Cultural Cascade

by The Based God

Chapter Five: Hornloft

Martin Louverture had decided to watch the sunset. It had been mere hours since he had been expelled from the rest of the group. He had expected it to occur, but that didn't make the sting any less painful.

It was for the best, however. Someone like him couldn't be allowed to exist within a community of normal people, no matter if his family were there. The sunset helped calm his frazzled nerves, even though he knew that he and the others were not making it back to Ashland anytime soon.

As the sun went down, he continued following the tracks westward, away from the train station. Survival skills weren't quite as much a concern with his abilities, but they were still an issue now that he was alone.

Besides, he didn't like overusing his abilities, preferring to do things the "normal" way if it were possible. He may not have much of a choice if this is how things were going to go down.

The sun had set by the time he had exited the treeline, and he had followed the train tracks to an interesting place. The tracks dipped down slightly, but forking off to the left was a small settlement within a tiny valley. Similar to the one they had encountered yesterday, but it was distinguishably different.

Aesthetically, it looked very similar to the other town. It mostly used log architecture for its cabins and lodges, and there was also a very big townhouse in the center like the other one.

This place had quite a few more buildings however, and was situated in a different geographical location, so it was pretty obvious to anyone that it was a different town.

"Hmm..." Martin muttered to himself, closing his eyes and placing his hand on a tree. He relaxed his posture and waited, before images passed by within his mind's eye faster than one could comprehend.

Still, Martin caught several snippets of information via using his clairvoyance, even if he couldn't control it at this point in time.

"Ponies. They're all ponies here too. It's another town of them, and not a human in sight. I heard what happened from Albert before I left for good; the ponies at the other town didn't seem too happy to see him."

The psychic focused his clairvoyance once more, trying to find more specific information on the town. Images popped into his mind once more, slower and more controlled this time.

"Still couldn't get a name for this place, or any information about this world. What's it called? How big is it? Is it just these ponies who live here? Is there some kind of ruling body or hierarchy?

Those questions and more popped into Martin's head. It made sense that there would be more than one isolated town of ponies, especially if they were advanced enough to build their own railways.

Martin's thoughts drifted back to his family and few friends back at the train station. After the reveal it was safe to say that the majority of the group didn't care for him.

Whether they liked him or hated him, it was clear that he and the rest of the group were in serious trouble. He had been there when they had found a temporary shelter, but they needed more than shelter.

They had found a stream in the forest out near the back of the train station, but they had not found a way to sanitize it yet. The water main had gone defunct years ago in the old train station. Food, fuel, and clothing were in very limited supply, something that they found out after the first day there.

For someone like his mother Priscilla, she couldn't handle any extended time with these limited living conditions. Lucy and Steven were there to take care of her, but...

"Wait a minute!" he said out loud, as an idea overcame him, "Desperate times call for desperate measures!"

Even if Martin had been officially banned from the group and forced to survive on his own, there was still a way he could help both himself and them at the same time. He had people he was responsible for in the group; this wasn't the time to waste away from loneliness and depression. As long as he had that goal, he could keep going.

"I can't be seen..." he muttered to himself like a mantra. Pretty soon the blanket of night would completely cover the forest, and he could make his move.

For the time being, he waited. Watching the town below like a hawk, trying to scrape up some information using his clairvoyant abilities.

Along with teleportation, ESP was not a psychic discipline that he had a great deal of control over. It fluctuated wildly, usually showing him nonsense or irrelevant information. Martin tried to focus this time as he placed his hand on the tree once more, and he was rewarded with at least small slivers of information that he could use.

In his mind's eyes, images of specific ponies flashed through every couple of seconds

"Almost all of these ones have horns on their heads. I saw the regular ones and the pegasi at the other town, and there are none of them here. Multiple races of these creatures, perhaps? This place seems to be a town where one race and one race alone lives."

