2040: Learning To Fly

by KrisSnow

Heart Transplant

Diver, Nimbus, Kingsfoil and a sleepy Key sat around a coffeeshop table with a map scroll. Diver grumbled about losing his journal; it'd been part of the stuff wrecked or stolen by the Sunward Ho gang. "Based on that description of the mountain, here's what we'll need from the box." He tapped some notes.

-Retinari's Net: Drop it to trap enemies.
-Spellbook of the Black Lotus: Gives a unicorn unlimited mana for 30 sec, once/day.
-Wingblades of the Red Spot: Wind/lightning damage.
-Thrice-High Ribbon: Triple jump.
-Stonecutter's Hatchet: Cuts through terrain.

"Are we set?" he asked.

Key was idle again. He'd been grumpy about being woken up. Back on Earth he was fixing breakfast and occasionally checking on his computer. When the human got back his equine body yawned. "Let's go. I'll walk on autopilot and eat."

They all drank their coffee of +10% energy, stuffed their cheap replacement saddlebags with a carefully chosen selection of food and whatever potions were available on short notice in the recently burned town, and walked outside. Diver called out to the sky, "Hey, world, take note! We hereby boast that we're going to set a record for speed on Mount Improbable!"

His HUD announced: Quest progress is now being tracked.

"Should we start running?" said Kingsfoil, shouldering his share of the magic gear.

Noctis was following them for now. "Nah. We're not at the actual entrance yet. Let's get this over quickly though."

An angry fire spirit summoned by the recent battle flew at them with a roar like sirens. Key fended it off with his telekinesis. Diver used the chance to practice with the red-copper razors he flicked out from the front edges of his wings, like switchblades. He hopped into the air, flew past the fire spirit, and brushed next to it. A highly localized gale of shredding wind pierced the monster and tore it in half with a single blow. Diver landed in a crouch, feeling cool. "I like these. Do they come in other elements?"

Noctis said, "Yeah, but most aren't that powerful."

Three bears jumped them on the northern outskirts of town. Nimbus pinned two with the unbreakable net, and the adventurers beat the tar out of them all. Then there was the canoe-riding sequence, where they managed to hit a rock at just the right angle to fling them over much of the river's course.

Soon they reached the foot of a mountain with a winding trail and many ledges. An ornamental gate and a save crystal marked the official entrance. Diver looked back at his party.

Noctis waved goodbye. "Good luck!"

Diver hugged her. "See you." To the others he said, "Activate crystal!"

They all pinged it to mark their progress.

"Deploy snack!"

They scarfed down mugs of coffee, donuts for another 10% energy boost, pineapple muffins (wound resistance, in honor of the spiky fruit) and forbidden bacon sandwiches (attack power, from the implied un-equine aggression). Diver felt stuffed but powerful.

"Forward march!"

Music began, and a tiny clock was now visible in the corner of Diver's vision whenever he focused on it. The first stage of the mountain was just a steep trail until a rock golem blocked the way. It stopped blocking the way when Diver chopped it up with two passes of his wingblades. There were endless rolling boulders, but Kingsfoil hacked a ledge out of the solid rock to make the rocks fall harmlessly out of their way. Then he dug a trail upward around a complicated lock.

Diver tapped his hoof; this part was slow going. "I guess it's much faster than solving the puzzle."

Kingsfoil talked around the hatchet in his mouth. "Yeah. The lock is meant for the unicorns, mostly. Takes telekinesis."

"Want me to take a turn with that hatchet?"

"Nah. I can't get tired." Key kept casting a minor spell on him to restore his stamina, and he couldn't really feel anything.

In a few minutes they'd cut through the lock and hurried up the mountain trail ahead. There was a cliff of ledges. Diver studied it, conferred with the others, then tied that triple-jump ribbon around his tail. The piece of cloth was the first reminder he'd had in a while that his tail existed, and it was startling to feel it at the base of his spine after so long taking it for granted. With that on, he jumped, jumped twice more in midair, then started flying. At maximum altitude he landed on a ledge, then anchored a rope to it and tied the ribbon on the end so the others could use it. The others bounced and climbed up in fewer stages than should've been possible, even using the hatchet to make a few extra hoof-holds.

