Chapter 51
It took several moments for Sumac’s vision to clear, but when it did, Sumac found himself looking at a giant purple pumpkin that was the size of a house. On top of everything else that had just taken place, it was a bit too much to take in. He just sat there, clutching his lantern, staring at the enormous purple pumpkin with wide, almost almost unblinking eyes. Pebble was still clinging to his neck and Boomer was right where she belonged.
“I’m home,” Pebble said in a low voice, and her words did not register with Sumac.
Aside from the pumpkin, there were other giant vegetables, some big rocks, many little rocks, and the dirt that Sumac found himself sitting in was fine, coarse, and gritty. Not far away, there was a good sized patch of poison joke. Sumac’s blank stare fell upon the blue flowers and the little colt said nothing as he just sat there in the dirt.
“I’m home and we’re safe,” Pebble said to Sumac.
Sumac didn’t feel safe. No, he had just fallen several miles out of the sky and his mother was nowhere to be seen. In fact, there was nopony. He and Pebble were alone. He tried to remember all of the things he was supposed to do in times of trouble, but he had trouble recalling Trixie’s list of instructions.
“Aunt Mub-Mub!”
For a second, Sumac thought that Pebble was going to let go of him, but she didn’t. She did the opposite. She doubled down upon her grip and squeezed him so hard that for a blink of an eye, he saw two ponies approaching. The pony, she looked worried, fearful, and she hurried over.
“Pebble… Pebble… oh… oh my… things must be bad for you to be sent here… oh no.”
Now, more confused than terrified, Sumac asked, “Where am I and who are you?”
The mare didn’t stop. She came right up, plopped down in the strange dirt, and then Sumac found himself swept right up with Pebble in a squeeze. Boomer sneezed from the strange dust and then let out a worried sounding honk. Sumac felt very much like letting out his own honk, as Boomer seemed to have some idea of how to cope with this situation.
“My name,” the mare began, “is Marble, and I am Pebble’s Aunt Mub-Mub. This is the Pie Family Rock Farm and Research Facility.” The mare spoke in a soft, calm voice that was quite soothing and her overall demeanour was just what two terrified foals needed.
“We’ll need to get you a cup of tea,” she continued, “so that the poison joke doesn’t bother you. It is what allows stuff to grow here.”
“And the big purple pumpkin?” Sumac asked.
“Oh, we’ve imported ash from Mount Maud. It’s very magical. We grow food here, alchemical ingredients, and Limestone has been trying some pottery made from the stuff when she’s got a bit of free time.” As Marble spoke, Pebble was rubbing her face against her aunt’s foreleg.
“Are we safe?” Sumac craned his head around to look at Marble.
“Oh, this is the safest place in Equestria,” Marble replied without hesitation. “You’ll find that your magic doesn’t work here. Magic in general doesn’t work here and we like it that way. As for keeping safe, the plants protect us. They do Tarnish’s bidding. We have needler cacti, stranglesnatch, and quite a number of carnivorous plants that can be a little cantankerous. But don’t worry, you’ll be safe.” Marble drew in a deep breath, nosed Pebble, and then asked, “So, Pebble, are you going to introduce me?”
“Oh. Oops.” Pebble was starting to sound a bit more like her usual self again. “This is Sumac Apple. He’s my best friend.”
“Hello, Sumac Apple, I’m really very happy to meet you.”
“Hi.”
“And that’s Boomer.”
“Oh, she’s adorable. I was wondering about her.”
The soft sound of Marble’s affectionate and warm voice was doing a number on Sumac. His heart was no longer thrashing against his ribs. It was a little easier to breathe. He was thirsty, his mouth was dry, and he felt a headache coming on. But, he was safe and Marble’s voice was lulling him into a calm. His brain was still garbled though and he wanted his mother. He wanted to cry and scream about it, there was a tantrum in there somewhere, but he didn’t have the energy left to make it happen.
“Sumac had a magic surge and needs help,” Pebble said in a very matter-of-fact voice. “He also has a potty mouth.”
“Oh… oh, oh dear, we can’t have that. Don’t let Cloudy catch you swearing.” Marble gave Pebble and Sumac one last squeeze, then let them go. “Come on, both of you, let’s go to the house. Follow me.”
