The Trials of Shmarity: an Ogres and Oubliettes Story

by TheMessenger

47. Last Orders at the Yawning Portal

47. Last Orders at the Yawning Portal

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” the Squid Wizard said in that awful squeaky, posh voice of his. “To think, I spent all that time, money, and labor in order to track you down and return you to me, and here you are, back in my throne room on your own accord.” Several of his free tentacles swayed in the air as the rest of the Squidzard’s body bobbed from his high-pitched, snorted chuckle, but the appendage wrapped around the wand kept the glowing rod steady and directed at Rarity. “I’m surprised to see something so reckless from you, Princess, I honestly expected better. Mind you, I would have found you one way or another, and any attempts to stay hidden would have only delayed the inevitable. Shame, but at the the very least you could have enjoyed your freedom for a little while longer.”

Rarity’s eyes narrowed into a glare, and she stared to move toward the Squid Wizard but stopped when he jabbed his wand at her and his skeletal guards stepped up with their pole arms out and ready. “Hmph! If you truly thought I would just run and hide and leave my friends in the clutches of some uppity overgrown squid who knows a couple of magic tricks, then you really don’t know me at all.”

Almost as if to emphasize her point, there was a groan from Discord, which got every creature’s attention and caused everyone to turn toward him and Spike. The two were in the process of sitting up, rubbing at their faces and shaking their heads, murmuring and grumbling like they had just woken up the morning that followed a long night of partying with Pinkie Pie. Rarity looked back to the Squid Wizard and saw that both of those brushy eyebrows had shot up almost to the tip of his elongated head and that his already gigantic eyes had widened and taken up even more space of his face.

The Squid Wizard soon recovered from his shock with a forceful cough. “Ahem, well, yes, it does seem that in the wake of your untimely arrival, you have caused us quite a spot of trouble. First the prisoners’ rioting—“ A loud crash and distant screams rang out from elsewhere in the keep. “—and now I see that you’ve undone all my hard work on these blasted heroes of yours. No matter, there’ll be plenty of time to learn just how you managed to do all this once all this madness is resolved and the instigators are properly punished. But first,” he said, moving the wand away from Rarity and pointing it at Spike instead, “let’s take care of these heroes you’re so worried about.”

He waved the rod with a flourish, and out from its tip came three tiny balls of light. The glowing balls orbited around the wand for a brief moment before they suddenly all rocketed toward Spike. With no time to spare for a second thought, Rarity threw herself over the dragon’s vulnerable body and stiffened as she braced for the magic missiles headed straight toward her and Spike. Two of the orbs circled right around Rarity to reach their original target, eliciting a gasp from Spike as he was struck in both his sides, but the third vanished with a flash.

When Rarity opened her eyes, she found that there was a translucent barrier that stood between her and the Squid Wizard. Unlike the shield that her magic anklet had produced, of which Rarity noted remained dim and completely still, its daily charge having been spent, the glow of this new barrier was a light blue that felt strangely familiar to her, and the image was of a multifaceted diamond, big, bright, and brilliantly blue, like those of Rarity’s Cutie Mark.

The Squid Wizard’s tentacles waved angrily as he let out an enraged sound that was something between a squawk and a whine. More bolts of magic flew out of his wand, this time all aimed at her, but each one was intercepted by the appearance of additional diamonds, all sparkling like stars on a clear evening sky as the bolts bounced off their surfaces and disappeared. Now that the danger had seemingly passed, Rarity slowly lowered the foreleg that she had instinctively raised, and as she did so, she felt an odd tingling sensation that started at the end of her hoof and traveled up her leg and rippled all through her body. Perplexed and more than a little concerned, Rarity lifted a shaky hoof to check it. She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected to find, but dancing sparks and minuscule streaks of lightning coming out of her hoof as the fur around it stood straight up was definitely closer to the bottom of that list.

“No no no no!” screamed the squid, pulling Rarity’s focus back to him. His purple skin had turned a bright red, and his increasingly bulging eyes threatened to pop out and escape. “This isn’t how things were supposed to go down at all!” The Squid Wizard motioned to his skeletons. “What are you boneheads waiting for? Take her down, now!”

The two skeletons took their first steps just as Rarity’s front legs started to grow numb from that prickling feeling. Her entire body shook violently, and she was hit with a wave of nausea coupled by a twisting in her guts as all of a sudden the silver pedant around her neck started to burn. The urge to vomit soon became too much, and she bent over to retch, but instead of spit and the contents of her stomach, streams of purple electricity spewed out of Rarity mouth and made their way to the osseous minions and their master, striking them with a loud zap.

