To be deleted

by jdssprototype

Chapter 3: Part 2

Author's Note:

This chapter will be only in Samuel's point of view.

I'm still looking for some more feedback on points of view. I want to be descriptive of individuals while still showing you the big picture.

But third person feels harder to make connections with, as the writer, and probably reading it.

But constantly switching points of view for first person doesn't seem like a healthy writing style either.

I dunno, I'll work it out eventually I suppose.

Without further ado, please enjoy the second portion of chapter 3. And the long awaited meeting with the princesses.

I sit up in bed with a start, something... something was strange, about last night.

Not just strange as in, 'I woke up on a different planet with obvious gaps in my memory and met an alien girl who doesn't speak a lick of proper language' either... But the contents of my dream fade. All I can remember is shouting and anger, fear... and the tears of someone who really loved me. But somehow, I know they're gone now...

I shake my head and sigh, before catching myself on the headboard when my balance fails me. 'Ugh. This shit's still going on? I swear, it's like I've got hibernation sickness or somethi-...' No... You're fucking kidding me, right subconscious? 'Is that... actually it? But who put me in hibernation? Where the hell did they send me? What is this place?'

I can't help but grab the back of my head and throw myself back into this small ass bed...

...

...

Fuck it. I sweep the blankets and sheets off of myself and swing my legs off the side, gritting my teeth as a wave of vertigo tries to crawl up my spine... hunger is the first thing to start screaming at me. A kind of hunger that screams 'you're body is empty, shithead. FEED ME!'. It's swiftly followed by my parched throat screaming past my cotton mouth tongue, a silent but deadly call for sufficient hydration.

I shamble a few steps forwards, resisting the urge to bend over and grasp my stomach or to fall to the spinning ground. It's hard, but as I walk, it gets easier. My body finally falls under my control as I reach the door, and opening it just hits me with another wave of nausea as the smell of something cooking floods my nose.

I... can't recognize the smells. They're familiar, but off in so many ways. A part of me wants to struggle with this, but the majority is still caught up in trying to pilot this starving shell I call a body.

First thing's first, water. I check the halls until I find the bathroom, completely ignoring the fact that it's made of living wood or that bookshelves line damn near every vertical surface.

I shut the door to the bathroom, and fall to my knees at the sink, pushing a stepstool of some sort out of my way as I stare at the faucet. 'Oh what the hell!' There's no fucking buttons... I do notice two color coded metal bars on either side, and my hands reach towards them, experimenting until a stream of water begins to flow.

I sigh with relief, eager to finally sate one of the pressing concerns I woke up to this morning.

I slurp the luke-warm water from my cupped hands, occasionally slapping my fists against the edge of the basin if they start to shake or respond strangely to my commands.

'Damn it, my body definitely wasn't this bad on the walk here...' I can't help but wonder what changed from then to now. It almost feels like I'm in someone else's body or something, but the mirror in front of me proves me wrong......

Wait, what the hell!?

I find an absolute mane of blonde hair falling down my back and shoulders, and in the light of the sun streaming through the blinds, I see just how unbelievably pale my skin is.

But beyond that, after checking every inch of my torso twice over... I realize that my numbers are gone.

My service rune, citizen level, my entire official identity is just gone... My spine crawls as I imagine who would have done that to me... Even if I made it back to proper space, I could be captured and sold into slavery by anyone with the strength to do so. Drafted into the fucking war, forced to run plantations, or even used as experiment stock by some of the rougher systems.

"Hehehe...hahaha-HahahHA~aa!!!" I can't help it, my eyes water, even as I cover them with my palms and sit back on my heels. My laughter continues for almost a minute, thoughts I can't even grasp flying through my mind as I alternate between feeling the lingering terror in the pit of my stomach and the nervous disbelief that makes my heart race.

Why am I here!? Was I even real? Skin that's never seen the light of day, hair that would have taken over a decade to grow, lack of identifying scars and most damning, no presence of my citizenship runes... I can't stand it, I can't look at this me, I can't deal with these feelings. 'Ican'tIcan'tIcan'tican'twon'tcan'tnononono!' I clench my fist and slam it against the mirror, shattering it with an immense amount of noise.