His ESP flashed through images of dozens of multi-colored unicorns doing different tasks. Some were sitting down at tables eating, eerily similar to human families at dinner. A few were in their beds and others were walking around their houses. For just a split-second, Martin saw a more unique scene.

His mind brought him to what appeared to be the large townhouse in the very center of the community. Inside there appeared to be a meeting of some sort, with his mind flashing to an image of a podium in the very back of the lobby.

There was a unicorn standing on top of the stage, looking over the podium in order to address a... crowd? Martin wasn't getting any images of a pony crowd, but he just assumed that there was one.

The pony in question was clearly a female. In fact, most of the ponies he was shown were clearly feminine, as opposed to the other one which had a predominately masculine population.

The unicorn had a bright yellow coat that was nearly blinding to look at, with a shiny golden mane that was pulled into an elegant looking bun. For such a isolated place, this pony sure took care of herself well.

That was all Martin could glimpse of her appearance, but the meeting gave him quarter. The sun had almost completely set beyond the horizon, and if they were holding some kind of town meeting or something of the like...

As soon as he felt it was dark enough, Martin took the left fork in the road to enter the town. A cabin isolated from the rest of the town marked boundaries, and he stood there, waiting to make his move as he hid in the darkness and awnings.

This bunch of cabins was apparently out of the way from the main district of the town, located off one of the side dirt roads in the southwestern portion of town.

The sound of dripping caught Martin's attention. He stepped out from the shadow of the furthest cabin, making sure that none of the horses were around. He crouched low and avoided the windows, crawling into the dim and dank space of an alleyway between two houses.

There were a few empty boxes and trash bins, obviously waste from whoever lived in the house. Yet, at the very entrance to the alleyway, opposite to where Martin was now was a barrel. That was where the dripping noise had been coming from.

The barrel was open and situated directly above a drain gutter, where it was collecting excess rain water. Trying not to make a sound, Martin bounded past the trash bins and boxes and placed his hands on the old wooden surface of the barrel.

"Damnit. It's almost completely full..."

Concentrating, Martin revved up his telekinesis, feeling the wooden and watery structure of the barrel. The barrel shifted underneath the psychic force, and lifted into the air slightly.

A few seconds later, and it was released with a quiet thud, coming back to rest on its original position.

"No good. It's too much weight, and I don't even have a way to transport it back to the station. I should probably try to find a cart or something I can load all the stuff into." Martin thought, moving away from the barrel and back into the shadows before someone saw.

"There's a stream near the station anyway. If I can get some pots and fuel for a fire, they can purify that water." The only problem here meant that getting those supplies probably meant breaking into a pony's house.

Martin looked out the alleyway, seeing the main road of the village and the very edge of the large townhouse. Curiosity overtook him, maybe he should get a glimpse for himself on what was happening in that building?

Martin peered out the alleyway, squinting his eyes to see as well as he could in the dark. No one seemed to be lurking around; it was past nine o'clock. They were probably all either in their houses or at that meeting.

"Okay... I can probably go, but I need to play it safe..."

There was another alleyway his eyes were locked on directly across from him, on the east side of town near the townhouse.

Instead of making a break for it when the coast was clear, he looped back around from where it came, trying to remain within the shadows. Once he was out of the village proper, he entered the eastern side of town, which was in a similar layout to its counterpart.

"These ponies really don't like the night. I know it's a small town, but you'd think there would be some social drinkers or something out and about. Then again, maybe I'm overthinking that they're similar to humans."

After a few minutes of climbing through backyards and alleyways, Martin reached the right side of the townhouse. Six windows were built into the first floor of the building, light filtering through them as Martin crouched low and took a place by the one nearest to him. He remained deep in the shadows, making sure that he wasn't visible in the window.

If only his clairvoyance was under control; he could find out information without having to resort to this. Since it wasn't however, he carefully snuck a peek through the window.