At the top there were pillars with cracks that could only be seen from above. Diver figured that one out right away and they raced through the puzzle to create a new path. A mountain-goat minotaur blocked their way and they bull-rushed him right off the cliff and hurried on.

Finally they came to a winding trail with a suspiciously safe ledge, a checkpoint crystal, and a path to a deep round crater. "Ready?" said Diver.

The others caught up. Key said, "Timer's running out on the food bonuses."

They stuffed themselves with the last of their snacks, tied the triple-jump ribbon onto Kingsfoil, prepped the spell tome for Key, and charged into the crater.

A dragon slowly descended from the heavens, its scales crackling with lightning. Diver tapped one hoof; Noctis had briefed him. As soon as it roared dramatically and battle music began, everyone sprang into action.

Diver ran around the crater arena to distract it, slashing here and there with his blades. Key hacked a few bits out of a wall to create a tiny stepping-stone. Kingsfoil hopped onto it, snagged the hatchet, triple-jumped to get higher, and carved a similar hoof-hold. He nimbly hopped down to the floor, where Diver dodged the dragon's lightning breath and tossed the net to the deer. Kingsfoil took off again, much higher than a non-pegasus should be able to get. He waited for the right moment and pitched the net, which crashed down hard on the mighty boss dragon. The beast now seemed magnetized to the floor but it was struggling to get up.

"Key, go!" said Diver.

Diver activated the spellbook, giving him unlimited mana. He began blasting the monster with endless streams of his best spell so far, a little energy blast from his horn with the force of a punch. With each hit the dragon took little damage, but was stunned for a fraction of a second.

That was Diver's cue. He jumped and flew along a staircase of clouds, rising above the crater's rim. From here he sensed massive electric potential, power in the air. He raised his forehooves, jumped and shouted to call down the lightning. A huge bolt crashed down through him but washed through with little damage, on its way to the boss. Diver landed feeling singed and wobbly. The dragon roared, crackling with electricity, and crumbled into glowing dust.

A crystal heart containing an icon of wings descended from the heavens. An angelic choir sang a single "Ah!" Diver decided the prize was taking too long to reach the floor, and jumped up to snag it in midair.

You have earned the Heart of the Pegasus! said a message that hung in the air, apparently visible to all. The letters appeared slowly as though being typed. If you accept this item, you will receive the full powers of a pegasus!

WARNING, it went on. This item will alter your mind! Consequences include --

"What are you waiting for?" said Key. "We might still be on a timer."

Diver landed, clutching the crystal in his forehooves. "I doubt it."

Consequences include a new air-related sense, an intuitive interface adjustment, motor control/sensation adapted to this body, possible mild claustrophobia, and reduction of any acrophobia. Mental changes may not be fully reversible. Rejection will still grant you partial rewards for this quest. Please say 'Accept', 'Question', or 'Reject'.

Diver faltered. He'd already decided to commit to this new species. In fact, he already was a new sort of creature by being an uploader. He'd already gone through mental changes by virtue of getting his brain shredded on an operating table. It was just that last time, the procedure was meant to copy him exactly, not to make him different.

He took a deep breath. This is about more than being a silly fantasy creature. I'm jumping into things, but I'm doing that with open eyes. These changes seem good, and there seems to be a way to undo some of them if they go wrong. Let's try this. "Accept," he said.

The world went mad. The air was squishy, green, and the ground felt made of splinters and the scent of booze. Key said something and the words tasted tangy. Diver twitched. "I don't know how to process this!"

Kingsfoil looked up. "Something else is coming."

Colorless green ideas slept furiously in Diver's vision. He blinked and shook his head, tripped, crashed face-first, and threw his hooves over a plaid cloud to gag. The cloud was... voltless? There were sparks inside it that mixed like red and blue, sweet and sour; he didn't have words for them. The air overhead felt thin like a tunnel.

"Look out!" said Key, and tried to shove him out of the way.

It didn't work. The falling treasure chest was guided by a localized low-pressure zone so it crashed straight along that. Of course. Diver saw that just in time to get beaned by it. He plowed face-first into a mass of cloud --

Major wound. Humid. Flight power charging. High up.

