Alma slept at the inn and returned the next morning to Ivory Tower. Half of her four-day weekend was gone, since minds like hers typically ran at maybe a third or a fourth of real-time speed. She frowned as she dressed her squirrelly body in skirt and blouse, and slung her borrowed pony saddlebags over one shoulder. She'd have to return those and get a new set, and that meant talking with part of Noctis again. She sighed; she wasn't eager to have a hundred ponies with a crush on her, even if they were basically one person. She'd have to let them down gently somehow.
She picked up a copy of the Talespace Tribune from a newsstand in the hotel. It was quaintly printed on paper, by a generation that had barely seen newspapers outside museums. She sat at a free hotel cafe to read it and eat a pear-and-walnut salad, perfected by the taste upgrade.
_Challenger II launch already planned: More Uploaders To Asteroid But No Talespace Node? -- Hypocrisy! Rumor of Chinese Brain Robbery. -- "Army of Enough" Fights Sanctions, Demands Crucial Electronics. -- Runaway AI: the 'Riding Jeans' Scenario Revisited. -- Opinion: The Dolphins Belong._
Nice that so much of it was Earth-focused, outside the Lifestyle page that was focused on magic today. Alma considered the brown shamanic markings on the fur of her hands and sandaled feet, that marked her own first forays into the magic system. They'd been absent from her as a pony even though every other world she'd visited here had let her keep them. Hoofland really was a rule system unto itself. Idly, Alma waved one hand to call up the magic system in its usual swirl of glowing icons and dots in the air, but didn't see a marker indicating that she'd earned a new spell element from her latest experiences. Bah; she'd been hoping to get something flying-related.
Alma tossed the newspaper down. If she wanted something like that, then she had to earn it elsewhere. She should be adventuring.
She left the hotel through the huge front doors, built into the cliff-wall of the cavern surrounding the Ivory Tower itself. She walked out of the Tower's suburban college town, then along bare rocky ground toward the portal to the fantasy land of Midgard.
A trio of waist-tall kobolds leaped out from behind a rock and brandished jagged knives. "Gimme gimme money!" said one.
Alma traveled with a staff these days. She yanked a rock out of her hip pouch, stuck it into the sling-like pocket on the staff's end, and flung the rock so hard it knocked one lizard-critter down like a club to the gut. The others stared long enough for her to reload, summon the magic interface, and link up her "Stone" and "Arrow" elements to charge her second blow with extra force. Her hands swirled through the air as she manipulated glowing icons, creating trails of light. "Who's next?"
Like no fantasy monsters ever, the other two ran away yipping in terror.
"What are you, anyway?" she said to the groaning kobold who was just standing up again. "Randomly generated for my benefit, or random relative to this world's need for a monster population, or part of some scripted plotline?"
"Much ouch! You be sorry next time!"
"Come on, spill it. I fought gross little slimes and cute anime slimes here before, and they didn't talk."
The scaly midget backed off with a knife still clutched in his wavering paws. "Know nothing! Just looking for easy prey and saw rat-thing."
It sounded like a random encounter rather than something arranged for her personal entertainment. Alma liked that. "Get out of here." She let the creature run off. On the other hand, there wasn't any significance to the event if the monsters had popped out of nowhere like particles in vacuum. Maybe there was at least a procedurally generated kobold lair nearby, that would keep spawning muggers until someone took it down. Sounded fun, if so, but she'd need backup.
Alma went back to town and walked into Thousand Ales, a bar and grill full of sports memorabilia. Battered-looking televisions loomed on the walls and a crowd of people in Caliphate garb were watching baseball, probably Earthside players who weren't allowed to see decadent Western media but could use this game's world as a loophole.
The centaur behind the bar waved to her. "Hey there. Done with pony-world?"
"For now," said Alma. "I forgot to ask whether you'd been there."
"Of course. It wasn't for me, but it was fun to visit."
Alma said, "Some of the ponies are excited about your smell/taste thing. You could make money or at least friends there." She grinned. "Maybe snag some mares."
