One Way

by jroddie

44: Asperx' story

Chapter 44

Asperx was a very, very strange pony. It’s almost impossible to describe how unusual he was among his species.

“Slacking in your form, Captain!?” Asperx spat at me as our swords clanged together. I gritted my teeth, feeling his unusual brand of bladesinging. The fight had been going for a few hours now, and I was unusually exhausted. His sword was more like a garden instrument than a sword. It started off straight near the hilt, but then started to get weird. Certain parts of the blade were very different from others, different shapes and sizes and angles and colors. It made the whole thing look like a piece of rainbow rock candy. It was almost a club, except that every facet was sharpened to perfection. It was very easy to swing, judging by the way that Asperx clobbered me with it. It made strange colored sparks every time that it came into contact with my blade. He was slightly shorter than I was, but he made up for it by just beating me around with that club of his. He pushed me around like he owned me. Looking back, I could have just entered the Flow and crushed him like a fly with my superior strength. I could have just electrocuted him until he let off. But I didn’t even think about it at the time. While I was thinking about what I could do, Asperx hoisted his club-sword high and shouted triumphantly. I took the opportunity to strike. My sword clipped his right foreleg just when he smacked it away before it could do any more damage. I looked at his wound. It was bleeding, I thought, but everything that was coming out was a bright, cobalt blue. I looked up at Asperx in disbelief. He chuckled.

“Spies aren’t just known for their ability to eavesdrop.” He remarked and swung his club at me again like a baseball bat. I lunged out of the way and right into Asperx’s face. I rose the sword up to his neck and pressed on it slightly. A drop of bright blue blood formed. Asperx panted with a wide grin on his face.

“A rare pony it is that can beat me with a sword.” He gasped out.

“You call that a sword? It’s more like a club!” I remarked in disbelief. Asperx chuckled, out of breath.

“I know, I know. Now please, let me go.” He said, extremely winded. I scowled for a moment, and he made a pleading look. I finally removed my sword and flicked the blood off of it. It sizzled on the ground, and I looked at it. I turned back to Asperx. He shrugged.

“I’ll promise that I’ll tell you later. We need to go now. An impatient Princess is nothing to trifle with.” He said, gesturing for me to follow him. I did so reluctantly. We walked together like we weren’t trying to kill each other a few minutes before. Some of the guards that we passed said hello to me, but they avoided Asperx like the plague. I noted that in my head and continued on without a comment. I finally had to ask him.

“You aren’t really a pony, are you?” I asked him after we passed one of the Royal scholars, surrounded in his normal attire of a cloud of books and papers. Asperx sighed, and his head slumped.

“I’m not now.” He remarked, sounding ashamed.

“But you were once?” I grilled. Asperx sighed heavily again.

“Yes, I was once. Let me tell you my story, it will help explain.” He ventured, and I nodded.

“Equestria during my childhood was not a very dangerous place at all. War of the Factions was about it, and that only lasted a few months when I was thirty.” He remarked, very blase.

“I thought it was a very dangerous and deadly war.” I questioned. Asperx snorted.

“Brother told you that, didn’t he?” Asperx inquired amusedly.

“How did you-”

“He always makes a big deal out of it. He got booted out of the army and right into the arms of the Royal Guards as soon as they found out he was a Bladesinger, but he always likes to make ponies think that it was a very very big deal and that he was a very very big part of it. He was in the army for about three minutes. Anyways, my childhood. I was a chipper young unicorn, looking up spells and whatnot in my spare time. You know what it was like as a foal.”

“I never was a foal.” I said, and Asperx looked at me with a quirky glance.

“Strange.” He said after a pause, and then continued. “Well, I was such an amazing student that my parents enrolled me into some magic school or another while I was still a very young foal. I can’t remember exactly which school it was, and I’m not too sure I would know it if I were to ever see it.”

“Why wouldn’t you remember the school? It must have been a big part of your life as a foal.” I said. Asperx stopped walking and stared at me openly.

“Do you know how impossible it is to try and tell a story around you?” He remarked indignantly. I felt slightly ashamed.

