Entropy

by PseudoBob Delightus

Lost Chapters - #2 "Free At Last"

Chapter 2:
Free At Last

I stood ahead of a large trunk that stood out from the rest. It had notches and marks carved into it by sharp and powerful claws. Three yellow feathers lay on the mulched forest floor. I shuddered and tried to move past the memory of an event that, upon further reflection, yielded positive results. It was more than could be said for anything else in the day, as I was strung up by aliens and almost killed on two occasions.

I took it back. Saving the yellow one was the catalyst for all of it. The morality was questionable, but I wished I hadn't done it.

I looked at the trail leading back to the area. It bore a curious pattern of two unbroken paths dug deep into the dirt and mud, with a single set of circular tracks off to the right. I turned to another track, leading in a direction I could guess led back to my tree. It was signified by broken grass blades and torn up shrubbery. That was the line I made on my way to the noise that was mysterious and unnerving not an hour past.

It must have been just as, if not more, horrifying for the manticore as/than it was for me, when a small, unknown animal ran up to it and knocked it down without touching it. A cone of flattened plants spread out from a roughened point, signifying the power that was let out, and centered slightly to the right of the desiccated tree.

The tree; I was standing next to that tree. Sap leaked freely out of the numerous notches. I played at a frayed end of what used to be a whole jacket.

The manticore did not need sympathy. The horses, pegasi and unicorns did not need sympathy. I sure as hell wouldn't get any, so it was no use saying that I needed any either. Did anything?

I trekked through the tall, broken grass and back to my starting tree. I took note of a small, dirty river that led in the general direction of the small mountain range in the distance, as I would eventually need to survive in the land I continued to find myself in, despite many a prayer to many sorts of deities that I could only hope to them that they heard me. I wondered if the local... things had any sort of imaginary, god-like character that they blindly followed.

Perhaps, I thought, they could mistake a large, intelligent creature, from a far away place, with mysterious powers, for a god? I wouldn't be so lucky, especially after their first reactions, but it was an interesting train of thought that I held onto for a few minutes before reaching my destination. Besides, they could overpower me anyway.

In a dreary corner of the forest, my original tree laid on its side. There were obvious exit signs on the trunk, with chunks and particles of moist bark littering the ground beneath. I caught a glint of reflected sunlight, and was surprised to find my watch among the wreckage. Next to that were my steel-toed boots, some gloves, a backpack, and some boots.

It fit that these would come here, given that it was in the midst of winter when I departed. Adding to the mystery, however, was a more encapsulating question of why; I did not have any of these items close to me before being teleported. Even my clothes were unfamiliar, and that was not because they were ripped and dirty. It made no sense that anything around me would be brought to this place, neither did it make sense that I would go.

I stated with force, as I left the area and headed up the stream with my loot in tow, that nothing made any goddamn sense. It took several tries, but soon I was able to pronounce the phrase, and most others. The water shook and bubbled in response.

“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?” I didn’t think I ever got it perfect before that attempt.

By now, I had increased in volume, and was speaking fluently in the language that never escaped me, yet in a distant voice. Boughs and shuddered leaves defied my words. They beckoned to me, as if to draw me to conclusions, yet I had no intention of following blindly into the deep woods.

I stuck to the river, not quite standing in the stream yet never leaving it's reassuring presence, keeping myself alert to the glowing eyes that seemed to dot every shadow and hide behind every tree only to pop out as soon as my vision left them. I caught motion in my peripheral vision, perhaps of one of the creatures getting careless and approaching. My neck tingled; they could have been silently approaching, directly behind me, that whole time.

"Ah-HA!" I shouted, landing from a jump that faced me towards them. Except they were gone, replaced by a tree. Less than a second passed, the remnants of a tree dotted the water to my right, and sharp pieces of lumber impaled everything behind it.

There were no reactions to what I did beside the one I held on my face, and even that was hard to discern. I, for some reason, looked to my hands, and noticed the lines that had always been there. I checked my clothing; it was torn up, but I owned it at some point. Nothing was different. Nothing changed about me.

Except for that. The force that decimated what used to be a tree, as immovable and invincible as they would be when faced by natural forces, even manticores, came from my lungs. My voice, if it was possible, did that to that. What, I thought, if anything, was real anymore? What position did I play in this screwed up game of pain and fantasy and power? What sort of malevolent force placed me in a land where I would have such quantities and qualities against me, despite having so much false potential to remove them? And...

...Why?

My explorative mind could not be sated by imagination any longer. It told me, try again. I didn't like it at all, but there were few other options beyond hiding away from the yellow and red dots that hung in the shadows. It occurred to me that it should not have been that dark, even in a forest, at one o' clock PM - according to my watch. Nothing was entirely believable except for the path that tracked both ways through the river, and even it seemed to beg to me. I finally listened, and I gave them something to listen to. I hoped it wouldn't work.

As another once-intact trunk ceased to exist, I knew that they were right. I was beyond different. Surely I was different, obviously, but the changes reached further than that; at my disposal was a force that had, at the moment, no specific use. It was just bestowed upon someone who had no capacity to exploit it properly, however that was going to happen. I could only imagine that it would end badly for all parties involved, yet the inanimate, non-existent voices continued begging.

My footsteps, the babble of the river to my left, and the inevitable chirping of birds above the canopy, filled the air with tangible sound. It drew me away from the non-voices of every dark corner, every overturned rock that I passed by. I became so lost in the realism that it became the only thing to hear, even past the grass and brush being crushed under my heavy steps.

