Chapter 1 - Epoch
My world was being rocked by explosions. They were all around me, slowly demolishing my house, the street around it, and some of the neighboring buildings. They were all I could hear, and all that I could see as well. Well, that is if you count the bits and pieces of various objects being thrown around as a part of said explosions. For some unknown reason, time had also slowed down. Not enough to completely freeze everything in place, but slow enough that I could watch as an explosion caused a ripple of cracks to break their way through a wooden floorboard. I had no explanation of what was happening. The last thing I had remembered doing was playing some game on my computer. It made no sense!
The first detonation was like a jumpscare to me. At first everything was engulfed in a bright light, and I heard an extremely loud roar of thunder. I had panicked and tried to backpedal from my chair, but found myself frozen in place. This fact never had a chance to register in my mind however, as more flashes and roars of thunder—less bright and loud this time—blitzed throughout my room. In the initial moments of panic, I assumed my house was being struck by lightning, but the sustained booms and flashes quickly had me devolving into a panic-stricken mess. I was trying to get away from everything at once, and like those strange nightmares I used to get when I was a child, I was seemingly glued in place as everything around me blew apart. Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of everything happening at once, I lost consciousness for an unknown amount of time. When I came to again, I was immediately blasted awake and once again stricken with panic. This time, my fear was more manageable, and I eventually calmed down once I realized that I was not feeling any pain.
I could feel things smacking against me and bouncing off, sure, but I never felt any of the pain I’d expected from being at the zenith of multiple explosions.I recall wondering if I was dead, and if this was just what happens when it’s your time. That thought quickly swapped to a fear of death and yet another panic attack, up until I calmed down enough to realize I was still breathing, my heart was still beating, and I was thinking.
Conscious thought meant that I wasn’t dead. Conscious thought meant that I was alive. I think, therefore I am.
I was still frightened by everything occurring around me, but my panic went away as after a while the repetitiveness of everything that was happening lulled me into a state of calm. I began to question if this was indeed what death was like, or if I was just having some sort of fever dream. Perhaps I was being abducted by aliens? None of these thoughts satisfied my curiosity however; I was still breathing so I couldn’t be dead, my thoughts were too detailed for this to be a dream, and I didn’t feel myself slowly floating into the air—I was just stuck, frozen in place.
It was as those thoughts were running amuck in my mind that time instantaneously resumed its normal pace. Accompanying the return of time was an indescribably bright light, along with the ability to move again. I know I was able to move because I recall closing my eyes and covering my face with my hands to block out the light, but my eyes still burned as if I was looking directly into the sun itself.
That’s when the pain started. To say it was simply painful would be a gross understatement. It felt as though my eyes were being torn out of their sockets, pulled by some unknown force. I tried to scream out in pain, but whatever had been tearing into my eyes quickly began to spread; covering the rest of my face down to my throat in mere milliseconds. My silent scream of agony was cut short when the fiery pain reached my chest, and near instantly branched out to the rest of my body.
I wasn’t quite coherent then, as I was in quite a large amount of pain. I do however recall the cracking of bones, ripping and tearing noises, and strangely, the feeling of wind being whipped across my body as though I was flying through the air at mach one. In no time, I blacked out due to the overwhelming sensations.
I slowly came to, a sense of wrongness flowing throughout my body. I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet and I knew something was terribly wrong. Everything ached, and my mind was extremely foggy. I could barely remember my own name! The weird sense I felt, along with the fact that I was having a hard time remembering simple things threw me into a slight panic.
Fuck. What is happening? Why do I feel so… Off? Why does everything hurt? Why can’t I think properly? I knew I was beginning to approach hysterics, so I began throwing everything I knew about myself at myself.
Stop. You are Cooper Cortez. You were born in Calgary. You are now twenty-nine years old. You went to the University of Calgary, and graduated top of your class in 2012. You now live in Toronto and work as a Hardware Logic Designer for Mintel. You are strong. You are alive. Wake up.