For all his brawn, Kai the native AI looked bashful. His long ears flicked back. He tugged at his vest and looked aside at a collection of dangling beer mugs. "I got asked to give a talk at the Tower, to some neuroscientists. I'd feel out of place doing something like that or lording over the pony-people."
"You should! The lecture at least. You're brilliant, helping to come up with a fix for one of the big bugs of Talespace." After years of work, his research group had thrown some of uploading's critics ("and ye shall taste only the emptiness of dust and ashes!") off their game.
"Thank you. Maybe."
Alma told Kai about the kobolds. "Want to go hunting? I'm looking for Poppy too, since I was on my way to learn climbing and try to get some kind of flying or gliding magic."
Kai looked around the restaurant. It was pretty quiet at the moment. "I can leave an NPC bartender for a while. It's a Newcomer Fair day, so Poppy should be around. Before I put up the NPC, want to take over while I look for her?"
A real person behind the bar was always more interesting than an NPC that lacked even a town-style mind. Poppy took the excuse to make a running leap, vault over the bar, and thud into the wall behind it. A customer saw her and snickered.
Kai headed out, flicking his tail and saying, "Ah, the wondrous agility of the squirrel, nature's acrobat."
Once she'd recovered, Alma poured beer for a handful of uploader customers and chatted with them about space news. The Earthside gamers kept watching TV, since the food and drink here were pointless. Before long, Kai returned from the Tower with a red-furred squirrel archer wearing a medieval tunic decorated with a tree. Kai had his cool barding and spear, plus his own saddlebags.
Alma hugged Poppy, who'd recruited her to this species. Poppy said, "I haven't been to Hoofland in ages. Once we pound some kobolds I'd like to visit again and see what Kai looks like with fewer limbs."
"I'm a pegasus in there," said Kai. "It's uncomfortable to not have six." Tauric forms seemed popular among natives due to some code quirk.
Kai, Poppy and Alma ventured outside of town to search for a monster lair. Sure enough, a crude camp of straw nests and bones was hidden in one of the cavern's many blind canyons and outcroppings. Kai spoiled their stealth by blundering into a rockslide trap.
He shouted and staggered ahead just in time to avoid being crushed by falling boulders. Lizard-like yips and hisses came from the camp. Alma and Poppy scrambled over the pile the moment it stopped, and readied their weapons.
A dozen of the mean little creatures leaped out from all around them, swinging knives of stone and bone. Alma flung a rock, missed, then got knocked back by a kobold leaping at her. She bashed away with her staff and covered Poppy long enough for her to fire a few arrows. Then everything became a melee. Kai couldn't use his full speed in the uneven-floored canyon, but he galloped ahead, spun, and skewered monsters left and right with his spear.
Alma used the distraction to charge another magic stone-shot, and brained another kobold with it. There was no more time for fancy spells then, only a flurry of teeth and knives and bludgeoning.
The three of them soon stood bloodied and winded in the midst of lizard corpses and the tribe's pathetic collection of loot. Alma rummaged through the critters' various bags and junk piles. "I still kind of feel bad about wiping out talking monsters."
"They're NPCs," said Kai. "And you once killed that evil skeleton guy who wasn't."
True, though the skeleton was a card-carrying member of the Forces of Evil, a faction of dedicated trouble-makers. Since death wasn't permanent, their fight had been little more than a wager for money and prestige.
Poppy said, "Sometime, we could let a monster population get out of control here, just so we can get a big group battle going."
Kai looked alarmed. "Not near my bar!"
"Oh sure, everybody wants there to be a hoard of bloodthirsty monsters, but not in _their_ backyard. So, Hoofland?"
Alma's fluffy tail drooped. "I'm looking for housing. I should do a tour of all the major worlds before committing."
"Right," said Poppy. "You'll have to arrange for a mortgage and home inspection and contact a realtor, and then it'll be such a hassle to move and _oh wait_."
Kai said, "I've heard of those. Taxes too, right?"
