I forged ahead in a straight line, until the blue flowers were behind me.
There was no sudden lightning or thunder, no swarm of parasprites, not even ominous clouds. I looked back. A gentle breeze swayed the sunlight drenched blue flowers, just like before. It was anticlimactic.
So now what?
The joke wouldn’t happen until tomorrow. I had the rest of the day and this evening to kill. I wasn’t sure what to do.
I briefly considered taking a train to Canterlot, but Pinkie had refused to tell me how to find Lyra. Besides, did I really want my final conversation with her to be an argument over why I left without saying anything?
No. There was only one way to make things right with her: undo what was done to me.
Which left only one course of action, and that was to return to the castle.
So I did, and once I got back there, I went back to that hidden room I had last found, the one with the vault in it, on the off chance Discord was waiting there for me. In that room, there was no light other than what I provided, no sound but my own breathing, and no smells except that of dust and decay.
Of course he wouldn’t be here.
“Discord!”
Nothing happened.
If there was any logic to his appearances, I couldn’t see it; but then, he was the Spirit of Chaos.
I waited a few more minutes, then gave up.
Not having anything better to do, I resumed the search for hidden rooms. I found a half dozen more, but none with a magically locked vault—or anything else useful, for that matter. The preservation spells had fared poorly in that part of the castle.
Eventually, it was time to call it a night. I returned to my guest room and made myself comfortable on the bed, or at least as comfortable as I could be while wearing all my saddlebags. That had gotten old real fast.
Sleep did not come readily this time. Part of it was wondering—okay, perhaps worrying as well—what form the joke would take when I woke up, but it was also sinking in just how screwed I was. Even if I got into that vault, with or without Twilight’s or Discord’s help, there was no guarantee I’d find anything helpful.
I could only hope Zecora was right, that the joke those plants had in store for me would open a door, somehow, to new opportunities.
Something wasn’t right.
I opened my eyes. Dim light suffused the—I lifted my head in shock.
I was in a cave, some ways from the entrance judging from the lack of direct illumination.
What happened to the castle?
A reset had never moved me before. Could it have destroyed the castle? That was absurd. My having disappeared a few months earlier could not possibly have resulted in that happening.
I lift myself off the hard ground and onto my hooves. There was really only one logical explanation. I examined myself the best I could, given the poor light and lack of mirrors. Nothing was out of the ordinary.
“How about my voice?” I asked the universe at large.
That was fine too. So far as I could tell, the joke had done nothing to me other than to relocate me to this cave.
This was supposed to be funny?
I walked towards the light. Might as well see where I was. There had to be something significant about this. Just dumping me in some random spot to be forgotten—which was rather redundant, if you asked me—well, I expected more out of poison joke than that.
I followed the light through one turn, then another, and spotted the entrance. Through it could be seen a forest. That so did not narrow down the possibilities.
Once I got outside, I looked around. The trees were tall and numerous, making it difficult to see very far. The ground sloped gently down. Not much of the sky could be seen through the canopy, yet even so it was dimmer than I would expect.
This didn’t seem to be the Everfree. It was just too orderly, too… normal. But neither did it resemble any other forest I was familiar with. That meant I was more than a day’s walk away from Ponyville, assuming I could determine in which direction Ponyville was.
It was half-tempting to just stay put and spend my few remaining days in this cave. Was there really any point in getting back to Ponyville or that castle? Maybe the poison joke did me a favor.
Except that isn’t how poison joke worked.
And I still needed to eat. The ground was covered with the remains of dead plants, and most of the still living plants didn’t look terribly appetizing. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were starved for sunlight—but then, how did they ever grow here in the gloomy shadows to begin with? It’s not as if these trees had sprung up overnight.
Regardless, I also needed to drink, and here there was no water.
“Well, I can’t stand around here all day.”
I started walking downhill. So long as I did that, I should reach a river or stream, eventually a valley or a lake, maybe even a town or other sign of civilization.
After twenty minutes or so, the sound of running water became audible. Perfect. Another five minutes and I reached it. First order of business was to quench my thirst. Next was to fill my canteen. That didn’t take long, perhaps unfortunately, as it was sized for convenience rather than survival.
After putting it back in a saddlebag, I studied the river more closely. It was a dozen feet across and flowing fast enough to make crossing it a challenge. Fortunately, there was no apparent need to do so. The gap in the canopy was wider here, revealing cloudy skies. It was enough to support a lusher undergrowth. I took advantage of that, too.
I continued on downstream, and within an hour I came upon a broad meadow. I took that as a sign to rest. I shouldn’t have needed one so soon, being an earth pony, but I chalked it up to my less than upbeat state.
Sitting on my haunches, I absorbed tranquility of the flowing water, of the flowers swaying in the gentle breeze, of the sounds of distant birds. A rabbit—a normal rabbit—scampered by in the distance. A really large cat dropped out of the sky in front of me, it’s horn glowing—
Wait, what?
I collapsed to the ground. I couldn’t move a muscle. No, that wasn’t completely true: I could blink and move my eyes. I could still breath, too, but I couldn’t talk. Which was a tad bit inconvenient at the moment. I’d love to ask why I’d been hit with a paralysis spell.