Skin that should have been protected by my runes, splits, shredded by the glass and allowing it to dig into the flesh between my knuckles.

The pain drives me breathless for a second, and shreds all my trains of thought as I place both of my palms on either side of the mirror. I haggardly draw a breath, and look at the orange eyes shining out from the bangs that fell in front of my unblemished face.

I stare at them, even as a loud and frantic knocking on the door meets my ears.

At least, if nothing else, my eyes are the same. They're a constant. I stare at the half a dozen reflections of my eyes until the door is forced open, only for the people on the other side to gasp at what they see.

I straighten myself, and turn my head to look at them... Twilight, and a purple reptilian biped who nearly reaches her chin.

She's obviously revolted and afraid, but in those expressive plates of an eye... I see an overwhelming amount of care. She's worried for me, not of me... I can't meet those eyes, and look at my hands, cradling the injured one. "Sorry, Twilight." The words are as listless as I feel, now that the adrenaline and pain are starting to dull.

The waves of emotions I was feeling earlier, are firmly locked behind... a mirror, I'll call it. For now, they're not going to trouble me.

So, I stumble past the both of them, and follow the smell of food. Along the way, I pick the larger shards out of my flesh, depositing them on an end table I encounter at the stairs.

I head down to the kitchen, intent on eating something and washing out my wound. Their should be something I can use to bandage it around there too, I hope...

_-_-_-_

A short while after I finished eating, Twilight and her friend came downstairs.

I was looking for something to bandage my hand, while firmly pressing a ratty rag I'd found in one of the drawers against the wounds. They'd stopped bleeding, for the most part, and I think I got all the glass out, but for the life of me, I couldn't find a medkit of any sort down here.

"Samuel..." She says my name, and I look at her, shoving my guilt for breaking her mirror right through my own mental copy. I don't want anything clouding my judgement right now, I can't afford it.

She says it again, when I fail to respond. "Samuel... [Please, sit down and let me help you.]" She follows it up with something in her own tongue, and I hear a chair scoot across the floor.

Looking at her again, I see she's got a roll of a soft looking fabric and some shears in her grasp. Her eyes are something I can't stare at for long, so I sit down and hold up my hand to her, taking the rag away.

She grits her teeth and the bipedal reptile grimaces, looking away and leaning against the wall.

The flesh is flayed on two of the knuckles, revealing a hint of the joint caps. The worst of the two has visible ligaments wrapping around bone. Even I hiss a bit, surprised at the amount of damage I managed to do to myself. I didn't think I'd hit the damn thing this hard. But then again, I've never punched a pane of glass before so I don't really have a reference on what would normally happen.

My attention is drawn back to her, though, as the fabric is quickly cut and dabbed with liquid from a strong smelling bottle. When the bandages touch and wrap my fingers and knuckles, the skin chills and numbs almost immediately.

In less than a minute or two, she's finished bandaging it up, and breaks the silence between us. "[I won't ask you why you did this.]" Her voice is calm and even as she tries to lock eyes with me. I finally give in and look at her when she says my name, "Samuel..." I find myself staring into my own reflection in her expressive gaze. "[We need to go soon. Spike, take a note please.]"

The biped, who's long recovered from his nausea at my injury, begins to write as she speaks. I quickly give up trying to listen to the words though, and just watch the two interact.

A minute passes and the reptile halts the writing, rolling up the scroll, and... setting it alight? He breathes flame on it, in a strange application of magic that I can't even classify. Then it's ashes and smoke flit through an open window, off into the world at large.

Twilight motions at me with a single hoof, and then gestures at the kitchen at large... I think she wants me to stay here for now, probably while she deals with something or another. I nod, and pull my chair up to the table, which still has the roll of soft fabric on it and the scissors...

Well, since we're waiting on something, and I feel the need to keep busy and focused on something, I fashion some incredibly simplistic boxers out of the gauze-like grey fabric, and use the shiny fridge as a mirror to cut my hair into something more manageable, which I tie back, not trusting myself to cut it long or short enough to do any other 'style'.

Finally, a good while passes, and Twilight returns to the kitchen, with a scroll and a shiny rock in tow.

