The Problem With Magic

by deathtap

Day 3: Gaps In The Brain

Warm. Bright.

It took a moment for me to struggle through the haze. It felt as if I had been asleep for a long, long time. A stream of daylight hit me right at my eyelids. I could feel its warmth penetrating through me. At first, I tried to open my eyes, but as my mind came out of the blackness of unconsciousness, I felt an overwhelming surge of sickness waft up through my body. I shuddered slightly, trying to keep the contents of my stomach down. I tried to will myself to ignore the feeling coming up through my chest and throat. At least it wasn’t pain. How much pain had I been through this past month? Yet, somehow, this one was worse. As if I had been stretched out, pulled, and then compressed together at the same time.

As I started to wake up more and more, the constant, agonizing pain slowed its pulsing waves. At first there was a slow, long and constant thrumming that began to quicken. The pain would subside for a moment, giving me intense relief. Yet each time I tried to open my eyes, the pain would once again start. I braced myself internally as each wave came and went.

But throughout all of this, something felt off. Very off. The spine, for one, felt abnormal and different. It felt strangely familiar and the alien feeling in my gut was something that I could not understand. I knew I had to investigate, but I did not want to open my eyes. The nausea was still unbearable and I felt that if I waited, then maybe it would go away.

Slowly. Painfully slow, I opened one eye. The light flooded into my retina blinding me and a series of dizziness made my world spin out of control. I let out a groan as I tried to squish the feeling away, pressing my eyelids together as tightly as I could to retreat away from the light’s invasion. But, I had to try again. So, again, slowly, I tried to open the lids, but the same sensation prevented me from seeing. The only consolation was that each time I tried, the eyes seemed to get used to the light and eventually I could keep my eye open long enough to see.

The first thing I noticed was how everything looked strangely different. It did not register right at that moment, but my focus seemed to hone in on the object in front of my face. The fuzzy outline of what looked to be a rock started to focus itself in my view, but before it could fully form in my vision, I shut my eyes to push away the searing headache that suddenly flooded through the back of my head, down my neck, and along the muscles on my back before fading away into numbness.

There I lay again for a long time in my own darkness. Half conscious, aware about myself being aware, but not much more than that.

Again I opened my eyes. Again, the same fuzzy shape formed, and this time I waited for it to pull into view. It loomed there for a long moment, and my brain started to work over the singular thought of willing the vomit sensation to go away. It was then that I noticed just how normal the rock was. Not normal in the sense that it was a rock, but how normal in the sense that it was a real rock.

My heart turned numb, and I jerked my head up. That didn’t go well, and I clasped my lips with my hand to stop the puke from pouring out. That stopped me as I drew my hand up in front of my face and stared in stunned silence.

My hand. No hoof. No fur. My hand.

Then my fingers started to hurt as if I had slept on them and the cramped combination of my muscles and ligaments waking up and stretching and conforming back to their neutral position quickly subsided and I lay down there staring at the rock to the side with my hand still on my lips.

What. The. Hell?

I sat up slowly and I stared around me. My legs were starting to work, and I could shift my body around. I looked around where I was and noted that it was like a deep cave. No. Not a cave. More like a pit, but with an angled slide that was relatively steep, but not something too difficult to climb out of. I stared upwards towards the sunlight beyond and the trees beyond that and tears formed in my eyes.

“No.”

I choked back the tears. It couldn’t be so, but it was. I already knew it when I saw the rock, but I refused to accept it. Refused to accept the truth of the situation and about where I was. I sat there for a long moment trying to recall… something. Anything.

“T… T.... Tues!” I shouted, which came out more like a hoarse whisper, the voice barely able to make a sound as if I had not used my voice in a long time. As if I had just awoken from a dream.

“Tues! Tutela!”

My voice was louder, but it still wasn’t strong enough. Forcing myself, I stood up. I pushed myself up and fell, stumbling back into the wall of the cave that was caked with wet, slimy mud. The smell of the dampness combined with the fresh petrochoric smell of rains that came and went lingered in the air.

“Tutela! Are you there?” I called again, but my voice was still soft. It barely carried, but was louder. Again, I pressed my hand beneath me, turned and tried to stand. My legs did not seem to know what to do, and I stumbled backwards again, and fell back down on my rear on the other side of the cave.

“What is going on?” I asked the nothingness, knowing full well that I would get no response. Somehow, despite not understanding what was going on, I knew that I was not going to get a response; that all I would get was silence.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, my thoughts slowly clearing up as the foggy veil started to evaporate. The sun was further along, as I could tell from the shadows in the trees. It was also starting to get colder, and I could feel the numbness in my fingers returning.

The pain was all but gone now. At least the physical pain. The gaping hole in my heart was very much still there and I could not ignore it.

I was back. Back on Earth. Back in my world. That was clear. No matter how many times I wished it were otherwise, and no matter how many times I closed my eyes hoping that this was the dream, the world as I knew it was still there in front of me. How ironic it was. When it had all started, this was what I had wanted, but now that I was here, all I wanted was to go back. Back to where they were. Back to anywhere but where I was.

“Tutela. Please… answer me… what’s going on?”

Nothing.

