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The Beginning of Adventure!3,985 words
Danger in a New Land!3,244 words

Danger in a New Land!

While the teleportation was instantaneous from an outside perspective, from within the trip took several seconds. Dewey's eyes saw an impossible tunnel of color, shape and thought. He opened his mouth and his lungs were filled with an airless nothing; not a vacuum, but a harmless, fluid, anti-reality substance. His mind flashed with foreign ideas and magics that vanished as quickly as they appeared, leaving him with fuzzy memories and strange tinglings in his horn.

Steven just swore.

The pinprick of white light glowed brighter and brighter until it exploded into a flash of blinding green light. The two ponies fell into a heap of limbs and shopping bags.

"WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM!?" Steven's wings pushed himself into the air, he turned and shouted at his companion. "WHAT.. WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING!? EXPLAIN! NOW!" He swooped down and grabbed Dewey's shoulders, shaking him violently.

But Dewey's mind was still filled with memories of the teleportation spell, he sat on his rump, with a grin on his face that didn't improve Steven's mood in the slightest.

"Did you see that? That was awesome!"

Steven pushed him onto his back and flew back into the air. Higher and higher he few until he landed on the closest cloud. He looked over the edges, frantically searching for any sign of home. When he couldn't recognize anything on the landscape, his frustration boiled over and he let out a scream that was heard all across the grassy plains where they had landed.

"I should just fly off and leave him here." Once he had said what he was thinking out loud his anger evaporated. Of course he couldn't just leave him, he's was his best friend. Back when they were kids, Steven had continually been made fun of for being a blank flank. Ponies used to say it was because his mother had had an affair and he was half-griffon, Dewey had been the only one who had ever defended him.

He landed next to Dewey, who had awoken from his daze and had begun sorting through the bags. "What now?” he snapped.

"I bought you a new saddlebag, I'll empty these bags into it.” Dewey answered without looking up. “I wasn't able to fill the canteens before we left so while I do that you should go find a source of water. We can set up camp there." Steven's evaporated anger partially condensed, but it was getting late and any more shouting might hurt his throat. However, he did permit himself a little growl and flew back into the air.

He didn't have to fly very high before he spotted what he'd been looking for, a river that he had briefly caught a glimpse of when he had first looked over the landscape. "This way." Steven slipped on his saddle bag and took off towards their destination, leaving Dewey to walk in the direction he'd gone.

Steven was able to put up his tent and start a fire by the time Dewey reached him. The firem made with wood from the trees dotting the riverbank, guided Dewey to the exact spot in the late evening darkness. When he had finally stepped into the firelight, Steven had unwrapped an hay-bar he'd found in his bag.

"You know that stuff will keep for ages. We should just eat the grass here and save that for if we need it."

Steven contemplated this sound advice.

"Please just shut up!" he retorted. Steven finished the remaining half of the bar in a single bite and shut the tent flap. Dewey silently set up his tent and ate a few mouthfuls of grass before going to sleep, leaving the fire to die down by itself.

As Dewey began to drift into unconsciousness, the dying embers caught the eye something on a nearby hill. It watched the campfire for a few moments before laughing to itself and ran off into the night.

"Dewey! Dewey, there's something out there!" Steven had his head through the flap of Dewey's tent and was repeating what he had whispered before, loud enough to wake the unicorn. The things outside the tent heard him and laughed at the fear in his voice.

Dewey reached into his bag, pulled out a flare and gave it to Steven. He flew above the tents and twisted the top, a spark set the flare alight. Yellow eyes and teeth sparkled in the light as Dewey levitated the largest rock he could find. "What do you want?!" Steven asked.

"Meat!" The answer was met with a chorus of laughter as their leader stepped into the boundary of illumination. Drool fell from its mouth onto its metal chest plate, the armor so rusted it was impossible to remove. Its fur was covered in scars from weapons, bites and claws. It held an axe stained with dried blood in its right paw, which it raised above its head.

Simultaneously the two ponies threw what they were holding at the creature. The flare went over its head, lighting up the rest of the pack. The rock was more accurate, causing the creature to duck to avoid getting hit.

"Dewey!" Steven swooped down and picked the pony by his hooves and pulled him into the air. The pack took this as the signal to attack. They moved as one, jumping with claws, teeth and weapons, climbing on each other to get a higher launch.

Dewey defended himself by kicking and pushing with his magic while Steven pulled him onto the branches of the tree they had made camp under. "Are those damn Diamond Dogs?" Steven asked, trying to get a good look at the creatures beneath them.

"Not Diamond Dogs, definitely not Diamond Dogs." Dewey replied in shallow breaths, desperately trying not to get a good look at the creatures beneath them.

At their leader's growl, the pack stopped their attempts to climb up after them and stepped back from the tree. The pack leader walked under their branch, its tongue hanging out of its hyena mouth.