True to his abilities, he saw the yellow unicorn from his mind's eye on the podium. There she stood up on the stage, and Martin noticed the gleam in her eyes as she orated. It was unnerving, and Martin didn't like it.

She was speaking loudly and passionately, to the point where Martin could hear her clearly in her language even if the windows were closed. Martin squinted his eyes to see a banner directly behind the podium.

It was a dual color of green and gold, a green symbol upon a golden background. The green symbol appeared to be that of a tree, with a long point resembled one of the unicorn's horn jutting out from the top of the branches. A line connected the horn to a large circle above it, and Martin speculated that the circle represented either the sun or the moon.

When the unicorn spoke, a flurry of voices answered her in the same words. Martin's eyes panned away from the orating unicorn to the rows of benches set up around the town hall.

Dozens of ponies filled the large townhouse, seated in rows upon rows. Like his mind had told him, they were mostly female and almost all unicorns, with maybe six or seven of the regular type mixed in. There were absolutely no pegasi.

They were all grinning as they heard the unicorn speak, stomping their hooves or smiling wider when they heard something that clearly agreed with especially.

They were all wearing clothes, too. The same type, on top of it all. Some kind of uniform perhaps, but the golden cloaks were fashioned in the same manner as their apparent logo, with the same tree, horn, and sun icon plastered upon the front.

"Okay, this is getting weird..." Martin muttered to himself, pausing, "Not like it wasn't weird before, but for some reason I feel uncomfortable in this town. Did I stumble across some kind of cult?"

"Vini nu Nosin!"

The unicorn female's powerful oratory voice seemed to pierce through the hall with that statement, as the entire hall erupted with cheers upon the apparent end of the speech.

Martin stole one last glance in the room to see every single pony stomping their hoof in unison in a quick beat as the yellow unicorn left the podium.

Martin's heart almost froze in his heart when he heard the double doors to the townhouse slam open, just a few minutes later.

Not bothering to risk anything, Martin carefully retreated back into the shadows to the very back of the townhouse, until his back hit a stone wall that seemed to separate the town from the rest of the forest.

He looked to the right, noticing that a metal fence had been built between the building and the wall, leading to a back crevice. He leapt over the small fence after only a bit of climbing, stepping over a forgotten garbage bag and a few empty boxes. He squeezed past a dumpster and crouched low behind it, hearing the shouting of the ponies as they exited the townhouse.

"They're all going home now. What was that? Half the town seemed to be there just to hear one horse talk."

Martin crouched behind the dumpster for a few extra minutes, just to be on the safe side. He couldn't be entirely sure whether the townhouse was completely vacated, but the back area of the building had windows and a staircase down which ended in a door. A basement, perhaps?

He would find out later. For now, he waited until the lights went out in the town hall. Peering inside through the small window in the back, Martin saw the view the unicorn pony had as she gave her speech. The banner was in the way, but he was able to see most of the main floor of the townhouse, dark and empty.

"Okay, time to do this..." he muttered to himself. Leaning up against the wooden wall, he placed his hands against the wall as if he were trying to push directly through it.

After a few minutes of concentration, his fingertips slipped directly through the solid matter, and Martin began to pull the rest of his non-corporeal body through with them.

Martin blinked, and a split second later he had phased directly through the wall, and was now standing upon the raised stage that the unicorn had taken.

Intangibility, the fourth of his seven PSI abilities. It would no doubt be very useful for these types of situations. Even if the town burglar proofed their homes, it was of no matter to him. If only he had invisibility on top of it.

A small flame lit on the very tip of Martin's finger. Pyrokinesis, the fifth of his abilities. He absentmindedly remember that Albert had figured out his true nature when he had been first discovering this particular ability.

The flame on his finger functioned in the same manner as a candle, and it dimly illuminated the otherwise pitch black room. The young man walked up to the wooden podium, placing his free hand on the smooth wooden finish. The banner behind him hung proudly, and he noticed two other standards of the same symbol hanging in the eves near the entrance of the door.