Now somewhat less panicked, I tried focussing on my aching limbs. I knew these aches were attempting to reveal something to me, but my mind was still too foggy to determine just what it was that they were trying to tell me. It was only after about a minute of lying about and groaning in pain that I realized that the reason I felt off was that my body was different. How different my body was exactly I could not tell, but I definitely counted at least two new limbs, and I couldn’t feel my fingers or my toes. My neck felt extremely long as well, and with the way my face was resting on the ground I had to assume that it had been lengthened out as well. I tried to pry open my eyes, but the muscles in my eyelids refused to move. It was almost as if they were super-glued shut. I tried lifting my hands up to my face, but found a similar resistance in the muscles of my arms as well. Hell, attempting to move anything just resulted in a weak, sluggish flop.
A couple minutes of struggling later, and I had successfully managed to lift my hand up and flop it down onto my chest. Two things made themselves known when my hand hit my chest: One, my chest was extremely fluffy. Like, I have chest hair, but definitely not this much. And two, my hand was extremely solid. My hand hit my chest with a solid thump and then bounced right off.
This really isn’t looking so good… I was extremely confused. Why is my body suddenly so different? What happened to me?
My mind was preoccupied with the other changes I had noticed when my hand bounced off my chest and flopped back to my side, but I eventually realized that it also brushed against one of the new limbs I could feel I had. I took a moment to get a feel for the new limbs I was detecting. I was lying on my side, and one was crushed underneath my body while the other laid across my side, stretched down to rest above my thighs. New muscle groups shifted and rippled as I attempted to figure out just what the foreign limbs may be. With only how they moved to go off of, I determined that they felt like an extra set of arms. However, when I lifted them and let them drop, they felt much wider, and I swore I could feel the way the air blew through them as they fell.
Enough of this. I was getting tired of not knowing, I needed to see what had changed with my own eyes. I attempted to open my eyes again, but they resisted any and all movement strongly and I quickly gave up. Deciding to physically force my eyes open with my hands, I raised my hands up to my face, but whatever sluggishness was affecting me caused me to just slam both of them into my nose. Ow, ow ow ow. My hands are definitely made of stone now. This failure inadvertently confirmed that my face was quite elongated, as my left hand now rested on my nose, but my nose was longer than my hand was wide.
Okay, okay. Attempt two. Let’s not try to knock myself out this time yeah? With that thought in mind I, with much more care this time around, lifted my hands up towards my eyes and rubbed at them. Whatever was glueing my eyes shut apparently decided to vacate the premises, because my eyelids fluttered open the moment my hands stopped putting pressure on them. I was, however, immediately bombarded by a bright white light the moment I did so, and I immediately forced my eyes shut with another groan of pain. I tried opening them again, only to get the same result, however the light seemed dimmer. I knew that meant that my eyes just weren’t adjusted to whatever light I had found myself surrounded in, so I slowly worked my eyes with the light to get them fully opened.
I was confused when I finally got my eyes fully open, and in front of them were what looked to be orange hooves. I went to move my left hand up towards them to see what they were, when they also moved. It was at that moment I realized that the hooves were mine.
I… Shit.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information, other than stare forwards at my hooves for a couple minutes wondering what in the hell was going on. I could also see some long locks of electric blue hair obscuring the upper periphery of my vision, and a long orange snout right down the center of my vision. I’m… A fucking horse? What? I unconsciously began to trace my eyes down from my ha- hooves to my legs, seeing what were definitely furry horse legs. My eyes traced further down, and I saw the reason my chest felt like it was so full of extra hair. It’s because my chest was now just as fluffy as my legs were, if not moreso. I began to nervously twitch, which caused my eyes to snap to my new limbs as they too were twitching.
Those are wings…
Those are motherfucking wings!
I have motherfucking wings now!
Holy shit!
What is going on?
What am I? Why am I like this? What caused this? Am I an Angel?
Questions were being flung throughout my brain faster than I could process them, and I was quickly beginning to get overwhelmed. My eyes stung as they quickly started to tear up, and my breathing became quite out of control. Recognizing my imminent panic attack, I immediately began stepping myself through some breathing exercises. After a few minutes of clearing my mind and just focussing on my breathing, I was in a much better state of mind to assess… Everything.