"Meeeeat? Come down. We want to be friends." This was met with laughter from the pack. "Come down and we promise to kill you before we eat you." This was met with even more laughter, even the boss chuckled at the joke.

"W-why should we?" Dewey asked, clinging to the tree branch as tight as he could.

"You stay, you stave. Naaasty." More laughter. "You stave, you waste away, we get less meat. Better you come down." Again, more laughter.

"You.. you can't make us. We'll eat the leaves and he can fly away and get me food and drink." Dewey yelled down at the gnoll. The gang's laughter was interrupted by a sharp growl by their boss.

It paused before replying "Flying meat can go and we leave him alone. For now." The others didn't like the sound of that, but a low growl and a vicious look silenced any objections.

"Look, you can't get us and we can stay up here forever, so why don't you just go hunt something else?" Steven spoke up.

The pack leader walked out of the circle of gnolls and stared at the dying flare. "Yes, we'll go hunt something else."

"What!" The largest gnoll, armed with a mace and wearing a breast plate much too large for him, stepped to the leader of the pack. He growled, towering over the battle scared veteran. The leader of the pack lowered his axe and laughed in the face of the challenger.

"You stay, and you and you." He pointed to three of the youngest hunters. "You stay while we go hunt. We take meat things, so if they escape, they have to find us to get them back." The three youngsters, barely older than cubs, giggled at being singled out for a job. The big brute took a moment to understand the plan, then he chuckled, bent down and licked his leader behind a torn left ear.

They pulled the tents from the ground and carried their spoils away into the night. The four remaining gnolls sat in the grass and waited for something to happen.

"Good thing they didn't try cutting down the tree." Dewey whispered to Steven.

Steven carried Dewey to a larger tree before flying up to sleep on a bed of clouds. The junior gnolls play fought as the eldest slept. Dewey, however, couldn't sleep, he was busy trying to think of a way to escape. He tried using his magic lift the mace, but was to heavy and too far away. Even if he could, what was he going to do, drop it on its sleeping hyena head? He'd never killed anything before and he didn't want to start now.

"I didn't think it would be like this. I thought it would be fun. Sorry Steve, sorry. I'm sorry." He sat, propped against the tree trunk, the first tears he had shed for a decade rolling down his cheeks.

Steven tried shielding his eyes from the morning sun before he remembered what was happening. He dashed to the tree to see Dewey sleeping, propped between the branches.

"Morning meat." On the ground, the elder hunter's smile showed his impressive set of teeth. His back leaning on the tree trunk, next to him was the remains of half an animal carcass that the pack must have brought him in the night. The poor dead creature, it reminded Steven of the times spent living in the Griffin Kingdom. Nearly every summer him and his parents were guests of the noble house of Steven Razortalon.

"We're not meat, we're ponies." The gnoll's laughter at this comeback woke Dewey with a start, Steven landed on the branch to help hold him steady.

“Steven, Steven I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't.. I didn't think.." He wasn't crying any more, but Steven could tell he had been.

"No, no you didn't," Steven interrupted, hoping that being confrontational would snap Dewey out of his melancholy.

"You should just leave me." Steven could barely hear him over the laughing gnoll beneath them.

"Don't start that now. You got us into this situation, you get us out of it. Use some magic or something." Steven was worried now, Dewey was never one for self pity.

"I can't, I can't fight. I can't do anything, I'm just a librarian." Below them, the young hunters had awoken and had joined in with the mocking of their prey.

"HA HA HA HA HA HEE HEE HE HE HE HE HE AHA HA HA HA"

Steven was cold, hungry, he had barely slept and his only friend was acting less than useless. He just couldn't stand it any longer. He flew high into the air and then shot down like an arrow at the predators. The senior gnoll's eyes were closed and his ears were full of laughter, so he didn't notice the pony until his hooves had collided with his face. His head was knocked back, smashing into the tree trunk he'd been leaning on, knocking him out cold. Steven landed, spun and kicked him again in the face with his hind legs. He then turned to the trio of young, confused gnolls; they'd never seen prey fight back.

"RUN MEAT!"

They did.

Steven and Dewey had flown across the river and had climbed over a number of hills before they decided to discuss what to do next.

"We're not really do this, are we?" Dewey asked. Steven finished swallowing his grass breakfast before replying.

"We have to, we're not going to get very far without our stuff. It was your plan to begin with." While trying to think of a way to escape the tree, Dewey had thought of several plans. In the best one, Steven used his pegasus talent of weather manipulation to scare the hyenas away.

Steven flew high and spotted the gnoll camp, a trio of wrecked caravans they must have ambushed and moved in to. The plan was for Steven to fly out of their reach with the storm cloud and scare the gnolls away, shocking a couple maybe. Then the two of them would find their saddle bags and put as much distance between them and the savage hunters as possible. "It's not like they've seen a pegasus before, they'll be scared to death of somepony shooting lightning at them. It's strange here, the weather doesn't seem to need anypony's help." Steven's thoughts on foreign weather patterns was interrupted by Dewey.