I helplessly watched as that unicorn cat—too many syllables, so I’d just call it a unicat—levitated a rope out its saddlebags, just like any unicorn. Aside from the horn and its size, it also differed from ordinary cats in its coloration: a calico comprised of dark green, light red, and cyan. Another cat landed beside it and folded its wings. Okay, so that’d be a pegacat. This one was a uniform pink.
As the unicat approached me, rope floating by its side, the pegacat said, “You’re sure this is it? Looks like a weirdly colored, juvenile horse to me.”
From the voice, I assumed the flying cat was female.
“It still has traces of the magical signature King Apollo detected,” her now obviously male associate replied as he bound my legs. “It’s connected somehow to that event, and I’m not taking any chances. You know our orders.”
I was beginning to suspect what the joke might have been.
“Yeah, but it’s clearly just a pack animal—look at the saddlebags! Where’s its owner? That’s who we should be concerned about.”
The unicat stepped back to inspect his work. “Who’s now out these supplies,” he said, nodding at my saddlebags. “Anyway, I’m dropping the spell. Let’s see if those hold.”
Control of my body returned to me. I tried to snap the ropes with sheer earth pony strength, but failed. I wasn’t sure why. The ropes didn’t look unusually strong. They must have been magically strengthened.
The pegacat went airborne and hovered over me. “Hook me up. I’ll fly it back to The Agency while you keep an eye out for its owner. It can’t be too far away.”
“Oh, well played,” I theatrically addressed the poison joke, present only in spirit. “Well played.”
The two cats stared at me, open jawed.
I gave them a stare of my own in return. “Yes, I can talk, when not prevented by a paralysis spell.”
“Weirdly colored, juvenile horse, huh?” the unicat droned, not taking his eyes off me.
“And I’m not weirdly colored, juvenile, or a horse. I’m a pony!”
“A pony is a juvenile horse,” pointed out the pegacat above me.
I rolled my eyes. “Not where I come from!”
“And where would that be?” the calico demanded.
That stopped me cold. Where was I now? In a place that’d never heard of Equestria, that much was clear. Those plants must have sent me to a different realm, however difficult that was to believe. Perhaps it had been within their power only because the walls between realms weakened during a reset? Speculation was pointless. The real question was, how do I get back?
I could wash myself with the antidote, of course, but it seemed unlikely that would magically transport me back. It wouldn’t hurt to try, but would I have the opportunity? They’d have to untie me first. And who knew what the next reset would do? The unraveling of my existence was taking place in my own realm, not this one.
I needed to get on these felines’ good side. If this “King Apollo” was anything like my Princess Celestia… “Equestria,” I finally answered. “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“You got that right. How’d you get here?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Poison joke?”
He just sighed. “Whatever. We’ll sort this out once we get you back to our facility.”
It wasn’t a pleasant trip, what with being all tied up while suspended under the pegacat. Some kind of enchanted crystal was put on me to reduce my weight down to almost nothing. The unicat had one also, though his was powerful enough to lift him above the pegacat. Or maybe he simply weighed a lot less to begin with. At least his legs weren’t tied up.
Over half an hour had passed when a magnificent city clinging to the side of a mountain appeared. The parallels were a little too blatant, if you asked me. Next I’d discover that there was a small farming town in the valley below named Kittyville.
A few minutes later, I was lowered onto the ground in a walled-off area behind a large building. After unhooking me from the pegacat and removing the weight-reducing crystal, the next thing the unicat did was to remove all my saddlebags. “Those are mine!” I protested. I couldn’t risk not having them overnight.
They remained floating in the air beside the unicat. “You’ll get them back if we don’t find anything dangerous, and if you behave yourself.”
Another unicat walked towards us. The calico levitated my saddlebags over to this new one, who took hold of my saddlebags with its own magic and returned to the building.
Finally, my legs were freed from the rope. I had to remain on the ground anyway, to let the pins and needles come and go.
The two cats who’d captured me weren’t going anywhere. I guessed they were willing to continue our conversation now that they had me secured. “I’m not here to cause trouble,” I began. “I only want to get home, and I’m afraid I’ll need your help to do so.”
“You need the antidote to poison joke?” the pegacat asked, humoring me.
“So you know what that is?” Interesting that we had that in common too.
She nodded. “But I’ve never heard of distant teleportation being one of the jokes.”
“Me neither, until now. I think I was a special case.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I already have the antidote in my saddlebags.”
“And you’ve used it?”
“No,” I admitted. “I needed to see what the joke was, first, and, well, I didn’t get around to it before, you know, you showed up.”
The calico looked askance at me. “You needed to see what the joke was.”
“Look, I know it sounds a little crazy.”
“And what was the joke?” the other one asked.
I looked back and forth between them. If they were buying any of it, they were doing a good job of hiding it. I could only hope it was due to their interrogation technique. “In my realm, I used to hunt monsters, just like you do here. I even worked for a super-secret anti-monster organization called The Agency. Anyway, the joke was to send me here so that I’d be hunted like a monster by a similar organization.”
They looked at each other.
I seemed to have gotten their attention, so I pressed my advantage. “We used highly secret weapons based upon incredibly ancient rune magic that nopony else even knew existed.”
Oh yeah, I got their attention. After a moment of silence, the pegacat lifted a paw to the sky. “Runes like these?” she asked.
I looked up. The sky was only partially cloudy here. Sprinkled across the clear areas between the clouds were glowing runes, seemingly suspended above the air itself. Some of which were all too familiar.
“Yeah,” I said. “Runes like those.”