Much to Sumac’s surprise, Pebble took his lantern from him. She grabbed the brass ring at the top in her teeth, stepped away, and stood there, waiting, holding the lantern. He got to his hooves, almost lost his balance, and was kept from falling over by Marble, who braced his side with her foreleg. A tear rolled down his cheek and he wished that he was back in Ponyville.
The kitchen was warm and sweet smelling. Sumac sat in a chair and tried to hold still while a mare named Cloudy Quartz fawned over him. She was gentle, but also worried, and she checked his eyes, looked him over for injuries, and something about everything she did made Sumac feel better, even if it annoyed him somewhat.
“Where is Iggy?” Pebble asked.
“Igneous is off with Sonneur. They’ll be back.” Cloudy pulled away from Sumac and began checking over Pebble again. As she looked over Pebble, she said to Sumac, “Drink, colt, you’re dehydrated. Your brains are no doubt scrambled.”
“My telekinesis doesn’t work,” Sumac whined.
Cloudy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Use your hooves like the rest of us, or, if your hooves are too shaky, just slurp up the tea out of your cup. I don’t mind. I understand.”
Feeling a bit bothered by his total lack of magic, Sumac did as he was told, bowed his head down, and began lapping up the tea out of his cup. It had been sweetened with honey and there was a lot of milk, leaving it luke-warm. The tea, much to his surprise, was quite good, and not at all what he expected poison joke tea to be. Relaxing a little, he slurped down more tea while Boomer watched everything that was going on.
“We almost died.” Pebble looked up into her grandmother’s eyes. “We were several miles up in the sky when we were attacked and then we fell back down. It was a long way to fall. We had time to talk about it and say stuff. Rainbow Dash saved us.” When Pebble was done speaking, she grabbed up a block of rock hard fudge and then crammed it into her mouth, whole.
Cloudy’s legs trembled for a moment, and then, looking a little sweaty, Cloudy stumbled into a chair and sat down. The old mare looked at Marble, let out a soft whinny, and then shook her head. Without warning, Cloudy leaned over and kissed Pebble, then sat in her chair and tried to compose herself, her eyes watering. She placed a hoof over her mouth, perhaps to hide her expression from the foals at the table, and then just sat there, staring at her granddaughter.
“Such a cute little lizard,” Marble said.
Turning about, standing on the table, Boomer inflated as much as she could and then let out a smoky snort as she stared at Marble. Her tail lashed from side to side and she sucked in even more air, trying to be a big intimidating dragon.
“Marble, I think you’ve offended the fire breathing chuckwalla,” Cloudy remarked.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to.” Cringing, Marble shook her head, picked up some grapes from the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table, near the lantern, and pushed them towards Boomer as a peace offering. Marble smiled, a soft smile if ever there was one, and then watched as Boomer gobbled down a grape.
In the middle of the kitchen table, between a bowl of fruit and a platter of pie, sat the lantern, and as Sumac lapped up his tea, he glanced at it. It had caused no small amount of trouble. The young colt supposed it was worth it, but he was having some trouble taking everything in. Everything in his life was a mess right now, and all because of the lantern.
No, not just his life, but everypony’s. All of Ponyville had suffered. Sumac’s addled brain had trouble dealing with the realisation that lingered upon the edge of his thoughts. This was beyond him. He had only a small part in this, as he was the… he was, well, he was the lantern bearer, for the lack of a better term.
“Sumac?” Pebble asked.
Distracted, Sumac did not respond.
“Sumac Apple, are we still special someponies?” Pebble’s voice was timid sounding, worried and shy. She sounded a lot like her Aunt Mub-Mub in moments like these.
Jerked from his thoughts, Sumac looked over at Pebble, shocked and surprised. “Why would you even ask?”
“Well, because we were falling, and we both thought we were going to die, and I thought maybe we were just trying to comfort one another and—”
“Nothing has changed.” Sumac slumped over and he was certain that he saw something almost like a smile on Cloudy’s muzzle. His little brows furrowed and he avoided looking at Cloudy. Marble too, as she was blushing and making no effort to hide her smile.
Across the table, Pebble let out a soft sigh of relief. Her face had turned a shade of coffee brown as she ate another block of rock hard fudge and she too, avoided looking at her grandmother and her aunt. She sat there, chewing, turning browner and browner, like a cake, or in this case, a pie, left in the oven.