It was only after the sound disappeared that I realised I was doing this. I shut out my footsteps, accidentally, after hearing an inconsistent gait and wishing I could be done walking. I spoke with the words of the forest, answering their calls and changing the message. Soon everything around me became a blur of incoherent noises, as if the raw, wandering thoughts leaked from my mind and littered the landscape.

Eventually, I found relief in the form of some sort of immediate goal. There was an apple hanging off of a single, outstretched branch, perhaps double or three times eye level. It was shaking and dangling slowly in the breeze, as if to be bestowed upon my outstretched hands. But I did not hold my hands out. Instead I watched as the apple

I quickly became bored of the lack of challenge, and tried something else. I had seen the effect my voice had on the manticore, and I attempted to replicate the action. Sucking in a deep lungful of air, I compressed it hard before forcing out a loud “BOOM!” ‘Ow, my leg…’

The water was momentarily pushed back over the ravine; leaves were blown off branches and some small shrubs were nearly flattened. I could not believe it when I saw it. I could move things by yelling. Not only that, I started to remember interesting things like that in a game I once played, years ago. I couldn’t recall much else about it, aside from "Force Roll Doll" or something. I guess nostalgia could wait until I actually remembered something that made sense.

After a few tries, I could consistently push things pretty far. I got bored based on the lack of difficulty, and my leg starting to hurt more, so for another challenge, I aimed up at the tree above me and repeated the blast.

“BOOM!” The tree was left with bare branches as the sound waves carried most of the leaves up in a burst of foliage. This was becoming exhilarating, so much so that I continued for hours, and ignored the pain of slight movements in my leg. I quickly learned how to produce different sounds, different blasts, and with more experimentation, more facets of my power were revealed. ‘Like levelling up, in a video game,’ I thought.

I could estimate the sound’s reactions with environments, and adjust my voice accordingly to make it sound like it was coming from somewhere else, basically ‘throwing’ my voice. I extended that specific point beyond the obvious use; inverting sounds and throwing them to an area could effectively mask out the existing noise. I could even silence my footsteps once I got the timing right. The rate at which my new abilities were being discovered was mind-boggling. The thought of being god-like was enticing, but soon, three conflicting thoughts came up.

The first was that I would possibly be shunned by those that had originally accepted me for being me. That was a given, and I could fully understand the reasoning, but it made me less than eager to return to my original home, back to Kanata. As far as I knew, nobody else had super powers, and the masses would look upon me as a freak of nature, and despise me for being better than them. That last portion eased the pain, as it was always a big point in a super hero’s life to accept hatred.

That last though got away from me; I was not a super hero.

Continuing to the next one, I started to wonder if I was still on the same planet, let alone the same universe. There certainly were no manticores in the present day, and even though I never traveled very far I could say for certain I had never heard of any talking, pastel-coloured ponies, or any unicorns or pegasi at all. For all I knew, I could be inside the game I remembered earlier, with those new body-tracking suits or something. I didn’t like that thought, however, since it assumed technology was around a decade more advanced than it really was.

It was very evident that something strange had happened last night, and I started to make links back to that tree. The feeling I got when I stepped back inside, the knowledge that flowed to me, almost as if it was passed down by an invisible hand. After having a good internal debate about the nature of this place, I went down to the last thought, and thinking it aloud gave me hope for returning home.

“If I was to find my way home, I could make a killing as a ventriloquist.”

That absolutely killed the serious mood I had going, and I literally broke down with laughter. Before long I snapped out of it when I heard some noises near by, and squelched my voice. With any luck, this was a search team sent out to find me after I had been missing for a day. But, of course, I heard the familiar voices of at least three of the six ponies that had captured me, so I needed to act quickly.

Securing my belongings in the pack, I ran off towards the mountains to find some form of shelter that would hold me over for the night, still feeling a sharp pain in my leg. I heard the hoof-steps grow louder, but as the grass turned to stone and I approached a cave, I had more consistent sounds to work with and masked out my own footsteps.

The ponies continued uphill, close behind me, but unaware of my exact location. I acted quickly and threw my voice past a nearby hill, producing pebble-shift noises, distracting them long enough to hide inside a crevice on the stone wall. Watching them pass me in the receding light, I noticed that the rainbow-cyan and yellow-pink ones were not with the other four. Perhaps the former was too injured to go along with them, after we collided. I think I got a broken leg from that incident, and my face reflected what I was thinking of the pain the smaller pegasus had gone through.

I felt guilty again, and this time, with only an empty rock cavern behind me, there was nothing to pull me away. The yellow pegasus was probably too shaken up after the two incidents and may be recovering from emotional pain. ‘Lightweight’, I chuckled.

After seeing the ponies retreat as quickly as they had left, I made my way into the larger cave and set up my camp in the dying sunlight. I looked at my watch to see that it was almost 7 in the evening. I was genuinely exhausted from all the running, practice and sustained injuries. I also needed to wake up early for what I had in mind, but I had one last thing to attend to.

I grabbed a few tough branches and some of the strips of fabric from my bag, and tied my leg up in a splint. It might not last for very long, but I could only think of a few options and I didn’t have the tools for amputation.

Straining to make a mental note of where the ponies had returned to, I laid on a slightly risen stone platform and wrapped my sweater around my body. Sleep came much more easily than the night before, even through my pain, as an odd sort of calm shifted through my body. My last thought was about being in my house, on the comfortable bed, drifting off….