The whole world flash before Rarity, forcing her to squint as the lightning coursed through the trio in front of her for some several seconds. The tingle in Rarity’s body faded and the Queen of Fey’s symbol cooled when the electrical discharge finally ended, which left the scent of burnt air to linger and assault her nostrils. Both skeletons had collapsed into unmoving heaps of scorched bones, and the Squid Wizard barely looked any better. The sudden jolt had left his cape and hat seared and torn, and a number of his tentacles were either crooked and bent out of shape or limp on the floor. Scorch marks and lines marred his once smooth skin, and he appeared to be having trouble keeping both eyes open, with one of his eyes swollen and heavy with crust buildup. The hair of both his brows had completely burned away, and all that was left were two ashy outlines, raised and slanted, leaving him forever stuck in an expression of awe and shock.

The Squid Wizard’s one good eye remained fixated on Rarity as he forced himself forward and limped on toward her. He held on to his magic wand even as his tentacle wavered and appeared to struggle with what weight the thin little stick had. Slowly, he lifted the wand, but before he could finish bringing it level to Rarity and point it at her, a dart of flame flew by and smacked the baton out of the Squid Wizard’s grasp, inciting a yelp from him as he leapt back.

Rarity looked behind her, to where the fire bolt had come from, and standing there on his own two feet, his green eyes gleaming with life, was Spike. Discord stood next to him with a smirk on his face as he waved around the dagger Rarity had dropped, and on Spike’s other side stepped up Big McIntosh who wiped a foreleg across his lips, the empty potion vial still clasped in his hoof, before lighting up his horn and magically lifting his sword.

The Squid Wizard glared and hissed at the gathered group that stood against him, but with him being so visibly injured and so solely outnumbered, there was no bite to his bark. “Bah!” he exclaimed after seeing that no creature here was intimidated. “You and your heroes may have won the battle, Princess Shmarity, but the war is far from over. Prepare yourself, for my influence over Spiketopia is still strong, and you will not be able to undo it so easily. Soon, these lands will all be mine!”

He grabbed his hat and flung it at Rarity’s feet. The moment the cone shaped headgear hit the ground, smoke billowed out of it, quickly creating a thick screen that hid the Squid Wizard from view as the smoke shrouded over him. It didn’t take long for the cloud dissipated, but by the time it did and they had finished coughing, Rarity saw that the squid had vanished as well, leaving behind the two charred and dismantled skeletons and the echoes of his crazed crackling laugh ringing far through the keep.

*

“Let me see if I’ve understood everything correctly...”

The dark stones and decor of the Squid Wizard’s throne room were gone, and around them were instead the crystalline walls that made up Princess Twilight Sparkle’s castle. They found themselves all before the large circular table that occasionally doubled as a topographical display of Equestria and its surrounding lands whenever there was a friendship problem out there that needed solving. At the moment, the map was inactive, and in the place of mountains and settlements and other landmarks there were open bags of junk food, empty cans of soft drinks, and a few books with covers that depicted cartoonish monsters and adventuring heroes.

Scatter about the table was also a collection of colorful dice, large in both number and variety. A good portion were your typical six-faced ones, the kind you could find in just about any popular board game, but there were many more with an increased number of sides, from eight to ten to twelve and finally all the way to twenty. Rarity even spotted a few odd tetrahedrons in the bunch as well as a number of paper cutouts with amateurish doodles of characters upon them. Amongst the caricatures of skeletons and brutish looking thugs and yes, the squid in the flashy cape and hat, Rarity found Discord and his ridiculous locks of blond hair, Big Mac in dark armor and a helmet with curved ram horns, Spike in those wizard robes and beard, and even a drawing of herself wearing that gaudy pink and puffy dress she had woken up in so long ago.

The models of three of those particular miniatures sat across from Rarity, stripped of their costumes when they were brought here at the snap of Discord’s claw, as had Rarity of her own gear. Their features showed differing degrees of exhaustion and, in the case of Spike and Big McIntosh, embarrassment while Discord carried himself with a familiar air of smugness and slight annoyance as he leaned back in the seat normally reserved for Twilight.

“...while we were out on a mission, the three of you were playing this, Ogres and Oubliettes game, was it? Which was, shall we say, ‘enhanced’ by Discord’s magic to the point where when you perished in the game, you ceased to be outside of it.”

“Eh.” Discord waved his paw side to side before he returned to filing down his claws with a vegetable peeler. “More like we were all stuck in an in-between limbo state while our essences were trapped inside the game. Ah, well, except for Big Mac over there who just failed his saving throw against a domination spell, which pretty much boils down to the same results.”

