//------------------------------// // 10. Shift in Perspective // Story: Final Mission // by Sharp Quill //------------------------------// “I cannot.” The weapon floated in a golden glow over to the nearest table—to him, not to me—and set down on its surface. “It must be done in your own realm.” Of course it would. I opened my front-left saddlebag and, with a sigh, put the crystal inside. “That weapon isn’t going to fit in a saddlebag,” I said as I closed it. “The crystal you may have, but not this time hunter.” He looked at me curiously. “Did you not say you had them too?” “Yes and no,” I said, hesitating. I didn’t really feel like going into detail. “A few years ago, Princess Celestia shutdown our Agency and allegedly destroyed all the weapons. I suspect you can guess why she’d do that; she never gave us an explanation.” Apollo nodded, but didn’t offer one himself. Beyond keeping secrets, eh? Perhaps he had more to lose after all. “Turns out they weren’t destroyed, only hidden away. I now know where, but access is another problem.” “I truly am sorry,” he said, lowering his head, “but that is a problem you’ll have to solve on your own.” Frustrating it might have been, but this problem I could deal with. “I already got access to them once. I should be able to get access again.” I just needed to find Twilight and come up with an excuse to get her to that vault. Shouldn’t be that hard, really—so long as she’s in town. “There’s no need for physical contact,” he continued. “You can keep the crystal in a saddlebag while you’re wearing it; it’ll still work. You should keep it hidden there. It would be best if one of them did not see it.” Like a certain unicorn rabbit? Got it. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t have the time stunner? There was no way to keep that hidden. But the rabbit must have seen me get zapped by one. Maybe it didn’t matter because the departure of that weapon from the vault, along with the acquisition of any new knowledge of it, would get reset. On the other hoof, if it wasn’t with me, what would happen on the next reset to something brought from another realm? I didn’t know. I wasn’t going to push it, not when I had good enough alternatives. The view from the top of the tower was impressive, to say the least. As I had thought, there was indeed a small town in the distant valley below. It wasn’t a farming town, however. Large, fenced-in grasslands with scattered bushes and trees surrounded the town, and within those areas were large herds of grazing animals. I couldn’t make out what kind, but they seemed to be smaller than ponies. Large rodents? Well, what did I expect from cats? The monarch waved a paw at the vistas below. “And that is Kittenville, a major producer of food for my kingdom.” Some pegacats were flying around, clearing the skies of clouds. “Do you have pegasi to manage your weather too?” Naturally, there was no reason for them to use “pegasus” as an adjective, anymore than we did. “We do, unicorns too.” He hummed to himself. “How strange, to have horses with wings and horns.” “I know the feeling.” He looked at me for a second, then broke out in laughter. “Yes, I suppose you do.” After King Apollo had returned the weapon to wherever it was kept, he took it upon himself to give me a tour. Diodoros and Theodosia had also tagged along, for reasons that weren’t clear to me. The attention was nice and all, but… “Not that I don’t appreciate the personal tour,” I eventually said, “but aren’t there other demands on your time?” He smiled at me. “I want to see how they return you to your own realm.” He looked towards the late afternoon sun. “Everything else can wait.” Was that why the other two had tagged along? Was he hoping to… detain one of them? Not that I really cared, so long as I got home—and got a few answers myself. “Let’s skip the waiting part,” a familiar voice snarked. Diodoros reacted first. “You!” he shouted. He took a fighting stance and charged up his horn. Apollo held a paw to his forehead and groaned. “Stand down.” “But sire!” “That was not a request.” The unicat stared at his monarch in disbelief, but powered down his horn as commanded—not that it was clear to me what he had expected to accomplish. I looked into the red and yellow eyes of the interloper. “What are you doing here, Discord?” I asked, as if I couldn’t guess. “Our realm not enough for you?” The draconequus crossed his arms. “I’ll have you know that I have many responsibilities.” Theodosia flew back to us, having momentarily left to check on something. “The statue is still there!” Diodoros turned back to Discord, mouth agape. “How did you escape?!” “Things are not always what they appear to be,” he smugly answered. Those mismatched eyes locked onto Apollo. “Isn’t that right, catnip-breath?” Apollo wearily sighed. “Just take the pony home. We are no longer your concern.” “As much as I’d like to spread some chaos around—just for old times’ sake, you know—you are, alas, quite right.” He wetted a talon and held it up, as if testing the breeze. “Magic is rather thin here anyway.” He hadn’t done a single random act of magic, it was true. Apollo addressed his agents. “You are not to speak of this to anycat. As far as you are concerned, Discord is still imprisoned within that stone statue.” He fixed his gaze on each in turn. “Have I made myself clear?” The two cats looked back at Discord, who gave an angelic smile in return. “Understood, Your Majesty,” they dutifully replied. “Well!” Discord exclaimed, “now that we got that out of the way…” I stamped my hoof. “Well, it isn’t clear to