"Samuel, [I'm going to need you to stand still for this." She says, gesturing at the chair I was in earlier.

I sit back down, looking at the strange blue crystal held in her magic aura. "Well what's that?" I ask, pointing at it.

"[Uh, you wanna know what this is,] Samuel? [Hmm... Well, I guess I can just show you.]" She points at the object, and then at her horn. For the first time, I notice her horn is alight with a faint shimmer reminiscent of the mana fields she's using to hold things.

She concentrates on it, and the glow intensifies, before a secondary shell of mana wraps around it, then a faltering third one. At that point though, the gem glows, and a blue stream of mana is pulled from it, circling and bolstering her horn, even as it shrinks.

It goes from the size of a fist to the size of a tooth, before a fifth and incredibly intense layer surrounds her horn, completely obscuring it from view as her eyes shine with power. "[Time to meet the princesses,] Samuel." She says, turning to face me completely.

Then, in a pop and a flash, we disappear...

_-_-_-_

And reappear in a very bright room, with many white ponies against the walls, and a carpet leading up to two thrones.

Upon them, are two people of a similar race to Twilight, though they dwarf her in size, sitting on great cushioned thrones.

The larger of the two, a white mare with large wings folded against her sides, and a billowing mane colored like a mixture of a pastel sunset and a chemical fire, smiles at us. "It's good to see you again, my dear student, Twilight Sparkle. And it's nice to meet you Samuel, my name is Celestia, and this is my sister, Luna. Together, we rule this country." Her soft and firm voice rings throughout the room, and I wonder if my ears are deceiving me... because I understood her!

Comments

[jdssprototype]

For reference about celestia's mane. It has four colors in the show. A cyan-indigo, pink violet, teal green, and sky blue coloration.
amazingrust.com/Experiments/how_to/Images/Flame%20Test/Log-Fire/5.jpg
^ Looks a fair bit like Celestia's mane, but anyways. Just saying, it's my headcanon explanation for the shitty canon coloration for her mane. Mainly, because suns have heavy metals in their core, caused by fusion, her mane reflects flames of some of the more widely known ones can make. Green for copper, blue cobalt, pink Lithium, etc.

[Sunsong]

Quick question. What is the flight velocity of an unladen swallow? How is it affected by the magic heavy environments of Equiss? Think on it ;)

P.S. Loving your story so far, and the cover art.

P.P.S. Concerning your latest blog post, what is "Questing"?

[jdssprototype]

9718276
Questing is a collaborative story-telling format.

Someone once said, "Questing is like sitting down to read a choose your own adventure book, except one guy is holding it, and a dozen others are screaming which page to flip to next."

It's where an author gives control of aspects of the story to his readers.

[jdssprototype]

So I've gotten some information and advice that helped me see what to do with this story, what I've been doing wrong. So it's going to be rebooted in a better format soon.

Look for it in a week or two, unless I get whisked away by irl.

[Sunsong]

9719391
... that sounds awesome.

[jdssprototype]

9729221
Well, if you're 18 or older, here you go. A pony quest on Anonkun aka fiction.live

If you're under 18 and can handle profanity and people calling you a lot of bad names if you try to talk to them and they don't like you, feel free to check out fourchan's /qst board. Here's a link to the big thread that explains what questing is, basically, and where people talk about all the quests running on the site.4chan /qst general thread

[xenomorph1987]

wheres chapter 1

[Kain26831]

In just finished reading this and it's really good I was wondering if you were still doing the rewrite it were gonna continue?

[MoonWoah]

Just going to say. It is a shame to delete a work, you know? I'm a proponent of going back eventually to make things work. Whatever your decision know people still read no matter what, or how many little.

[Living Dimension]

I like this story
a nice first contact scenario...
You could have described the way from the outdoor scene to Ponyville in more Detail even if nothing plot relevant happened.
The chapter with the greater mind of a reality-bending unspeakable Creator was good and quite enigmatic.
I would read further in this nice little universe your mind explores.

[Herald of Opera]

10326815
Fortunately, he disappeared two weeks after making the last chapter and there was an entire year between that and your comment. There was another year before I happened upon it all out of curiosity.