eyebrow. “So? Think you lot can go back to town and not mention anything you saw here?” They huddled in for a bit and whispered amongst themselves. I chuckled inwardly when they seemed to reach a conclusion. The orange one's head popped out and regarded me. “What sorta candy?” I tilted my head, trying to remember. Eh, something about them being jelly babies or something...? “Uh… let’s think, I bought that stuff fairly recently on a train. I think that they’re jelly babies or something.” She returned to the huddle. After thinking about it for a while, Sweetie's head popped up. "No chocolates?" I rubbed my head. Let's think about my chocolate inventory... thousand year old chocolate bar seemed to be the only thing I had. “Chocolate’s bad for your teeth, you know. Besides, the only chocolate I have is a bar of dark chocolate that’s over a thousand years old. But…” I waggled my eyebrows and pulled out a rather secret box. I contemplated the really, REALLY good chocolate, but I wanted to bribe them, not get them hooked on a taste that's almost impossible to obtain. “This is genuine Belgian chocolate, under a preservative spell. It’ll be the best damn chocolate ever.” I opened the box, letting all present see the tiny, red-foil wrapped balls of Belgian chocolatey goodness. Their mouths watered, Auric's included. As one pony, they all wiped the slobber off their mouths. I didn't pass a comment; I'd been in that exact situation once before, after all. “Can y’blame me? It’s been so long since I’ve seen chocolate that good.” He turned to them. “I guarantee that one of those will be dangerous for your dinner appetite and might just ruin your opinion of other chocolates.” They rehuddled. Then, they turned the full force of their adorableness on me. My soul wavered, telling me to break out my really, REALLY good stuff. But I persevered. “We’ll each take one of the chocolates and we’ll split the jelly babies, and we’ll tell nopony about what we saw here, and you’ll give Sweetie lessons in her new fancy magic. Deal?” Auric looked at me with a raised eyebrow, almost wondering if I was going to accept these terms. Of course, but they were well-mannered children, even if they did barge into me rather rudely. I chuckled good naturedly. “My, you have good manners. Here." I gave them two balls each, just to ensure their silence. I winked at them. "It's a secret to everybody." They each let out a small cheer, unwrapped their delicacies and popped them into their mouths. Their eyes glazed over, and their taste centres went into overdrive. After about ten seconds, Auric waved a hoof in front of their eyes. "Run along now, girls. My friend and I have things to do today." They blinked before scampering off and nodding. "Thank you, mr!" I waved them on as they went on their merry way. Ah, to be young and alive again... Auric chuckled, breaking me out of my reverie for a bit. “Cute kids. They’ll be right little hellions, especially if they all turn out to be Adepts.” I smiled. “Just glad that I don’t have to break the REALLY good chocolate. Trust me, after you’ve tried a genuine Wonka Lindt, the Earth ones’ll taste like utter garbage.” Auric blinked, obviously lining it all up and setting it in his mind. "Note... to self. Try to scry that world next..." He shook himself out of his contemplative haze and looked up at me. “You have a way of derailing conversations. Let’s...just get to Newvale and hope your Twilight doesn’t try to break the rules I wrote about…” ----- (Meanwhile, in the guest room of the tower…) Twilight woke up. “Ah, that was… surprisingly pleasant.” She looked around. “Now, where’s Auric? I wasn’t asleep for that long, was I…?” Getting up and refixing her shirt, she wandered over to the door, on which was pinned a note. “From Auric?” She pulled the list off and read it. Then reread it again. Then again, to confirm what Auric had written. Her eyes narrowed. “You sneaky little…” she took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, Twilight. Okay. In and out. Iiiin and oooout.” She frowned. “Nope. Not helping. Still mad. Then again…” she bit her lip, remembering the Jupiter room. “Perhaps it’s best to…” She frowned. “No. I guess I’ll not go there, and I won’t tamper with the mirror, but I WILL at least see into the other rooms!” If the door could chuckle, it would have. Twilight walked over to it. “Alright, give me the labs, please.” She opened the door to the kitchen. Her eye twitched, and she shut it again. “No, I said laboratories.” Opening it again, she was given the bathrooms. A bit of hair started frizzing up. “I swear, if this isn’t the laboratory room, then I swear to Celestia, I WILL turn you into firewood.” She glared at the door, which seemed to be mocking her. Opening it a third time revealed nothing but a blank wall, with another note pinned onto it. Taking it down showed a very...well, it was a message. Twilight- If you’re reading this, then you’ve just tried to get into my labs for the THIRD TIME using the door that has a mind of its own. Not only does this door NOT connect to the lab doors, but the lab doors, which are on the ground floor, do not open without me. Special enchantment to prevent someone from CREMATING THEMSELVES while I’m not home to LOOK OUT FOR THEM. If you’re THAT bored, feel free to LOOK, but not TOUCH, at the mirror. Or, perhaps in a few hours, when Measured returns, you two can swap comparative magic theory. Lord and master of the tower, wielder of Alchemy, and your host- Auric Fulcrum. Twilight’s eye twitched and her mane burst into a small blaze. With conscious effort, she turned it off and tried to calm down. It didn’t work. “YOU MOTHER-”