Chapter twenty six, Chaos Curriculum: Literature Matters.
-Maries, Chaos Realm-
Everything was trying to kill us, except for the air itself and even that was suspect!
Yeah, when blue grass stiffens, sharpens and angles itself to try to kill you, you know not to trust anything around you in this world.
We marched forward on the dark purple ground and kept our senses open to anything that might happen around us.
You think that’s bad, I think we’re being watched and I can’t help but to keep thinking that.
Of course we’re being watched, Jade is behind us and is staring at our butt.
Not what or who I meant was watching us Mara.
Is that a bridge?
Yes Maria, that’s a bridge. I don’t trust it for one second.
I’m with you on that Mara.
Speaking of with us…
“Excuse me, but didn’t Arizona and Velvet seem a bit quiet to anyone?” Mara asked Jade as we moved.
“Snickers, is playing matchmaker.” Explained Jade swiftly without pause as we approached the bridge down the warped hill that formed a loop that we continued to walk along, up and then down through it. “So they are a bit distracted with one another right now.”
“More like soul matcher, though there’s more than one soul that can be matches made in Elysium and finding them without help is quite hard to do.” Odd comment from Sekhet there. Wasn’t Elysium a place of peace, warmth and love that ponies went to when they died? “Snickers is probably one such being that is capable of doing so, only time will tell.”
“Ah, that explains why the two were being about as awkward as Jacky is around my brother ‘Gene Eric the Swift Reaction’!” Just one swipe of our paw across his throat… no wait, Flamberge’s throat is also covered in dragon scales.
Darn it, how does one quiet an annoyingly loud dragon down without lethal intent?
Would you two stop plotting Flamberge’s demise? We’re coming up on the bridge and are we just going to ignore the fact that the loop we just walked through was where gravity, as Jade put it, happened to only be a suggestion?
“Why are we walking, we could just fly to where the amulet is and then get back really quick.” Ah yes, the other minor annoyance to this situation. This has already been explained multiple times, yet Spitfire didn’t quite get the memo.
“Because, do you want to hit every trap Discord set up to prevent anyone from flying? If you hit an anti-gravity zone I’m not rescuing you. Go ahead and try it, make my day... please! Just don’t come crying to me when you get hurt.” Sekhet has stated to the guards and lone Wonder Bolt that she was a goddess, knew about this world and knows exactly what not to do when in the chaos realm. Shining would be smart enough to heed her advice, Spitfire seemed more ready to challenge anything she says. “By the way, everyone duck… like right now.”
We threw ourselves to the ground and boulder flew over us being chased by a log that looked like it was covered in running chainsaws that were all stapled, glued or taped onto it. Both inanimate things flew off into the sky.
“Okay that’s it I’m going to fly over to the other side of the bridge… is that where we’re going?” Spitfire received a lazy nod from Sekhet and she shot off into the air, only to come back down seconds later as an upside down tornado happened to immediately spawn directly into her flight path.
She was sucked into it and then spat directly into a bush of pointy peppermint sticks.
We sniffed one, just to see if it smelled of peppermint and after finding out it smelled exactly like the flame geysers back home, we decided to just quickly move on past the dazed Spitfire.
Marie watched as the tornado spiraled randomly off into the sky while keeping its conical shape as it tumbled and flipped away. We were on approach for the gorge and seemingly the only method for crossing it.
“She did warn you Spittle, catch up to us when we reach the bridge.” Even Jade knew better than to tempt fate at a time like this, especially when any tempting here would mean an almost immediate reaction based on what was said and the context thereof. “More patches of bladed grass… also avoid the blue flowers. Its poison joke, the pollen from it causes nasty effects with some hint of humor based on one’s personality when affected by them.”
Spitfire quickly caught up to us as we gave any patches of deadly foliage a wide berth and came upon a sturdy looking stone bridge. It looked far too normal to us and very well constructed.
What was the catch here?
Once we were about to step onto it an ugly creature with a long bumpy nose, claws sharp and long as daggers came out. It looked to be mostly bipedal like Jade. It also had nasty looking wrinkled green skin, it was hunched over with a large hump on its back and its thick coarse red hair was hanging almost to the ground.
This is what had climbed up from beneath the bridge. It was pretty large, but we think we could take it.
“Oh great, a classical bridge troll trial.” Is that what it was Jade? We growled and prepared to fight it off. “No Maries, back down. Let’s see what it wants first… hello?”