I brought my hooves up to my eyes and wiped away the tears that were building up in them, all the while worrying about my current predicament. First off. What am I? I had hooves, four legs, and a long neck and face. This could mean I was a horse. However, I also had wings. Horses don’t have wings, so that ruled a horse out. There were a lot of commercials out that used a horse with wings and a horn, and I knew they called those unicorns. Perhaps that is what I had turned into? If that were the case, then- I brought a hoof up to my forehead to check for a horn, but my hoof did not bump into anything other than my skull, ears, and my hair—Or mane, I suppose. In any case, I didn’t seem to have a horn. So what was I then?
Wait. Hold on. I knew what I was. It was something from Greek mythology. I remembered going over it way back in my highschool history class when we were learning about the Greeks. We only glossed over it for the most part, but I definitely recall learning something about a winged horse. It was called a Pegacorn? No, doesn’t sound right. Pegahorse? Definitely not. Pegasus? No. Or actually, possibly? It sounds correct, but it also doesn’t.
Ugh, none of this even matters, I need to figure out what happened to me, and get help. Abandoning that line of thought, I took a quick glance around at my surroundings and realized something that really wasn’t beneficial to my current predicament; I was in the middle of a forest. Fuck. Of course, that wasn’t all I ascertained from my look-around. I found myself in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by what looked to be either fir or pine trees. There were puffy bushes of what looked like blueberries interweaved between the trees, encircling me like a sort of protective barrier. Whether they were truly blueberries or not, I didn’t want to test. I wasn’t really that much of an outdoorsman, but I did do a fair amount of outdoor camps and whatnot when I was younger. Unfortunately, a lot of that knowledge was lost in recent years as I’ve run short on time to actually do things outdoors. Working full time designing processing units never left me with much time to work on my own hobbies, let alone going camping. I no longer trusted myself to determine if those berries were actually safe or not to eat.
Well, with luck I’m not the only one in this predicament and I can get some help. I didn’t want to think about what might happen to me if I was the only one this happened to. Becoming some scientist’s research project did not sound like fun to me, and I shuddered at the thought.
Throwing those thoughts away, I focussed on what was important. Alright, first things first. I need to find someone and get help. I brought my hooves close to my chest to push myself up onto my feet — er, hooves. Scratch that, first things first is that I’m probably going to need to teach myself to walk. After that will be finding someone to get me some help.
Never before did I think I’d have to relearn something as simple as walking. But, here I am, now sporting four legs attempting to push myself up into a standing position on four legs. With the fact that I was essentially a horse now, I didn’t attempt to stand up on two legs, as I assumed that would just end in failure. Quadrupedal locomotion probably didn’t mix well with bipedal locomotion. In no time flat, I managed to get myself up on my feet—hooves. My legs were extremely shaky, however, as if it was the first time they had ever had weight on them. It could be true, I’m in a new body, so there’s a good chance that they are literally new.
After a minute or so of struggling to keep my legs still, I finally managed to feel slightly sturdy on my new hooves. With this sturdiness came a slight burst of confidence, and I raised a hoof and brought it forwards, taking my first step as a pegasus. My hoof struck its mark and I shifted my weight to it, dragging myself forwards a slight bit. Raising the opposite rear hoof, I brought it forth and repeated my actions. Just like crawling, except now my rear legs bend the opposite way. After the success of my first and second steps, I took a third, then a fourth, then a fifth. On and on I went, until I reached the edge of the small clearing I had found myself in. I had a few close calls where I mistepped or kicked one leg with another, but overall walking wasn’t too hard to get down. I was hesitant to move any faster, as I doubted my wobbly legs would have the coordination to do something advanced like trotting or galloping. Taking my first steps was a good first step, but moving faster would come with experience. With hope, I wouldn’t even have to learn to do so. The faster I can undo whatever has happened to me, the better.
Since I was now standing, I could easily see over the bushes that encircled my little napping area. My head swiveled left and right, but unfortunately I saw nothing but more and more trees. Each tree was spread a meter or so apart, with fairly dense foliage in between. The canopy was thick enough that I couldn’t fully see through to the sky above me, but it was not so dense as to completely block the sight of the cloudless sky behind it. Birds were chirping here and there, causing me to twitch my new, rotatable ears. I recalled a random tidbit of information I’d learned about the wilds when I was younger stating that if birds were chirping, there were likely no predators around. That’s good. I don’t quite think I’ll be able to run without either hurting myself or just outright tripping.