“Eeyup,” the farmer huffed, and with his forelegs folded across his chest, he glared down at the table, though whether he was scowling at the picture of the Squid Wizard or, bizarrely, the red twenty-sided die next to it, Rarity couldn’t be sure.

“Right, fine, so because of Discord’s magic, the three of you ended up incapacitated and couldn’t leave the game, and the only way for you to escape was if the characters you were playing were brought back to life. And the reason you dragged me, and me alone, into this mess to try and revive you all was because there was this Princess Shmarity character in the game whom I could take the place of.” Rarity gestured to drawing of the mare in the pink dress.

“That’s pretty much the gist of it,” Discord answered with a smirk as he checked the work on his talons and Spike and Big McIntosh collaborated with nods and subdued affirmations. “I mean, you really only had to bring me back to life, and I’d have done the rest, but this is fine too.” He tossed the peeler over his shoulder where it exploded against the wall into confetti, and when he looked up, Rarity saw that the draconequus’ eyelashes had extended, which he fluttered them in the direction of Spike. “I’m not sure everything would’ve worked as well if we tried bringing in someone who wasn’t already part of the story, so thank goodness for Spike’s thinly veiled romantic delusions.”

Spike slouched down in an attempt to hide his blush, but Rarity was too busy staring at Discord with a stony frown on her face to give notice. Eventually, the draconequus sighed and turned to her. “You know, I get the odd feeling that despite demonstrating that you’ve clearly got a solid grasp of the situation, you still have questions.”

“Several actually,” Rarity said, “though I suppose I could sum up a good deal of them with a simple ‘why.’ For instance, Discord, with all the magic I’ve seen at your disposal, I don’t understand why you couldn’t just return everypony to the real world in the first place the moment things got too dangerous. Or was it because?” Rarity’s eyes narrowed, but her gaze was pointed to not just Discord, but also Spike and Big McIntosh. “Please don’t tell me this whole ordeal was due to some silly display of machismo. As if Rainbow Dash and Applejack weren’t bad enough.”

Spike quickly shook his head. “It wasn’t anything like that,” he said. “None of us knew what was going to happen, these were our first character deaths since Discord joined up, and I’m sure he would’ve stopped the session the second he knew something was wrong if he hadn’t been the first to bite it. Um, well, probably.” Spike shot Discord a quick glance that looked just about as confident as he had sounded before he winced and gave his head another shake. “I mean, it was still kind of his fault. This never would have happened if he hadn’t rushed in like that without thinking. Seriously, that treasure chest had trap written all over it.”

“Eeyup,” said Big Mac, nodding in agreement. “Could’ve seen it a mile away.”

“And I say it’s what Captain Wuzz would have done,” Discord contended with a huff and a tilt of his nose up into the air, and after a couple of short moments, he lowered his head to return his attention to Rarity. “Anyways, once I’d, you know—“ Discord made a slashing motion over his throat, and for a second, black Xs blotted out his eyes. “—there wasn’t a whole lot I could do, outside of coming up with someone to help guide you along and push you in the right direction, and even then, once the Queen of Fey came into existence, a lot of what they did was out of my control.”

“Is that really all it took?” Rarity’s expression was an incredulous one, her brow furrowing as she regarded the spirit of chaos with pursed lips. “A trapped treasure chest? You’ll forgive me if I find that difficult to swallow, considering how powerful you’ve shown yourself to be.”

Discord let out a chuckle. “Yes, I know, my powers are pretty great. And sure, I could’ve walked away from that poisonous acidic gas explosion without so much as a scratch,” he scoffed, haughtily brushing the knuckles of his paw against his chest, “but Captain Wuzz only has so many hit points, and he unfortunately doesn’t have access to my any of awesome abilities.”

“So you just, let yourself die? Why?”

“Uh, because otherwise that’d be cheating,” Discord said, his tone so very condescending, as if what he was describing was the most obvious thing in the world. “Rarity, I’m a lot of things, but the one thing I’m not is a cheater, especially it comes to O and O.”

Rarity looked to Spike and Big Mac, her doubt unmistakable, and to her surprise, the two nodded in confirmation. “Yeah, believe it or not, Discord’s been pretty good about following the rules,” said Spike. “All he does to add to it is make the game come to life.”

“That’s all it needs, really. Game gets plenty chaotic without my influence,” Discord said with a shrug. “Though I guess I should probably add a failsafe that’ll let me regain control of everything in case something like this ever occurs again,” he added after a slight pause and with a hint of reluctance in his voice.

“You guess? Probably?”