Feeling a bit better, if a bit awkward, Sumac pulled his plate of pie closer to him. He didn’t know what sort of pie it was, and he didn’t care. It was purple, purple pie. It had some sort of purple puree. He thought of the purple pumpkin outside and eyeballed his pie. He couldn’t use a fork, there was no fork for him on the table so it didn’t matter, so he just nipped off a bite.
It was pretty good. And Sumac would probably enjoy it even more if he wasn’t in such a miserable state. His body needed food though, it screamed for food, and he attacked his pie with ravenous need. As he ate, Cloudy cut off another slice of pie and slipped it onto his plate. She tucked the pie knife back into the pie and then sat there looking at Sumac with a raised eyebrow.
“Special someponies, huh—”
“Mama, don’t tease,” Marble said in as firm of a voice that the shy pony could muster towards her own mother. Marble leaned over and gave her mother a hopeful look with sad, soulful eyes. The edge of Marble’s eye twitched just a little, and the corners of her mouth tugged downwards.
“I wasn’t going to tease them,” Cloudy said as she turned away from Marble. “I just… I just don’t know where the time went, that’s all. First, Maud brought Tarnish home with her, and then… then you and Sonneur eloped, and don’t you think for even a moment that I’ve forgotten about that, my little filly—”
“We didn’t want to cause a commotion or a fuss.” Marble retreated away from her mother.
Shaking her head, Cloudy sighed. “Pebble was born… everything seemed perfect. Pebble went off to school… I wasn’t happy about that, but I knew it was best for Pebble. And now… now…” Cloudy’s words trailed off and she took a moment to straighten out her glasses by tugging on the little ornate chain that hung from them. “Pebble comes home from school with a special somepony and something has tried to kill her.”
“It’s my fault.” Sumac lifted up his head from his pie, licked his lips, and looked at Cloudy. “This is all my fault.”
“How is this your fault?” both Pebble and Cloudy asked together, at the same time.
“I made an arch-nemesis.” Sumac squirmed in his chair and found that he could no longer look at the others, so he stared down at his purple pie and licked his purple lips. “I ran my mouth and it got me into trouble, just like Applejack said it would. I made Catrina angry. I made her hate me. Pinkie Pie even threw me a party to celebrate the fact that I had a nemesis. Pinkie Pie said it, Catrina hates me more than anything. So this is my fault. Pebble and I almost died and Ponyville was attacked and it is all my fault.”
There was a prolonged moment of silence at the table and Cloudy just sat there staring at Sumac. At least a dozen different expressions in the span of just a few seconds caused her face to contort in odd ways. At the end of it all, Cloudy could say nothing. Reaching out her forelegs, she snatched Sumac out of his chair and crushed the little colt to her barrel.
In the embrace of a kind stranger, Sumac found comfort. Much to his dismay, he found himself tearing up again, and then, he was crying. He felt his glasses being taken off of his face and he heard them set down upon the table with the soft sound of metal on wood.
“Tarnish made a nemesis too.” Marble’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “It is why our rock farm is now the way it is. Tarnish made a powerful enemy, an enemy that swore that if he couldn’t get Tarnish, then he would get Tarnish’s foals, and his foals’ foals, and he swore that Tarnish’s offspring would never know peace.”
“Yup.” Pebble slumped over the table and rested her chin upon the edge. Her lips were stained with fudge and there was a tiny sliver of peanut on her snoot.
“Who?” Sumac asked as he allowed himself to be cradled by Cloudy. He was being babied, but he didn’t mind. Even though he would never admit to it, he needed this.
“Never mind who.” Cloudy gave Sumac a squeeze. “You’ve suffered enough. Just know that you are safe right now and that is all that matters. Now, after I’ve held you for a bit, you’re going to finish your pie, have a little more to drink, and then I think that both you and Pebble need a nap. And I don’t want no lip, either.”
Feeling warm, safe, and secure, Sumac wasn’t in the mood to give no lip. A nap sounded pleasant, but he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He was too worried about Trixie and Lemon Hearts. Cloudy was stroking the back of his neck, smoothing out his unruly mane, and it made him feel better.
Left undefended, Sumac’s half eaten pie was fair game. Boomer made her move to investigate the peculiar purple pie. The tiny fire breathing chuckwalla edged closer and closer, her claws at the ready to subdue her purple prey.