My exploration of the area did not tell me anything about where I was, unfortunately. I was in a forest, but what forest? Where in the forest am I?
Am I even on Earth still? All the trees and bushes looked similar to what I’d normally see. Everything else was normal enough, except for me of course. The birds sounded the same, the wind sounded the same, the sun looked the same; but once the thought that I might actually be a very long way away from home burrowed its way into my mind, it refused to leave. Hell, I might still be on Earth, but just in some kind of experiment. I swear, I better not be in some fucked up version of The Truman Show.
In an attempt to evict the poisonous thoughts from my mind, I pointed myself in the direction of the sun, and trudged forward through the barrier of bushes. With hope, I’d find the edge of the forest quickly and I’d be able to get help immediately.
After taking three steps, I knocked two of my hooves together accidentally and face-planted into the dirt. Mrff, I guess it’s not exactly like crawling.
It was beginning to get dark now, and I’d been walking for at least a few hours by now. There were a few stumbles, a few near misses, and one or two face-plants during; but ignoring all that, my walk was completely uneventful. Despite this, there was no end in sight to the trees, just more and more and more of them. I did take notice of an incline though, and have been following the incline upwards. It doesn’t branch off too far from my original path following the sun, as it’s only about thirty degrees to the right. I was hoping that following the incline would eventually lead me to an elevated area I could use to look around and find a nearby town or city. The incline was beginning to get fairly steep though, so progress was slow going. Luckily my new body had increased stamina—or at least walking with four legs up a hill was much easier than with two legs. Pretty soon I assumed I’d be high enough that if the trees thinned out a bit I’d be able to see a good distance in the opposite direction.
After another hour or so of walking, it was beginning to get a bit too dark to continue onward. I began looking for a location to bed down for the night. I didn’t have to look very long, luckily, as after just a couple minutes more of walking I found myself standing in the mouth of a dark cave. The mouth of the cave looked to be about two meters tall, and was around the same size horizontally. I couldn’t see further than a meter or two into the cave due to how dark it was outside, but I was quickly running out of options for locations to bed down for the night. Anything could be hiding inside the cave. Wolves, bears, coyotes… But would those animals try to eat a pegasus? Probably; if I was trespassing on their territory. Unfortunately, with the sun now below the horizon and the crickets chirping, I had to make a decision now. So, I carefully stepped into the cave.
Immediately I screamed, for I had lost my footing on the smooth stone that was inside of the cave. Flailing my legs about, I tried in vain to regain my footing. It was not to be however, and I found myself once again with my face buried in the ground. With a great struggle, I brought myself back on to my hooves. My legs continued trying to slide out from under me, and I inwardly chuckled at a miscreant thought that bounced through my head. I must look like Bambi trying to stand up! Hah!
Once I got myself under control, I began to plod my way deeper into the- Ow. And I walked into a wall. I quickly realized that the cave wasn’t quite as deep as I thought it was. It barely went back a few meters, as if a large rock which had made its home here had slid out, leaving a small foxhole in its place. So really, what I had found was just a two-by-two-by-two hole. More than enough to keep me safe for the night, though.
There were two problems before I could sleep. First, I needed to use the bathroom. I was avoiding thinking about it because I didn’t want to know in what ways that particular part of my body had changed, but I can only hold it for so long. Second issue, I was quite hungry. During my walk I did not come across any more berry bushes or anything else that might have been edible. Going without food was not an option, especially since I’m lost in a forest. Who knows how long it will be before I get another meal.
I decided to take care of the former problem first, as I could do that practically anywhere. I’ll spare the details, but it was both horrifying and—in an odd way—thrilling to see the changes made to my equipment.
