//------------------------------// // Chapter 42: Reunions, Happy and Otherwise // Story: At the Inn of the Prancing Pony // by McPoodle //------------------------------// At the Inn of the Prancing Pony Chapter 42: Reunions, Happy and Otherwise “You leave the room with the trapper and head back out into the passageway, which continues north for fifteen ponylengths,” Alexia Reichart narrated to the group of players. “You are now at a fork, with a passage that leads back southwest, or you can go southeast or north.” “Southeast,” said Susan, her eyes on her map. “You head southeast down a wider-than-usual passage, until you emerge into a smallish cave. There is a short dead-end passage to the southeast. There is a passage east, another north, and another south.” “That’s it!” announced Susan. “We’re back on the Hexagon. East will probably take us to a door we haven’t used yet. The northwest door, which would mean passing through it would be going southeast.” “Okay,” Erica said, looking back and forth as though judging the tunnels. “After consulting my hireling, Torn Deck, I agree! Let us go onward to the East!” “Now hold on,” said Brittany, gesturing to the three girls standing behind the others. “We’ve got some of our party still trying to meet up with us. Do I hear anything? Any ponies approaching us?” “Yes,” said Alexia. “It’s quite faint, but you do hear the sound of hooves down the southern passage.” “Giant hooves?” asked Susan, cautiously. Those who had been watching their prior showcases knew exactly why she asked this, and why the phrase “keep running!” had become a leitmotif of the showcases in general. “No,” said Alexia. “Normal-sized hooves.” “‘We wait,’” M.J. immediately said in character. “Or...you could wait for somepony other than Hope to call the shots.” “No, we wait,” said Brittany. “Gem sits down and does her hooves. No way am I going to get myself lost looking for them.” Sally shook her head in disgust. “We could at least call out for them.” Brittany shrugged. “Sure. We do that.” “The steps seem to get faster after you call out. After a few minutes, you finally see the cause of the noise. Molly, Polly—get yourselves closer to the table.” Alexia directed this last instruction to a pair of identical twins standing behind Luke. “We’re bringing you back in. Turning the corner of this ‘Hexagon’, as you call it, are a filly earth pony and a fledgling griffon, both brown with white spots. I’ll tell you right now because you’ll never keep them straight otherwise: the griffon is named Cumulus, and the pony’s name is Accumulous, although she’ll only answer to Cumulous.” “‘We’re identical twin cousins,’” the pair said in creepy unison. Alexia had the look of one who’s had to deal with this sort of business for a period not less than years. “With them is their guardian, a pegasus stallion named Four Bearings. ‘Ah finally!’ he exclaims, ‘I thought I’d never find any peace!’” “Choss practically has a conniption,” said M.J. with a smirk. “‘Make up your minds!’ the three heads cry out as one.” “‘Don’t wanna’,” said Molly. Or perhaps Polly. “Maybe...just maybe, you two should be our leaders, and go find the big enemy boss,” Erica snidely suggested. “They’d probably be the lone survivors,” Brittany remarked, before getting into character as Gem. “‘By the way, what happened to you?” “‘We ended up in the southeast corner of the caverns,’ Four replied.” “‘Fight any m...monsters?’” Sally as Chestnut asked. “‘The vicious loop!’” “‘The vicious loop!’” “‘They mean to say they found a tiny circular passage and went around it over one hundred times looking for secret passages,’ Four said wearily. ‘We’re only here because they finally got so dizzy that they stumbled out here by mistake, and I then had to drag them the rest of the way around.’” “‘Let’s do it again!’” the pair chorused. Alexia groaned in character. “For the thousandth time, No!” “‘You ever have kids, Hope?’ Midnight asks.” Re-thinking her question only after it had left her mouth, Ellen looked to her sister with an expression of dread. Mary Jo’s expression was simply heart-breaking. “‘I’ve taken care of one or two,’ she whispers. ‘None of my own, though. Can’t.’” She sighed deeply afterward, expressing her personal opinion of this revelation. “Oh!” Wide eyed, Ellen bit her lip, before nodding. “‘Well...hopefully this is a good experience. I’m...sorry, Hope. Um...Cumulus?’” she asked, looking to the twins. “‘Yes?’” asked Molly. “Hope gives Midnight quite a cold look at the word ‘experience’. Must be one of her trigger words,” said M.J. “Um...sorry to interrupt. Carry on.” “‘Yes?’” asked Luke with a wide grin. “Not you.” “Midnight sternly looks to the twins. ‘Did you go through any doors but the one that you’ve already gone through? Because we have to keep the number of doors we each go through the same,’” she explained. “No, just the one,’ Four replies. Just then, you hear screaming from the north. It’s the sound of panicked ponies, running towards you.” “Do we hear anything else, like roaring, or heavy hoof falls?” asked Susan. “No,” said Alexia. “Just two scared ponies.” “Gem positions herself to catch the two and uses her earth pony powers to brace herself. ‘Stop!’ she cries.” “Two ponies run into the room,” said Alexia. “One is a tan earth pony stallion with a brown mane and an