“Sorry.” I mumbled. The seemingly frail grey pony seemed to smile. His teeth were amazingly bright white squares. We started walking again, weaving our way around a whole gaggle of shouting foals and their weary teacher. We both laughed at the spectacle. It took a moment after that for his story to continue.

“I’ll get to why I can’t remember it later, as long as you won’t interrupt any more.” He chided. I pantomimed zipping my lips and he continued. “I was an exemplary student. I turned in all of my work, corrected my professors, and even met a princess. Some tiny little pink thing, I can’t remember her name right now. Anyways, I grew up. Mares became the subject of conversation instead of lunch or Mr. Kelp’s essay due tomorrow. There was one, I can’t remember what she looked like, but I knew what her favorite flavor of ice cream was. It’s sad. I can’t remember who she was or what she looked like or what her mane smelled like or what she liked to do in her spare time or even what color she was, but I know that she loved butter pecan ice cream more than Celestia herself. I’m good at rambling. But now we come to the important part. I was in my late twenties, working on an experiment with my chemistry professor, Dr. Scroll. The last thing that I can remember from that is that I titrated a solution. I remember specifically the dripping of the dropper, drop by drop by drop. There was a white flash. Everything went silent. What I’m going to say from this point forward is what I was told after the fact. The titration solvent was actually mislabeled. It was a solution griffon tears, which are extremely volatile when a correct incantation is said over them. The incantation was said beforehand in preparation for another experiment. The other experiment got a eighty-percent citric acid solution instead of a sixty-three percent activated griffon tear solution. It took a few minutes for the tears to heat up enough for them to react. I was told that they had to pick pieces of me out of the carpet from the floor below. That mare that I told you about, she found my liver, pancreas, and one of my eyes in her favorite garden on campus, a few buildings away. My brain and what little of my original body remained in the room were rushed to the medical research lab. Luckily, it was in the same building as my failed experiment. Dr. Scroll handed my remains off to Dr. Cap, who was a visiting professor at the time and, luckily for me, one of the brightest medical minds of his time. From what he told me, I wasn’t even recognizable as a pony. The metaphor he used was “Dragon vomit”. He worked on me for five days straight, trying to make me work again. He wouldn’t tell me how he fixed me, but I surmised one thing. The college, Canterlot university, has one of the largest research wings on Equine brain function in all of Equestria. Dr. Cap stole some brain matter from fresh cadavers, mixed it up into little pieces and then put them in my head so that I would have a complete brain. That’s why I can’t remember her name or what she looked like, or even my first magic school. But I can remember some things that I have never experienced. A shiny hearthwarming eve ornament, The smoky smell of hickory in a stallion’s mane, the bitter taste of black licorice, and the sound of a mare’s voice saying “It’s time for dinner”. You see, I’m not entirely myself. I’m little bits of different ponies, with the dominant part being my original personality. That’s why my sword looks so strange. All of those different facets, all of those colors, they all represent what means the most to one of the ponies in my brain. It’s strange. One of the pieces loves pecan pie. I used to hate pecan pie. The scent of a fresh one made me want to gag. Now, whenever I see one, It takes all of my willpower to not scarf it up right there.” He told me, and I felt harrowed. We were silent for a very long time after that.

“What about the blood?” I scrounged up the courage to ask. Asperx chuckled humorlessly.

“I never found out what it was. What I do know about it is that it has a high viscosity, a low boiling point, and has a pH of about eleven. It keeps me from freezing to death in climates that would make other ponies into fun shapes of icicle. The viscosity keeps me from bleeding to death whenever I have what could be a mortal wound. I don’t know what the high pH does, other than make me feel odd.”

“Odd?”

“My legs tingle whenever it rains.”

“That is odd.” I agreed. Asperx continued his story like I never asked a question, with his violet eyes conveying deep sorrow. I just then noticed that one of his eyes was a single shade of purple darker than the other one.