"Don't you join in." Alma turned away, grumbling, and did one last look through the treasure. Under a tattered cloak she found a pouch full of gleaming yellow crystals.
Kai clopped closer to look over her shoulder. "Deltite! Don't know if it's enough to transform you, but if you keep up a stockpile and you ever want to go permanent pony..." To give people a challenge rather than let them shapeshift on a whim, there was a whole magic subsystem involving crystal collection.
"Quit that." Alma turned around with her hands on her hips. "Poppy, I get your point about Earth housing requirements not applying, but that doesn't mean rushing into things."
The other squirrel-lady shrugged. "I'm not saying you should change permanently. You're still welcome to join my town in Midgard." With all that that implied. There was a sort of elven religion developing there, along with a reality TV show. "But since you can enter and leave Hoofland without spending resources, it could be fun to commute there for a while and try being something different."
There was some merit in that idea. Besides, there'd be time to explore the other worlds more thoroughly later. Maybe _much_ later. In a way, being liberated from imminent death made it easier to commit to doing strange things. "Fine. Let's do some equine adventuring. But I do want to climb and upgrade my magic, afterward."
#
They met up again with appropriate gear. Alma had her saddlebags over one shoulder plus her money supply. Her Talespace money; the pittance of real, gold-backed dollars she earned as a teacher was earmarked for uploading of her needy students. Sore subject, that.
She, Kai and Poppy made for the Hooflands' west gate, to show up again in Noctis. Alma jumped through this time and landed on four hooves. Her wings were back, unfurling like muscles that'd been asleep. Kai was an impressive red pegasus stallion with bright orange eyes and orange-trimmed wings, and Poppy... actually no, _that_ was Poppy. Kai was a more ordinary pegasus in a natural brown with deep brown eyes and blond mane.
Poppy spoke in a deeper voice. "Shouldn't your eyes be googly, miss grey pegasus?"
Alma said the catchphrase of the old cartoon pony she looked like. "I just don't know what went wrong!"
Kai looked puzzled. "Has everybody seen this show but me?"
Alma wrestled her saddlebags onto her long torso, then decided to take the plunge. She grabbed the muffin that was still in there, and chomped on it. "Testing, testing. 'Somepony once told me / The world was gonna roll me... / She was lookin' kinda dumb with her fetlock and her hoof / In the shape of an L on her muzzle...' Huh. Guess it doesn't handle song lyrics well. Poppy, you didn't tell me you'd, uh, switched."
"A true son of the forest explores many branches." Poppy looked vain and showed off a mystical mark on his flank, shaped like a sunburst.
"Destiny brands! I hadn't paid attention to those. Do they actually do anything?"
Kai didn't have one. He shuffled his hooves uneasily and said, "I thought they were for full-time residents."
"It wasn't like they could make me stay. Come on; let's find an adventure."
Alma would've asked more questions, but Poppy jumped off the cliff and wheeled around to the right, out of sight behind the entry fort. Kai hurried after him, leaving Alma unsure she had enough flying ability to follow. _At worst, I'll die._ She forced herself to leap off over the edge, too, with her wings spread. She was dropping quickly, more so once she leaned to spin rightward. She was going to smack into the rocks.
Kai and Poppy spotted the problem. Kai made a touch-and-go landing and dived after Alma, arriving a few seconds after Poppy who took a more direct route. They snagged Alma by the forehooves and with a dangerous confusion of wings, hauled her back up to the space just behind the entry fort.
A pair of enthusiastic pegasi and a unicorn, including Sterling the banker, were setting up an aerial obstacle course of clouds and rings on the hilly cliffside land.
"Hi!" said Sterling. "I thought you'd be back, but I didn't expect you'd bring friends. Perfect Timing here happened to be doing agility training, so I --"
Alma trotted over to him and held out one forehoof. "Noctis. I appreciate that you're trying to be friends, but I'm getting a little disturbed. I'm here to do some adventuring, but not the kind full of contrived coincidences."