off-colored bit as his cutie mark. The other is a light blue unicorn mare with a shimmering mane that looks like it is flowing underwater. They stop, take one look at Choss, and immediately turn back around and run in the opposite direction, still screaming.” The last of the standing girls, recognizing the description of her characters, grabs a chair and squeezes in between Brittany and Mary Jo. “Hi, I’m Irene,” she introduces herself. “And don’t mind Wooden and Wavy—they’re silly.” “A few minutes later, they run back into whatever scared them before, and they start running back.” “Choss positions himself next to the entrance of the cavern, and moves to block it when they pass him,” said Mary Jo. “And Gem catches them again,” added Brittany. “‘Aaaaah-ugh!’” Irene said in character. “‘Beholder!’ screams Wooden, pointing in one direction. ‘Chimera dude!’ screams Wavy, pointing in another.” “‘Beholder?!’” Ellen replied, leaning forward to put her hand on the table. “‘Are you sure?’” Irene thought for a bit. “‘Might have been a couple of gas spores,’ Wooden says cautiously. ‘But that’s definitely a chimera dude,’ says Wavy.” “‘Good gorgimera,’ says Facet, patting Lion Choss on the head. ‘Probationally,’ grumbles Lion. ‘In any case, I’m not eating ponies,’ says Gorgon.” “Wooden and Wavy take that as good enough, and introductions are passed around,” said Irene. “‘So, now can we head for the new door?’” asked Susan as Torn Deck. “I mean, we don’t hear anypony else approaching, do we?” “No,” said Alexia. “Then off we go!” “You walk southeast for two and a third ponylengths,” said Mary Jo, taking over narration. “The end of the passage is blocked by a pair of riveted iron doors, each three pony-lengths wide and eleven pony-heights tall. From the look of the hinges set into the stone, each of these great doors must be as least three hooves thick. On each door are many leering demonic visages in bronze. Weird symbols form a crabbed tracery around the border of each great iron portal. In the center of each is a plaque with the following runes inscribed in Equine: Eggwife’s treasure rests within. Her curse on any who disturb it. Seek no further to steal it, nor to free she who is prisoned here, for a fate worse than death is sure to come to those foals who violate this circumscribed place. “This must get really boring for you,” commented Brian. “You’re not in this game, so hush,” said Mary Jo. “Do you open the door?” “I use my chalk to write ‘NW’ in green chalk first,” said Susan. Ellen frowned a little. “Didn’t we just write the number one on the first one?” “Yeah, and we wrote ‘N’ on the second one. So much for consistency.” “Carry checks for traps,” Luke said, knowing how futile it was. “Nope,” M.J. said after rolling. “Cold iron door, no traps, mechanical or magical. You get out the rope and start tugging.” Luke rolled, and nodded happily. “Carry pulls her weight this time.” “Nope,” said Susan. “And she rolled a six, so I guess she falls to the ground or something.” “We only need three successes,” said M.J. “Transformed Bumble fails. Burnished falls on his rump. Itty Bitty succeeds with the strength of two ponies! Facet falls down, Hope falls down—this must be a really slippery passage or something.” “Midnight also fails,” Ellen declared, as Erica from the younger group rolled and smugly crossed her arms. “The awesome and rad Ameri, who is clearly in charge, succeeds.” “OK, that’s enough,” said Mary Jo. “The door opens. This is the sixth door that either of your parties has opened.” She looked down at a note that Alexia passed her. “Hmm, good idea. Hold on.” She got up and walked over to the computer. Whatever she saw there, she definitely didn’t like. “Alright,” she said, addressing the audience. “If any of you are responsible for hacking into the computer system, or knows who did, please step forward immediately, or suffer my wrath.” Gary, who was standing right there, peeked over her shoulder. “Is, uh...is this part of the act?” he asked. “No!” exclaimed Mary Jo. “And it’s not a hack—she’s really there!” She dropped her voice to a whisper before continuing. “This says that Pat Crowther, the world-famous cave explorer, just dropped into Equestria with her immediate family.” “Pat Crowther, the co-creator of Colossal Cave Adventure,” Gary whispered deadpan. “Since when were you dragging real-life figures into this story? And how did a family of humans suddenly land in Equestria?” “Since now?” Mary Jo said, perhaps not as quietly as she would have liked. “There’s a doomsday function tied into the dimensional system if too many individuals try to access the central area at the same time. It’s a random component to drag in random monsters, although theoretically, if you had a couple dozen individuals playing the game at the same time, then anything could happen!” “So what’s going on?” demanded Susan. “Um, well…” Mary Jo said, as she walked back to the table. “You find that the corridor on the other side of the iron doors is sort of...full.” Gary picks up a chair and sits down behind Erica. “I know I am going to regret this,” said Luke. “But full of what?” “Let’s start with the things that remotely make sense. Closest to the doors are what appears to be an average-sized pony tour group, led by an overweight grey earth pony stallion. Hope seems to recognize him.” M.J. rolled her eyes. “Of course she would recognize him. ‘Water Cooler!