Wow! That was fun! It's been a while since I've had this much adrenaline coursing through my veins. Also, the Chimera fight was happily avoided. I had to deal with the thing via Chicken Head because I don't believe that this armor could protect me long enough in that kind of continuous heat. It probably can with it being made of Dragon scales, but I might've cooked inside this. After the stonage was done I was amazed at how the body was still moving, so I just cut off the rest of the heads. With the body bleeding out, the Chimera will actually die before it de-petrifies. Speaking of bleeding out... I reached towards my shoulder and found that it had some new pink scars, burns and scratches from the fight. Oooo there's even blood. Well that was going to hurt stupendously if I ever touch it. Anyway, when I was just about to move my hand to my back, so I could inspect for even more cuts or bruises, when I noticed that my new Manticore buddy was staring at a bush. Man...I've got to have a name for him.
Anyway Thrasher...no. It can't be Thrasher. Ummm.....OH! Zandar..... Yeah. I'm sticking with it. Anyway Zandar, was just investigating the bush all the while growling. I approached him cautiously and put my hand on his back. His fur stiffened and he stopped growling. Suddenly a unicorn walked through into the clearing. Now it wasn't that much different from any of the other multicolored ponies that I had happened upon in this forest, but one thing was different. This one looked exactly like Twilight Sparkle. Now I'm still set that I'm not in Equestria since I've not seen anything ever do any fucking magic at all.
Carefully I approached her(I think it was a her). She began to neigh nonsensically. I rethought my approach and carefully lowered the weapon and the head. It probably saw the whole bloody battle and was apprehensive towards me and my weapons. On second thought she was also probably really scared of Zandar as well. I looked behind me and motioned for him to step back. It looked at me quizzically before it stepped back a few feet and laid down with his tail swinging around while he was staring at it all the while.
I approached the Twilight-pony when I noticed something off about her. She didn't have terror in her eyes. Seriously, all of the animals that I have met so far have all looked at me with terror. Even in this place I'm still considered an apex predator, but what I was getting from the pony was a look of curiosity. Now some people may call me crazy when I say this, but I think this pony was actually kind of smart. When I say smart I mean like an awesome dog or something like that. I mean I can't imagine any creature evolving into a civilization without hands or being the best predator, only predator, or it is in a place with no predators at all.
Anyway as I finished my inner tirade, I just happen to notice Twilight was poking me with a hoof. After more series of pokes and prods I suddenly felt a change in the air. I then noticed a glow from her saddlebags. They opened by themselves and a magenta glow wrapped around a quill and a notepad went in front of her face. I stumbled back frightened. I had never seen anything like this before. This could only be described as magic. Yep. There's no denying that I'm in Equestria now. That means that I can finally do something that I've always wanted to do. Disprove magic being just "magic".
Now I know what you're thinking. "Why would you do that Mark? Don't you like the idea of magic being unexplainable?!?" The straight answer is I do. I do want to think of magic as unexplainable, but the scientist in me is telling that this magic thing is nothing but hokey. Now before you all start hating me for my ideals I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a physicist. Well technically I'm not. I only got a minor in that category after all. My major was in Chemistry. Anyway from the time that I studied physics I've always seen the universe as one great, big moving mechanism that's supposed to do something that I don't really understand, and that bugged me. I wanted to understand the universe and all that it did. I wanted to take apart all the laws of physics and say "Why?", so when I started watching MLP ,as an awesome past-time, it got me thinking about how they could do that in real life.
I listed all of the things magic has explicably done in the series from raising the moon to levitation. I kept crunching numbers, looking into books, and I even asked one of my professors about it once. Nothing helped. Until I looked into atoms again. The first goal was to see what their horns were made out of and see if any material known to man could do these things. Then I came upon the answer. It was so obvious. There in big bold letters explaining it all. QUANTUM MECHANICS.
Now for those that do not know what that is I will tell you. It is a fundamental law in the universe that states at a sub-atomic level anything can happen. Any type of atoms can jump space, go back in time, and change their own array. I had finally found it. I was ecstatic. I had finally found out how they were doing these things. Then I proceeded to go into more research into how we could do "magic". I came up with nothing. I was sad for a time, but then I realized that I shouldn't worry about it right now. Many physicists will solve this problem at some point in the future. Many mysteries of the universe would probably be solved in a matter of decades. Now you can see why I would like to do this. Magic may be possible for me to learn if, and that's a big if' I can figure out how unicorns use Quantum Mechanics to their advantage, but first there's the issue of getting Twilight to take me to civilization.