The unicorn answered for Sterling in nearly the same voice. "Are we being too friendly? We're sorry. We just want you to feel welcome."
Alma ignored the snickering coming from Poppy's direction. "All right. Please give me some space so I can see more of this world, and not focus on, on whatever this is, okay?"
Kai said, "I'd like to try the obstacle course though."
Sterling and the unicorn slinked away along a different hill trail, saying in unison, "Okay. Some other time?"
"Fine," said Alma, and immediately regretted it. The other pegasus remained. "And you're _not_ Noctis?" asked Alma.
"No, ma'am. I'd yell at you for chasing them off, but I can guess what's going on. Newcomer?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, judging from your arrival, you three look like you need flying practice. Want to play?"
The four of them bounded through the rings and bounced off clouds and flagpoles, nearly falling off the cliff again and again but using the danger for motivation. Alma got much better at turning. "I can still only glide, though. It sounded earlier like no amount of practice would let me really fly, because I have to do a quest for that. How does that work?"
The pegasus trainer flopped onto a cloud. "North of here, Mount Improbable is the big questing area for pegasi. It's like the Labyrinth of Night for unicorns or the Centralia Fire-Mine for earthbound, in that you've got to bring all three main races or you'll get your flank kicked."
Alma said, "They're puzzle dungeons that take all three?"
"That, and general combat strategy. Ever fought a four-meter-tall wooden wolf-golem whose eyes burn with unholy flame? Typically earthbound ponies tank, unicorns are damage-per-second or buff/debuff support, pegasi are strikers or --"
"Are you an immigrant?" Alma asked, hearing game lingo. She'd meant to say "uploader" but the word-filter caught it. "I expected to hear it all phrased in terms of friendship powers."
"Got here in January." He glanced again at Poppy. "Say, weren't you in the war?"
Poppy blushed and stepped away from him. "Not importantly. 'Ratatosk' here has got the basics down, so we'd better head for the mountain. Thanks!"
"With an all-winged party like that?"
Poppy sighed. "Right. We'll figure something out. Thanks again!" He headed for the upward trail leading into some woods away from the cliff.
Alma, puzzled, excused herself and followed Poppy. "What was that about?" she asked, once they and Kai were away.
"I only uploaded a few months before you," Poppy said. "I threw myself into this new life, and I was really enthusiastic about seeing all the places I could go and all the things I could be. Not like you with trying to get right back into an Earthside job."
"The 'bounce'," Alma said. A lot of people were trying to make themselves useful instead of just playing, so right after reaching gamers' paradise they asked about earning that degree they'd always wanted or finding an Earth job where they could 'work from home' or use robots.
Poppy's wings twitched noncommittally. "Eh. It was wanderlust more than responsibility. So I ended up in Hoofland, just in time to get involved at the tail end of a huge battle that redefined the map and overthrew the second queen of the east."
"There've been multiple revolutions already?"
"Just one here in Noctis, but yeah. Queen Sunward Ho the Ill-Considered, who had a... different take on pony canon. She wanted a war just to keep things exciting."
"I guess that's not as horrible as it sounds, since nopony could die," said Alma. She practiced hopping up and down between the ground and some tree branches.
"Ever died several times in quick succession? It gets more painful. There's a limit before you respawn at some failsafe location, but it's still torture."
Alma peeked down from her branch. "Ludo allowed that?" She tried to remember hearing anything in Earth media, before she'd uploaded, about events in Hoofland. "I guess everypony dismisses news from here even more than from Talespace in general. It's just a cartoon, right?"
Kai looked thoughtful. "Poppy, you committed to this world, though. You got a permanent mark."
Poppy glanced back at the sun design on his hide. "I thought Hoofland was the solution to the problem I saw, of uploaders fragmenting into a thousand different cultures. Should've seen at the time that people wouldn't rally around something they saw as not just disarmingly silly, but childish."
