Blackie dodged an additional bolt of lightning, prompting another response from Andrew.
Andrew yelled to Blackie mid-bounce, “Pegasi can do that?!”
"Stay down!" Blackie shot back.
Andrew stumbled backwards as a bolt landed right at his feet.
“You don’t have to tell me that!”
Blackie kicked up a hoofful of dirt and lobbed it upwards hard. Somehow, the dirt remained in a large clump. It landed spot on with one of the pegasi holding onto a black cloud, shaking them slightly. Andrew was both impressed and confused: how had Blackie managed such a throw, and why did he not go up to fight the pegasi? Nonetheless, the two were both at the will of the pegasi above.
Well, not for very long.
"Stay here!" Blackie took flight and soared low across the lands in the direction that he and Andrew had come. Two pegasi followed after the stallion, leaving Andrew alone with four of his own to deal with.
“Really?! I hope there’s more to your plan than just flying away!?” The crescendoing cackle of electricity caused Andrew to dodge another bolt of lightning. Andrew gave an exasperated mental sigh. 'Great, now what am I gonna do?'
Steeling himself, Andrew bit hard on his lip and jumped the river. His boots landed partway in the water, and with a surge of epinephrine, Andrew left a splash in his wake. The pegasi behind him were momentarily surprised, but quickly took off after him. Unfortunately for them, Andrew was much faster on his feet than they were in the air.
Except for one bulky black pegasus that was nigh invisible in the night.
Andrew’s eyes flicked around the darkness, searching for a way to evade the pegasi. The nearby forest caught his eye, and with only a slight moment of hesitation, he turned and began running straight for it. His leg throbbed under the weight of each step, but as he quickly came up on the forest, the pain disappeared entirely. Andrew was not sure what gland had released a new hormone into his system, but he was definitely sure that he would not be pleased with his next wakeup call.
Andrew was only mere meters away from the forest when the black pegasus caught up with him. The two of them rolled into the woods, fighting hoof and hand for leverage over each other. Andrew threw a hard punch into the stallion’s side, knocking the wind out of him, but a hoof to Andrew’s groin caught him by surprise as well. Nature apparently had a vendetta for the two, as they both rolled over a rocky edge and onto a lower elevation. Andrew managed to flip himself in time to land on the pegasus. No crack filled the air, but a loud crunch certainly did. Andrew did not register the sound, even after the bundle up duo had rolled to a complete stop. Throwing one last punch at the stallion’s chest, Andrew stood shakily.
Another crunch filled the air, and this time, Andrew recognized the sound. Whipping towards the sound on the balls of his feet, Andrew raised his fists upward.
“Who’s there?!”
Another crunch. The sound came from back towards the stallion, and as Andrew turned back again, his heart came to a painful, lurching halt.
A giant spider was watching the two creatures carefully.
The stallion whickered weakly as he began to stand. "What are you?"
Andrew rushed over to the stallion and kicked him in the gut.
“Shut up.” Andrew slung the stallion over his shoulder. “Fatty.”
The stallion pawed weakly at Andrew’s back, but gave up when he saw that another spider was behind Andrew.
"Away, away!" he whimpered. "Monster! Away, away!"
“Shut up!” Andrew spotted another set of eyes from his left. “Just shut up you idiot! You’re gonna get us killed!”
The stallion waved his hooves wildly. "Away away! Monster monster! Away monster aw—!"
Crunch!
Andrew dropped the walking stick that he had just used to knock out the stallion. It fell to the cold grey stone with a loud thump, drawing a hiss from all of the spiders around him. The sound of their crunching, Andrew realized, came from their teeth. The spiders around him were not like the spiders that he had previously encountered, for their keratin teeth were all much more larger.
And they dripped of a green venom.
“Oh no, I am not getting paralyzed today!” Andrew was half-tempted to throw the stallion to the spiders and make a break for it, but he wasn’t about to let a pony die, not on his hands. The spiders slowly began to encroach on Andrew and the unconscious stallion.
He had to figure out a plan, and fast.
"Leg’s injured, adrenaline’s fading, it’s too dark beneath the canopy to see a clear path out." Andrew’s mind was thrown into full throttle as the spiders began feinting him, their lunges only making the full distance halfway. A flash to an old memory took its place in Andrew’s mind, and though the idea felt incredibly stupid, he felt that it was his best option here. He’d only seen his friends that had interests in American football doing it, and while he had no protective gear on, there wasn’t much else for him left to do.