Anyway an idea came to mind and I acted on it. She could probably not understand me anyway being I could not understand her at all, so I thought of another way that I could get an idea into her head. I stepped back and motioned for her to follow me. She had stopped writing in her pad and looked at me. I did the same motion and she seemed to understand. I walked away from the fire pit towards Zandar and patted his back. He looked at me and I motioned for him to follow me. He got off the ground and followed me while he still eyed the pony. I was going to send her a message that she can't possibly mistake for anything else.
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Twilight was amazed. This thing wasn't a minotaur at all. It was some other weird creature. Its body wasn't covered in fur, but it had scales instead. It was just probably some sort of armour for the creature though. The scales looked too....baggy to be the flesh of the creature. She didn't even know what to say about the thing. All that she could think about the creature was its face. She felt like its pale blue eyes stared deep into her soul and just rummaged around scouring for something. Also its black mane felt unnaturally short to her. This combined with all its other traits such as height and gait made Twilight feel like she could get eaten at any second. This also could've been from the feeling she was getting from the manticore. She was pretty freaked out about the fact that it actually had a pet manticore. She's only seen one pony tame a manticore and that was Fluttershy. She wouldn't even know how this guy (she assumed because of the lack of mammary glands) would do such a thing.
Anyway she was currently following the creature presumably back to its lair. She was super excited about this of course after she realised he wouldn't kill her. All the things this thing could teach her would be extraordinary. Maybe he even had his own type of magic. She presumed this because one would need to actively push magic into the crystal to actually get it to do something like play the music as it did.
Then Twilight noticed how the dirt slowly gave way to rock as she found herself following along a familiar path she had taken before. "Is the creature's home in the abandoned cave?" she wondered. She would have the luck to find out soon. After a while of walking the creature began to grumble in a low tone. It was like that of a dragon but slightly higher pitched. There was no doubt it was male after this moment. Unfortunately she couldn't understand if he was grumbling unintelligently about something or she didn't really know his language. She then realized he probably couldn't understand her, being as he is an undiscovered creature that pony kind had never had the chance to meet before.
"Mr. Creature, can you understand me?" She spoke. the creature had not moved its head nor had its ears swiveled to meet her. She was then sure that the creature had no idea that she was actually saying anything intelligible. Thus in her mind came the problem of how to communicate with him. Writing would do no good as he probably couldn't understand it at all. Also, he probably couldn't understand writing in general. So while she was thinking on the issue of communication, she was then jarred out of her funk after she bumped into him. She looked up and saw the creature smiling slightly. He then looked towards the cave.
She was motioned inside while he told the manticore to stay here with his grumbling language. At first she was scared to go inside. Sure the fear was irrational ,but it was too dark inside for her tastes. He must have some sort of night-vision to be able to see like*flick*...this. Her thoughts were interrupted as the creature flipped the switch of his hanging lamp. Her eyes were greeted with the glinting of a dragon's horde. Thousands of gold bits, jewels, and other shiny things from centuries past littered the corner of the cave. Then Twilight looked past it and further into the cave. Various furs littered the cave floor. They were all made from creatures she recognized were native to this part of the Everfree. As she looked more and more around the cave she spotted his bed. Specifically what was hanging above the bed.
Above his bed was a dragon's head. Its mouth was hanging open like it would breath fire any second. Its orange eyes were still open seemingly having a pained look to them. In all of Equestria's days only a few ponies would claim to ever have been dragon slayers. Most of them were nut jobs, but the few that were true proved to be the best and capable fighters anyone could get, so they were immediately put into Celestia's guard. Now she knew this creature was an excellent fighter. It handled the ambush that happened at the bonfire fairly well. Now she knew this thing was probably one of the best fighters if it took down a dragon. She could only imagine the bloody battle. At least now she knew where it got its scale armor. Then Twilight realized something. The dragon moved back. It probably never even took its hibernation after they woke it up. This creature probably saved all of Equestria from being smoked, and it didn't even know it.