Diver groaned and turned over onto his back. He blinked. The sparks were everywhere. He twitched his wings and felt the energy separate a little, drawing from his own mana pool to create voltage. There were no numbers and yammering notes in his vision now. He hurt, he was atop a mountain in still air, and his still-glitching mind knew how to stir wind and lightning by magic.

"You all right, there?" said Kingsfoil. "Sorry I didn't react faster."

Diver climbed to his feet and looked around. "I think so. You said the power-up was 'a little confusing'. Yeah. A bit. Got any healing power left?"

The deer leaned down and touched him, creating a rune-field that took him a minute to solve.

Diver's head wound faded and he didn't need any notation to tell him so. "Thank you both. What's in the box?"

Key solved a puzzle-lock and pried it open. "Cheese?"

There were three one-pound wedges of Swiss cheese in there, each labeled with a ribbon bearing an elegant "M". There were also three cloth badges with a stopwatch icon and a trophy, and three more with a cheese-bearing dragon.

Key said, "I think this is a booby-prize recognition of a successful speed-run record, and an incredibly cheesy victory."

"Fair enough," said the deer. "Are we done here?"

The unicorn nodded. "I need to log out and get to bed. Where are you, Foil?"

"Catalonia."

"Oh, wow. Are you close to the fighting?"

"The war's farther south. They mostly just have Grenada again."

The two non-uploaders chattered while Diver tried to make sense of his vision, his more intuitive link to the game world's interface, and the feel of air around his feathers. Things were happening in the real world -- the Outer Realm, or as one native had put it, the Dark World where death had teeth. That world needed adventurers too.

I promised Noctis not to run off, thought Diver, and folded his wings along his sides. To the others he said, "Thanks again. Let's divide the loot and get back to town, or at least somewhere that you... your bodies can rest without being harassed."

#

He left them "sleeping" in a safe-looking hollow tree that had its own save point. Their bodies faded out without dropping their gear. Diver nodded to himself, tapped the crystal, and tried out flying on his own.

He whooped. No artificial flight ceiling, and even with his overloaded saddlebags and wing-blades he could fly twice as long as before. He pushed as high as he could and felt the warmth of the rising sun along his hide. He didn't simply run out of flight power; he felt the subtle strain of his wing muscles and knew to transition to gliding. Wind rushed along him as he played with different ways to hold his hooves, dangling or horizontal. Something tickled behind him and he glanced back to find he had a tuft of tail-feathers along his hairy tail. The tilt of his head made him yaw right but he wiggled his tail to compensate like an airplane, changing his move into a gentle roll. He was on his back in the sky, gliding above a forest where the sun was only starting to show him the brightening world.

Diver rolled level again and slipped down to a mostly dignified landing. He bounced up again and again on his way south to practice the moments of takeoff and landing, which seemed to be the hardest parts.

When he made it back (after overpowering a giant wolf with his unfairly good weaponry), he spotted Meteor the pegasus first. He was working with some other equines to rebuild a guard tower. "Hey, Meteor, I got it. Any news?"

A unicorn cast some sort of scanning spell. "Whoa, where'd you get those wingblades?"

"They're loaners from the queen."

Several ponies called out "All hail Harvest Moon!"

"Backgrounders," muttered Meteor. "That was a cheap victory, if you were using her gear."

Diver's wings drooped. "But I told you, and you giggled at the speed-run idea. Or... Golden Scale did, anyway."

"From my perspective it's disrespectful. This isn't one of your theme parks."

Diver left him, abandoning the idea of having him go inform the rest of Noctis of his cheesy victory. Instead he found Nimbus' ruined arena and the tent that the batty innkeeper had pitched there, with a storm-cloud logo on its canvas.

He peeked into the tent. Nimbus was inside, surrounded by a pale glow as she cupped something between her wings and forehooves. Electric current flowed between them and swirled around a sphere of cloudstuff. Nimbus said, "Hang on," and took another minute to complete her spell. The orb slowly shifted into a fluffy hexagonal tile made of slate-grey vapor. She set it down next to three others, then stretched. "Powered up yet?"