Under Rarity’s glare along with the troubled glances from Spike and Big McIntosh, Discord tossed his arms up in surrender. “Fine, fine. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure dying in the game doesn’t carry over into our world,” he grumbled. “I just figured we might want to leave it in to give us some extra incentive to be more careful with our characters, but no, a consequence free fantasy world it is.”

Big Mac cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, Rarity,” he said, “but if you wouldn’t mind wrapping your questions up? I should be getting home, got some work on the farm to take care of first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, it is getting pretty late, isn’t it?” Discord pulled out a pocket watch, and upon flipping the lid open, out popped a bird attached to a spring that cooed loudly each time it sprung up. “A bit of a long night too, seeing how much we had to pack into it.”

The mention of time and her watching of Discord, Spike, and Big Mac all stretch and yawn sent a wave of weariness crashing over Rarity, and as she tried fight off her sudden exhaustion, shaking herself furiously to keep her head clear, she couldn’t help but to add her own dainty yawn to the choir. It was a huge relief to learn that she hadn’t spent well over a month away from her home, friends, and family, that she wasn’t returning to a horribly out-of-fashion fashion franchise or to an overly overweight cat courtesy of Sweetie Belle’s care, but at the same time, coming to terms that that entire epic adventure, from the initial road trip to Baldursgait and her extended stay at Horshire to those long weeks out at sea to her time at the schools of magic, had somehow been condensed into a single night of real time made Rarity’s head spin. Truthfully, there was nothing more she wanted right now than to go home and finally sleep in her own bed, but she just had one last question to present before she was ready to leave.

“And the three of you are sure you’re all alright?” she asked, looking to Discord, then to Big McIntosh, and finally to Spike. “That there aren’t any lasting effects from the whole, dying and then being turned into a zombie experience? Or from the hypnotism?” Rarity added in regards to Big McIntosh.

Spike and Big Mac answered no with a gesture of their heads while Discord waved away Rarity’s concerns dismissively. “Yes, yes, no new traumas or additional mental scarring or need for group therapy, as fun as it might be to see how long a shrink could last with me.” He took a moment to stroke his beard before continuing. “It’s all simulated, pretend, no more dangerous than reading a book or watching a stage production or playing at an arcade, so you can rest easy about us and all the looting and killing you had to do. I mean.” Discord waggled his eyebrows, and a kitchen knife appeared on the table right in front of Rarity, illuminated by an unseen spotlight. “You don’t feel like stabbing me right now, do you?”

“What? No, of course not!” Rarity immediately answered, clearly appalled by the notion. Eyes wide, she shoved the knife away from her. “How could you even suggest such a horrid thing?”

“See?” The smug draconequus gestured toward her. “You’re fine. You’re still the same prissy overdramatic mare—“

“Humph.”

“—he’s still the same soft spoken stallion who probably wouldn’t be so soft spoken if he had anything interesting to say—“

“Hey!”

“—he’s still the same really awkward dragon, but I’m going to give him some slack this time around if only because the reason he turned out that way was due to growing up along side Twilight Sparkle the princess of awkwardness herself, and that’s completely out of his control—“

“I, huh.” Spike scratched the back of his head. “Um, okay?”

“—and I still am, and forever will be, the infinitely supreme master of chaos,” Discord finished with an exaggerated sweeping bow. “We’re all perfectly fine, each and every one of us, especially me.”

“And so I don’t have to worry about having to donate my body to a school full of zombie making wizards?”

“Exactly, no worries there. Now if that’s everything, you’ll have to excuse me.” Discord stood up, revealing himself to be wearing a pair of neon yellow jogging shorts and a set of sweatbands, one around each of his wrists and one over his forehead. “I’ve got to run.”

He crouched down into a runner’s set position, then with a loud bang, said supreme master of chaos disappeared.

“Should do the same and head off,” Big McIntosh announced, and he too got out of his chair. “I told Granny I’d might be home a bit late, course now’s probably mite more than just a bit.” He rubbed the back of his head, his grimace indicative of the likely scolding waiting for him back at Sweet Apple Acres. “Guys’ night next week?”

“I’ll have to check Twilight’s schedule, see if she has plans,” Spike said as he started to clean up the mess on the table, stacking the books together, scooping the dice into a box, and gathering all the leftover litter into a large black bag. “I’ll stop by later with the details.”

Big Mac nodded, first to Spike, then to Rarity before bidding the both of them a goodnight before exiting the room. Now that left Rarity with just Spike, who was currently wrestling with the stuffed trash bag in an attempt to seal it shut. Rarity’s horn, back in its proper place atop her head, lit up, and she took the bag and magically tied the edges of the opening together, closing the bag with a neat bow.