She wanted to show respect for this creature ,but it probably would not understand the gratitude it deserved. "Wait...where is the creature?" she thought. She looked around and finally noticed him hunched over a carved, poorly made cabinet. On the cabinet was a set of wood and stone tools. There was also a sort of armory off to the left of it. There was two wooden armour stands that was poorly made as well. On one there was a fur pelt of some sort and on the other was some sort of scrapped clothing. She then noticed that it took off its armor and was about to replace it with the fur pelt. On its body were thousands of scars, bruises, and cuts. Some looked fairly fresh judging by the pink skin and blood around some. Twilight gasped right then and there. The creature turned to look at her. She pointed towards his back. The creature just smiled in a way that just stated, "Hey. This is not that big a deal."
Anyway she was investigating some of his poorly-made tools when the creature pulled out something. It looked like a piece of paper. Emphasis on looked. It was so torn and yellow it was hard to make anything out on it. Anyway the creature pulled out a stick and began drawing or writing on the paper. It kind of looked like a nature preserve brochure, but aged and discolored before he put the writing implement to it. It kind of looked like a piece of graphite on a wooden stick. When the creature was finished it did look like a drawing, a rather crude one in fact. "It looks like a bunch of trees and a...house?" Twilight thought. "What could he be implying?" As she wondered what he wanted the creature sighed and drew an arrow from the forest to the house. Oohhh. She realized he wanted to go home. Or at least some type of structure. She then realized he must've been here a long time to been able to whittle all of his tools and furniture. He probably was just trying to find a way out of here. She was happy to oblige.
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Oh thank God that's over with. I'm a horrible artist. Now that I was done, Twilight was starting mumbling to herself in horse language. Hopefully she actually understood what I was trying to tell her. Otherwise all I did was show her some of my poor art capabilities. Anyway I walked away from it as it studied the drawing towards my meat surplus. Twilight probably didn't see it earlier as it was hidden underneath my bed in one of the only things I was able to save from the flying tent. My cooler. Thank God for that. I don't know how ponies would even react if they knew I eat meat.They could possibly run havoc in fear of me or be perfectly fine with it ,but I don't really know what they would do if they ever found out. Unfortunately another bad thing about the cooler is that it doesn't really keep things cold anymore. Sure I could hike further up the mountain and gather some ice and snow but I really don't want to travel for 5 hours without food or water. Anyway it only stores my cooked food anyway. I grabbed some of my leftover rabbit steak. Don't ask me how I was able to get that thing into a steak form. I will likely never be able to do it again.
After I closed the cooler and pushed it back under the bed I headed towards Zandar. The reason for rabbit steak is that I should probably start training him. I don't want him to think bad of me in the middle of the night and eat me. He was sitting by the entrance and was also looking at all the shiny things in the corner. I tried all sorts of things to get him to stop staring at it. I snapped my fingers, clapped my hands, I even pet him the wrong way. Nothing worked. I could only guess it was the cat part of him taking control. Man. If I ever got my laser pointer again he would be so much fun to play with. Although after he realizes what I'm doing he probably will scratch me with his big claws. I finally got his attention by waving the steak in front of his face. This got him greatly interested.
I wagged it in front of his face for a while before I pointed to the ground he stared at my finger then the ground. He brought his head back up and tilted it. *sigh* I repeated the gesture a few times till he finally got it. He laid down on all fours and I got on him. He looked at me like I was crazy. I handed him his steak. His mouth opened wide and he just swallowed it whole. Yeah the meat was probably a bit too small there. I'm going to have to dig in to the giant meat cache. I looked at Zandar and noticed he was purring over the meat. My guess is he's never eaten any cooked food before. I also noticed that his scorpion tail behind me was slighlty lower and further away from me. I could only guess that Zandar was tolerating my sitting on his back. I was greatly pleased with myself. I probably looked like the incarnation of awesome-ness. I mean seriously. What better definition of awesome then do we have of human beings riding mythical beasts into battle? The only way I could even look any more awesome is if I was friends with the dead dragon. Heh. Yeah.
Anyway I finally noticed that Twilight had looked up from the drawing. She looked at me in a mixture of disgust, awe, and confusion. Then she shook her head and motioned with her head for me to follow her. I nodded then I pointed at Zandar. She looked at me in confusion before she got the message and nodded. Huh.. Nodding is universal. I only hope that she actually knew that the question was if I could bring Zandar along. If not then there's going to be some epic miming shit going on soon.