"Yup! I've got --" Diver extended one wing, which made the wingblade flick out like a switchblade and slash half the tent. The whole thing collapsed on them. Buried under canvas, Diver finished, "Yes. Yes I did."

Nimbus grumbled and threw the tent off of them. "You're flagged. Take those things off before I lose my head."

Diver carefully leaned his muzzle over one wing, then the other, to undo the buckles with his teeth and one hoof. They clattered to the dirt. "Sorry. Anyway, it went well. Here's the rest of the equipment we borrowed, plus... cheese?"

Nimbus took the blades, the spellbook and the other things borrowed from the queen's stash. "That's maximum cheese. Seen that before; don't ask. Fills your mana at the cost of you having to scarf down an entire pound of cheese in mid-battle. As for those patches, it looks like you got an achievement from our sarcastic AI overlord."

"Do they do anything?"

"No. Now that you're stronger, you're worth bringing to the war conference. The queen's scheduled one to figure out how to respond to this uprising in the east."

Diver chuckled bitterly, thinking of the real war that Key and Kingsfoil had mentioned. Before uploading, Diver hadn't paid it much attention, since it was on the far side of the world. Now, well, he didn't know offhand what continent held the computers where his mind was stored. All the troubles of the world might well be thousands of miles away.

Or, dangerously close yet invisible from here.

There's only so much I can do. Diver ruffled his wings and tail-feathers, feeling lighter but still weighed down by coins and other trinkets from the quest. "How's the town? I'd like to do some shopping, but not if there's urgent need for repairs."

"The invaders mostly just got the castle and some isolated spots like my dome. Bastards. Not everything is open since it's morning now, but you should be able to get whatever you need from shadow-run shops. Try the Busty Dragon Inn or the Pointy Emporium, depending on what you need. Some armor, maybe? Meet me in the castle at sunset."

The little cloud-tiles caught his attention. "Rebuilding the dome? Can I help?"

Nimbus sighed. "It'll take forever to get a proper cage up, but the basement is partly intact" -- she pointed a wing toward the cratered trenches that the underground rooms had become -- "and I can rebuild the rest better than before. So I'm doing tiles instead of concrete. If you want, I'll teach you the basics of cloudsmithing when you get back."

"I'd like that."

#

He spent a few happy hours wandering around and shopping. There was no way to afford equipment nearly so good as what he'd borrowed, but he got what he thought was a good price on some light leather armor. The breastplate fastened around his back, chest and torso ("barrel" was apparently the term) like a jacket and had clasps he could work with his teeth and hooves. It seemed silly to get a weapon for his mouth so he could pretend to be a human swinging a sword around. Instead he invested in some basic wingblades, which were little more than daggers carefully strapped to his wingtips. He figured his loadout wouldn't weigh him down much; heavy armor and giant weapons weren't suited to pegasi. The rest of his money went into a tiny sapphire focus gem, worn around his neck. It was supposed to help him get started with magic. The equipment was less powerful than what he'd borrowed, but it was his.

He made it back to Nimbus, who looked him over and nodded approvingly. "Ready for that lesson?"

Diver looked at the ruined tent, and covered his muzzle with one wing. "Sorry. I forgot to buy a replacement."

She shrugged.

"Oh! Check this out." He flicked one wingblade into position, making an audible shing! noise. He grinned, put it away, and did it again.

"You're easily amused."

Now that he could sense something of how Hoofland represented voltage, current, and magic, the innkeeper gave him a lesson. It was possible to charge bits of cloud, and common magic crystals, to create something like circuitry. "So what's this do if I hook it up?" Nimbus asked, pointing to a diagram.

"Just a battery hooked up to a wire. No resistance. So... the energy flows all at once?"

"Yeah. Basic zap spell. If you can 'draw' that in combat while generating voltage with your wings, then you're a living Tesla coil. Bzzzt!"

"We just do elemental lightning, then?"

"Pegasi can do wind and frost, too. For those you need to tap into the ambient magic field..."