“Thanks,” Spike said as he heaved the bag over his shoulder.

“Think nothing of it.” The two made their way through the castle and towards the entrance, following in the hurried footsteps of Big Mac. “Are you sure you’re doing fine? I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but I’d honestly feel better about it hearing it from you rather than from Discord.”

“Me? Yeah, I’m good. Maybe a little tired.” The dragon’s jaw nearly unhinged from the size of the yawn that suddenly overtook him. “Okay, make that really tired,” Spike amended, a slightly pink glow visible from beneath his scales, “but I’ll be fine. It really wasn’t so bad, dying. In game, I mean.” The next couple of seconds passed in silence. “What about you? How are you feeling? I mean, you’re the one who did all the work there saving us. Oh and, uh, thanks by the way for, um, saving us. We were watching, me and Discord, and I know it wasn’t easy.”

“But of course. I wasn’t going to leave my Spikey Wikey in that sorry state, not when there was something I could do about it.” Spike’s blush grew brighter. “And to answer your question, I suppose I’m feeling alright. Tired, yes, but considering everything we just went through, simulated or not, that’s to be expected.”

They had reached the front foyer and pushed past the doors that guarded the entrance. The world outside was still mostly dark, but down over the horizon, the lightest of pinks could be spotted where the sky met the countryside, a sign that Celestia’s sun would be making its ascent in a few hours and all the more reason for Rarity to hurry home and get what sleep she could.

Spike set down the bag and dusted off his claws. “Do you, um, I mean, it’s still kind of late, er, dark. I can walk you home, if you like.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Rarity said, smiling, “but I can make it home on my own. You should head back inside and get to bed before Twilight wakes up. We wouldn’t want to worry her.”

“Oh. Okay.” Spike rubbed the back of his neck as he kicked at the dirt. “Hey, um, Rarity?”

“Hm?”

“I was just, well, wondering. I know it was your first time and all, and with everything that was at stake, there was all that extra stress, not to mention you started out all confused and without any idea of what was going on, and—“

“Spike, darling, breathe.”

Spike took a deep breath. “I just want to ask, and I’d totally understand if you said no, would you be willing to try Ogres and Oubliettes with me again some time? Or, er, with us I mean.”

Rarity gave the request some thought, tapping at her chin as Spike fidgeted nervously. “Hm. Well, I don’t think I’m quite ready for the chaos magic enhanced version, and I wouldn’t want to force my way into Guys’ Night. That wouldn’t be fair to Discord or Big McIntosh, now would it?”

“Oh.” Spike’s face fell. “No, I guess not.”

“That being said, I’d be lying if I said I had no interest in this game after my less than ideal first time. I’m certainly willing to learn more about the game and how to play, and I’m especially curious to where this Princess Shmarity character is headed.” Her smile widened. “Perhaps the two of us can have our own little private sessions where you can better show me how everything works.”

Spike quickly closed his mouth that had fallen open as his eyes had grown large. “Y-yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Well then, I suppose I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Right. Well, um, good night!”

And with that, the two went their separate ways, Spike back into Twilight Sparkle’s castle and Rarity making her way through Ponyville, to the carousel styled structure she called home. There she would find that perfect mattress for her sensitive body, the pillows for her head with the required amount of depth and fluff, and that soft silk comforter she had so painstakingly prepared so that she could enjoy the maximum level of stylish comfort. There Rarity would enjoy the perfect sleep that could only be found from one’s own bed, at least for a few hours before the sounds of morning, of singing birds and the bustling businesses and lively townsfolk, and the sun’s glare became too much.

Author's Note:

And with that, we come to the end. Thanks for giving my story a read and sticking through it, and whether you’re a fan of Dungeons and Dragons or not, I hope you found some enjoyment out of it all.

Comments

[Hillbe]

So this Wizard Garbunkle and Princess Smarity made you late for work?
DISCORD YOU PROMISED
But but , It's only a game....
What's the problem?
We had a lovely time
Love is right!
Rainbow Dash!
But the Dracony babies were so cute!

Twilight breathe
Even your brother & Flury Heart play now
Can I join?
Nope - You never do anything

[ShiningBeacon]

Excellent work. It wrapped up how I expected it would, but given that the ending it got was the one that made the most sense I’m quite satisfied with it. I would definitely read another story like this from you. Aside from some syntax errors I didn’t find any issues with this story. It was a fun read throughout, and I hope that you continue to write for us.

[Black anchor586]

Quite a long read, but I sure did enjoy reading it! Kudos!