Pulling myself up, I looked up at the slope and wiped away my tears. I could not stay down there, and it would get cold and dark soon. I needed to head out and made my way towards the entrance of the pit. Slowly, but steadily, I managed to get up. As I exited, I noticed just how ‘real’ everything looked. It wasn’t like the bright pastel shades of the Everfree. No, this was more natural and as much as I wanted to deny it, I had to accept it.

The rains had stopped, and the fresh morning sunrise lit my way. A few drops from the leaves high above me dripped onto my head and squinted the pain in my heart away. I stopped, turned and looked at the pit from where I crawled out from and stared. In my heart of hearts I had hoped to see something, anything, that would prove to me that the last month hadn’t been some fever dream. Right now, the thought of what had happened being nothing more than a figment of my imagination surged through my head, but I pushed it aside.

No. It was real. I was there, in Equestria. It had to be real.

I took a step and paused. A stick was poking the bottom of my feet, and the nerves there seemed to explode awake. I paused, letting the feeling subside and I took another slow step. A small path made it obvious where I needed to go, and I followed it in that half-daze that I was still feeling. Waiting in that pit-cave was not something I ought to be doing, and I knew it.

Every step both hurt and tickle my feet. The sand between my toes felt exhilarating, but it was punctuated by pain as small sharp rocks and sticks poked me time and again from below my foot. I tried to ignore it and just focused on taking one step at a time as I tried to puzzle what happened and why there was such a huge gap in my memory.

The last thing I remember was… Pinkie.

[Mood music - Optional]

There she was, her head turned away from me. I stopped in my tracks and reached out to her, as if in my haze I could actually touch her. Instead, my hand met the cold hard texture of the trunk of a tree. I fought the stinging sensation in my nose, held back and fought the tears and moved past the obstacle and headed on. A small incline made me stumble, but I caught myself against a small boulder and steadied myself. As I reached the top of the small mound, I barely noticed the path leading straight down in front of me. I stared without looking and continued as my mind focused on what happened after.

The pull. That pulling feeling, I could remember that. It was the same feeling I always got when Tuetela pulled me into that in-between world that she always did. But up until that point, my memory just stopped and I could not recall what happened afterwards. A gap in the trees made the light shine right at me making me squint, and I looked up at the tall canopy high above me.

A drop of water dripped right into my eyes, and I felt its cool moistness. The trees here were thinner now, and I started to feel the cool breeze blow through my hair on my head.

As I stood there, I began to wonder if all that had happened had been a dream.

“No.”

I forced the words out of my mouth, forced it because it had to be said out loud for me to understand the weight of the situation I was in.

The way out was obvious, and I followed the trail not really paying attention to anything apart from what had happened. What I had forgotten. After the forest in the Everfree. And after Pinkie. What happened? Had I just come here straight away? No. Definitely not. Tuetela would not have done that. Something. Something was missing. But what? What was the missing piece. Why was my brain not working? I knew it in my gut. I knew there was something, something super important. Something. The sensation was overbearing, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I stopped as my foot landed on something hard and different.

I looked down and saw the black-grey flat rock. No. Not rock. Asphalt. A road. A white line. It was then that a muffled shout from behind me made me turn.

“Hey!” A voice shouted. “You. Stop right there. Are you fucking deaf?”

My eyes set on the creature standing tall, like me. A man was standing there, to my left, walking briskly. He was pointing at me and shouting. Something was smoking. It looked like the burnt-out shell of a… car? I stood there staring at it for a long while.

The officer got in my face and my eyes shifted focus to him again. He was saying something, but I touched my head. His voice made my brain hurt. Why was he talking so loud? Or was he shouting? I think he was shouting, but I was struggling with my own thoughts.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Why the hell would I come back here? What the hell was wrong with me?

And all at once my brain stopped, cleared itself, and everything snapped into place.

“Um… is there a problem, officer?” I asked, recognizing his uniform.

“Problem? Kid, you just walked out of the forest buck naked and you’re asking me if there’s a problem?”

I looked down at my body and my shrivelled penis.

I frowned at that.

Hey. It was cold.

The officer tilted his head, then gestured with his chin over to the charred remains of the car. “That yours?”

I looked at him, then at the car, then back at him.

“Where… where am I?”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on. We’ve been looking for a man, this man,” he showed me a photo of myself. “Have you seen him?”

“That’s me,” I blurted out faster than I could stop myself.

The officer raised his eyebrow, looked at the photo, then at me, then at the photo again. “You sure?”

“Um… what? Yeah. Look at me.”

The officer shook his head again. “I am. And… well, yeah. You need help. Would you mind coming with me. We’ll get you back to the Station, check you out, then you can go off if you check out. I’ll get you a blanket to cover yourself with.”

“Okay.”

I followed the office to his car and he put the blanket around me.

The officer asked me questions on the ride. I answered as best as I could, but I avoided all talk about what had happened over the past month in Equestria. I knew enough to not say anything about that, or I’d end up in a place far worse than a jail. Anyway, how could I explain that to him? I at least had the common sense to know that talking about a magical world of talking ponies was not going to help me, particularly in the state he found me in. Right now, as I sat in the backseat, it was clear that he thought I was coming off some drug-fueled high. His line of questioning signified as much.