Bracing his shoulder, Andrew let out a roar and bum-rushed the spiders with his shoulder held out forward.
The spiders were thoroughly surprised at Andrew’s willingness to charge them. Most of them jumped out of the way, but one of them stayed behind to try and gnash at Andrew’s shoulder: it immediately took the brunt of Andrew’s weight. Apparently, everything in this world weighed much less than Andrew, for the giant spider went flying upon contact with Andrew’s shoulder. As soon as Andrew was clear of the spiders, he went deeper into the forest: the pegasi were waiting outside in the sky, and he would be stupid to believe that they weren’t.
As Andrew ran further into the woods, he made sure to keep his eyes peeled for anymore spiders. He could hear them crunching their teeth together and skittering behind him. Fortunately, Andrew also seemed able to outpace the spiders. It finally made sense to him why the chaotic side of nature had injured his leg; it was Andrew’s greatest weapon against the world. Pain peeled back into Andrew’s mind at a rather inopportune time. He brought the stallion to his chest and rolled down yet another cliff, this time making sure to keep what limbs he could close to his body. He rolled for a good while, and by the end of the roll, Andrew’s adrenaline had finally left him.
The first thing that Andrew did upon his halt was let the stallion drop from his hands and onto the stone ground. The second thing that Andrew did was crawl over to the side, hold himself up, and vomit over a smaller ledge below him. Wiping the barf that remained around his mouth with the back of his hand, Andrew slipped his pack off and checked it over quickly: a metallic plink had been going on and off during his roll. Thankfully, the thermos seemed to only be scratched and battered, nothing new to its already worn condition. His also pack remained free of holes. Realizing that the chittering spiders had stopped making noise, Andrew looked up and held his burning leg.
The spiders stared down at Andrew in silence. It was unnerving, to say the least. They quickly receded back over the edge, causing Andrew to heave both a painful and relieved sigh. Looking over to the pegasus lying near him, Andrew shook his head.
“Idiot.”
Nearby, a faint glint of light blue light caught Andrew’s eye. The two had fallen before the mouth of a cave. It was not a full cavern, however, as only a small portion of the rock had weather away. In its wake, however, Andrew spotted an eerily familiar sight.
A bright blue, shimmering, clear pool of water.
Groaning, Andrew stood and limped over to the pegasus. There was no clear injury to the pegasus, but Andrew suspected there to be bruising all over the pegasus’ sides. He pulled him up carefully: the two may have been enemies, but Andrew wasn’t going to let a pony be mortally wounded on his part. With a grunt in each aching step, Andrew dragged the pegasus and himself over to the pool.
Andrew only held faint visions of the pool’s purpose, but trial and error would serve him well enough. He set the pegasus down by the pool, then lifted one of his black hooves to the pool slowly. On contact with the pool, a small trail of crimson began to leak from the hoof. Andrew pulled the hoof away, causing the trail to be severed. After an inspection of the stallion’s hoof, Andrew noted that there wasn’t any actual blood on the stallion. He put the hoof back in the strange water, causing the trail to begin anew.
After an agonizing minute of watching the stallion twitch and shiver, Andrew gave in to an unseen pressure and dipped a hand in. The water was cool, and amazingly, refreshing to the touch. He felt reinvigorated, albeit slightly, just by touching the water. A stupid grin came to Andrew’s face.
He had an idea.
Andrew went to take off the steel toe boot on his right leg, but got a better idea instead. Andrew could care less for the circumstances; the water was great, and he was tired. So very tired. Andrew began to strip his clothes off.
When he was left wearing nothing but his boxers, Andrew lifted the black pegasus up and lowered them both into the pool cautiously. Immediately, Andrew felt the multiple bruises and cuts that adorned his body soothed by the water. His skin seemed to drink in the liquid, and as Andrew lifted a hand out of the water to inspect it, he saw a rather large cut doing just that. He let the absorbing hand drip down back into the water and felt his right leg’s calf. The strained muscles would have already been healed within the next few days, but Andrew could feel days worth of healing passing by, just like that.
Things were still running at full speed through Andrew’s mind. Everything happened so quickly in this land. Everything was so simply solved, no peace ever held for too long, no calm ever without a storm. Everything was just… just…
Magical.
After over a week of being trapped in a magical land of ponies, hydras, dragons, spiders, snake chickens, buffalo, intelligent squirrels, and even more creatures, it finally clicked into Andrew’s mind what exactly he had gotten himself involved in.