"Alright, I'm gonna scour this place from top to bottom. I'm gonna need a whole bunch of stuff; this building probably has some kind of storage room."

Looking around, Martin had two options. He saw two parallel staircases running to a second floor on either side of the stage. There also seemed to be a basement which he saw before.

The basement would come first, as Martin found a door underneath backstage, near to where he had entered. Following down a dirt path beneath the foundation of the building, he was brought to a clear storage area with boxes and other items stacked up to the ceiling.

"I could use this..." he muttered to himself, grabbing an unopened pack of what appeared to be black, multi-gallon garbage bags. He pulled one out and opened it, depositing the pack within the bag. Carefully, he began to rummage through boxes and bins, hoping to find something that could be useful.

Most of the stuff he found was home repair items. Using his telekinesis, he emptied a box of its contents to use as another container for the baubles he was going to pick up.

If only there were a backpack around here for him to use. Then again, why would equines create something that more properly fit a human body?

When Martin had finished, he phased through the basement wall. He had found a good chunk of supplies after checking both the basement and upstairs, and had made sure not to pack anything heavy.

In the basement, he had taken some undersized tools. Four hammers, three wrenches, and an axe were placed neatly into the box he had taken. Thankfully, he had found four bottles of lighter fluid which had been the thing he was searching for most. It wasn't much, but there wasn't going to be a running propane tank within the train station anytime soon. He had gotten enough suitable fuel to make fires.

He had also found a few books, and some really helpful maps which went in the box. They didn't know the language, but perhaps they could pick up on a few things by looking through the books, and the maps were readable on a rudimentary level.

He had hit the motherlode when he stumbled across the kitchen and pantry upstairs. The kitchen held mostly perishable foods, but he managed to snag a few knives, ceramic pots, and can openers.

Out of the pantry, Martin had grabbed no less than forty canned goods which he deposited within the garbage sack. By the time he was done, he had two garbage sacks and two boxes worth of supplies which he had stored within the back area of the townhouse.

Only problem now was getting out of town with the supplies in hand. If only there was a cart or something, but even then he doubted he could push one out of town without being seen or making too much noise.

Once he was out of the townhouse, Martin once again took notice of the cinder wall that the ponies had built around the eastern part of the town, separating the town from the forest in a boundary.

"Hmm..." he pondered, scratching his chin. With enough effort, he had lifted the two boxes and two garbage sacks over the fence and out into the wide back alley between the lodge and another house.

The cinder wall was about eight feet high, by the standards of these horses it was probably around eleven feet high. Clearly meant to keep out animals and intruders, but it shouldn't pose much of a challenge for Martin.

One at a time, he lifted each box and bag using his telekinesis. The last time he had checked, his limit for lifting items was around one-hundred and fifty pounds. It wasn't more of a mild strain on his capabilities, but he couldn't get all these supplies back to the train station just by using telekinesis.

The crates and bags rested snugly down behind the fence, invisible to anyone that didn't go looking for them. They would be safe there for now, and he wouldn't have to worry about them while he went in search of some kind of transportation.

"Need to camp out here for a while. Those ponies just exited their meeting not too long ago, but this seems to be a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere. Everyone should be settled in for the night eventually."

So, Martin waited for about another hour or so before he took to the streets again, making sure that he once again stayed out of sight beneath the awnings.

He searched the area around the townhouse for any kind of transportation he could, checking around the properties for any carts while steering clear of any windows.

"Bingo!" he whispered from a back alley a few properties away from the townhouse. After around ten minutes of searching, he found what he was looking for. Resting near the front porch of a house in the northeast part of town was a medium sized horse-drawn cart. It was similar in shape to ones that he had back on Earth, but a good deal smaller.

A thought jumped into his head as he imagined the ponies pulling these wheeled wagons themselves.