me!” I approached the Spirit of Chaos. “Is that why you’re nowhere to be found most of the time? Because you’re busy terrorizing other realms? Aren’t you reformed?” “Reformed?” Theodosia repeated. Apollo raised an eyebrow, his curiosity piqued. Discord’s eyes dashed back and forth between cats and pony. “It’s… complicated.” Let’s see just how “complicated” it is. I began to explain his alleged reformation. “Princess Celestia had him released from his stone imprisonment with the intention of reforming him through the magic of friendship, so that his powerful magic could be used for good. It could have gone smoother, granted, but it seemed to have worked—” It hit me. “The whole being-turned-into-stone bit was just an act, wasn’t it?” The pieces were clicking into place. “And Celestia knew it.” I looked at this realm’s version of Celestia. “Just like you knew.” King Apollo reluctantly nodded. “The magic of friendship?” Theodosia said, trying to wrap her mind around the concept. A slow clap rang out. “You got me,” Discord said. “Though I suppose it doesn’t really matter, given the circumstances. Let’s just say Princess Sunbutt was an excellent negotiator and leave it at that.” I didn’t know what to think anymore. “We really need to be on our way.” Discord turned to his side, and with paw and talon tore open a hole in space itself, revealing ultimate blackness. He turned his head towards me. “After you.” I stood my ground; I had to take advantage of this opportunity. “You will remember everything that happens here, right? Even after the next reset?” He looked as if he just ate something distasteful. “Unfortunately, yes. I can handle the minor paradox, due to my chaotic nature. That’s why I was assigned this task.” “Then remember this: look me up after the next reset. You’ve done so before.” I planned on getting access to that vault first thing upon returning, but it wouldn’t hurt to hedge my bets. His eyes focused on me. “Not that I remember—big surprise—but your reappearance would stick out to me if I happened to be around.” “Then plan on being around in…” I quickly did the math. Twenty one, thirty four… “fifty five days.” And I would have been missing for over nine months. I just hoped that crystal worked, and that I got to use it within the next few hours—maybe in the next few minutes, if Discord was cooperative. “Fine, fine,” he irritably said. “I can’t keep this open all day.” I looked back at the cats for the last time. “Good luck.” “And to you,” returned Apollo. I approached the hole. The blackness was impenetrable. Shouldn’t I be able to see Equestria, or something? I reassured myself that Discord had every reason to return me home. If they were going to do anything else to me, they already had had plenty of opportunity to do it. I took a deep breath, held it, and stepped through the hole back into Equestria. Except that it wasn’t Equestria. The landscape around me… how to even begin to describe it? It was like one of those drawings of “impossible” objects, objects that could never exist in reality. They could be drawn on a flat surface by messing around with the rules of perspective. Here, it was somehow real. The ground twisted and bent, forming junctions and loops to fill the world in which I had found myself. I couldn’t see more than maybe a mile, at most, but I had little doubt that this—whatever this was—was far larger. There was no apparent source of light, yet everything was illuminated, with inconsistent and nonsensical shadows being cast. Numerous buildings dotted the landscape. Some of them even made sense to my eyes. Others… it wasn’t always clear what was a floor and what was a wall, or even what was inside and what was outside. Creatures of all colors walked about in the distance, always sticking to the ground; gravity must be pulling to the ground, regardless of orientation. Then there were the flying creatures… were those paths even physically possible? All were too far away for their species to be identified. I looked back, ready to demand answers from Discord. He wasn’t there. The hole in space he had opened was gone too. He wasn’t coming. Which meant I was trapped here. To be fair, Discord had never said where he was sending me. He had merely failed to correct everypony else’s assumptions. So now what? My surroundings still baffled me. It must have been an illusion, a trick of perspective. If I went somewhere else, the illusion would fall apart. It had to! Of course Discord would put me in the precise spot where the illusion was perfect. I tried not to think about it, why this realm would have been constructed so as to create that illusion at this one spot. I was in a large, grassy field. Picking a direction in which the field eventually curved up, I started walking. A few feet, a few dozen feet, a few hundred feet. It made not the slightest difference. Looking to either side, or above me, the shift in perspective exposed other parts of this realm. It was more of the same impossible geometry. I collapsed to the ground and closed my eyes—and kept them closed. At least the cat-realm made sense. How was I supposed to get home now? Why was I even brought here? Wasn’t it necessary to get me back to my own realm before the next reset? Or was Apollo wrong about that too. But Discord had come for me. It all made as much sense as the insane world around me. My ears locked in on something approaching. The gait was odd, definitely not a pony. What more can go wrong? I lifted my head and opened my eyes. A large rabbit was hopping towards me. A lime-green rabbit that possessed a horn.