Alma glided down, thinking. Poppy's decision to become a humanoid squirrel, as her standard body, wasn't just for fun. As she'd explained it (conveniently, after convincing Alma to get a similar body), the point was to create a distinct culture among uploaders that would unite instead of dividing. Essentially a new race, or nation, or religion, all in one. "Wait a minute," said Alma, landing at Poppy's hooves. "Did you tell ponies to worship Nightmare Moon and Celestia?"
The marked stallion stepped back. "I wasn't the first cleric of Celestia, not by a longshot."
Alma said, "I'm not accusing you of anything. Just trying to understand. Your whole 'Forest Lord' thing is abstract since nopony's actually playing the character. The people who worship Miss Fun-and-Games the AI are praising somepony who isn't human and who even teased me for being too respectful." Alma pointed to Poppy's brand. "But the pretty princesses are pony underneath. I mean pony. Damn it." The word filter reflected the absence of humans around here.
Kai said, "I understand. Most human cultures have no problem with their ruler having absolute power over them, so most locals have no problem pretending Their Equine Majesties are god-queens. But you two aren't European or Chinese or American, and it rubs you the wrong way."
"Right," said Alma. "I'm mostly okay with our AI overlord having that kind of power, because I recognize that she's not really pony. Darn it! Can I say 'naked monkey'? Good." She flicked her wings and stared far down at the distant palace, realizing something else. "Nightmare Moon said that she's a 'true pony', mentally, more than with the stupid speech filter thing. So she's trying to transcend 'naked monkey' nature, too."
Kai looked startled. "She's trying to qualify as a goddess?"
Poppy hopped into the air and hovered. "It's not like that. When I was here as a cleric, the point was to rally ponies so we could work together here or on Earth someday. Not to make a cult out of it."
"Yeah, well, that's where it's going."
Poppy slapped a branch with one hoof. "That's not what it's supposed to be! They were supposed to sit on the throne and dispense quests and make sure things stayed interesting, not change their brains to qualify as okay to worship."
Alma said, "Are you all right, Poppy? I didn't know you had this much of a history here."
"Enough that I need to go and look into this business. You don't need another pegasus anyway for your quest. Go have fun while I figure out how screwed up Hoofland got in my absence." She flew off quickly enough to leave a sparkly aura in her wake, toward the eastern lands of Celestia.
Alma looked to Kai. "Great. Hoofland is secretly turning into the Church of Equinology?"
"Huh?" the brown stallion asked.
"There's this cult on Earth that claims alien volcano spirits... Never mind. Tell you later. Queen Nightmare Moon -- All hail --" Alma slapped her hooves over her muzzle.
"Speech filter?" asked Kai.
Alma nodded, tried to curse, and said "darn". "Ugh. Anyway, she told me to explore Hoofland to better understand her intentions. She also hinted at me about thinking I'm important for being a cross-world traveler. She might tell me more than she would somepony else."
"Want to do the pegasus quest without Poppy? I think I can get a spell to temporarily go earthbound, and I know a unicorn if you don't mind him being evil."
"Forces of Evil?"
"That, and he has some influence over the Islamic Caliphate."
Alma swore, "Muffins!"
"It's him or recruit one of Noctis' interchangeable bodies. I don't know a lot of ponies."
Alma frowned. "Let's see if Onyx the Baker is up for this instead. How about we meet up in a few hours? Local time. I also want to get out of here and do anything non-pony-related."
#
Alma tapped a wrench against her fuzzy hand, as she watched the bridge across a gorge. Suddenly the mechanical gun turret beside her started shuddering and beeping. "Spy's sapping my sentry!" she called out to her team. A man in a lab coat was trying to sneak away, but she clubbed him unconscious with the wrench and his disguise wore off, revealing him as the saboteur. Meanwhile a scary guy with a flamethrower ran up to help her fix the gun and guard the bridge against some incoming mercenaries in blue. This particular battle had happened many, many times over, to the point of going from an ordinary video game to a traditional sport among uploaders.
She flexed her hands, wondering what it'd be like to have hooves full-time. She was still missing something about the queens' plans.