“I woke up the week before my funeral service. I got to see my gravestone, they already had it picked out. The epitaph read “A loving son, brother, and friend.” A few lines lower, there was another line. “He died doing what he loved”. I thought that was kind of funny, actually. I was a scientist, but If I died doing what I loved, they would have found my body with that mare. Anyways, I really had nothing to do with my life after that point. I had forgot nearly everything about being a chemist, and I could barely remember what my family looked like. I traveled. I went everywhere. As a foal, I could remember looking at all of the little dots on the map and wondering what they meant. I found out what they meant. I went everywhere. I saw Salt Lick City, Cloudsdale from balloon, Appaloosa back in its heyday. I went everywhere except for Canterlot. I tried to stay away from there. I was a published scientist in my other life, and ponies that I can’t even remember meeting before greeted me like we were foalhood friends. It was a sad place for me. Anyways, Princess Celestia went to Trottingham one year for the Summer Sun Celebration. I was abroad that year and decided to hop on the train and go see it. I couldn’t remember a full celebration from my previous life, so I really wanted to see one. Apparently, she was with a full complement of guards that year. Guess who was the commanding officer?”

“No idea.”

“Dear old brother, that’s who. He cried when he saw me. Rushed up to me and wouldn’t let me go. I’m about ten years older than he was, so he was still very young when my accident happened. My parents and I agreed to not tell him that I was still alive. It would be too strange for him, mom said. I agreed, because I wasn’t planning on staying at the family estate in Canterlot anyways. So imagine- Your big brother that you loved to death, come back to life and backpacking abroad. It pretty much destroyed him when he figured out that mom and dad were lying the whole time. I couldn’t blame him. But he pleaded me to come back with him. I didn’t want to, but I had to. He had already been hurt so much because of what I agreed to, and I couldn’t bear to hurt him anymore. I talked to the Princess on the way back to Canterlot. She nearly died of excitement when she found out I was a bladesinger. The Princess was also shocked by my story, but was intrigued enough to offer me a job. Second lieutenant of the forward second. Looks great on a resume and pays even better. So I bought a house in one of the Canterlot suburbs and commuted to work every day. It was good. I could go practically wherever I wanted, which meant a whole lot of time away from Canterlot. I was truly happy for once in my second life.” He finished. I was aghast. His story sounded frighteningly similar to mine.

“You remind me of me.” I said. Asperx looked at me like I was asking him if I could lick his eyeballs.

“Really?” He asked incredulously. I nodded.

“Yeah. I died once, too.”

“Really?!” He asked again, not even believing me any more.

“You see, I came to Equestria from an entirely different dimension. You know what a dimension is, right?” I asked. Asperx just shrugged. “Well, all you need to know about it is that it’s like here, but in a completely different place. Anyways, I was a human.”

“A human?” Asperx asked, completely in the dark. I had to think about how to explain what a human was.

“Imagine a Dragon. A really short dragon, but a foot or so taller than one of us.”

“Okay.”

“Now imagine this dragon without any scales.

“Um...”

“And this dragon has a very flat face. No real beak to speak of or anything. Very long legs, they kind of resemble the arms. And the hands of the dragon are very stubby and don’t really have claws. That’s what I was.”

“You might be weirder than me.” Asperx muttered, and I laughed.

“Maybe. But anyways, I died like you did, and I woke up exactly like this.” I concluded, gesturing to my perfect Numbered body. Asperx grinned.

“That’s very interesting. I have the feeling that I might get to know you very well.

“Cool.” I said. Asperx reached up to the left side of the hall and pulled down on a candle holder. A square opened up in the wall and he pushed me in. He was laughing as he closed the stone door behind me. He entered with me.

"That was strange." I said.

"That was the door." He corrected, and we continued down another hall. We finally reached a large stone room in at the outlet of the hall. There was a large stepped podium up to a chair on the floor. Celestia was sitting there, looking very disgruntled.

"I have a bone to pick with you, Captain." She said very angrily.

Comments

[Northwest Brony]

Grumpy celestia should not be trifled with.

Also, asperx seems like an interesting pony.

[Gytrash]

Interdasting

[My Little Dashie]

I really like this new character. Hes quite unique to the world which you've created, Jared. Lots of character, and very believable, even in his unbelievable state. I do hope we'll be seeing more of him.

As for the description of humans, I couldn't help but giggle.

I miss you, Jared. I hope you log into skype soon :)