Somehow, somewhere, Andrew had managed to slip himself into a magical land of fantasy.
He sank deeper into the water and laid his head back, a slow chuckle rising from the back of his throat. The answer to everything was just so plain and simple. Nothing had been complicated at all about the world, for all Andrew had to say to reach his answer was simply, ‘magic.’
Understanding was all Andrew had wanted to reach. Now? He had it. He really had it all. The meaning would have come slower to him, but the new revelation had immediate effects. He knew that he was not on Earth anymore, he knew what the land wanted from him, he knew that he had a larger role to play in even further lands, and he knew what he was dealing with.
'So,' Andrew asked himself, 'what do I do now?'
The pegasus in his arms let out a grumble and pawed at Andrew’s chest adorably.
“You know what?” Andrew ran a hand through the pegasus’ mane. “I want to find more ponies like you.” He sighed and leant his head back again. “Despite your horrible attitude towards me, it’s your fault that this whole new realm of knowledge has been revealed to me. But you know what?”
The pegasus chose that moment to yawn and awaken. He bristled at the sudden contact and stared wide-eyed up at Andrew, but was surprised to find Andrew smiling down at him with what felt like an incredibly misplaced smile of kindness, but Andrew wasn’t dishonest, he was truly happy.
“Ponies like you could use a little bit of friendship.” He pat the thoroughly confused stallion on the back and shut his eyes. “I would say the world knows that it needs more love, but here…”
Andrew sat up, a twinkle in his eyes.
“I’m the only one who really knows that, aren’t I?”
Despite the formatting issues, another good chapter.
8170000
Oh snap, did not notice that! Super pressed for time, fixing right now.
fixed: Thank you my friend!
This story has really picked up steam in the last handful of chapters. I'm liking it more and more.
Good chapter!!
Good. Good. Fixed leg, finally.
Good on you, Andrew. Be a good shepard, yeah?
More comments for the comment god!
He better bottle that damn snake oil I hear it cures all ailments
8170464 What would a comment god even look like?
8170488 vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/8/8e/Celestia_writes_a_letter_to_Twilight_S3E01.png/revision/latest?cb=20121113140457
8170921 You know... out of context that quote sounds pretty dark, as if being said/seen through the eyes of a mentally broken individual unable to see that the so-called red mess or at the least refuses to see.
8171488 It's all good. Thanks for the clarification. I am honestly enjoying this story. I have never read anything like it before.
thanks for the chapter
Andrew, seriously? If somebody tries to flat-out murder you, return the favor. Otherwise they will try again and perhaps injure or even kill somebody else. Somebody who may be unable to defend themselves.
Many many people have made the same mistake, but please know the difference between epinephrine (a synthetic drug used to boost adrenaline output) and adrenaline (a very powerful hormone that speeds up metabolisms, increases reaction speed, and numbs pain), this information could very well save your life some day.
8176825
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't epinephrine exist as a naturally produced hormone, but also as a medicated and synthesized form, hence the existence of epi-pens as well as the adrenaline produced by our adrenal glands? And is adrenaline not the very same hormone?
Edit: One quick google search later:
source: http://www.differencebetween.net/science/health/difference-between-adrenaline-and-epinephrine/
additional reading: http://www.wisegeek.com/is-there-a-difference-between-epinephrine-and-adrenaline.htm
I'm an American, FYI: most likely the reason I used epinephrine.
8176833 then why the hell did my nurse tell me that? XD
Edit: try to stick with one term all the same, because of the very reason I commented.
8175849
... that's a bit of a grim stance to take... especially considering this story is E for everyone.
Let's do some moral philosophy:
Put yourself in Andrew's situation. You are now in charge of leading a bunch of ponies, herbivores no less, who are innocent as can be, and are actually taking care of quite a few younglings. You see a pony who stole your food out of the need to survive and also tried to hit you with lightning bolts and you choose to toss him to a horde of hungry spiders. The ponies around realize what you've done, and while some may agree with you, others will definitely not agree with you.
It's clear that there is some sort of hostile chemistry going on between the tribes, but nopony's been killing each other despite each tribe's close proximity to one another, so that probably means they're too afraid to kill, they see no need for killing, don't want to kill around you, or they're just too innocent to even understand what killing is like. By killing a pony, you've lost the trust of at the least quite a few ponies. No matter what you say to justify it, you will be seen as a murderer. The ponies have done their fair share of fighting, sure, but we've only seen that within the tribes themselves: Storm being injured by the pegasus. Why did they desert them? You don't know why, so you've just killed a pony without context.