Martin crept up to the device, grinning wider when he pulled out a large dusty sheet from the interior of the cart. It was moth-eaten and ragged, but it was perfect if Martin wanted to think about stealth.

He pulled the wagon out of his place, testing for loose hinges on the antiquated wheels. It was heavier than he thought, but luckily it didn't make any creaking noises as he moved it along the street.

Before heading out of the alleyway, he hopped into the cart and covered the top with the white sheet, laying down in the bed of the cart as he began to work his telekinesis.

"Okay, this is the riskiest part of the entire procedure. It should take about a minute to reach the village gates, and in the meantime all I gotta do is hope that no one hears the cart or comes out of their house otherwise."

Even still, the idea of a haunted wagon was preferable to being found out. Either way, it would probably be the talk of the town the next day, but the former wouldn't have ponies out there looking for him and his former group.

Slowly and steadily, he used telekinesis to move the cart along main street. The owners of the cart would no doubt notice their cart was missing, and careful as he was, someone was bound to notice the missing supplies sooner or later. Returning trips to the town would be much tougher.

He was finally allowed to breathe easier when the village was in his view at the bottom of the hill. Throwing the moldy sheet off himself, he adjusted the cart upon the path.

None of the horses had come out of their homes. He couldn't be sure if anyone saw the cart out their windows, but he could live with. After a few trips of fetching the stolen supplies, they were loaded into the cart as Martin began the journey back to the train station.

---

The cool morning air calmed Francis Budenburr down. It would get much hotter later in the day, but Francis guessed that it was around nine in the morning right now, cool enough to do some morning hunting.

While the rest of the group slept, Francis and a few others had gotten up at the crack of dawn. Leaving through the back door of the station, they prepared to go hunt for food.

After Martin's banishment yesterday afternoon, Francis had decided to craft crude atlatls from the stone and wood found in the forest. He was clutching his handmade spear thrower now, a few darts strapped onto his back.

Some rustling in the leaves drew Francis' attention elsewhere, and the thought of prey entered his mind. Perhaps a big buck would come riding out of the bushes.

Slowly but surely, the overweight man crept around a few trees, trying to avoid spooking the inevitable prey. Once passing the tree, he leaned into the bushes where beyond the animal was making noises.

"If we can get a big buck, that's a lot of food to hold us over..."

Peering through the bushes, Francis realized that was he was looking at was not a buck. It was one of those pony things that they had seen in the town and in the old pictures.

The pony jumped at the sound of his rustled, and looked his way. Cursing, Francis ducked down back into the bushes, trying to think of a plan. It wouldn't do good to be discovered out here when Albert had received such a lukewarm reception.

This was in particularly was a deep blue unicorn with a curly black mane who was wandering around the forest with a dopey look on his face. Francis almost smacked himself when he realized that the unicorn was levitating a notebook and pen using some indeterminate force.

"What the hell? Telekinesis like Martin's? Are these things psychic to boot? No... not psychic. It's different than Martin. There's a weird blue aura surrounding both the horse's horn and that notebook its carrying. This isn't a psychic power or anything..."

Francis backpedaled away from the business, realizing that the unicorn was probably from the town that had given Albert such a warm welcome. Being so close to the train station, he didn't want to give away their hideout.

Snap!

"Of course there would be a twig there! Why wouldn't there be?" an annoyed Francis thought to himself, seeing the pony's ears swivel in his direction.

"Don't you dare! Don't you fucking dare!" he thought as the blue pony adopted a look of curiosity. The pony had definitely heard him move, and was on his way to check in the direction he had heard the noise.

"Sula?" he heard the pony say. Its horns began to glow in that weird color again, and Francis noted with dread that he was pointing the damn thing directly at the bushes he was hiding behind.

Francis nearly gasped when the bushes seemed to be enveloped in the same blue glow, before being pulled apart as if by hands. The pony had adopted a look of concentration while doing this, but that changed to a look of shock from Francis in all his glory was revealed to the unprepared unicorn.