They forgot about making cloudstuff bricks and practiced making little bursts of ice and slashing wind. Nimbus reached the limit of her magic knowledge, decided he was a good student, pulled her ruined tent's canvas over the exposed basement of her inn, and dragged him by the tail into the newly-made room.

"Hey!" said Diver, as she started to tear his armor off. "We're exposed."

Nimbus glanced at the open view of the street level, then at the blank space between the stallion's hindlegs, and sighed. "I guess someone could wander past or hear us. Later, then. Look forward to it." She kissed him and the canvas collapsed on them both, again.

#

At sunset, after a nap and a chat with a wizard who insisted that Nimbus was doing magic all wrong, Diver headed for the castle. Not surprisingly, the elaborate stone walls were still badly damaged. Here and there they'd been patched with clouds as though someone had stuffed cotton into a wound. The drawbridge was closed but a door had been set into the broken wall that'd taken a giant lion impact.

He walked into the throne room, where Queen Harvest Moon had a map table and a gathering of four horses sitting on cushions. She waved and said, "Help yourself to dinner." A buffet table lined the back wall.

Diver practiced using his wings like a pair of tongs, to help him fetch things. His range of motion was impressive. He piled a plate full of apples, oats, and some kind of bacon-like bark, then joined the royal table.

Harvest Moon said, "Please welcome Sky Diver, who has already assisted the Night Guard. Whenever Nimbus gets here --"

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Your majesty." The bat-pony groused as she trotted in with the queen's box of magic stuff.

"Ah, good. Food's over there. As I was saying, I'd like to formally induct our new pegasus into the Guard as a provisional member. Will you accept, Diver?"

Diver whinneyed, then covered his muzzle, startled both by the offer and by his own reaction. As a human he would've said something like "huh?"

The Night Guard members looked amused. "I remember my reaction to the 'heart of the earthborn' quest," one of them said. "Nearly made me quit Hoofland for building starships in Diamond Space."

Blushing, Diver asked, "What exactly are you offering, your majesty?"

The orange mare said, "Pledge loyalty to my reign as a Noble, to be on call for tasks that will defend my honor and interests, for one year or until we both agree to end the relationship. In return, I will give you money, a patch of land, access to certain special resources, and a promise to make your life... interesting." She smiled.

Nimbus flapped over to sit beside Diver, biting into a mango. "Normally that means general policing of Noctis and the power-nodes the queen holds, and occasional raids or diplomatic missions. Right now, though, who knows?"

A guild! Diver had just been invited to an old-timey gaming guild. He snorted. Nobody else was laughing, though. "Do you have only five members working for you?" he said, counting Nimbus and the other guests.

Harvest Moon shifted uncomfortably on her cushion. "Thirty, and parts of Noctis. Everyone here has something in common."

"Uploaders?"

"I'm a native," said a zebra dressed as some kind of mechanic.

He wasn't sure how the sensation mapped between brain and body, but it felt like his mane stood on end, prickling down his neck and shoulders. "Why does your strategy meeting involve only the people who live here?"

The queen said, "Reasons that I'll explain, if you promise that they won't leave this room." She leaned over the table to stare with those big green eyes. "This is serious, Sky Diver. Cross me by stealing my property or damaging my castle, and we'll have fun with it. Overthrow me and I'll say 'good game' and buy you a drink. Lie to me and I'll really become angry."

The weight of everyone's gaze was on him. Though the stares were cartoonishly large, the minds behind them were real. Diver leaned his neck back and said, "All right. I won't share whatever secrets you tell me here, without your permission."

The queen relaxed and sat back down. She took a drink from a sort of bowl made for hooves, which struck Diver as a nice touch compared to using human tools and fudging the physics. "Hoofland has only existed for a few years, less than that in subjective time. It began as a few isolated environments for players of Thousand Tales who asked for fantasy adventure. Why ponies? There'd been a cartoon about horse adventurers that became surprisingly popular, and had a revival in the 2030s. These islands of horseplay were welded into a single world with some attempt at a consistent style and rules. Then, uploading happened and it became more than a game. There; that's the history of the world."

Harvest Moon smiled and went on. "Yesterday, there was a coup in the eastern Hooflands that overthrew Regent True Sky. The king was gone because, well..."

