When we awoke, there was smoke coming from the beach, just on the other side of the woods from us, and I decided we should investigate. From the treeline, we could see a beached yacht, but it wasn't the source of the smoke. Nearby, three ponies and a human stood around a rather large fire bonfire. Looking closer, I realized it was actually a funeral pyre.
"Daddy!" Relena cried out, as she immediately realized whose pyre it must be. So much for stealth. We followed her toward the others, trailing behind as she ran as fast as she could, but ready to close the distance if anyone threatened our new ward. Fortunately the others weren't hostile. I recognized Frank, but I didn't know the earth pony with him, nor the strange bat-winged pegasi. Lunar pegasi, I remembered from the show.
Frank offered his condolences as she approached the pyre, as close as safety would allow. Her father was well dressed, a lucky coincidence no doubt. But he looked.. crushed. Like he had fallen off a building, only to have rubble fall on him. In other words, exactly as I would have expected Relena to look after her tumble. Any doubts I had as to his 'skull totem's function were gone. I mourned his loss all the more, seeing such proof of what kind of man he had been.
Black Rose studied us as we approached. She looked at me and asked. "I take it you are the pegasus with the 'magic blood'. We have some questions for you."
Frank looked at me for a bit before his face lit up. "Daniel?!"
"Guilty on both counts," I confessed. As I walked toward them I pulled back onto my hind legs, subtely shifting my hips to support the stance better, then shifted my upright form into a human without breaking stride. "How did you recognize me?" I asked Frank.
"I would recognized Rarity's workmanship anywhere," he commented.
I laughed. I had been wearing the same outfit since I left Ponyville, my changeling magic reshaping it with me, and Deus carefully cleaning and repairing it as I went. I even still had the scarf around my neck, hiding where the scar had long since faded. I patted him on the shoulder, pulling back when I saw him recoil fearfully.
"Hey, can you teach me how to do that?" Relena asked excitedly.
"Not without.. unacceptable side effects," I said as I shook my head.
"Like breaking the sky?" Frank asked, pointedly.
"Ehehe.. that was more from flying, but yeah.. the transformation has the same side effect, just not enough to be noticeable."
"You somehow make a portal back to our world?" he asked. "That's what it looked like anyways."
"No such luck. It's more of a low-magic zone. Which.. would explain the similarity to our world's sky."
"Your world?" Bardrick asked. "I knew you were hiding things from me, but.. care to enlighten me, mister 'magic blood'?"
"Magic blood? Is that your Item? Cause I thought it was that spider thing. And is that how you managed to survive, umm, well, you know?" Frank inquired.
I held my hands up to stop the questions, or at least slow them down. "In reverse order.. Yes, it's how I survived. The magic blood and the spider thing are kind of one and the same, and yes they are my item.. or the creations of my item. It's kind of.. self replicating." I shifted my focus to Bardrick. "Frank, Relena, myself and nine others of our kind crossed over to your world against our will a few days back. We were each given one item of our choice, with pretty broad liniency as to what, and challenged to a Survival Game."
"Like Minecraft!" Relena supplied helpfully.
I chuckled. It was a much better interpretation than what some of us had come up with, and explained why she didn't seem instantly suspicious of other humans. "Some of us have been, shall we say, playing the game wrong. Including one of us who seems intent on 'winning' by conquering the world. But meanwhile we need to find some hidden markers scattered around the world. Speaking of which, I hope you didn't put Mr. Swift's phone on that pyre. He should have the code for Generosity."
Cross Guard handed over the phone, but it was password locked. Relena helpfully volunteered the password, and we were able to find the code in his photo gallery pretty easily. In a few minutes, we all had Magic, Laughter, Generosity, and Loyalty lit up on our phones. "If all went as planned, Zeke should have Honesty and Kindness when we get a chance to link up with him. So we just need the three of us, Zeke, Scott and one more player together, and we have a chance."
I was a little annoyed that magic still wouldn't Activate for me. Loyalty did, though, so that was something, but Frank had Loyalty as well. And none of them would activate for Relena. "I wonder if I could have activated Laughter, if daddy was still here?" she wondered aloud. Yeah.. a funeral wasn't the time to be laughing.
"You've met Scott?" Frank asked.
"You introduced my spider to him," I replied.
"You still owe us some explanations," Black Rose cut in. "About your 'magic blood', these spiders everyone keeps mentioning, and that low magic zone in the sky."
I sighed and sat down, since I had been towering over everyone but Frank, and held my palm out where everone could see. At my urging, tiny spiders began to crawl up through my pores on my palm, and combine with each other until they formed into a spider the size of my fist. "This is a small piece of my primary fractal spider, '<Deus Machina>'. His name means 'God machine', and is a reference to <Deus Ex Machina>, the literary technique of having problems just miraculously solved by divine intervention rather than the characters having to work for it. When I first acquired it, I assumed it would just solve anything and everything, though reality has been.. a lot more nuanced. It is, however, a very versatile tool."