"Shit!" he cursed. The blue unicorn stood frozen in place, but at least it wasn't running back to its shithole town screaming bloody murder. Maybe this situation could be salvaged, as long as no one else came around and he didn't lead this one back to the hideout.

"Wait, what's it doing now?"

Francis watched as those ever expressive eyes changed from a shocked and fearful look to a pensive look. The pony's mood seemed to change when he realized that Francis was just standing there, and the pony got out that notebook of his and began jotting something down while jibber-jabbering in his own language.

The pony had finished writing down in his little book, but was still talking. Apparently he had stopped writing in his little book, and was now clearly speaking at Francis.

He watched bemused as the cobalt blue pony took out several kinds of nuts from one of his saddlebags, and placed them in a neat pile upon the ground while speaking very slowly to him in that language.

The pony continued to watch, waiting for Francis to make a move. Was this pony really going to treat him like an animal? He was clearly laying out those nuts in order to appease him with food.

"Nice try, kid. But I ain't no animal."

He didn't know why he had tried speaking to the pony; he already knew that they didn't even speak the same language. Yet, the pony only cocked his head in confusion before squealing in glee as he wrote down more in his notebook.

He didn't even seem to realize that Francis had spoken. Even if he didn't understand the words, shouldn't he at least have understood that he was talking with advanced linguistic capabilities?

Frustrated, Francis glared at the pony and pointed a finger at the unicorn, before pointing the same finger back at himself. Again, no response that told him the pony knew he was more intelligent than an animal.

No matter what he pantomimed, he couldn't get through to the pony. He tried to charade out for the pony to go home, to get through that he wasn't an animal, or that he didn't want any trouble. Nothing got through.

If he had to guess, Francis figured that the pony was registering all of what he was doing as animal behavior.

"Something ain't right. We can recognize these horse things as intelligent, but for some reason, they can't do the freakin' same. That ain't normal, no way no how."

Francis took a step forward toward the pony. This seemed to please the curious pony at first, but just now he seemed to realize the type of thing Francis was holding.

Couple that with Francis imposing over the small horse, and maybe he was starting to have second thoughts. The human stood over the pony, and that was all he needed to panic.

The notebook flew from the pony's telekinetic grasp as he screamed something in his language and began in a full gallop in the other direction.

Francis blinked. That was really not what he had wanted to happen. He wasn't particularly trying to make any threatening gestures or noises. He thought getting in closer could help them establish better contact.

They were dealing with creatures they had never seen before in their lives, however. Behavioral patterns of these equines weren't exactly common knowledge. He really should've dropped the weapon before he stepped forward.

The pony running away like that was really a poor scenario for Francis and the group. There was the disastrous meeting Albert had with them yesterday, and now this.

If he could've at least got that pony to understand him in any way, shape, or form, it would've been better. Hell, if he just backpedaled and walked away, it would've been better.

This had been a case of sheer bad luck. Francis had run into a pony while he was out hunting, and now that pony thought he was nothing more than a strange and aggressive animal. That pony was now likely to tell everyone back in his town.

"Damnit!" Francis snarled, retreating away with hunting game as the last thing on his mind. Albert's appearance in the village probably set the village on edge; this one would probably have them actively sending out search parties.

Francis made his way back to the train station, ready to tell the rest of the group about the encounter.

Comments

[Kyuubi325]

How can the ponys not recognize inteligence? Are they just sheltered or are they really that clueless?

[Tofty]

6167819 The way the humans also pick up on this makes me think this isn't just stupidity on their part, but you never know, they really could just be really stupid ponies, haha. The fact that Francis had fashioned some kind of spear indicates a basic intelligence at the very least but it clearly wasn't recognised.

Anyway I'm surprised this story hasn't had more attention, not a lot has gone on yet in the grand scheme of things but it's pretty well written and a nice change of pace from most HiE stories. Look forward to seeing what goes on next.