One of the Night Guards said, "He died. On Earth."

Diver winced. It didn't matter what narratives appeared in Hoofland, if you were an Earthside player, because an ending could hit you like a bus.

The queen said, "There was a free-for-all against True Sky. The new queen seized enough power to become a Noble. Diver, you've seen what I can do in combat, but there's more to it than that. This new 'Sunward Ho' immediately decided that provoking a war would be a fun thing to do, so she sent several blackguards and knaves to wreak havoc in my lands. I hear that even the Hart Forest was hit in a crude attempt to pin the blame on me."

Diver's wings fluttered as he took it all in. He looked at the map spread across the table, and the zebra pulled his plate aside to give him a better view. Hoofland had a vague border between Harvest Moon's night-themed western queendom, the former True Sky land in the east, the deer kingdom to the north, and some kind of zebra/dragon confederation in the south. The references to the Coast of Blades, Flying City Aeolus, and the Griffin Keep Academy made him yearn to explore everywhere and see all the wonders that people had made of this world. He said, "If there's a war, you don't mind that, do you?"

"Not war itself. I send minions to try capturing foreign power nodes and other resources, and we have the occasional assassination attempt, robbery, kidnapping and so on. All in good fun. What we saw the other day is, I fear, the start of something different. The enemy went out of their way to kill residents repeatedly, including immigrants who feel more and more pain as that happens. And including a child who was tagged as such to anyone who bothered to look. To make matters worse, Sunward Ho issued a statement that she plans to conquer all Hoofland using the aid of Earthside players throughout Talespace, and the Forces of Evil."

"The what, now?"

One of the guards said, "The Forces of Evil don't come here much. They're a gang throughout Talespace that believes in villainy for the sake of making sure that the world has 'bad guys'. Or they're a carefully designed outlet for uploaders who're sadists, to channel them into something semi-useful. Or they're a conspiracy aiming to rule the virtual world so they can dominate its culture even as it grows in uploader population. Or some mix of all three."

For as long as there'd been large-scale online games, there'd been "griefers" who had fun spoiling other people's. The difference here was that people lived in this game, and if it continued to grow, there would be genuine wealth and political power for whoever ruled it. "But we have an AI watching all this. Won't she step in if these jerks get too powerful?"

The queen said, "She's been maddeningly evasive about that. Some of the Forces of Evil boast that she won't intervene, because she so values our freedom to make our own mistakes."

Diver pictured a horde of Earthside players signing up for the game because someone had exhorted them on some Internet forum. It would be something awful. They'd use their accounts to make pony characters and swarm in as a griefer army, just to see what trouble they could cause. After all, fantasy horses were stupid and childish and didn't matter to anyone real, right? "Wasn't there an old game where the developers built a realistic ecosystem, put it online, then realized that human players were a bunch of immortal, insatiable top predators?"

"Yes," said Harvest Moon.

"A war, then. You want some way of stopping this outside influence and keeping the fighting to some kind of polite standard?"

"Not exactly." The mare cleared her throat and stood to address the group formally. "The enemy has tried to turn our world into just another playground for humans wanting to pretend to hurt each other, while inflicting real pain on real people. Is that the sort of world we came for?"

"No!" said her Night Guards.

"We can be better than this petty gamer nonsense. We can, in fact, become better people. Stallions and mares, I propose that now is the time to implement the Ascension Code."

Author's Note:

The Ascension Code sounds like a novel about a Vatican conspiracy.

Comments

[mastermenthe]

Oh heck dont think you slipped that SA reference past me!

Good chapter!

[Mix-up]

always great to see your story

[LostArchivist]

"Yes. Yes I did."

That, plus the accidental tent to the face, is funny. I think it's also a reference, but if so, I missed what.

Seems fair that the crap reward is technically useful, if slightly damaging to dignity. Ha.
Also, it is an absolutely terrible pun, which itself is a pun. (because the pun itself is cheesy. It goes on infinitely!)

The Pointy Emporium is a great name. Pegasi with actual magic is quite interesting, even if it's still elemental bursts. Makes sense, actually, so that's clever.

I imagine the ending refers to the ponifying mentioned in the previous book?