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Hmm...I have my suspicions, but I’d rather not elaborate at the present moment,’ he said, looking around him. ‘Let’s just say that I appear to have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.’ But that’s not the weirdest part.” She sighed just thinking of the reaction she was about to get. “There were also four bipedal creatures wearing clothes, two of them tall as, oh, Celestia, the other two of average pony height. They are all wearing yellow caving gear and miner’s helmets.” “Seriously?” asked Brittany in protest. She looked beseechingly at Alexia. “Please tell me that we’re not putting humans in a pony story!” The younger P.H. grimaced a little and shrugged. “I know, it’s bad form, but by the rules for this collision of realities—by the way, that would make a great band title—anything can get sucked in! So, here we have some humans from some caves on Earth somehow transposed onto our game. I say we deal with it the only way we can...put them in a quiet corner and leave.” “Well, they’re kind of in the way,” noted Susan. “One of the two human girls pulls out a camera, I’m sorry—a strange device—out of her pocket and causes a bright flash of light to appear. ‘Now they’ll have to believe me,’ she says.” Mary Jo looked right at her sister before adding. “As if my brain wasn’t full enough as it was…” Erica rolls her eyes. “Stunning spell on the lot of them.” “No!” Ellen said, horror stricken. “Nothing happens, a temporary protection granted them due to the trip between dimensions. Well, other than them getting just as dazed for a moment as you all were earlier. ‘They must be as weirded out as we are,’ the adult male comments.” “We are going to have a long talk about this later,” Susan vowed to Mary Jo, before getting into character. “‘We are about to march into a massive ‘good vs. evil’ style fight on the other side of those doors,’ Torn Deck announces, pointing at the enchanted doors. ‘Anypony, anything not interested in the risk of serious bodily harm, had better exit through those doors over there while you still have the chance!’” “The adult female human—who I might as well call Pat because that’s her name, takes one look at her two daughters before making up her mind. ‘I didn’t bring my nasty knife, sorry,’ she says with a grin. She begins leading her family past you out of the room. ‘We’ll be cheering you on, honest.’” “Nasty knife?” Luke said incredulously. “Yeah, she actually showed me—I mean yes, she actually has one,” said Mary Jo. “And it does live up to its moniker. Most of the tour group—who by the way seemed to have no qualms with humans walking among them—followed the humans out of the room, muttering something about the south-west door and ‘the demons of the dark.’ Once they leave, the only newcomers in the room are Water Cooler and…” She got up to check the computer one last time. “Brian, how did you get into this game?!” “The idiot put a portable hole inside a bag of holding,” replied a bored Edgar. Mary Jo face-palmed. “That’s like, the only possible way to get sucked into another dimension in the Pony-Handler’s Manual!” she exclaimed. “I don’t think even Luna could survive an encounter with this guy,” Ellen muttered to herself. “Your game was sounding much more fun than ours!” Brian exclaimed, loudly dragging his chair across the floor to find a space three rows away from the Founder’s Table. “Ugh!” M.J. exclaimed, before suddenly making up her mind. “You know what? Fine! For your incredible feats of heroism across the centuries, all of the characters I control move aside to let you face the big boss first. Even Hope...no, especially Hope Springs!” “Ameri moves aside and bows.” Erica said with great decorum. “The end of the line of characters that...what’s the name of your character, Brian?” “Griffon.” “Yes, I know he’s a griffon. What’s his name?” “Griffon. Griffon the Griffon.” Mary Jo stared at him. “If I let you play that dragon, what would you have renamed her?” “...Death. Death Head the Death Bringer of Fiery Death.” “Except black dragons spit acid,” observed Ellen. “...of Spitty Death?” The entire table, at this point, was observing Brian as though just realizing that he was mentally handicapped, and that they probably needed to apologize for jokes that were too accurate. “So!” said Mary Jo grimly. “You walk right past that one pony you wanted to throttle for her freaky mind-control powers—” “Hey!” exclaimed Brian. “Too late! And you walk up to the pair of ebony doors with silver hinges. And standing there, her forelegs crossed as she stands uncomfortably on her hind legs, is Firebelle the pegasus, remarkably reverted back into her original pegasus self.” Brian looked incredulously at Mary Jo. “Crippled wings and everything?” “...Yes.” “Why? I made her awesome.” “You want to ask her why?” M.J. asked, a malicious smile growing on her face. Brian quickly looked over his character sheet. “Sure! Griffon can take any pegasus dame.” “Alright, you ask her. And her reply is this: ‘You, me. Through those doors to face the monster responsible for all this madness. There I’ll show you what kind of pony I’m made out of.’” “‘You’re on!’” Brian exclaimed. “I open the doors!”