But he kept throwing me off when he kept asking me if I was sure I was the person in the picture. Of course I would recognize myself. Right?

At the station, they put me in a holding room and gave me some clothes that they had. I put it on and the next thing I knew I had a bowl of hot noodle soup given to me. I inhaled it, quickly consuming it. It was awful, but it was filling.

After that, I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew I was awakened by the sound of the door unlocking and a familiar face entered the room.

“Raj?” I asked. And my heart jumped in my chest. I was actually happy to see that sonuvabitch.

“John?” He responded, surprise evident on his face. And… doubt as well, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing in front of him. “What… what happened to you?”

“What happened? I… don’t remember. I don’t know. I’ve been gone for so long. It’s been more than a month. Right? Sorry, but I can’t recall anything…”

Pinkie’s face again sprang to my mind as she turned around to face away from me. I furrowed. Why did I just remember that?

I shifted my focus back to Raj who just stared at me, his expression blank for a moment before he turned to the officer next to him, then back to me.

“John. You’ve been gone for three days?”

“Three… days?”

“You’ve been gone for literally three days. What the fuck happened to you? How are you… like that?”

The expression on my face must have spoken volumes because he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He took a picture and turned it so I could see the screen.

I leaned in and looked at it. I furrowed my brow and leaned in and really looked. My eyes opened wide as I snatched the phone from him and stared at the person.

“What?”

I turned on the selfie camera on the mobile and audibly gasped at what I saw. I touched it, and the smiling face mirrored within. It was as if I was seeing my reflection for the first time. And I was. The person who was staring back at me wasn’t me. I mean, it was me, but a very different version of me. This version of me had long flowing hair that went down to the top of my back and a healthy beard that, though scruffy, looked fantastic. Somehow I did not notice that as well. I didn’t even know I could grow a beard like that. Then I looked at myself, and my general body shape as well. I was much thinner than before, my face having deflated substantially.

But the biggest difference? My body. What the hell? Boy, was I jacked. I was muscled to the core. How had I not noticed that? I had muscles in places I didn’t know muscles could exist!

I stared at myself for a long moment before turning to Raj.

“What the fuck indeed.” I handed his phone back to him and sat in a heap. “What. The. Fuck.”

Comments

[Pause]

spittake

[Scarlet Scribe]

Just when I thought this couldn't get more surprising...

[SirDragon001]

Thank you for the chapter.

[Witchery]

8898424
IT LIVES AGAIN!!!

[deathtap]

11155829
It does! I'm just waiting for a response from someone. Then you'll get the next one.

[Egil]

LET’S FUCKING GOOOOO!

[Cold Spike]

Holy SHIT. Four years?!

[Twilight_the_spy]

Oh hell yes. What a surprise! Unfortunately I've gotta get some sleep before starting on my reread of this story, but wooo damn, an update!

11155849

Then you'll get the next one.

Wait, you've got more chapters ready too?

[deathtap]

11156519
Yep.

[Benprodemo]

Wait a second.
Hoho-hold up.
I'M SO FUCKING HAPPY YOU'RE ALIVE, I COULD HUG YOU!!!!!

[deathtap]

11156786
Aw. Thanks, Benny.

[Luna Lightblade]

WHOA WHAT?! I remember this being one of the first fics I read on this site nearly 10 years ago now. Absolutely floored to see this update again.

Time to re-read the entire thing!

[Obsessedwithjelly]

Theres a reason that I have eighty-something deadfics on my read later shelf, and thats because sometimes people come back from the dead.

That being said, I have practically zero recollection of what this ones about, and at nearly half a million words, I'm not about to start a re-read until theres a completed tag on it just in case.

But welcome back

[deathtap]

11158263
I understand. I got a couple big ones in my to-read list.

[Twilight_the_spy]

Woo, finally finished my reread, and wow, as amazing as I remember.

Seems that Forest's training has carried over to John. I wonder if he can run with flames as a human now? lol

[Twilight_the_spy]

Actually, I'm extremely curious as to why this is marked day 3... I assume it's not because he's been "gone" for three days in the human world? There must be some link to the third day that I'm missing, or maybe I'm just trying to read into it too far.

[Witchery]

11175242
Of course! Theres a few errors like that in the later chapters as well, mostly capitlaization stuff and a few word choices, but its minor.

[Witchery]

11175231
Might be an archived version on archive.org or something.

[Witchery]

God I hope the next chapter doesn't take four years. It's just so, so good.

[deathtap]

11156168
Seems like a trend. But I am going to break it for you guys.

[deathtap]

11175258
I brought the artist back! So, no worries. When I get the copy, I'll definitely upload it.

[Witchery]

11176252
Fantastic. Seriously, I love this fic and have since 2012.

[deathtap]

11176259
Aw~! Thanks so much! You make it worth me writing it.

[DarthAvarous]

Wow, seeing this update brought back a lot of great memories. Glad to see you still around. The thought of this being finished is tantalizing.

[AttomicRainBoom]

Wow I didn't know how much I missed this story 😭 until it got updated.