“Will you take a nap with me?” Pebble asked Marble. “I need my Aunt Mub-Mub.”
“Of course, dear.” Marble smiled the sort of smile that makes everything right in the world. “Once Sumac is done eating, I’ll get both of you cleaned up and then we’ll all take a nice nap together. Pebble, your face looks sticky.”
Shrugging, Pebble replied, “Don’t care.” The little filly let out a sigh and then deflated. “I wish my mama and my daddy were here…”
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7609437
Catrina is the worst sort of villain. She allows the characters and the readers to get lulled into a false sense of security before she strikes. She's evil like that.
I assume that Tarnished's nemesis will appear in Venemum iocus. Probably near the end and this is probably connected to the act of destruction his will perform.
Somehow I knew the Pie family rock farm would be the safest place on the planet.
I wonder, if Tarnish is able to fully harness his power, maybe he's be able to piss off Catrina so much that the chokes on her on hairball.
For some reason, that seems like a very Universe-appropriate way to take her out.
7609666
Tarnish?
Called it~! Though I figured it was more of the area being able to cloak tracking due to all the unstable magic. Then again the unstable magic does well to hamper most foes as is, eh?
I hope everyone is doing alright back in Ponyville.
Will Cheese Sandwich be making an appearance in this story?
I wonder if the Eloping with Sonneur has anything to do with the Arch-Nemesis Marble has? Maybe some other mare who had her eye on him and is used to getting her way but he wasn't interested and when he and Marble Eloped that pissed her off the a degree that she swore revenge.
7609738
We shall have to wait and see.
7609744 Very well. I had also expected that Sumac and Pebble would be transported to the Crystal Empire. This chapter proved me wrong though.
7609743
Where does it say that Marble has a nemesis?
7609749
Thought Pinkie said she did in the chapter she found out Sumac had one....
*Goes back to read*
...Oh, She mentioned everyone BUT Marble. My bad
7609763
Marble is too shy and too sweet to make a nemesis. Why, the very idea of offending somepony almost makes her faint.
7609598 Didn't he already do the act of destruction, with the giant tornado thing?
7609793
Nope. Not even close.
7609796 If that doesn't count then it's no wonder the druids are extinct. They really need to lighten up on their entrance requirements.
7609801
Spoiler!
When Tarnish reestablishes the new order, he makes some much needed changes.
That mood whiplash... where the hell did that come from.
7609804
The sudden removal of danger and being placed in a safe environment?
7609668
Argh! Too many characters to keep track of.
7609811 I was actually talking about the sudden appearance of "threat of kids being killed by mad sorceress" and destruction of their home.
7609840
Oh. That. Pebble grew up with that. She's fine with it, as are the others. The end of VI will cover that particular subject, when it happens.
Well... That is to say, wow.
cnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2015/08/17/afa6f6a4-636c-42f2-82e3-6491bb83c49c/thumbnail/670x503/ba8b98978b58e8413251445c489a725d/calmowl.jpg
I think we all need a breather now.
But something tells me, this is probably going to be the reality of the situation.
cdn.meme.am/instances/66099824.jpg
Marble and Sonneur eloped?!?!
Ohhhh, I bet Cloudy was *pissed* Not to mention how disappointed Pinkie was that she didn't get to organize the wedding reception. (But knowing her, she probably threw a bash all the same later.)
7609389
Kudz. Kudz. I hope there's no mirrors where he's going because if he falls into the Chase-verse and becomes BonBon's apprentice I'm sure he could use swears like Words of Power and inflict his terrible wrath upon reality's fabrics itself.
7610174
This should happen.
I hope Trixie and lemon heart are okay. :(
Considering what Tarnished can do and does without trying his making enemies is a given and probably even without trying. Look at how he affected Twilight in "The Weed" or what we've heard he did to Discord.
7609766
Won't she feel left out, though, not having her own nemesis? ...Maybe she can rent one.
Hmm, i wonder how it will go from here? And Hey! Where is that wedding we where promised?!?! I doubt it will be on the farm.
7610883
Wedding SOON.
7610919
Fixed that for you.
sitting?
7611226 No. Setting. Actually, I'm not so sure. Both makes sense.
Ahh, so the Weedverse twist on the rock farm. Interesting.
Understandable reaction just in general.
It's as much mental as physical, really. Be the dragon, Boomer, be the dragon.
Ooo.