"I don't think we should. What if one of them come back and tries to kill us?" The usual confidence he had in his ideas hadn't fully recovered yet.

"Then we kill him." Steven answered, as it was most normal thing in the world. Dewey stared open mouthed.

"What!? How can you just say that? Killing is wrong!" Steven stood up and let loose some of his pent up frustration.

"Don't you get it?! We're not in Canterlot anymore, we're not in Equestria! The rest of the world's not like that! You've never been out of Equestria, I have. I've been to the Griffon Peaks and the Minotaur Caverns, people fight and animals kill each other. And if we ever want to get back home, if we want to survive, we need stop being scared." He paused a couple of seconds, deliberating whether or not to continue. "You wanted an adventure, now here we are."

It took several hours for Steven to find enough clouds to squeeze together to make a storm cloud. Shooting out accurate and non-lethal lightning bolts was a very tricky and stopping it from raining away was a constant struggle. Steven doubted he'd be able to shoot off more than a dozen before it ran out of static electricity.

Despite Dewey's concern the plan worked. The gnolls were relaxing after feasting on a couple of water buffalo when Steven attacked. Their ears ringing from thunder and their behinds painfully zapped, the ferocious predators fled, many of them dropping their weapons and running on all fours. Half of them didn't even realize they were being attacked by a pony. Dewey crept into the camp, levitating an axe and shield dropped by the young gnolls who fled the tree, and started searching the caravans while his partner kept watch high above him.

“I found them!" He shouted up to the pegasus. Steven dived down and followed him into the structure. "Help me get it all together."

Steven entered to see the saddlebags' contents scattered around the alpha gnoll's caravan. It took them much longer than they'd hoped to find everything. Luckily, the gnoll leader had forbidden any of the others from touching the bags, so none of the items were broken. However, the tents had been ripped by the journey, so the two of them felt it wasn't worth bringing them.

When they exited the caravan, the first thing Steven noticed was that the storm cloud had started raining. With Steven no longer there maintain it, the cloud did what came naturally to its kind.

The first thing Dewey noticed however, was the Gnoll leader charging towards them, axe raised and mouth wide open.

"Look out." He pushed Steven back into the caravan and raised his shield above him to protect him from the blow. The attack knocked the piece of metal and wood from his telekinetic grip and it spun away from him.

The leader turned his head and shouted, "ATTACK!" but the pack kept away. They were afraid of their leader, but they were even more afraid of the painful shocks and the deafening booms.

Dewey took this chance and swung his axe at his attacker. The gnoll jumped back, grabbed the handle and wrenched it from the unicorns grasp. Meanwhile, Steven realized what was going on and shot into the air, racing to grab hold of his leaking weapon.

Throwing the weapon to the side, the gnoll raised its own axe. Dewey grabbed onto it with his magic and tried to push it away, causing it to embed itself into the ground to his left.

Steven reached the cloud and patted the bottom, stopping the rain from falling. He could tell it had lost a lot of water, there couldn't be many more shocks left in it. Even if he did shock the pack leader, he doubted it do anything but make it even angrier. He grabbed the cloud's sides and pulled it down, turning to face the ground in time to see the gnoll smack Dewey across the horn with its left paw. He forced himself to fall as fast as his wings would allow. When he saw the creature raise the axe, he squeezed the cloud as as hard as he could.

"DIE MEAT!" The gnoll snarled between gritted teeth before opening its jaw wide, ready to continue its eternal laughter.

The lightning struck the raised axe, jumped the gap between the weapon and the gnoll's simple steel helmet and made a path through her semi-humanoid body into the ground. Intense pain coursed through her, a violent gargling sound emanated from her throat, her eyes rolled up into her skull and she collapsed to the floor, dead. The other gnolls ran, what little courage they had regained destroyed by seeing their pack leader smoking on the floor.

Steven landed next to the fallen unicorn and pulled him to his hooves, the cloud had popped in his hooves and had soaked the corpse. Dewey Decimal and Steven took a moment to look over the creature's body, the fleeing hunters and the ruined caravans before putting on their saddlebags and leaving the camp.

"You called for me?"

"Yes, come closer. Did you hear that, a few minutes ago."

"It was just thunder, nothing to be worried about chief. The sky isn't ready to fall quite yet."

"Look." He pointed out the window, "I don't see any big storm clouds, do you?"

"N.. no, chief."

"Send a group out to take a look, but be sure that they're careful. It's been months, but that gnoll gang might not have moved on yet."

Bowing, the warrior closed the door behind him. The chief turned and looked out the window again. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun.

"A pegasus?"

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