I took a breath before continuing. "Within my blood, it can allow me to survive some otherwise fatal problems, heal me more quickly, and even optimize my body a bit. It can also create crystals capable of copying magical effects, such as changeling shapeshifting, or pegasus flight, but it takes a lot of work to get each new effect working the first time. And, I need to copy the experiences of someone who has such magic, such as Wind Chaser here."
"You're a changeling?" Relena asked Wind Chaser, realizing the implications faster than anyone else. "Show me!"
Wind Chaser cringed at being outted, but at my nod she reverted to her original form for a few seconds before changing back, with a glance up and down the beach to see if anyone outside our huddle had spotted her. She looked at the lunar pegasi. "You're not alarmed?"
"Your Queen has formed an alliance with our princesses. She mentioned losing a drone in a confrontation with 'king Daniel', I'm guessing that was you?" Black Rose returned.
Wind Chaser nodded. "She gave me over to my new King, in return for consideration for a future alliance," she said, leaving out the details of her precarious position at the time.
"So you're a king now?" Frank asked, mockingly.
"The itinerant king!" I declared jokingly. "My kingdom is admittedly small, but quite portable."
"So you just declared yourself king then?" Frank asked.
"Only after Wind Chaser tried to declare me Queen," I answered.
"Wonderful. Now, back to the spiders, if you would?" Black Rose cut in.
"Right. So, outside my body they can become a force to be reckoned with," I continued. "They can basically 'eat' anything, and turn it into more of their own. They can combine into larger and larger spiders, gaining both strength and intelligence as they do. Within a substantial range, I can control them remotely, though even beyond that range I could give the larger spiders complex tasks and trust them to think through the details. They lack self motivation and emotions, but they have sharp, methodical minds. I tried using that to stop the one Robert calls the 'army man' in the desert near Dodge Junction, but despite tearing up the entire region to make more spiders, he was able to overwhelm me with his 'super weapons'. It's still a possibility, if I'm willing to go that route, to basically destroy the land to save it. But I'd rather go for something a little more subtle than that."
"Yes, please avoid breaking the world any more than you have already. At least not as a first resort," Black Rose replied.
"Right. I'm trying to think of a less cataclysmic way to solve the problem. I actually have an idea, but I'd need, well.. probably need most of Canterlot's guard forces to volunteer for, well... radical alterations."
"What are you thinking?" Cross Guard asked, a bit nervously.
"Relena just gave me the idea, actually, though Wind Chaser's been a decent prototype for some time. I can put my spiders into someone else, and give them a version of my 'magic blood'. For Wind Chaser I used it to allow us to communicate more easily, and grant me her experiences, but it can also allow her to fast heal, etc. If I allowed it, she could copy my magic crystal trick, and be able to move as fast in the sky as I can. With a few more crystal tricks mastered, we could have an army of super-soldiers, powerful enough to take on the enemy without ripping up the land."
"Are these 'crystal tricks' what ripped up the sky?" Black Rose asked.
"Yeah, but that was non-stop pushing my limits overnight, in a limited area."
"Don't dismiss her complaint so hastily, boy. I saw you in the morning, you ripped up that patch of air when you went for your rescue dive in an instant," Bardrick countered.
"True, but you said yourself it was starting to fade pretty quickly. Ponies armed with my crystal tricks can keep them as reserve maneuvers, using them only when strictly necessary, and sticking to their own power the rest of the time. They'd be able to dodge incoming attacks, even scatter out of range of a <nuke>, for example. If they use it responsibly, it should be able to recover naturally. If they overuse it.. well, I can only trust that it was necessary to prevent a worse fate."
Wind Chaser cut in. "Well, as much as I hate to volunteer, I really should test out your crystal tricks myself to see if it's even a workable option. You remember what happened when I fly into that low-magic zone, if I'm generating one around myself won't that be a big problem for me?"
I nodded. "Yeah, we definitely need more data. If I can translate horn magic and.. what do earth ponies have? Adding more tricks to my repertoire will allow for a more effective fighting force. Like.. a bunch of mini-alicorns," I grinned.
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but changelings would be a better analogy. We have wing, horn, and might magic by nature, as well as shapeshifting. Though.. I will admit my skill with the horn is pretty limited. If you want to be able to cast spells with your crystals, you'll need to get help from someone else," Wind Chaser responded.
"I'm not really sold on your plan," Cross Guard said, "but I do think you should bring it to the Princesses. They'll want to see you, anyways, and we should bring the child with us as well."
"My name is Relena," the child in question cut in. "And I would love to meet the Princesses. So, take me to your leader," she giggled. At least there was some laughter to be had.
"I can take you back as far as Manehattan," Sudden Surprise offered. "After that.. I don't. I don't really feel up to going with you any further than that." She looked sadly at the smoldering remains of the pyre.
"Thanks," I said, "we'll just have to take it from there." I thought a moment, "Bardrick, I think you should go home. If you come with us, I don't know when or even if you'll be able to see your family again. If you turn back now, they're just down the road."
Bardrick shook his head. "I'm seeing this through. You're little spidery trick.. it can transfer knowledge of how to use magic, right? But can it transfer common sense? I might be able to train you to not be such a fool after all."
I laughed. "Alright then, I'll be glad to have you at my side."