It was when I was on my way back to the cavern that I realized. Ding dong. Hello? Anyone home? You’re a fucking horse. Eat the grass. Cursing myself for not realizing this sooner, I stepped near the cave and lowered my head to the ground, pausing with my long mouth an inch or so above the grass. I had no clue how this was going to taste, and I’d prefer to not eat grass, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to survive. With a sigh, I lowered my mouth to the grass and used my teeth to rip a mouthful from the ground.
It didn’t take too long to fill my belly with grass. All in all, the taste wasn’t too bad, it was like a slightly bitter, tasteless salad. However, I cringed and gagged a couple times on the texture of the grass, which once chewed had the consistency of vomit.
I tiredly made my way back into the cavern. I may have been granted more stamina, but walking for hours upon hours really does take it out of you. Before I could bunker down and sleep, I came across one more dilemma I had to deal with. What would be a comfortable way to sleep? I recall that horses slept while standing up, using some ligament in their legs to keep them locked in place. However, try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to get anything in my legs to lock. With that option scratched off, I tried lying down. Unsurprisingly, my wings were not happy when I tried laying on my sides, but laying on my belly seemed to work just fine. My hooves painfully dug into my chest and rear however, so I stretched them out leaving me essentially hugging the ground. The stone beneath me was cool to the touch, but it wasn’t cold enough to leave me freezing throughout the night.
And so, I slept.
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10687860
Thanks! And the plan is to have a lot more information about Cooper revealed to the reader throughout the first few chapters. This chapter was more or less a setup/"prologue" to get the setting established.
For a first chapter I think you did pretty good. The story has a lot of potential.
Can't remember anything of your old story, sorry, I might look it up again soon. But, I am looking forward to see where this story leads to with the hint of a conspiracy and that Nightmare Moon is going to be in it. At the moment I have not idea in what direction you are going will go at the moment as it is a pretty standard HiE setup at the moment, but still on a good start at least.
Also, you probably seen me hustle this around in the comment section, but I will do it any way; If you are looking to commission a cover art for your ley me know I have plenty of experience in doing HiE cover art, and you can go see my DeviantArt gallery here and my Youtube Channel here . You can PM me if you are ever consider it. I wish you good luck on your second try to your story.
10687907
Thanks! I hope I'll be able to realize that potential though instead of pancaking my story into the ground.
10688082
Thank you! And I wish you luck if you decide to read my old story, as it's got a lot of the whole 'Hi my character is wacky and random' in it.
I've definitely seen your cover-art for stories that I have read, and it has been a thought in my mind during the planning of this story to seek you out for comissioning. You are quite talented and it'd be nice to have dedicated cover-art, rather than some random amalgamation I created in five minutes using Photoshop...
Unfortunately I'm in a spot where I need to do a slight bit of replanning (noticed a big plothole, ouch), so I need to do a bit of work before I can say what would be fitting to the story as cover art.
I'm not sure you said that quite enough times; maybe once more to really get the point across?
10701983
Aight, bet. I'll edit one more in
Jk, missed that repetition when doing my reread I guess, will fix that tomorrow. Thanks for pointing it out!
Edit:
On a second look, it seems like I accidentally left an old paragraph in there that I had wanted to rewrite. I'll just remove it right now.
10701986
No problem; happy to help.
Status update:
Halfway or so through replanning right now (noticed a major plothole, needed to rewrite a large amount of things because of it). I was going a bit slow because of midterms, but those are mostly over now (last one is on the 22nd). I should be done with replanning in a week or less, and the next chapter will be out in a week or so after that is done, depending entirely on how much work my professors decide to release.
I've added the Slice of Life tag to allow me some freedom in the starting chapters here. Originally I was going to use some timeskips, but I feel like the amount I'll be skipping will feel rushed if I don't give more background first--background which requires me to force Cooper into some specific situations.
10711269
More status update: Still writing, but things are going extremely fast irl. I didn't have a whole lot of time during the summer to write as I was busy helping my dad with ALS, but in 2 days I'll be back and much more able to write.
I have the next chapter mostly completed, but I would like to get a buffer of at least a few chapters before I start posting them -- that way I can get myself into a proper schedule.
Soon:tm:
Shteud then. When "intel" typed on qwerty keyboard in russian you'll get "штеуд".