“What did you say about my mother you vicious crow?! I’m so insulted, but I forgive you immediately because pudding is in the proof of the stairs.” That made no sense, even in the context of what Jade said to it. “What’s your barter?”
“We wish to cross?” Jade tried, why was Sekhet sitting back and watching this? Couldn’t she just deal with the creature herself?
“It’s one of those sphinx traps, I’m not touching it and Jade can defuse this easily enough.” Alpha above alpha’s Sekhet must have noticed our glance, which is why she answered. We followed her in resting a second later, as did Spitfire and Flamberge.
“Ah… you’re so full of it, like vinegar and toiletries! Answer any questions three, get one wrong and decompressed you’ll be.” The troll cleared his throat. “More blood for my hair is always quite fair, such conditioners are fairly rare. I’ll just go to the super market and buy some the next time I’m there.”
It shampooed with the blood of the dead? Or was that more nonsensical gibberish?
“Question one, what is your name?” Wait, why was Jade asking it questions and was that a smile?
“Queezy Queer Questioning Quintin the Quirky, you addled brained tart!” Okay, we were tired of this troll insulting Jade and were ready to teach it a lesson when Sekhet held a paw out. We sat back down and watched. The troll waggled its finger in Jade’s amused looking face. “No dessert for you, you don’t deserve to be yourself. Of course the mutton chops work, strap the goat to the magical beam emitter and kill him too!”
“What… is your favorite color?” Even now Jade was receiving curious looks from both Flamberge and Spitfire, especially as she handled this situation in a comically calm tone.
“A bright red, like the blood spilled from when you’re too well fed. Hemorrhoids are known killers, you should find a jar of mayonnaise to protect you from them.” Ugh, we did not need to know that the troll had issues. Like there weren’t enough issues with its gibberish… but it notably answered both questions before devolving into saying really odd things.
“Does a box containing all boxes contain itself?” Everyone just stared at Jade blankly trying to even comprehend what she just asked, we too were a bit too perplexed by the crazy question from out of nowhere.
“I can’t possibly cogitate that!” The very second the troll finished the statement... it exploded… violently.
Said explosion proceeded to make the entire bridge collapse and sent bits of the troll flying everywhere.
We all turned to Jade slowly with shocked looks on our faces.
“Aw… and I wanted to know the answer to that last one too…” Our supposed mate not only destroyed the troll, the bridge and asked a question as bizarre as to be unanswerable, but she was actually expecting a correct answer for it?
We loved Jade dearly, but she was clearly insane and in this case that was likely a good thing.
“What… the… freaking… buck... was all that?” Spitfire said slowly while thrusting her hooves into the air for emphasis.
“Well the troll did say someone had to answer three questions and if one is answered wrongly, then you explode. If he had answered all three correctly, then I suppose we would have been allowed to go past him with no problem.” That… kind of made sense Jade, well in a chaotic manner it did. Our beloved was far wiser than any of us to start asking questions first. “He didn’t specify who had to answer the questions. Just that three would be told and answered with a caveat of what happens if you were to answer one wrong.”
“You just killed him!” Yes, that did indeed happen Spitfire, what’s your point? The troll was the one that issued the rules, he practically killed himself and Jade is blameless in preventing any one of us from meeting the same fate.
“No I didn’t, he technically spontaneously exploded and I had nothing to directly do with that. Besides, I’m sure he does it all the time and I had nothing to do with his failure to answer a slightly complicated question.” Jade proceeded to walk backwards towards the edge of the broken bridge on our side of the gorge while placing her arms behind her head. “Now come on, let’s go!”
“Go where, the bridge is… how are you doing that?” Seriously Spitfire? Even we were beginning to understand Jade’s logic as she stepped off the edge of the broken portion of the bridge backwards onto thin air and continued walking backwards over empty air without looking down.
“Doing what!” Jade shouted back as she continued to slowly walk backwards across the empty space with nothing beneath her.
“Seriously, does anything in this place make sense?” Giving Spitfire a pitying glance, we shook our heads at her sadly. She was trying to apply logic to a place where there was barely any to be had.
“For a given definition of sense. Sometimes, it has to loop around to making sense to become nonsense once more eventually.” All our attentions were on Sekhet, who turned to look behind her. “Speaking of making sense of things and looping around. Jade, stop being so slow!”