As we've seen, ponies in the show are usually only dazed by lightning, so would it be a stretch to say the ponies use lightning as a sort of non-lethal weapon? Humans would definitely be affected by the lightning in a hazardous way, but the ponies wouldn't know that. They're too naive to understand what exactly they're dealing with, but the few that are smart enough to recognize that you've got more of a clue as to what's going on in the world will most definitely follow you. By killing a pony, it may show that you wish to protect the ponies from malign influences, but you're ruling over three separate herds of ponies that have different developing cultures. By killing a stallion instead of punishing him in any other way, you've proven that you're willing to hurt the ponies. What does that say to the ponies under you? Will the pegasi believe you to be against their ways due to the killing of a pegasus? Will the unicorns and earth ponies see you as a threat to their own life due to your willingness to kill?
Again, the ponies have probably done their fair share of fighting, but since they haven't been outright punting each other despite living in the same group, it means that they have some sort of restraint on their fighting. Storm was injured by a pegasus of her own tribe, most likely the alpha. Does this mean that he had the intent to kill? Who knows: you don't, that's for sure, and by making an action without prior context, you are endangering the future of you role as a leader of the ponies. In the short-term, yes, you would definitely be able to take care of your problem through killing, but in the long-term, again, what does that look like to the ponies?
This is all about context. The stallion doesn't know that Andrew could die from being shot by a lightning bolt, but he's also too distracted by a grudge that was brought on through the need to survive (eating Andrew's fish). Andrew has been told by Harmony that as long as he keeps his intentions pure, that the world will remain pure and help him in turn. Killing a pony would definitely go against such orders, and his infatuation with their cuddliness and innocence is another factor in his decision to not kill the stallion.
So, you either kill a creature who is too uneducated to realize that their world's rules do not apply the same way that they do to you, or you rehabilitate a pony who is leaning towards the darker side of the world. You are either a harbinger of death and violence, or you are a bringer of friendship and peace.
Why did the pegasus alpha attack Storm and cause her to bleed? Was it an accidental wound, or were his intentions much more darker? That's for you to find out in a future chapter: chapter 28 will bring you the answer.
Senseless killing will get you nowhere. If you don't think about the consequences of your actions on the people around you, then you clearly aren't fit to be a leader. You may have to kill at some point in your leadership, but killing your followers' kind is not the way to gain their trust and loyalty.
Apologies for the 800 word blurb, but I just had to address your comments.
Cheers, and thanks for commenting!
ps. You straight up call the pegasus a bully/thug. Every bully/thug has their reasons and deserves a second chance, so are you making a logical decision, well-informed decision with prior context and evidence, or making a decision that appeals to your 'triumphant fantasy' by killing the pegasus at the first chance you get?
8177071
So you enslave them all and sell them to the Chinese! (Alondro is indeed human...)
8177071
No context? What part of "traitors, who purposfully injured, almost killed the alpha of the pegasi, & almost straight up, brutally murdered The Bushkeeper, who kept all of them ALIVE, & brought them together to these new, fruitful lands" is no context, he gave the willhorns their fwafwa, they wouldn't have a problem with him murdering someone of another tribe who would've brutally murdered the one who gave them their fatwa, the pegasi saw that dude as a TRAITOR who heavily injured their ALPHA and was about to flipping MURDER their savior.
Sorry if I'm a bit misinformed on your comment or its purpose, I just saw 'no context on killing him from the ponies POV' and fell into a kinda blood rage.
10346648
It's been 3 years, and my stance on this personally has changed, but I will try my best to explain what I was going for.
I did my best to depict the ponies as a sensitive bunch. If anything, my ponies (which readers over the years have blatantly tried to fit to their own versions of Equestria, which is fine in hindsight, but was a pain during writing) would at most be beating one another up, but not outright killing. I believe the context I was going for was that Andrew himself has no context on the dynamic between the ponies, but going off of Harmony's word, he wasn't ready to hurt ponies, even if they were being more than pricks.
All this morality talk I was going on about definitely applies to Andrew's thinking, I will say, but not mine personally. Let me know if this isn't enough, or if there's anything else you have questions about here; I'll try my best to answer.