“You guys sure got over here pretty fast, sorry for taking so long Sekhet.” What was Jade talking… about?! Also, why were we suddenly on the other side of the gorge? Complete with the bridge still being out. Shrugging this off as if any of this made any sense to all of our senses, Jade smiled to us. “Ah well, which way now Sekhet?”
“But we were… and then she… now we’re on the other side and…” Spitfire’s eyes started to spread apart, not exactly the look of a sane pony. Flamberge stood up and moved over to her to pat her on the back gently.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t think about all this too hard given where we are.” Sekhet stood up and started moving forward. We simply stopped caring and followed her with a horribly confused Spitfire in tow.
“This adventure is quite incredible… also highly confusing!” Thank you for the status report Flamberge, like we didn’t already know this world was amazing in how it worked. “This will be a story for the ages to tell any who should wish to hear of this tale of bravery and strangeness abounds!”
“This is going to be a long trip.” Maria bemoaned out loud.
“Look at it this way Maria, at least we’re with Jade.” Marie was quite correct in that statement.
“We should just be happy to be spending time in Jade’s company.” The three of us agreed on that Mara. “If the situation were not so dire, we would be enjoying this more.”
We walked for a time, until Jade shouted something odd.
“Giant wet noodle!” A large flat white noodle, of which we assume to be linguini, covered in a thick tomato sauce rose up. It roared at us with a mouth full of giant, and rather sharp looking, pointy corn chips.
This would go down as being a very dangerous noodle incident we would not be willing to discuss at a later date.
-Shining Armor, Hayburger-
“Okay, what’s going on between the cow and the reindeer?” Still couldn’t believe I was relying on Jade to get us out of here, I actually wanted her to succeed at something.
“Don’t know, they’ve both been kind of off since this morning. Usually the two are each other’s throats, but looking at them now? Even I think they are being a bit far too peaceful.” It was off is what it is, but I wasn’t one to get in the way of their current mood. The two were just sitting in a corner glaring at each other way too peacefully to be a good thing. “It's not my problem though. They’re kind of vitriolic best friends I guess, well at least ever since they first met when Snickers brought the deer to our town. They started fighting almost immediately and never really stopped, but I think they like it too much and may have masochistic leanings.”
“More than I wanted to know.” No seriously, why did I bother to ask? I was a cool, calm dude… at least I try to be. “So do you think they’ll make it to and back with the amulet?”
“Coo!” The turtle munching on some carrots intoned with a bird like noise, strange turtle.
“Yes, but you’re going to have to put it somewhere where no one can get at it and make sure that it’s inside a container that can’t be opened by almost any means. I’m only saying this while assuming it can’t be destroyed because of who made it in the first place.” That Fizzle, is exactly what we’ll end up doing.
We do not want the Sieve Precarious anywhere near any pony who can misuse its power like Sell Hard already has, heck we don’t want something that could drag an entire city into this place in the wrong hooves.
If it can’t be destroyed, we’ll put it in the middle of a cement block and cover that in molten iron. Once the metal cools around it, we’ll treat it to rust proof it and then drop it into the deepest parts of the ocean. The Mare-yawning trench seems like a good place.
“You know I should probably talk to Sell Hard about his relationship to his brother and why he thought all this was necessary.” While we were on the subject of people of interest, I figured I might as well bring up Sell Hard. “Do you think I should rough him up… or go easy on him?”
“Don’t ask me, I’m not exactly the most morally sound pony you could be asking.” Oh right, she gets involved in all of Jade’s capers.
Well then, I’ll just make a judgement call.
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Sonic loop then the bridge that Trolls?
Was thinking you were going to go with the unladen honey badger with depression, but the boxes is a nice one as you need really good stuff to solve that. As best as I can understand about infinite recursive sets, it does, forming a loop.
Subduction is such a slow process, which is what you want. Apparently vegetable oil works well with the iron encasing. Turns the surface into Iron 3 oxide, heamatite, which is extremely stable.
I got hold of Octopath Traveler:Demo for Switch, thought very nice RPG Maker style mechanics in semi 3D. Until two villagers were multiple times harder than the suppsoed Kings Right hand Lead Kight, and worse of all,the Demo only gives you 3 hours. I wont even be out of the village in that time, with trying to level grind the poor sod back up to Anywhere the sort of combat capability he is supposed to have.
They just announced Joker from Persona 5 is in Smash.......this is getting silly
Smash bros is ALWAYS fun.
Is this a metaphor for something?
Jevil; "A danger noodle?"
Discord; "Danger noodle."